Understanding Cultural

Landmines in the Balkans:

How the Land and Its History

Have Kept a People At War

This Document Contains:

? Information Designed for Current and Future Balkan Peace Keepers

? A History of the Balkans, with Emphasis on Post-WW II Developments

? Geographical, Cultural and Historical Insight into Balkan Inter-Ethnic Conflicts

? A Complete Account of UN and NATO Conflict Resolution Efforts 1992 – 2001
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01OCT2001

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Title and Subtitle

Understanding Cultural Landmines in the Balkans: How

the Land and Its History Have Kept a People at War

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Statham, Dawn Stram; Smith, Monte; Holmes, Ric 

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U. S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and

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530
Understanding Cultural

Landmines in the Balkans:

How the Land and Its History Have Kept a People At War

By Dawn Stram Statham, Ed.D.

Edited by Monte Smith, Ph.D.

Photographs by 1SGT Ric Holmes

United States Army Research Institute for the

Behavioral and Social Sciences

Chapter 6: The “Modern” Era

Title Page

Chapter 3: People of the Balkan Peninsula

Chapter 5: Wars, Wars & More Wars

Chapter 7: Peacekeeping Missions

Table of Contents

Chapter 2: Geography, Economy and Politics

Chapter 4: Middle History

Chapter 8: Lessons Learned

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Balkans

Bibliography Appendices
Special Product

Understanding Cultural Landmines in the

Balkans: How the Land and Its History

Have Kept a People At War

Dawn Stram Statham

Consortium of Universities: Boise State University

and the Army Research Institute

Monte Smith

L-3 Communications

Ric Holmes

U.S. Army National Guard

Reserve Component Training Research Unit

Lincea Ruth, Chief

U. S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences

5001 Eisenhower Avenue, Alexandria, Virginia 22333-5600

October 2001

Army Project Number Personnel

Performance

 2O363007A792 and

Training
BALKANS-0 ii

Approved for public release; distribution unlimited.
BALKANS-0 iv

The views, opinions, and/or findings contained in this document are those of the author

and should not be construed as an official Department of the Army position, policy, or

decision, unless so designated by other official documentation. The U.S. Army Research

Institute for the Social and Behavioral Sciences can be accessed online at: http://wwwari.army.mil/

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BALKANS-0 v

About the Authors

Dawn Stram Statham holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Portland State University, an

M.A. in Anthropology from Idaho State University, and an Ed.D. in Curriculum and

Instruction from Boise State University.

Monte Smith holds a B.A. degree in Psychology from Berea College, an M.A. in

Psychology from Vanderbilt University, a Ph.D. in Social Psychology and Experimental

Design from Vanderbilt University, and an MMR (Masters of Marketing Research) from

the University of Georgia. He is currently a Senior Research Scientist with L-3

Communications.

1SG Ric Holmes is with DET1, 115th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment, U.S. Army

National Guard.
BALKANS-0 vi

Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION TO THE BALKANS......................................................................................1

THE FRAGMENTATION OF YUGOSLAVIA .............................................................................2

UNDERSTANDING THE BALKAN CONUNDRUM......................................................................9

2. GEOGRAPHY, ECONOMY, AND POLITICAL BOUNDARIES OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA ........13

A LAND OF MOUNTAINS..................................................................................................16

TERRAIN, CULTURE, AND BALKAN HISTORY.......................................................................18

BALKAN ECONOMY.........................................................................................................21

POLITICAL BOUNDARIES..................................................................................................22

SLOVENIA.............................................................................................................24

CROATIA ..............................................................................................................27

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA ..........................................................................................30

SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO.....................................................................................34

MACEDONIA .........................................................................................................38

TERRAIN, HISTORY, AND PEOPLE: THE INEXTRICABLE MIXTURE..........................................42

3. PEOPLE OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA ................................................................................44

ANTIQUITY ON THE BALKAN PENINSULA............................................................................44

THE ROMAN CONQUEST..................................................................................................47

THE SOUTH SLAV MIGRATION .........................................................................................55

THE NOTION OF ETHNICITY.............................................................................................60

RACIAL ETHNICITY .........................................................................................................60

RELIGIOUS ETHNICITY....................................................................................................62

LINGUISTIC ETHNICITY...................................................................................................65

NATIONAL ETHNICITY.....................................................................................................71

MULTIETHNIC CULTURAL PLURALITY IN SPADES...............................................................73

ETHNIC CUSTOMS AND WAYS OF THINKING.......................................................................77

CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS.................................................................................................82

4. MIDDLE HISTORY ............................................................................................................84

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE (AD 395 – AD 1453).................................................................84

A STIRRING IN THE EAST: ISLAM.......................................................................................85

THE CRUSADES (1095 – 1291).......................................................................................87

FALL OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE (AD 1453)....................................................................87

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE (AD 1341 – AD 1913)................................................................88

DECLINE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.................................................................................94

RUSSIAN INFLUENCE DURING THE PERIOD OF OTTOMAN DECLINE .....................................95

5. WARS, WARS AND MORE WARS.......................................................................................... 100

THE FIRST BALKAN WAR (1912 – 1913) ........................................................................100

THE SECOND BALKAN WAR (1913) ................................................................................102

AFTERMATH OF THE BALKAN WARS ................................................................................102

WORLD WAR I (1914 – 1918) ......................................................................................103

AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR I.......................................................................................106

WORLD WAR II (1941 – 1945).....................................................................................109
BALKANS-0 vii

6. THE “MODERN” ERA .....................................................................................................116

CONSTRUCTING THE COMMUNIST STATE AND REUNITING OLD ENEMIES ...........................117

THE SUPPRESSION OF NATIONALISM...............................................................................119

TITO’S DEATH AND THE REBIRTH OF NATIONALISM..........................................................121

PRELUDES TO WAR: BELLIGERENT POSTURING AND THE EXPRESSION OF

NATIONALISTIC CHAUVINISM...................................................................................127

PRELUDES TO WAR: REVISITING WW II GENOCIDE .........................................................132

PRELUDES TO WAR: A SKELETON IN THE CLOSET? OR THOUSANDS OF SKELETONS IN

PIGEON CAVES?.....................................................................................................134

PRELUDES TO WAR: THE USUAL SUSPECTS.....................................................................136

THE OUTBREAK OF HOSTILITIES ....................................................................................139

7. BALKAN PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS: PROSPECTS FOR PEACE IN THE NEW

MILLENNIUM .....................................................................................................................147

OVERVIEW OF UN AND NATO PEACEKEEPING INITIATIVES IN THE BALKANS........................153

A CHRONOLOGY OF UN PEACEKEEPING INITIATIVES..........................................................158

NATO’S ROLE IN BALKAN PEACEKEEPING..........................................................................169

A CHRONOLOGY OF NATO PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS .........................................................170

ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES IN BALKAN PEACEKEEPING EFFORTS......................................178

8. LESSONS LEARNED ..........................................................................................................182

CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY...........................................................................183

DIVIDE AND CONQUER? OR ... CO-OPT AND SUBJUGATE? .............................................185

RECURRENT BALKAN THEMES.........................................................................................185

THE PEACEKEEPING CHALLENGE...................................................................................188

Bibliography .....................................................................................................................191
BALKANS-0 viii

Figures and Tables

Figure 1. Relief Map of the Mediterranean Basin................................................................... 13

Figure 2. Relief Map of the Balkan Peninsula and Eastern Europe, Showing Yugoslavia

Prior to Its 1990’s Fragmentation..................................................................................... 14

Figure 3. Europe – 2001....................................................................................................... 15

Figure 4. Post-Fragmentation Republics of the Former Yugoslavia .......................................... 16

Figure 5. Balkan Per Capita GDP in US $$$.......................................................................... 21

Figure 6. Political Map of Slovenia ........................................................................................ 25

Figure 7. Political Map of Croatia......................................................................................... 28

Figure 8. Political Map of Bosnia-Herzegovina....................................................................... 31

Figure 9. Political Map of the “Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” (Serbia and Montenegro)........ 34

Figure 10. Political Map of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia .................................. 39

Figure 11. Ethnic Diversity in the Former Yugoslavia .............................................................. 72

Figure 12. Chronology and Location of Peacekeeping and Military Operations ....................... 180

Figure 13. A Mosaic of the Balkans’ Geographic, Political, and Cultural Complexity................ 180

Table 1. Fragmentation of the Former Yugoslavian.................................................................3

Table 2. Yugoslavian Time-line Since World War I ................................................................7

Table 3. Balkan States Circa 2001 ....................................................................................... 22

Table 4. Slovenian Historic Time-line ................................................................................... 25

Table 5. Croatian Historic Time-line ..................................................................................... 29

Table 6. Bosnia-Herzegovina Historic Time-line ................................................................... 32

Table 7. Serbian Historic Time-line ...................................................................................... 37

Table 8. Montenegrin Historic Time-line .............................................................................. 38

Table 9. Macedonian Historic Time-line .............................................................................. 41

Table 10. A Short Chronology of the Roman Empire .............................................................. 52

Table 11. Major Civilizations to Penetrate the Balkan Peninsula ............................................... 52

Table 12. Original Homelands of European and Southwest Asian Languages............................ 66

Table 13. Ethnic, Linguistic, and Religious Diversity of the Former Yugoslavia ......................... 68

Table 14. Ethnic, Linguistic, and Religious Diversity of Non-Yugoslavian Nations...................... 70

Table 15. Minority and Majority Representation in Former Yugoslavia ..................................... 74

Table 16. Control of Balkan Territories in 1878....................................................................... 98

Table 17. Membership in European Political, Economic, and Security Institutions .................... 151

Table 18. UN Peacekeeping Missions in the Former Yugoslavia, 1992 to the Present.............. 158

Table 19. NATO-led Military Operations in the Former Yugoslavia, 1992 to the Present ........ 171
BALKANS-0 ix

Appendices

APPENDIX A. BALKAN SOCIAL CHARACTER AND CULTURAL PERSONALITY......................... A1

APPENDIX B. HUMAN ADAPTATION AND THE LAW OF THE LAND ....................................... B1

APPENDIX C. ANTHROPOLOGY: A WAY OF LOOKING..........................................................C1

APPENDIX D. THE MAKINGS OF THE BALKAN WARRIOR CULT ............................................D1

APPENDIX E. EUROPEAN AND BALKAN PREHISTORY........................................................... E1

APPENDIX F. A CHRONOLOGY OF HISTORIC EVENTS IN EUROPE AND THE BALKANS .............F1

APPENDIX G. INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, INVADERS AND IMMIGRANTS IN THE BALKANS............ G1

APPENDIX H. INDEX TO THE NATO HANDBOOK ................................................................H1

APPENDIX I. INDEX TO UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTIONS ON YUGOSLAVIA .................. I1

APPENDIX J. UN PREVENTIVE DEPLOYMENT [UNPREDEP] FORCE MISSION........................J1

APPENDIX K. SUMMARY OF THE DAYTON ACCORD ............................................................K1

APPENDIX L. SUMMARY OF THE CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE BALKANS (1996) ........................................................L1
BALKANS-1 1

Balkan States in 1990:

Albania

Bulgaria

Greece

Romania

Yugoslavia

Balkan States in 2001:

Albania

Bulgaria

Bosnia-Herzegovina

Croatia

Greece

Macedonia

Montenegro

Romania

Serbia

Slovenia

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION TO THE BALKANS

The Balkans were the original Third World, long before the Western media

coined the term. In this mountainous peninsula bordering the Middle East,

newspaper correspondents filed the first twentieth-century accounts of mudstreaked refugee marches and produced the first books of gonzo journalism and

travel writing, in an age when Asia and Africa were still a bit too far afield.

Whatever has happened in Beirut or elsewhere happened first, long ago, in the

Balkans. (Kaplan, 1993, p. xxiii)

On first consideration, Kaplan’s statement (above) seems a bit melodramatic, but

after an extended study of Balkan history, his observations strike home with unsettling

resonance. The Balkans really are the powder keg of Europe. The instigation of World

War I can be traced directly to events transpiring in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in July 1914;

namely, the assassination of Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian terrorist

group. And although World War II cannot be traced specifically to the Balkans, it has

been cogently argued that Nazism itself originated on the Balkan Peninsula, and only later

flowed up the Danube to infect central Europe (see: World War II).

Incendiary events in the Balkans, moreover, are not confined to history books; they

are as contemporaneous as tomorrow’s headlines, spurred by a series of political and

historical developments that swept across eastern Europe with startling speed and finality

during the last decade of the 20th Century. Seldom have so

many historically momentous events occurred in such a

short period of time. And nowhere were their impacts

more keenly felt than in the Balkans. This chain of events

began in 1989 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and

then continued as communism began its inexorable slide

into historic oblivion. The Berlin Wall, which had stood for

so many years as a detested symbol of unwanted Soviet

intrusion, was literally pulled down and broken into rubble.

Soviet influence in eastern Europe, which only a few years

previously had been omnipresent, diminished with surprising

rapidity and in many instances evaporated altogether as the

Warsaw Pact disintegrated. As the Iron Curtain

unceremoniously crumbled, the Cold War

(http://www.cmu.edu/coldwar/bibl.html) faded so abruptly

that few observers had time to anticipate the ramifications.

One of the unforeseen consequences was increased

complexity in the political structure of eastern Europe, including the emergence of several

new political entities in the Balkans, as indicated in the sidebar at the left.

Moreover, as the balance of power shifted, a whole new set of political considerations

came into play. Liberationist leaders of former Soviet bloc nations scrambled to establish

their countries’ independence, even as diehard communist power brokers, such as Nicolae

Ceausescu in Romania, vainly struggled to maintain the status quo. There also rose to
BALKANS-1 2

The former Yugoslavia consisted of:

Bosnia-Herzegovina

Croatia

Macedonia

Montenegro

Serbia

Slovenia

Plus Serbia’s two provinces:

Kosovo

Vojvodina

power an entirely new breed of opportunists, perhaps exemplified by Slobodan Milosevic

of Yugoslavia, who willingly fanned the flames of long-suppressed ethnic hostilities in

order to advance their own peculiar visions of nationalism and realize their military and

political agendas. Throughout the Balkan Peninsula, either violent civil insurrections or

open warfare raged for much of the 1990’s, as one after another of the former constituent

republics of Yugoslavia broke away from the Belgrade power base and declared

independence.

Throughout eastern Europe, it was a time of unprecedented social and political

upheaval. Old alliances crumbled and new nations emerged so often and so suddenly that

for a time it was hard to keep track of the latest developments, and practically a waste of

time to redraw old boundary lines given the pervasive fluidity of the political environment.

Moreover, many of the events that were reshaping the geo-political face of eastern

Europe during the final decade of the Twentieth Century were so far-reaching that only in

retrospect could their full implications be grasped. This seemed to be especially true on

the Balkan Peninsula. Certainly no other region of Europe was more affected by the

watershed events of the 1990’s. And although history allowed no Balkan country to

remain unaffected by the era’s rapidly changing circumstances, the six constituent

republics of the sovereign state formerly known as Yugoslavia were perhaps most acutely

impacted. It was in the former Republic of Yugoslavia that the fires of political change

burned most brightly.

The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia

One of the most destabilizing events of this tumultuous era was the progressive

fragmentation of the country formerly known as Yugoslavia. At the end of WW II, the

Yugoslavian (http://www.gov.yu/) federation consisted of six republics and two semiindependent autonomous provinces (see the sidebar at right). By the end of 1991,

however, the former republics of Slovenia and

Croatia had declared independence, and less than

a year later both Bosnia-Herzegovina and

Macedonia joined their secessionist ranks, leaving

only Serbia and Montenegro in the Yugoslav

Federation. Serbia, with its hard-line Belgrade

political power base, vehemently opposed the

developing separatist movements and desperately

struggled to hold together the old federation.

Belgrade’s efforts to maintain the status quo,

however, were doomed to failure. (An historic

time-line of Yugoslavia’s progressive fragmentation is presented in Table 1. on the

following page.)

Even as Yugoslavia was coming apart at the seams, nonetheless, the stubbornly

intransigent Belgrade regime actively encouraged resistance efforts by Serbian

nationalists living in Croatia and Slovenia, and eventually used force in an unsuccessful

effort to quash the secessionist efforts of the first two constituent republics to attempt a

breakaway. The loss of Slovenia and Croatia was especially distasteful to Belgrade

because these two republics, with their significantly higher standards of living, represented
BALKANS-1 3

the apex of Yugoslav industrialization efforts under post-World War II communistinfluenced government regimes.

TABLE 1. Fragmentation of the Former Yugoslavia.

1991 Slovenia and Croatia declare independence.

1992 January: Macedonia declares independence.

April: Bosnia-Herzegovina declares independence.

April: Serbia and Montenegro form the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The new

government, however, is not recognized by the United States.

1995 The Dayton Peace Accord ends hostilities in Bosnia.

1996 Members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) begin harassing Serbian policemen.

1998 Milosevic sends troops to Kosovo to quash unrest. Guerrilla war results.

1999 March: Following failed peace talks, NATO launches air strikes against Serbian targets.

Air strikes continue for 78 days.

June: Serbia agrees to sign a UN-approved peace agreement with NATO.

2000 January: Saddled with continuing trade sanctions, the Serbian economy falters; dissent

spreads. Montenegro discusses independence.

September: Milosevic is voted out of office but refuses to leave; demands a runoff

election.

October: Popular uprising begins, along with a general strike. Mobs attack parliament.

Serbian security forces either join them or retreat. Milosevic steps down. Kostunica

takes office. US and European Union begin lifting economic sanctions and offering aid.

2001 March: Hostilities erupt in the Macedonian mountains, near the Kosovo border, between

ethnic Albanians and the Macedonian Army. Ethnic Albanians demand a greater say in

governmental affairs.
BALKANS-1 4

Belgrade was unsuccessful, however, in its efforts to force either Slovenia or Croatia

back into the old federation. Slovenia accomplished its separation with only a brief period

of fighting, principally because 90% of its population consisted of ethnic Slovenians and

the 10% minority was fragmented into several splinter groups that never launched an

effective counter-insurrectionist movement. In Croatia, however, with a substantial

Serbian minority, it was another story. With Belgrade’s avid support, Croatian Serbs

stubbornly resisted Croatia’s secession for the next four years. In the end, nonetheless,

Croatian separatists prevailed, and as independence gradually became assured, the new

country evicted most of its Serbian population.

The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina

And Slovenia and Croatia were only the beginning. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the most

ethnically diverse of the former Yugoslav republics, hostilities eventually developed into

full- scale warfare (http://www.bosnet.org/bosnia/history). Fighting was both protracted

and embittered, and often it was difficult for outsiders to determine who was fighting

whom, or even why the combatants were fighting. Three major factions were pitted

against one another: Muslim Slavs (also known as Bosniacs), Croats, and Serbs. Muslim

Slavs were numerically dominant (43.7%) at the time of secession, but they did not

constitute a majority, and they were faced with determined resistance from significant

Serbian (31.4%) and Croatian (17.3%) enclaves within the country, as well as by

Belgrade’s determined refusal to let the region break away from the old federation. The

result was unmitigated ethnic warfare, the bloodiest outbreak on European soil since

World War II, with thousands of casualties and more than a million displaced civilians.

Although all three factions engaged in ethically questionable war tactics, the Serbs

launched a coordinated program of “ethnic cleansing,” whereby they planned to exile,
BALKANS-1 5

imprison, or kill all non-Serbs, especially Muslims. By the summer of 1992, reports of

ethnic cleansing were substantiated by:

... the photographic images of emaciated people held captive in detention camps

in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The resemblance to World War II Holocaust images

alerted international public opinion to the occurrence of a specific kind of

violence, employed to remove whole populations on grounds of their ethnic

identity.... In the Bosnian civil war, systematic terror was used by all the warring

ethnic factions (Serbs, Croats, and Slavic Muslims) to displace ethnic

populations as a means for establishing control over territory. Armed forces

committed atrocities against civilians to intimidate them into fleeing as refugees.

While the basic methodologies were shared by all sides, atrocities reported on

the largest scale were committed by Serbs against Muslims, and the greatest

numbers of refugees were Muslims, fleeing as Serbian forces gained territory.

(Denich, 1994, p. 368)

In March 1994, the Moslems and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina signed an agreement

creating a joint federation, thus reducing the number of warring factions from three

(Serbs, Croats, and Moslems) to two (Serbs and the Croat-Moslem federation). An

agreement negotiated in Dayton, Ohio, USA, in November 1995 (Appendix K: Summary

of the Dayton Accord) established two largely autonomous political entities, one to be

called the Serb Republic and the other to be named the Federation of Bosnia and

Herzegovina. Croats and Bosniacs were joined in the latter entity, while the former was

to be under Serbian control. Currently (early summer, 2001), a delicate but apparently

effective ceasefire continues in Bosnia-Herzegovina under NATO supervision.

The Tragedy of Kosovo (http://www.cia.gov/cia/di/products/kosovo/index.html)

Although overt acts of aggression between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in BosniaHerzegovina ended under the fragile peace achieved under the Dayton Accord in late

1995, other conflicts were soon to erupt in the Serbian province of Kosovo. This province

had once been the Serbian homeland but, driven out by invading Ottoman Turks in the

fourteenth century, resident Serbs had fled north into present-day Serbia, Croatia,

Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina following their defeat in the pivotal battle at Kosovo

Field in 1389 (Appendix F: A Chronology of Historic Events in Europe and the Balkans).

Filling the vacuum left by the fleeing Serbs, Albanian Muslims moved into Kosovo and

took up permanent residence, thereby committing, in the eyes of the Serbs, an

unforgivable sacrilege against the Serbian homeland and against Serbian ethnic traditions.

Nonetheless, by the 1990’s Kosovo’s population was 90% ethnic Albanian Muslims and,

encouraged by Slovenian and Croatian successes, they too soon began agitating for

independence from Serbia. In 1996, members of the militant Kosovo Liberation Army

(KLA) began attacking Serbian police, and in 1998 Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic

sent in troops to quash the rebellion. Guerrilla warfare resulted. In the ensuing struggle,

Serbian police, troops, and paramilitaries were accused of committing repeated acts of

violence against the Muslim civilian population. These alleged atrocities included

summary executions of suspected insurrectionists, destruction of civilian property, forcible

eviction of entire villages, widespread rape and torture, and massacres of innocent

women, children, and the elderly
BALKANS-1 6

Faced with continuing attacks by Serbian police, Yugoslav Army forces, and Serbian

paramilitaries, more than 800,000 ethnic Albanian refugees poured out of Kosovo, mostly

into Albania and Macedonia. In March 1999, NATO-led forces began a bombing

campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in an effort to force an end to

attacks against civilians in Kosovo. Saddled with economic sanctions against his country,

subjected to 78 days of air strikes, and faced with growing dissent and serious

consideration of secession by Montenegro, Milosevic finally conceded and agreed to

peace. A year later, in September 2000, Milosevic was voted out of office. By this time

he had already been indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the UNestablished International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (commonly known

as the war crimes tribunal), located in The Hague, Netherlands. In April 2001, Milosevic

was taken into custody by Serbian police and later remanded into the custody of

representatives of the war crimes tribunal. Meanwhile, the uneasy peace in Kosovo is

broken periodically as Serbian police and remnants of the KLA continue to clash,

especially along the Macedonian and Serbian borders. To add to the unrest, Albanian

insurgents inside Macedonia periodically clash with government troops over issues of full

citizenship rights for ethnic Albanian refugees. In late summer 2001, these repeated

clashes necessitated NATO intervention, in an operation called ESSENTIAL HARVEST.

The Tragedy of Yugoslavia

Even after observing the dramatic collapse of communism in 1989, few Yugoslavs—

or Westerners for that matter—could have predicted that within a few years it would also

mean the end of Yugoslavia as it was then constituted, and commencement of a decade

of bloody internecine struggles (Denich, 1994). But that’s exactly what happened. The

demise of Yugoslavia as a multicultural state promptly escalated to a problem of

international proportions and, unfortunately, restored the Balkan Peninsula to its historic

reputation as a zone of endemic ethnic conflict and international crisis. In the absence of
BALKANS-1 7

a liberal tradition harkening back to the Enlightenment philosophers in the West, the

vacuum left in post-communist Slavic nations was filled by the only cultural traditions that

survived communism: nationalism, religion, the family, and a focus on the vindication of

real or imagined inter-ethnic affronts from years past (Mestrovich, 1993, p, 18)

TABLE 2. Yugoslavian Time-line Since World War I.

1918 At the end of World War I, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was formed,

consisting of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and

Macedonia.

1929 The name, “Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes” was changed to “Yugoslavia,”

meaning “Land of the South Slavs.”

1945 After WW II, Yugoslavia became a communist republic under Josip Broz Tito and the

country’s name was changed again, this time to the Federal People’s Republic of

Yugoslavia. Kosovo and Vojvodina were recognized as Serbian provinces.

1980 Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavian leader since the end of WW II, died. In his absence, longsuppressed but smoldering ethnic conflicts began to flare.

1989 Dissolution of the Soviet Union.

1991 The Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia unraveled. Slovenia and Croatia declared

independence, followed shortly thereafter by Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Serbia

unsuccessfully attempted to block the secessions. Bloody conflicts ensued. By the end

of the decade, Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia were sovereign states; BosniaHerzegovina had been devastated by war and was governed with the guidance of UN and

NATO occupation forces; and Montenegro and Serbia had formed a new Yugoslav

federation, but one which was unrecognized by the international community.

Montenegro, moreover, was agitating for its independence, and Kosovo had attempted to

withdraw from the new Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia. Additionally, ethnic Albanians in

Macedonia were demanding a greater voice in governmental affairs.

To say that the Balkan crisis attained international stature is no exaggeration. For

reasons that will become clear later in this paper, both the European and larger

international communities were reluctant at first to intercede in Balkan internal affairs, but

once intercession was deemed necessary, the United Nations (UN) quickly became the

principal mediating power. Almost from the beginning of hostilities in Croatia, moreover,

NATO was commissioned to coordinate many UN peacekeeping directives. NATO’s

involvement focused the attention of 19 constituent nations distributed geographically from

North America (the United States and Canada), across western, central, and eastern

Europe, and extending to the Mediterranean powers of Greece and Turkey. One member

of NATO (Greece) is part of the Balkan Peninsula, and another member (Turkey) has

territory on the peninsula. Hungary, another NATO member, borders the region. Thus,

when the UN and NATO became directly involved, the Balkan crisis had, de facto,

escalated to international emergency status. Moreover, when NATO forces bombed

Serbia in 1999 in an effort to force an end to Slobodan Milosevic’s terror campaign

against Kosovar Albanians, Russia was indirectly brought into the affray because of its

longstanding historic support of Serbia. Russian officials protested bitterly throughout the

campaign of not being consulted regarding NATO bombing plans. And then, during the

bombing, China’s embassy in Belgrade was inadvertently targeted during one of the

NATO raids. Destruction of the Chinese embassy resulted in a vitriolic protest from
BALKANS-1 8

Rapes were not rare and isolated acts

committed by individual Serbian or

Yugoslav forces, but rather were used

deliberately as an instrument to

terrorize the civilian population ....

Beijing and, of course, adversely affected UN mediating powers, since China is a member

of the UN Security Council with veto privileges. What’s more, the treatment afforded

Muslim civilians in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo by Serbian military forces elicited an

outpouring of sympathy from Islamic countries throughout the Middle East and North

Africa. Thus, a localized Balkan conflict between Croats, Serbs, and Slavic Muslims

quickly and irrevocably escalated into a conflagration with international repercussions,

involving nations as geographically dispersed and politically disparate as the United States

and Canada on one side of the globe, to Russia and China on the other.

The Heritage of Terror

The Balkan Peninsula is no stranger to war and enemy depredations. As the reader

will see in later chapters, the region has been ravaged by successive waves of invaders at

least since the beginning of recorded history. Roman legions subdued this region and its

people almost two millennia ago. Then, when the Roman Empire fell into decline, Attila

the Hun and his armies made repeated forays throughout the peninsula, raping, pillaging,

and plundering on a widespread basis. After Attila left, Goths and Avars repeatedly

invaded the peninsula. Even Celts and Franks,

from the far-western reaches of Europe,

mounted Balkan depredations. Armies of

Genghis Khan swept across the northern tier of

the Balkans in the thirteenth century, and in the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Balkans

were assailed and eventually subdued by Ottoman Turks from Anatolia and the Arabian

Peninsula. When, five hundred years later, Ottoman rule was finally overthrown with the

assistance of the so-called Great Powers, a seemingly endless series of civil wars and

civil insurrections commenced, culminating in an especially bloody Yugoslavian civil war

that was conducted concurrent with WW II.

Throughout all these invasions and internal upheavals, acts of destruction against

civilian non-combatants occurred, at least to some extent. Nonetheless, evidence

continues to mount that the most recent Balkan hostilities have witnessed their own

heinous, and systematically implemented, crimes against humanity. These atrocities have

included massacres of entire villages, including men, women, children and infants. They

have included mass internment of civilian populations, as well as the deliberate use of

terror to produce mass evacuations, including an estimated one million displaced civilians

in Bosnia-Herzegovina and 800,000 displaced ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Atrocities

have also included the systematic use of rape as an instrument of “ethnic cleansing”

(http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/fry). Members of the Bosnian Serb armed forces, for

example, have been convicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague,

Netherlands, of using rape as an instrument of terror (Socolovsky, 2001). Tribunal judges

ruled that rape in Bosnia was used systematically as part of an attack directed at an entire

civilian population (Bosnian Muslims), and as such constituted a crime against humanity.
BALKANS-1 9

Unfortunately, the use of rape as a weapon of war in Bosnia wasn’t an isolated

instance. Evidence is now mounting that the atrocities committed against civilians in

Kosovo also included widespread and systematic use of rape and other forms of sexual

violence against women. A Human Rights Watch (2001) report stated that:

“... rape and other forms of sexual violence were used in Kosovo in 1999 as

weapons of war and instruments of systematic “ethnic cleansing.” Rapes were

not rare and isolated acts committed by individual Serbian or Yugoslav forces,

but rather were used deliberately as an instrument to terrorize the civilian

population, extort money from families, and push people to flee their homes.

Rape furthered the goal of forcing ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.” (p. 1)

Understanding the Balkan Conundrum

Gradually, most Westerners are piecing together a picture of what happened in the

Balkan states during the explosive decade of the 1990’s, particularly in the former

Yugoslavia. Nonetheless, the Balkans inevitably present a strange if not alien

countenance to most Westerners. It is a region quite unlike anything most Westerners

have ever experienced, teeming with ethnic diversity and alive with the memory of old

hurts and affronts, whether real or imagined, that inevitably bias contemporary perceptions

and often preempt efforts at peaceful conflict resolution. Some of the most divisive

prejudices and ethnic animosities, moreover, date back to (real or imagined) events that

occurred hundreds of years in the past, forming a mosaic of beliefs, prejudices,

animosities, and foregone conclusions so complex that outsiders are often baffled when

they attempt to understand it. Thus, while it is relatively easy to create a thumbnail sketch

of recent Balkan events, it is a far more difficult task to understand why the Yugoslavian

fragmentation happened in the first place, why it burst forth so suddenly and so violently,

and why the resulting conflicts were consistently accompanied by tactics that outside

observers often consider barbaric.
BALKANS-1 10

Perhaps the complexity of the Balkan conundrum is nowhere more forcefully

communicated than through a critical examination of the sanitized, politically correct

euphemism that has come to be known as ethnic cleansing. Genocide by any other name,

this insidious term that means the murder, rape and forcible expulsion of other ethnic

groups, has become almost synonymous with Serbian war tactics. This is not to say that

only Serbs have resorted to ethnic cleansing. In the Bosnian civil war of the early 1990’s,

for example, all warring ethnic factions (Serbs, Croats, and Slavic Muslims) used

systematic terror to displace ethnic civilian populations, including atrocities against civilians

to establish control over territory and to intimidate citizens into fleeing as refugees.

Although similar methods were used on all sides, Serbs (Serbian troops, Serbian police, or

Serbian paramilitaries closely aligned with Serbian government authorities) committed the

largest scale atrocities, directing them against Muslims. In both the Bosnian and Kosovar

conflicts, the preponderance of refugees were Muslims (the media called them “ethnic

Albanians” in Kosovo) fleeing in advance of Serbian territorial gains (Denich, 1994;

Human Rights Watch, 2001). For more information, check the following web site:

http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/kosovoii/homepage.html)

So is “ethnic cleansing” a Serbian creation, a product of a peculiarly diabolic Serbian

warrior mentality? Hardly. In fact, in a twist that fully underscores the assertion that

nothing about the Balkans is simple, “ethnic cleansing” was a tactic first applied against

Serbian civilians by the Croatian Ustasha (fascist terrorists) during WW II. It will be

recalled from the section above that in addition to their World War II struggle for freedom

from occupation by Axis powers, Yugoslavians simultaneously fought their own bloody

civil war. As part of this internal conflict, the Croatian Ustasha fought Serbian Chetniks

(guerrillas), both of which fought Communist Partizans, led by Josip Broz Tito. History

reveals that on May 2, 1941, Milovan Zanic, a Croatian government minister and leader of

the terrorist Ustasha announced:

This country can only be a Croatian country, and there is no method that we

would hesitate to use in order to make it truly Croatian and cleanse it of Serbs,

who have for centuries endangered us and who will endanger us again if they are

given the opportunity. (Denich, 1994. pp. 374-375) [emphasis added]

And so, the reader can see that ethnic cleansing is nothing new, except possibly to

Western journalists. During recent hostilities, however, the tables were turned, and

instead of being the objects of ethnic cleansing by the Croats, the Serbs employed this

practice against Bosnian Muslims, ethnic (Muslim) Albanians, and to a lesser extent

Croats and Slovenes. The actors were the same; only the victims differed.

This Paper’s Contribution to Understanding Balkan Conflict

If nothing else, Vietnam (and Somalia) should have taught us to pay

attention to the nuances locals pay attention to, and what it is they really seek.

The situation in the former Yugoslavia may not be easily solved, but unless

policymakers understand why, how, when, and where specific sets of individuals

distrust one another, a quagmire—of our own making—will develop. Simply

broad-brushing residents of the former Yugoslavia with labels like “Muslim,”

“Croat,” and “Serb” categorizes them, but explains nothing about their

motivations. Worse, while labeling may simplify the analysis, it never simplifies

the situation that still exists on the ground. (Liotta & Simon, 1998/1999, pp. 23-

24)
BALKANS-1 11

The goal of this paper is to provide the reader with enough information to begin to

understand why the most recent Balkan wars occurred, and why these conflicts saw

participant ethnic groups (Croats, Serbs, ethnic Albanians, Bosniacs, and Slovenes, for

example) pitted against one another with such ruthless and unforgiving ferocity. Be

forewarned, nonetheless, that the explanation of why the recent Balkan wars occurred,

and why they occurred at this particular juncture in history, is not simple. In fact, nothing

about the Balkans is simple - except perhaps outsiders’ perceptions of its people. (The

Balkan Peninsula is perhaps the most complex region - ethnically and linguistically - in

all of Europe.)

A multi-faceted investigation will be needed to unravel the Balkan conundrum. It will

begin with a terrain analysis, for the Balkans cannot be understood without reference to

its complex geography and strategic world location. Next will come an examination of

currently existing political boundaries. We will then examine the ethnic diversity that

exists in the Balkan Peninsula, a diversity that includes fourteen major languages, myriad

dialects, two alphabets, almost a score of different nationalities, and three major religions.

Then we will take a history tour, beginning with prehistory and the subsequent

establishment of Greek maritime trading villages, subjugation of the peninsula by the

Roman legions, incursions of Attila the Hun and other barbarian groups, the thousand-year

reign of the Byzantine Empire, the all-important in-migration of South Slavs, a fivehundred-year occupation by Ottoman Turks, the impact of the Balkan Wars and the two

World Wars, a succession of civil conflicts culminating in Yugoslavia’s internal bloodbath

during WW II, Josip Broz Tito’s role in Yugoslavian history and his suppression of ethnic

hostilities following World War II, Yugoslavia’s fragmentation and the resulting Balkan

wars of the 1990’s, UN and NATO military interventions, and finally, contemporary

peacekeeping missions and the prospects for future peace.
BALKANS-1 12

It is anticipated that many readers of this work will be soldiers or others interested in

Balkan peacekeeping activities. These readers, it is hoped, will find the work a valuable

resource, not just as a repository of facts and findings, but also as an instrument of insight

into the heart and psyche of the Balkans. Different readers will take away different

interpretations of this work, but should agree on one thing: The people of the Balkans are

a people who in many ways are fundamentally different from Western soldiers who have

been, and who will be, sent to the Balkans to keep the peace. Balkan peoples differ not

only in their recent intimate exposure to the horrors of a war that occurred literally in their

own backyards, replete with crimes against humanity that no people ever should have to

endure, but Balkan populations also differ in possessing a collective historical experience

beyond anything that most Westerners will be able to imagine, a collective history peopled

with a succession of invaders and marauders from Attila the Hun to Adolph Hitler, from

the Mongol horde to a five-century occupation by Ottoman Turks. For most of these

experiences, there are no real parallels in Western history. As a result of these unique

experiences, entirely different world views have developed in the Balkans. Different

outlooks have developed, and these outlooks fundamentally influence how Balkan peoples

think and behave on a daily basis. A careful reading of this work will, it is sincerely

hoped, provide insight to this fascinating dynamic.
BALKANS-1 13
BALKANS-2 14

CHAPTER 2

GEOGRAPHY, ECONOMY AND POLITICAL

BOUNDARIES OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA

The Balkan Peninsula is the largest and most easterly of three major peninsulas that

jut southward from Europe into the Mediterranean Sea (Figure 1). The Balkans are

bordered on the west by The Adriatic Sea, which separates the peninsula from Italy, on

the west and south by the Ionian Sea, and on the east by the Aegean and Black Seas.

(The Adriatic, Ionian, and Aegean are all branches of the Mediterranean, and the Black

Sea is an inland European sea connected to the Mediterranean by the Bosporus, Sea of

Marmara, and the Dardanelles.) On land, the Balkans are bordered to the west, north,

and east by the European nations of Italy, Austria, Hungary, Ukraine, and Moldova. The

latter two countries were part of the former Soviet Union, and still appear on many maps

as undifferentiated sections of the Soviet Union. Moreover, older maps (that are still

commonly in use) show Yugoslavia as it appeared prior to its 1990’s fragmentation, and

Czechoslovakia before it was partitioned into Slovakia and the Czech Republic (Figure 2).

These old political divisions are shown in Figure 2 because they are still found on many

maps and because they may help to orient readers whose last study of European

geography predated the rash of recent border realignments. A current map of European

political boundaries is presented in Figure 3, and a close-up of Yugoslavia after its 1990’s

fragmentation is depicted in Figure 4.

FIGURE 1. Relief Map of the Mediterranean Basin.

FIGURE 1. Relief Map of the Mediterranean Basin.

Sea» 1 19.450.000

J00_ _ «QOKtewtHn

"a60 400
BALKANS-2 15

FIGURE 2. Relief Map of the Balkan Peninsula and Eastern Europe, Showing Yugoslavia Prior to

Its 1990’s Fragmentation.

The combined land mass of the Balkan states is approximately the size of the state of

Texas. The Balkans have more than four times the population of Texas, however, so its

70 million people give the Balkans a population density of 235 residents per square mile.

The Balkan population density is approximately three times that of the United States as a

whole, and is roughly comparable to the state of Florida.

Eastern Europe

": •--••' ^-^j%fU"

KgY
BALKANS-2 16

FIGURE 3. Europe – 2001. Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia are recognized

as independent states by the United Nations. Macedonia is currently referred to as the Former

Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). Serbia and Montenegro have asserted the

formation of a joint independent state that has not been formally recognized by the United States.

omfnueiiif
BALKANS-2 17

A Land of Mountains

Unlike Florida, however, the Balkans are predominantly mountainous, as can be seen

from Figures 1, 2 and 4. In fact, Balkan in Turkisk means “mountain.” The complexly

interwoven Balkan ranges have played an important role in this region’s historical and

cultural development, causing some ethnic groups to be isolated, others to be separated,

and unavoidably affecting the migratory routes of every group. Through time, the

economic and cultural status of the Balkan peoples have been fundamentally influenced

by the geographical complexity of the peninsula, as well as by the ease of access to the

peninsula from both Europe and Asia (Gianaris, 1982; Wolff, 1974).

It was to the relatively inaccessible mountains that Balkan residents fled whenever

they were invaded. Thus they resisted the Romans, fled from the barbarians, and avoided

the Ottoman Turks. Throughout the whole of the Balkans, and even Europe, many of the

more traditional cultural groups are still found in the mountainous areas. The mountainous

areas of the former Yugoslavia, and of the present-day countries of Albania, Greece,

Bulgaria, and Romania are the least urbanized of the European continent. In Albania,

Bulgaria, and the former Yugoslavia, less than 50% of the population live in urbanized

areas (Bennett, 1992).

Former Yugoslavia
BALKANS-2 18

FIGURE 4. Post-Fragmentation Republics of the Former Yugoslavia.

Overview of Balkan Mountain Ranges

The Julian Alps are located in the extreme northwest of the peninsula, bordered on

the north and east by the Sava River. These mountains, with Mt Triglav (9,396 ft) as the

highest point, form part of the divide between the Adriatic and the Black Seas, and are

part of the main European Alpine system, extending southeastward from the Carnic Alps

in northeast Italy near the southern Austrian border to near the city of Ljubljana,

Slovenia’s capital. Interestingly, many Slovenian residents of the Julian Alps also consider

themselves culturally closer to their Italian and Austrian alpine counterparts than to other

Balkans residents.

The Dinaric Alps begin south of the Julian Alps and extend 350 miles in a single

unbroken chain paralleling the Adriatic seacoast through Slovenia, Croatia, BosniaHerzegovina, and Montenegro, to the vicinity of Lake Scutari on the Albanian border,

located a few miles due south of Montenegro’s capital, Podgorica. This chain forms an

almost impenetrable barrier, broken only by the Neretva River, which rises in BosniaHerzegovina and flows to the Adriatic via Croatia’s Dalmatian coastal region. Along

much of their length, the Dinaric Alps rise abruptly from the Adriatic and form an

imposing barrier to those approaching from the west.

From the Istrian Peninsula (a small spit of land jutting into the Adriatic Sea from

Slovenia and Croatia south of Trieste, Italy; Figures 2 and 3), to the Montenegrin coast, a

series of long but narrow islands parallel the shore. Greek trading villages were

established on many of these islands as early as 1000 BC, as well as at selected coastal

mainland locations. Due to the imposing Dinaric Alps, however, Greek culture and

influence rarely penetrated from the Adriatic into the Balkan interior, although Greek

influences did penetrate more successfully from the south, via ancient trade routes

through Macedonia and Albania, and from the east via the Danube River, which empties

into the Black Sea, thereby providing Greek maritime access deep into the Balkan

heartlands.

In the vicinity of the Albanian border, the coastal mountains curve inland, and become

even more rugged, forming the North Albanian Alps, generally considered to be some of

the most inaccessible terrain in Europe. Southern Albania, moreover, has several

additional mountain ranges. The Northern Albanian Alps and their lesser southern

counterparts are populated by the Geg and Tosk tribes, respectively, both known for

centuries for their isolation, clannish social organizations, and vendettas. In marked

contrast to its mountainous interior, however, western Albania constitutes a sizeable

coastal plain, where two of Albania’s five largest cities (Shkodr and Vlore) are located.

South of Albania, more mountains are the norm. The Pindus Range parallels the

Ionian seacoast from the (Greek) island of Corfu to near the southern tip of the Greek

Peloponnisos. In addition to its territory on the peninsula mainland, Greece also currently

lays claim to 2,000 islands in the Ionian, Mediterranean, and Aegean Seas. Many of

Greece’s Aegean island holdings lie only a few miles off the coast of Turkey.

And it isn’t just the Adriatic coast and Greece that are heavily mountainous. In the

Balkan interior, the Rhodope Mountains mark the border between Bulgaria and its

eastern and southern neighbors Macedonia and Greece, respectively, while central and
BALKANS-2 19

northern Bulgaria is dominated by the Balkan Mountains. To the north, almost spanning

Romania, the Transylvanian Alps run east-to-west until they reach a point

approximately one hundred miles north of Bucharest, where they intersect with the

Carpathian Mountains, a range that runs northwest into Ukraine and then Slovakia

(eastern half of the old Czechoslovakia [see Figures 2 and 3] and not to be confused with

eastern Croatia between Zagreb and the Danube, known as Slavonia). Many

geographers consider the Transylvanian Alps to be an arm of the Carpathians. Together,

the two ranges form a huge arrow-shaped formation that cut across the Romanian

heartland, pointing toward the Delta of the Danube on the Black Sea.

On the eastern boundary of the Balkan Peninsula, the Black Sea coast is not

mountainous like the Adriatic coast. Lagoons and sandy beaches are common along the

Black Sea coast in Romania and although the coast is higher in Bulgaria, sandy beaches

still occur. Further south, Greece’s Aegean seacoast is rocky and irregular and seemingly

uninviting, but it is also indented with an abundance of bays, ports, and shelter creeks, all

of which offered harbor to early explorers and encouraged development of the Greek

maritime tradition.

The extensive mountain systems throughout the Balkans are formed primarily of

limestone, either barren or otherwise covered with shallow, rocky soils and sparse

vegetation, effectively restricting land use for the most part to grazing. Forests are

scattered in the mountains, with occasional pockets of fertile alluvial soil. Most of the

Balkan soil is poor, however, providing a meager resource base in many areas. In the low

hills, running water is usually absent as a result of the substratum of porous limestone into

which rivers disappear and flow underground for significant distances. In the north and

east parts of Yugoslavia, especially in Vojvodina, the soils are deeper and support more

intensive agricultural activities. Except in this part of Yugoslavia, opportunities for

agriculture are limited, explaining the continued reliance on herd animals throughout much

of the Balkans (Gianaris, 1982; Tringham, 1971; Wolff, 1974).

The Balkan Climate

Climatically, the peninsula is situated in the Temperate Zone, with a warm

Mediterranean, or oceanic, climate prevailing in the south, especially along the coastal

regions. Relatively mild winters, cool summers, and gradual seasonal transitions

characterize this climatic zone. A cool continental climate prevails in the interior,

characterized by hot summers, cold winters, and rapid seasonal transitions. Prolonged

periods of hot, dry weather promote the production of such products as olives, grapes,

figs, and other fruits. Goats and sheep prevail in the south, where there are limited grassy

pastures, while cows and pigs are raised in the northern and central Balkans (Gianaris,

1982; Milisauskas, 1978).

Terrain, Culture, and Balkan History

It has been said that the lay of the land can be viewed as the stage upon which is

played out the drama of human societies, past and present (Milisauskas, 1978). In the

Balkans, no aspect of physical geography has impinged more directly upon human

behavior than its mountains. Mountains in the Balkans have created formidable barriers

to travel, trade, transport, and communication, in many instances encouraging and

supporting the existence of a myriad of isolated cultural enclaves, each often with its own
BALKANS-2 20

language and ethnic traditions. In no small part due to its predominantly mountainous

terrain, language and other cultural vestments in the Balkans are often so

compartmentalized that residents of one area are unable to understand the speech of

those from the next valley.

It is usually argued that the geographical complexity of the area has been a

significant factor in the disunity and polyethnicity of the Balkan peoples, who

throughout history have repeatedly found themselves in the midst of powerful

cultural and economic crosscurrents. (Gianaris, 1982, p. 4).

Paradoxically, and with the noteworthy exception of the Dinaric Alps along the

Adriatic Coast, mountains have been largely ineffective in discouraging foreign invasion.

From prehistoric times, wave after wave of invaders have swept through the Balkans.

Part of this apparent paradox is explained by the fact that in contrast to the other two

Mediterranean peninsulas—Spain and Italy—which are protected by the Pyrenees and

the Alps, respectively, the Balkans lack an effective mountain barrier with either the

European continent or Asia. The position of the Balkan Peninsula between Europe and

Asia has provided a constant corridor for incursions from both directions.

Geography has very definitely influenced the course of history in the Balkan

peninsula. Unlike the other two Mediterranean peninsulas, Spain and Italy,

Balkania is not shut off from the continent .... If the Balkan peninsula had been

protected by a mountain barrier such as the Pyrenees or Alps, in all likelihood the

development of nationalism there would have been less interrupted by outside

intervention .... further ... the Balkan land mass occupies an intermediate position

between Europe and Asia . . . . Thus has the door been constantly open to

settlement from Asia. ... accessibility from both Europe and Asia explains why

the Balkan peninsula has been a battleground of rival cultures, religions,

institutions, and peoples of the Orient and Occident, from the beginning of the

historic era. (Gewehr, 1967, pp. 3-4)

Figures 1 and 2 provide insight as to why invaders have historically enjoyed relatively

unimpeded access to the Balkans. Its river valleys, especially that of the Danube, have

provided open avenues of access. The Danube, with an overall length of 1,776 miles, is

one of Europe’s major rivers. In the east, it connects the Balkan interior to the Black Sea

(and thereby to both Asia and the Mediterranean Basin). The broad Danubian Plain,

coupled with the relative absence of mountains along the Black Sea coast, have

encouraged Asian invaders since time immemorial. As can be seen in Figure 3, a small

strip of the eastern Balkans is still under Turkish control, a vestige of the last massive

Asian invasion, engineered by the Ottoman Turks. Moreover, from Belgrade, the Danube

bends North and bisects Hungary before once again turning west and leading into the

European heartland of southern Germany. This northern approach to the Balkans, via the

Danube and Hungary’s Great Allford Plain, has provided easy access for a variety of

invaders from the northern sections of central and eastern Europe.

Another prominent avenue into the central Balkans has been the north-south corridor

formed by the Vardar and Morava Rivers. The Vardar River empties into the Aegean

near Thessalonika, Greece, and its valley forms an easy northward transit to Skopje in

northern Macedonia. From Skopje, it is but a short distance further north to the valley of

the Morava River, which flows north through Serbia to confluence with the Danube near

Belgrade. Since time immemorial, invading armies have used this convenient north-south

land route to breach the Balkan interior and connect the Mediterranean with central
BALKANS-2 21

Europe. Yet another route through the Balkans also transects Macedonia. It is the

ancient east-west trade route connecting the Black Sea and Istanbul with the Adriatic.

This route skirts the Rhodope Mountains in southern Bulgaria, connects briefly with the

north-south Vardar River Valley route, then veers westward through the Albanian

hinterlands toward the Adriatic coast.

Thus, geography has provided convenient access to invading armies from the outside

(from either east or north via the broad Danube River, from north or south along the

Vardar and Morava corridors, or from east or west through the Black Sea to the Adriatic

route), while predominantly mountainous terrain has simultaneously encouraged continued

compartmentalization of indigenous cultures. Throughout history, armies invading the

Balkans seldom have been faced with a united opponent, and usually have found it an

easy matter to engineer a succession of conquests over small, isolated, and uncoordinated

pockets of resistance. In many instances, invading forces have successfully co-opted one

indigenous groups by pitting them against their neighbors. Thus, Ottoman Turks recruited

Bogomil heretics to join in the subjugation of Christian Slavs in Bosnia in the 15th Century,

just as the Nazis encouraged Slavic Muslims to attack Serbian Partisans during World

War II.

The position of the Balkan Peninsula and the structure of its land have always

invited outside invasions. Waves of people coming by land from the west,

north, and east, and coming by sea from the west, south, and east have flooded it

again and again since the beginning of recorded time. Some waves retreated,

leaving little permanent effect; others temporarily left a deep impression which

was effaced or modified by a succeeding wave; still others made a lasting mark.

This succession of human waves produced a mixture of peoples of quite

extraordinary complexity and interest. No group ... could avoid receiving the
BALKANS-2 22

impress of the people whom it found upon its arrival in the Balkan area. None

could continue its residence there unaffected by further pressures applied by

new arrivals. All of the people ... were in their time invaders. All were repeatedly

invaded. In widely varying degrees each was molded by previous settlers and

by later attackers. The present ethnic structure has been created by a long and

complex process of stratification. (Wolff, 1974, p. 25)

Balkan Economy

The Balkan Peninsula is not 100% mountainous, of course. Vojvodina, the northern

province of Serbia, might be called the Balkan breadbasket, lying as it does on the

agriculturally productive Pannonian Plain. Regions of Croatia along the Sava and

southern bank of the Drava, and a broad stretch of southern Romania along the Danubian

Plain, are also agriculturally productive. Much of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro,

Macedonia, Slovenia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania are mountainous, however,

with limited acreage suitable for extensive agricultural use. Indeed, in the modern context,

the primary difficulty presented by Balkan geography is that few of the new republics

have sufficient arable land on which to support their populations.

People have often made the argument that an interrelated economy was the only

lasting solution to regional conflict in the Balkans. In the former Yugoslavia, deficiencies

in one region were offset by surpluses in another region. Produce from fertile Vojvodina

was used to feed Macedonia and Slovenia. As these republics have pulled apart,

however, some have experienced serious economic hardships. In the north, Slovenia and

Croatia have historically produced a large part of the GNP of Yugoslavia, while

Montenegro and Macedonia have been the poorest republics. While the northern

republics have established independence and self-sufficiency with relatively little difficulty,

the same cannot be said for the poorer republics in the south.
BALKANS-2 23

FIGURE 5. Balkan Per Capita GDP in US $$$. 1998 Figures. Germany (not included in chart) =

$22,100; USA = $31,500. Source: Time Almanac 2001. Family Education Company. Boston,

MA.

Figure 5 shows 1998 (the most recent year available) per capita Gross Domestic

Product (GDP) for Balkan nations. (Data for several comparison nations are contained in

the caption.) Absolute numbers are less important than relative numbers. Note that

among former Yugoslav republics, per capita GDP for Slovenia is four and a half times

that of residual Yugoslavia (Serbia plus Montenegro), six times that of BosniaHerzegovina, and ten times that of Macedonia. Today, the crucial difference between the

Slovenes in the North and the Macedonians, Bosnians or Albanians in the south is due less

to the fact that they speak different languages, write in different alphabets, or worship

different versions of God, than to the fact that Slovenes are inarguably “better off”

materially than their southern neighbors. This enormous discrepancy in standard of living

among countries in close geographic proximity has the potential of sending them along

vastly different future trajectories.

Political Boundaries

When the Yugoslavian Federation began to unravel in 1991, the Balkan Peninsula

consisted of but five countries (Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Yugoslavia).

Ten years later, due to the fragmentation of Yugoslavia, the number of countries had

doubled in number, plus two additional semi-independent autonomous provinces (Kosovo

and Vojvodina), both nominally part of Serbia but at least one of which (Kosovo) was

agitating for independence. Altogether, the single country of Yugoslavia had split into six

countries and two provinces. The resulting Balkan array of ten countries and two

provinces is shown in Table 3.

TABLE 3. Balkan States circa 20011

Name Capital Area (sq.mi) Same Size As Population

Albania Tirane 11,100 Maryland 3,200,000

Bulgaria Sofia 42,823 Ohio 9,000,000

Greece Athens 50,944 Alabama 10,000,000

Romania Bucharest 91,699 Oregon 23,200,000

Bosnia-Herzegovina Sarajevo 19,940 VT + NH 3,322,584

Croatia Zagreb 22,050 West Virginia 4,664,710

Macedonia Skopje 9,889 Maryland 1,995,859

Montenegro Podgorica 5,332 Connecticut 680,212

Serbia Belgrade 34,107 Maine 10,543,641

Kosovo Pristina Included as part of Serbia

Vojvodina Novi Sad Included as part of Serbia

 

1

 Table 3 data are from the Hammond Citation World Atlas (1999), and Bugajski (1994).
BALKANS-2 24

[Yugoslavia] ... was formed after World War I from a

diverse patchwork of cultures, ethnic groups,

religions, traditions and histories. There was no

history of a unified and independent Yugoslavia

before that time.

This polyglot combination made

Yugoslavia a fragile state from its

inception with many fissures that

could be manipulated by ambitious or

unscrupulous political leaders.

Slovenia Ljubljana 7,898 Massachusetts 1,973,096

TOTALS 281,972 Texas 68,580,102

The former Yugoslavia was approximately the size of Wyoming (just under 100,000

square miles), with a population estimated in 1997 at 24,180,000 (CIA World Factbook,

1997; Bugajski, 1994). Notwithstanding its relatively modest physical size, however,

Yugoslavia’s six constituent republics were worlds apart on many dimensions, including

language, religion, political outlook, history, and social and economic conditions.

That complex state was formed after World War I from a diverse patchwork of

cultures, ethnic groups, religions, traditions and histories. There was no history

of a unified and independent Yugoslavia before that time. Croatia, Slovenia, and,

for a short period of time, Bosnia had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Croatia and Slovenia were predominantly Roman Catholic and culturally part of

Central Europe. The southern parts of the Balkans, by contrast, had belonged to

the Ottoman Empire and were more eastern in orientation. Serbia, for instance,

only gained its independence in 1878 and Albania in 1912. The former was

predominantly Orthodox Christian which created a cultural connection with

Russia, while the later was the only predominantly Muslim nation in Europe.

This polyglot combination made Yugoslavia a fragile state from its inception with

many fissures that could be manipulated by ambitious or unscrupulous political

leaders. (Metz, 2001, pp. 2-3)

Because the fragmentation of former Yugoslavia has been the nexus of inter-ethnic

Balkan conflicts in recent years, this and the following sections will take a detailed look at

its constituent republics. The reader will note that even though adjacent areas have, at

times, shared common destinies and exhibited ethnic similarities, a journey from one end

of the former Yugoslavia to the other is a “trip through entirely different worlds” (Mojzes,

1995). We begin with an overview of each country, followed below by more lengthy

descriptions.

Slovenia, home of the Slovenes,

was the most ethnically

homogeneous of the former

constituent republics. Only 12% of

its population in 1991 was listed as

minority, a fact that contributed to

the relative ease of its secession movement in 1991.

Croatia, at the time of its secession, the traditional homeland of the Croats had numerous

“pockets” of ethnic Serbs, especially in the Krajina and Slavonia regions and along the

Dalmatian Coast. Many Serbs were expelled, however, following Croatia’s attainment of

independence.

Serbia (including the once-autonomous

provinces of Vojvodina, which has a bloc of

Hungarians, and Kosovo, with a large majority

of ethnic Albanians) forms the cornerstone of

residual Yugoslavia and has the greatest

concentration of Serbs.
BALKANS-2 25

Montenegro has few ethnic minorities. A schism exists, however, between those

Montenegrins who perceive themselves as ethnically, linguistically, and politically linked

with Serbia, and those who insist that the two peoples have distinct historical and political

histories that cannot be reconciled. In 1999, Montenegro began agitating for

independence.

Bosnia-Herzegovina was the most ethnically diverse of Yugoslavia’s former republics,

where Muslims (aka Bosniacs) outnumbered any other ethnoreligious population but still

fell short of a majority. Bosnia-Herzegovina also has substantial Croatian and Serbian

populations.

Macedonia’s population consists of a majority of Macedonian Slavs (65%), but it also

has significant Albanian (21%), Turk (5%), Gypsy (3%), and Serbian (2%) minorities.

Historically, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Albania have made claims on Macedonian

territory and peoples.

In the descriptions that follow, we will work our way geographically from the

northwest to the southeast. The landscape we will traverse is itself diverse, ranging from

green Alpine pastures in the north to bare brown mountain ranges in the southwest. The

center of the former Yugoslavia with its Asian-type plains contrasts starkly with the

Mediterranean scenery of the Adriatic coast. Accompanying maps are depicted on a

common scale in order to convey the relative size of the republics.

. . .the various states which came to comprise Yugoslavia had vastly different

political, social, economic, and religious histories.... Slovenians say they have

more in common with Western Europeans than with Central Europeans.

Macedonians say they belong to a Mediterranean culture. Bosnia has distinct

Near Eastern characteristics, while Serbians gravitate eastward toward Orthodox

countries, especially Russia. Even within Serbia, Vojvodina is regarded as

Central European, Serbia proper Eastern European, and Kosovo Near Eastern. It

is not surprising that the peoples of Yugoslavia did not have a strong traditional

sense of bonding, or that, in a period of approximately seventy years of living

together, they were unable to unite what for over a millennium was fragmented.

(Mojzes, 1995).

Slovenia

Location and Physical Characteristics

Slovenia lies in the extreme northwest of the former Yugoslavia (see Figures 3, 4, 6,

and 7). Its borders are with Italy (144 miles), Austria (205 miles), Hungary (63 miles),

and Croatia (415 miles), with approximately 29 miles of coastline on the Adriatic Sea. It

is approximately the size of Massachusetts, with a total land area of 7,898 square miles,

making it the second smallest republic of the former Yugoslavia. (Montenegro was

smallest.) In addition to its short coastal strip, Slovenia consists primarily of an alpine

mountain region in the west (next to Italy) and in the east a region of mixed mountains and

valleys with numerous rivers. Elevations range from sea level along the Adriatic to nearly

9,400 feet above sea level. In the plateaus and valleys to the east, the summers are mild

to hot, and the winters are cold (CIA World Factbook, 1997).

Migration and Early History
BALKANS-2 26

Slovenes were among the first Slavic peoples to migrate south (in the seventh

century) into what is now their homeland and take over from the indigenous people who

had been under Roman and Byzantine control since at least 14 BC. In later historic

periods, the Slovenes came under the domination of the Franks and became the object of

intensive Christian proselytizing, particularly under Charlemagne in the eighth and early

ninth centuries. Their lands became part of the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages

Figure 6. Political Map of Slovenia.

and by the fourteenth century, they were under Habsburg domination. Slovene national

consciousness grew during the Reformation, and the first Slovene grammar appeared in

the sixteenth century. Peasant revolts between the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries

were mitigated by agrarian reform, and in 1848 all serf obligations were abolished. They

developed a Slovenian kingdom under Austria in 1848, and in 1918 joined the newlyformed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Portis-Winner, 1992).

Demographics

As of July 1997, the population of Slovenia was estimated at 1,973,096, almost 90% of

whom were Slovene. Small minorities of Croats (3%), Serbs (2%) and Muslim (1%) also

existed. The homogeneity of the Slovenian population was a significant factor with

respect to the ease of Slovenia’s secession from Yugoslavia. Slovenes are primarily

Roman Catholic reflecting ties to the Catholic Church that date to the tenth century. In

addition to the Roman Catholic population, which is estimated at 70.8%, 1% claim to be

Lutheran, 1% Muslim, and 27.2% other. Slovenia has its own militia and has also

established its own currency. Milan KuÖan has been President and head of state of

Slovenia since April 22, 1990 (CIA World Factbook, 1997).

Table 4. Slovenian Historic Time-Line.

Time-Frame Inhabitants/Rulers

Ancient Illyrian & Celtic peoples

1

st Century BC Roman rule began

6

th Century AD Settled by the Slovenes, a South Slav group

748 AD Passed to the Franks

843 AD Passed to the Dukes of Bavaria (Germans)

Middle Ages Holy Roman Empire

AUSTRIA .

,W"K<

i \ HUNGARY

* .«-

.«M iCm,

ITALY ,

nHn. CROATIA

f f**"» **

0 a mm 4 n *>»
BALKANS-2 27

1335 AD Came under Austrian (Habsburg) control

1809-1815 French Napoleonic rule

1815 Hapsburg rule restored

1848 Slovenian Kingdom under Austria

1918 After WW I, joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Later

(1929) renamed Yugoslavia

WW II Divided among Germany, Italy, & Hungary

Post-WW II Became a constituent Republic in the Yugoslav Federation

1991 Declared independence from Yugoslavia

Slovenian Economy and Natural Resources

The traditional rural occupations of the peasants in Slovenia have been farming, livestock

raising, and forestry. Agriculture has been limited by the presence of rugged mountains,

stony valleys, and infertile limestone soil; and Slovenia has not been able to produce

enough grain for its own needs, requiring reliance on imports. Forests products are an

important resource, and furniture factories and sawmills are often located close to peasant

villages. Natural resources included natural gas, oil, mercury, lignite coal, lead, silver,

uranium, and zinc (CIA World Factbook, 1997; Portis-Winner, 1992).

Slovenia is the most industrialized of all the former Yugoslav republics. It also has the

highest per capita income of all the former Yugoslav republics, more than twice the

Yugoslav average. Its per capita GDP is four and a half times that of residual Yugoslavia

(i.e., Serbia and Montenegro combined). The dissolution of Yugoslavia, however, has led

to severe short-term dislocations in production, employment, and trade ties. Fighting in the

other former Yugoslavian republics has led to further destruction of long-established trade

channels and to an influx of refugees, primarily from Croatia and Bosnia. Slovenia

appears to be making a solid economic recovery, with one of the highest GDPs in Central

and Eastern Europe. The contribution to the GDP by sector in 1996 was agriculture

4.8%, industry 33.2%, and services 62% (CIA World Factbook, 1997; Portis-Winner,

1992).

Miscellaneous

Slovenia is currently involved in an international dispute with Croatia over fishing

rights in the Adriatic. Slovenia and Croatia are also negotiating some border areas. A

small minority in northern Italy also seeks the return of parts of southwestern Slovenia, a

dispute which, including minority rights issues, dates from World War II. In addition to

being vulnerable to flooding and earthquakes, Slovenia faces a number of environmental

issues. The Sava River is currently polluted with domestic and industrial wastes, there are

heavy metals and toxic chemicals along the coastal waters, and near Koper on the coast,

the forest is damaged from air pollutants originating at metallurgical and chemical plants.

Slovenia is a transit point for Southwest Asian heroin and for precursor chemicals bound

for Western Europe (CIA World Factbook, 1997; Portis-Winner, 1992).

The latest information on Slovenia can be obtained online at:

http://www.governmentguide.com/govsite.adp?bread=*Main&url=http%3A//www.govern
BALKANS-2 28

mentguide.com/ams/clickThruRedirect.adp%3F55076483%2C16920155%2Chttp%3A//w

ww.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/si.html

Croatia

Location and Physical Characteristics

Croatia, shaped like an inverted “U,” lies south of Slovenia, bordering the Adriatic Sea

between Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (see Figures 3, 4, and 7). It has more than

1,100 miles of Adriatic coastline. Numerous islands belong to Croatia increasing the

overall coastline to more than 3,500 miles. The total land area of Croatia is 22,050 square

miles. Croatia shares borders with Slovenia (415 miles), Hungary (204 miles), the

province of Vojvodina in Serbia (150 miles), Montenegro (16 miles), and BosniaHerzegovina (578 miles). Croatia is approximately the size of West Virginia, but because

of its shape it has a lot of border miles with other countries (and with the Adriatic). It is

also geographically diverse. In addition to the coastline and islands of the region of

Dalmatia in the southwest, there are extensive areas of flat plains in the north along the

Hungarian border. The north plain is the largest, most populated, and economically most

active part of the country. It is separated from the coastal region in the south by a central

mountainous region. Elevations in Croatia range from sea level along the Adriatic to more

than 6,000 feet above sea level. Along the coast, the summers are dry and the winters

are mild. The interior areas feature hot summers and cold winters (CIA World Factbook,

1997; Capo, Gelo, Macan, & Supek, 1992; Olujic, 1992).

The low mountains and highlands near the Adriatic coastal areas of Croatia are

known as the Dalmatian Coast. They feature karst, or limestone, topography which

erodes easily and dissolves in rainwater that runs along underground cracks, widening and

deepening the crevices until caves are formed. As a cave becomes larger and the roof

extends close to the surface, it may collapse, producing a sinkhole or depression. Often

the larger depressions, called polje, contain alluvial soil, constituting the only cultivable

land in the region. Unfortunately, much of the potential of the land in the sinkholes is lost

to drought and poor drainage (Olujic, 1992).

After settling into today’s homeland in the seventh century, the Croatians organized a

state, becoming Christianized within a few centuries. Beginning in the twelfth century, the

Croatian state unified with Hungary, forging more than a 600 year period marked by ties

to the Catholic Austro-Hungarian Habsburgs and the Western-European cultural milieu.

Croatian history has been marked by a struggle for national and cultural survival, for

maintenance of state independence, and for territorial integrity. Dalmatia’s position on the

fringe of the Balkan Peninsula has for centuries served as a link between the cultures of

the East and the West (Capo, Gelo, Macan, & Supek, 1992; Olujic, 1992).

Croatia is predominantly rural although there are significant regional differences. The

highest rural population lives in the northern and central plains. In the southwestern

coastal areas of Dalmatia, the population tends to be more clustered into towns although

there are marked differences between the islands, the coast proper, and the hinterland.

Only about 20% of Dalmatia is utilized agriculturally, mostly on a subsistence basis rather

than for sale or export. Animal husbandry is also limited to the subsistence level because
BALKANS-2 29

there is very little grazing land available (Capo, Gelo, Macan, & Supek, 1992; Olujic,

1992).
BALKANS-2 30

FIGURE 7. Political Map of Croatia.

Migration, Early History, and Settlement Patterns

Figure 7. Political Map of Croatia.

Demographics

The estimated population of the Republic of Croatia in July 1997 was 4,664,710. By

comparison with Slovenia, Croatia is somewhat more heterogeneous (Croat 78%, Serb

12%, Muslim 0.9%, Hungarian 0.5%, Slovenian 0.5%, and others 8.1%). Its substantial

Serb minority played a part in the conflict with Serbia in recent years. Slightly more than

76% of Croatians are Roman Catholic, 11.1% are Orthodox, 1.2% are Slavic Muslim, and

0.4% are Protestant; 10.8% other. Croatia gained its independence from Yugoslavia on

June 25, 1991. Franjo Tudjman has been president and chief of state since May 30, 1990

(CIA World Factbook, 1997).

Croatian Economy and Natural Resources
BALKANS-2 31

Approximately half of the population of Croatia is economically active outside the

home. Of those, about 59% work in the service sector [1994], 30% in industry, and 11%

in agriculture. Until 1990, peasant farms were limited by law to 37 acres of cultivable

surface. Despite widespread mechanization, agricultural production was not very

profitable. Until independence was gained in 1991, agricultural activity was predominantly

on small peasant farms. A small percentage worked on state farms. Primary products

are wheat, corn, sugar beets, sunflower seeds, alfalfa, clover, olives, citrus fruit, grapes,

and vegetables. Livestock breeding and dairy farming are also important. Most

agricultural products are used domestically (CIA World Factbook, 1997; Capo, Gelo,

Macan, & Supek, 1992).

Table 5. Croatian Historic Time-line.

Time-Frame Inhabitants/Rulers

1

st Century AD Part of the Roman province Pannonia

7

th Century Settled by Croats

10th Century Became a Kingdom

1102 United with Hungary

16th – 18th Centuries Ruled by Ottoman Turks

18th Century – 1918 Turks replaced by Austrian Habsburgs

1918 Joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Became

Yugoslavia in 1929

WW II Croatia was a German & Italian fascist puppet state

Post-WW II Rejoined Yugoslavia

Croatia is the second most prosperous and industrialized former Yugoslav republic,

after Slovenia, with a per capita GDP more than double that of residual Yugoslavia. The

secessionist struggles, nonetheless, severely weakened many aspects of the Croatian

economy. Disruption of economic ties to Serbia and the other Yugoslav republics poses

significant problems for Croatia (CIA World Factbook, 1997). The problem faced by

most industries is insufficient energy; most oil is imported, as are chemical products, raw

materials, and industrial machinery. Agriculture, fishing, and animal husbandry are limited

to the subsistence level in the coastal areas due to scarce agricultural and grazing land

(CIA World Factbook, 1997; Capo, Gelo, Macan, & Supek, 1992).

Croatia’s natural resources include oil, some coal, bauxite, low-grade iron ore,

calcium, natural asphalt, silica, mica, clays, and salt. It is subject to frequent and

destructive earthquakes. Croatia faces a number of environmental issues, including air

pollution and the concomitant acid rain from metallurgical plants that are damaging the

forests, and pollution from industrial and domestic wastes along the coast. Border areas

which have been subject to civil strife have faced widespread casualties and destruction

of the infrastructure, including damage to bridges, factories, power lines, buildings and

homes (CIA World Factbook, 1997).
BALKANS-2 32

Miscellaneous

Croatia is involved in ongoing disputes with Serbia over Serbian enclaves in eastern

Croatia in the region known as Eastern Slavonia, which was held by ethnic Serbs during

secessionist hostilities. The area is currently being overseen by the UN Transitional

Administration for Eastern Slavonia (UNTAES), and reintegration into Croatia is ongoing.

Croatia and Italy also have unresolved issues dating from World War II over property and

ethnic minority rights. Serbia and Montenegro also dispute Croatia’s claim to the

Prevlaka Peninsula in southern Croatia because it controls the entrance to Kotor Bay in

Montenegro. The area is currently under UN military observation (UNMOP) (CIA

World Factbook, 1997).

The latest information on Croatia can be located online at:

http://www.governmentguide.com/govsite.adp?bread=*Main&url=http%3A//www.govern

mentguide.com/ams/clickThruRedirect.adp%3F55076483%2C16920155%2Chttp%3A//w

ww.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/hr.html

Bosnia-Herzegovina

Location and Physical Characteristics

Bosnia-Herzegovina lies in the center of the former Yugoslavia (see Figures 3, 4, 7,

and 8). It is surrounded on two sides by the boomerang-shaped Croatia (578 miles) and

also shares borders with Serbia (194 miles) and Montenegro (133 miles). It has a 12-mile

“neck” of coastline on the Adriatic, surrounded on both sides by Croatian Dalmatia.

Bosnia-Herzegovina is comprised of two provinces which, combined with Dalmatia at the

end of the nineteenth century, formed the southernmost territory of the Austro-Hungarian

Empire. Herzegovina is the southwestern corner of the region, bounded by Croatia

(Dalmatia) and Montenegro. Bosnia proper comprises the remainder of the contemporary

republic. In total land area, Bosnia-Herzegovina is slightly smaller than Croatia—and

about the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined. Bosnia-Herzegovina is almost

uniformly covered by mountains and valleys, and elevations range from sea level to 7,828

feet above sea level. Generally, Bosnia-Herzegovina has hot summers and cold winters.

The areas of the highest elevation have a short, cool summer and long severe winters.

Along the coast, the winters are mild and rainy (CIA World Factbook, 1997; Jayne, 1910).

The two provinces differ in many respects from one another. The mountains in

Herzegovina belong to the Adriatic watershed, often rising 6,000 above sea level. They

are in some places covered with forests, and in others, consist of no more than barren

limestone ridges. Groupings of small towns and villages, surrounded by natural walls of

limestone, lie in the river valleys and upland hollows, appearing somewhat as oases in a

desert expanse of mountains. Bosnia extends to the northeast of the Dinaric Alps in a

region of mountain and forest with deep alluvial basins that expand into the lowlands of

the northeast. Bosnia is totally within the watershed of the Danube, which flows into the

Black Sea (Jayne, 1910).

Migration and Early History

Under Roman rule, Bosnia had no separate name or history. From the early seventh

century, the indigenous peoples of the area, the Illyrians, were either absorbed or expelled

as a result of the Slavs who migrated from north of the Carpathian mountains. By the
BALKANS-2 33

tenth century, pressure from Hungary and Byzantium gradually welded the various

isolated social units into a single nation, having but a weak central power and no strong

natural frontiers (Jayne, 1910).

FIGURE 8. Political Map of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

By 1463, the greater part of Bosnia was under Ottoman occupation. Large bodies of

Orthodox Christian refugees fled in the face of the Ottoman conquest, many of them

retreating to Croatia, Slovenia, and south Hungary. Other Slavs remained and became

converts to Islam while keeping their own language and many of their customs. In return,

Moslem converts provided mounted troops for the Ottomans. Converted Moslem Slavs

soon formed a kind of aristocracy and their descendants amassed considerable wealth

from the spoils of war and frequently rose to high military and administrative positions

(Jayne, 1910).

Dating from the Ottoman occupation, Moslem nobles and landlords held all land other

than gardens and residential properties. Slavs who declined to convert to Islam usually

were not permitted to own land. Slavic peasants worked the lands owned by Moslem

converts and paid rents to the Moslem landlords; they also paid taxes to the states.

Moslems in Bosnia-Herzegovina remain the principle landholders, and also constitute the

bulk of the urban population (Gratton, 1992; Jayne, 1910).

Demographics

The estimated population of Bosnia-Herzegovina as of 1997 was 3,222,584. All data

dealing with population, however, is subject to considerable error because of the

dislocations caused by recent ethnic cleansings and military actions. By ethnic group, it is

estimated that 40% of the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina is Serbian, 38% Muslim, and

22% Croat. By religion, however, 40% consider themselves Muslim, 31% Orthodox, 15%
BALKANS-2 34

Catholic, 4% Protestant, and 10% not specified. All of the groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina

(Serbs, Bosniacs and Croats) share the same language, Serbo-Croatian, but it is now

called Croatian, Serbian or Bosnian, depending on political and ethnic affiliations of the

speaker. Thus, the distinctiveness of Bosnian Muslims - since they share a common

language and Slavic origin with both Croats and Serbs - is primarily based on religious

affiliation. Serbs are primarily Orthodox, and Croats are for the most part Catholic. In

the twentieth century, in addition to the brutal warfare and ethnic cleansing of the 1990s,

there have been numerous dispersals of Bosnian Moslems outside of Bosnia-Herzegovina,

largely in response to political and military movements. These included the occupation

and later annexation of the territory by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the incorporation of

the region into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, in 1918, and the installation of

a Communist regime in the years following World War II (CIA World Factbook, 1997;

Gratton, 1992).

Table 6. Bosnia-Herzegovina Historic Time-line.

Time-Frame Inhabitants/Rulers

Roman era Part of the Roman province Illyricum

7

th Century Settled by the Serbs

12th Century Achieved independence

15 Century Fell to the Turks; many Bosnians converted to Islam

1878 Placed under Austro-Hungarian administration

1908 Annexed by Austria

1918 Became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats & Slovenes; name changed to

Yugoslavia in 1929

WW II Became part of the German puppet state Croatia

1946 Became on of six constituent states of Yugoslavia

Economy of Bosnia-Herzegovina

Along with Macedonia and Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina traditionally ranks as

the poorest of the former Yugoslav republics. Its per capita GDP in 1998 was $1,720,

only one sixth that of Slovenia. Agriculture has traditionally been the way of life in

Bosnia-Herzegovina. Farms have been small and inefficient, however, despite being

almost entirely in private hands; and the republic has been a net importer of food.

Traditionally, Bosnian Moslems are heavily represented in craft production and tend to

dominate the professions and civil-service posts (Gratton, 1992).

The war that broke out in 1992 returned much of the population to subsistence

agriculture in an effort to feed themselves. The fighting also brought the industrial

economy to a rapid halt. Despite sizeable deposits of coal and iron, supported by a strong

hydroelectric power industry, the country was unable to sustain industrial activity after the

fighting had begun in earnest. The irony for all of the former Yugoslav republics is that

they were, for a time, part of a functioning whole. Now that the republics have gone their

separate ways, the reality of the interconnectedness of the industries is apparent. Even if

and when the industries can produce, there is no realistic way of getting the products out.
BALKANS-2 35

Due to the devastating effect of the 1992–1995 war, Bosnia-Herzegovina’s per capita

GNP was estimated in 1996 to be only $300, less than a third of that of Macedonia

(Columbus Group, 1998; CIA World Factbook, 1997; Hedges, 1996; Figure 5).

Contemporary History

The inter-ethnic fighting from 1992-1995 led to partition and governance by competing

ethnic factions. The current governing structures were created by the Dayton Accord,

signed in Paris on December 14, 1995 by President IzetbegoviÉ of Bosnia-Herzegovina,

President Tudjman of Croatia, and President Milo”eviÉ of Serbia. The agreement

retained the exterior border of the republic and created a joint multi-ethnic and democratic

government, including a new constitution that is now in force in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The

Dayton Accord also recognized a second tier of government comprised of a joint MuslimCroat Federation and the Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska, each presiding over roughly

one-half of the territory (CIA World Factbook, 1997).

Miscellaneous

Current issues include air pollution from metallurgical plants. In addition, sites for

disposal of urban waste are limited. The wars in Bosnia Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995

caused widespread human casualties as well as water shortages and destruction of

t

the infrastructure. Disputes with Serbia over Serbian populated areas continue. The area

is subject to frequent and destructive earthquakes, and is a transit point for minor regional

marijuana trafficking routes (CIA World Factbook, 1997).

The latest information on Bosnia-Herzegovina can be located online at:
BALKANS-2 36

http://www.governmentguide.com/govsite.adp?bread=*Main&url=http%3A//www.govern

mentguide.com/ams/clickThruRedirect.adp%3F55076483%2C16920155%2Chttp%3A//w

ww.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/hr.html

Serbia and Montenegro

FIGURE 9. Political Map of the “Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” (Serbia and Montenegro).

Location and Physical Characteristics

Serbia is the largest of the six former Yugoslav republics (see Figures 3, 4, and 9),

approximately the size of Maine. (Combined with Montenegro, residual Yugoslavia is

approximately the size of Kentucky.) Serbia borders Croatia (149 miles) and BosniaHerzegovina (193 miles) on the west, Hungary (94 miles) on the north, Romania (295

miles) and Bulgaria (197 miles) on the east, Macedonia (137 miles) on the south, and
BALKANS-2 37

Albania (107 miles) and Montenegro (131 miles) on the southwest. Serbia has a total land

area of 34,107 square miles; the population was estimated to be 10,543,641 in July 1997.

The Serbian republic contains two provinces—Vojvodina in the north and Kosovo in the

south. They were semi-autonomous under President Tito and for some years following

his death until Serbia nullified that status in 1989. Serbia is one of only two of the former

republics of Yugoslavia that is landlocked—a factor of considerable importance in

relationship to any incipient ambitions to extend her territory. Serbia controls one of the

major land routes from Western Europe to Turkey and the Near East (CIA World

Factbook, 1997).

While Serbia is the largest, Montenegro is the smallest of the six former republics,

slightly smaller than the state of Connecticut. Montenegro is bordered by Serbia proper

and Serbia’s province of Kosovo (131 miles in total) on the east, Albania (107 miles) on

the south, 123 miles of Adriatic coastline and a thin strip of Croatia on the west, and by

Bosnia-Herzegovina (133 miles) on the north and northwest. Its total land area is just

over 5,300 square miles. In July 1997, the population of Montenegro was estimated at

680,212.

Migration and Early History

Serbs have had a homeland in the Balkans since the sixth or seventh century, arriving

with their flocks as herdsmen. The first Serb state dates to the middle of the ninth

century. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, internal warfare had

facilitated Ottoman conquest of the region at Kosovo Polje (Kosovo Plain) on June 28,

1389—a conquest still remembered and commemorated by the Serbs. Much of the

ancient Kosovar (Serb) population fled Ottoman conquest. Serbia was recognized as an

autonomous principality by Turkey in 1830 and was proclaimed an independent state in

1882. In 1918, the first Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was established.

From the Serbian defeat in 1389 until 1516, Montenegro was nominally an

independent principality. It was the last Balkan area to be subjugated by the Ottomans—

although never fully—and the first to be “liberated.” It was briefly an independent

kingdom before joining the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Wagner, 1992a,

1992b).

Culturally, Montenegrins are closely related to the Serbs although there are cultural,

economic, and historical differences. Traditionally, their beliefs are a blend of Eastern

Orthodox Christianity and pre-Christian practices. Although most people consider

themselves Orthodox, there are significant Catholic and Muslim minorities. Most

Montenegrin villages are small, populated with less than 1,000 people. Where land is

amenable to being plowed, villages tend to be clustered on the borders of the cultivated

basins. In other areas, residences are more dispersed. During summer months, livestock

is pastured on high mountain grasses, and the herders live in smaller groups of summer

cabins (Wagner, 1992a).

Economy and Natural Resources

Prior to World War II, the economy of Serbia was based primarily on subsistence

agriculture. An important part of the economy involved raising pigs, cattle, and sheep.

Peasant villages tended to be dispersed in small clusters, and with each house surrounded

by its own outbuildings, orchards, and fields. Since WW II, however, modernization and
BALKANS-2 38

urbanization have led to a decline in the degree of dependence on agriculture. Although

some households remain purely agricultural, most households combine agriculture with

some form of industrial wage earning. Although traditionally the neighborhoods or

hamlets within villages were composed of closely-related kin, the population of Serbia is

currently predominantly urban (Wagner, 1992b).

Current industries include machine building, mining, consumer goods, electronics,

petroleum products, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. Agricultural production focuses on

cereals, fruits, vegetables, tobacco, and olives, as well as cattle, sheep, and goats. As of

1994 estimates, agriculture and the service sector each contributed 25% of the GDP, and

industry contributed 50%. Their primary trade partners since the demise of the Socialist

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia are Russia, Italy, and Germany (CIA World Factbook,

1997).

The Montenegrins have historically been farmers in areas where agriculture is

possible and animal herders elsewhere. Herding of sheep, goats, and cattle, based on the

seasonal movement of flocks has been the most important economic activity. Their major

agricultural products include rye and barley and other cereal crops, as well as olives, figs,

and grapes in the coastal areas. Since World War II, there has been increasing

modernization and industrialization, although Montenegrin industry and agriculture remain

underdeveloped. External trade has historically been of only minimal importance.

Montenegro ranks last among the former Yugoslav republics in the percentage of its work

force employed in industry (Wagner, 1992a).

Natural resources of Serbia and Montenegro include oil, gas, coal, antimony, copper,

lead, zinc, nickel, gold, pyrite, and chrome. Current environmental issues involve pollution

of coastal waters from sewage outlets, especially in tourist-related areas such as Kotor;

air pollution around Belgrade and other industrial cities; and water pollution from industrial

wastes dumped in the Sava River that flows into the Danube.

 Demographics

In Serbia and Montenegro combined, 63% of the population is Serbian, 14% are

Albanian, 6% are Montenegrin, 4% are Hungarian, and the remaining 13% are

unspecified. Considerable conflict has arisen in the 1990s regarding the status of Serbian

populations living in Croatia and neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina. The province of

Vojvodina is mainly Serbian but also contains large minorities of Romanians and

Hungarians. The province of Kosovo has a majority of ethnic Albanian Muslims; Serbians

are a minority. Substantial Serbian populations live in the neighboring republic of

Montenegro that with Serbia forms residual Yugoslavia. Serbians are predominantly

Eastern Orthodox (65%) although 19% are Muslim, 4% are Roman Catholic, 1% are

Protestant, and 11% are not specified (CIA World Factbook, 1997; Wagner, 1992b).

Miscellaneous

On April 11, 1992, Serbia and Montenegro joined to form the Socialist Federal

Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), a self-proclaimed successor to the former Yugoslavia, an

entity not yet formally recognized by the United States. The US view is that the former

Yugoslav Republic has dissolved and that none of the successor republics represent its

continuation.
BALKANS-2 39

The latest information on Serbia and Montenegro can be located online at:

http://www.governmentguide.com/govsite.adp?bread=*Main&url=http%3A//www.govern

mentguide.com/ams/clickThruRedirect.adp%3F55076483%2C16920155%2Chttp%3A//w

ww.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sr.html

Table 7. Serbian Historic Time-line.

Time-Frame Inhabitants/Rulers

6

th –7th Centuries Settled by the Serbs, a South Slav group

13th Century Kingdom of Serbia established

1389 Battle of Kosovo Field; Ottoman Turks triumph

14th – 19th Centuries Ruled by the Ottoman Turks

1829 Turks grant Serbs autonomy

1882 Kingdom of Serbia declared

1918 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes established; Name changed in

1929 to Yugoslavia

WW II German puppet government established

Post-WW II Serbia becomes a republic within Yugoslavia

The swift collapse of the Yugoslav federation in 1991 has been followed by highly

destructive warfare, destabilization of republic boundaries, and the interruption of

important trade flows between the republics. Like the other former Yugoslav republics,
BALKANS-2 40

Serbia and Montenegro had depended upon their sister republics for large amounts of

energy and manufactured goods. This interdependence was accentuated by wide

differences in climate, variability of mineral resources and levels of technology among the

republics. The disruption of trade links, decline in industrial output related to loss of

suppliers and markets, and the destruction of physical assets due to the fighting have all

contributed to the economic difficulties. Other extenuating factors included the

communist practice of concentrating a great deal of industrial output in a small number of

large plants. Currently the economy in Serbia and Montenegro seems relegated to the

“back burner,” as political and military matters take precedence over economic reform

(CIA World Factbook, 1997).

Slobodan Milosevic was elected president of SFRY on December 9, 1990. He was

deposed in October, 2000, however, and replaced by Vojislav Kostunica. Momir

BulatoviÉ has been president of Montenegro since December 23, 1990 (CIA World

Factbook, 1997).

Table 8. Montenegrin Historic Time-line.

Time-Frame Inhabitants/Rulers

Ancient Occupied by the Illyrians

7

th – 6th Centuries BC Greek coastal colonies established

4

th Century BC Celts arrived

1

st Century AD Romans conquered Montenegro

5

th Century AD Goths invaded

6

th Century AD Avars invaded

6

th Century AD Serbs, a South Slav group, migrated

14th – 15th Centuries Stubbornly resisted the Ottoman Turks; some regions never

capitulated

14th – 15th Centuries Venice controlled only port city

1799 Montenegro gained its independence

1918 Joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes; Name changed

in 1929 to Yugoslavia

1946 Became a Yugoslav Republic

Macedonia

Location and Physical Characteristics

Macedonia is approximately the size of Maryland (see Figures 3, 4, and 10). It lies

south of Serbia, sharing a 137-mile border that was guarded under Operation Able

Sentry—a UN peacekeeping force discussed further in Chapter 7. Subsequent to the

initial deployment of Operation Able Sentry to Macedonia, troops have also been stationed

along Macedonia’s 94 mile western border with Albania due to economic and political

instability in that country. Macedonia’s 92 mile border with Bulgaria on the east and 141
BALKANS-2 41

mile border with Greece to the south have to date been secure. Yugoslav Macedonia has

a total land area of 9,889 square miles. Geographical Macedonia, of which Yugoslav

Macedonia is a part, extends into Bulgaria, Greece, and Albania and has a land area of

nearly 25,000 square miles. Like Serbia, Macedonia is landlocked, but it provides a major

transportation corridor from Western and Central Europe to the Aegean Sea and,

conversely, from Southern Europe to Western Europe. In 1997, the population of

Macedonia was estimated at 1,995,859 (CIA World Factbook, 1997).

Macedonia is an extremely mountainous territory covered with deep basins and

valleys. Elevations in Macedonia range from 164 feet above sea level along the Vardar

River to 8,833 feet above sea level at Koror. In addition, there are three large lakes, each

divided by an international frontier—two shared with Albania and one with Greece. The

Vardar River, which flows into the Aegean Sea, bisects Macedonia. The area is one of

high seismic risks, and it experiences numerous destructive earthquakes (CIA World

Factbook, 1997). Air pollution from metallurgical plants is a problem (CIA World

Factbook, 1997).

Macedonia sits at a major communication and transportation nexus, linking Europe

with Asia and the Mediterranean and Asia with the Adriatic. A north-south route, formed

by the valleys of the Morava and Vardar Rivers, has been used for millennia to connect

the Danube River to the Aegean Sea. Another ancient trade route, this one running eastwest across Macedonia, connects the Black Sea and Istanbul with the Adriatic Sea. No

wonder then that Macedonia is considered a major trans-shipment point for Southwest

Asian heroin and hashish.

FIGURE 10. Political Map of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Migration and Early History

The people who today call themselves “Macedonians” are connected in no way to the

Macedonians of the time of Alexander the Great, who were related to other Hellenic, or

Greek, tribes. Contemporary Macedonians descended from Slav tribesmen who settled

during the sixth and seventh centuries. After the subsequent in-migration of Asian
BALKANS-2 42

peoples now referred to as Proto-Bulgarian and their intermingling with the Slavs in the

area, the Bulgarians emerged and eventually established a state that included a large part

of Yugoslav Macedonia. During the ninth century, two Greek brothers were instrumental

in converting the Slavs to Christianity and for creation of the alphabet from which the

Cyrillic alphabet evolved. By the end of the tenth century there were two Bulgarian

kingdoms, including a short-lived one in the west that covered much of Yugoslav

Macedonia. At that time, however, it appears that the Slavs of Macedonia considered

themselves to be Bulgarians. The area subsequently fell under Ottoman rule, lasting until

1912. Under Ottoman occupation, Slav Macedonians developed guerrilla bands known as

hayduks that attacked Ottoman caravans and plundered feudal estates. The hayduks

were primarily displaced peasants whose fame grew and reached mythic proportions. At

the beginning of the twentieth century, guerrilla brigands from Serbia, Bulgaria, and

Greece all fought against the Turks and against each other as well—over the future of

Macedonia. With the defeat of the Turks in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913,

Macedonia was divided between Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria (Garber, 1992).

Contemporary History

In this century, the Communist International called for creation of an independent

Macedonia and recognition of a separate Macedonian “nationality.” When communists

came to power in Yugoslavia following World War II, Macedonia became a Yugoslav

republic. Tito envisioned the creation of a “Greater Macedonia” to include Greek

Macedonia in order to gain access to the Aegean Sea. This expansionist history underlies

Greece’s recent opposition to the use of the name “Macedonia” for a separate and

internationally recognized country.

The Macedonian Economy

Traditionally, the Slavs of Macedonia were peasants living in small villages scattered

around the countryside. Most of the villages were in the foothills or near streams and

rivers. Since World War II, there has been increasing urbanization, leading to

abandonment of hundreds of rural settlements and leading to a decline in subsistence

agriculture and a concentration of commercial activity in towns. Many peasants also

migrated to the Yugoslavian federal capital, Belgrade. Others went abroad (Garber,

1992).

Macedonia has many iron, zinc, and chromium mines; and large textile factories have

replaced the small, family-based looms that were common prior to World War II. Many

people are also employed in the tobacco industry. The abundant water supply in the

region supports numerous hydroelectric plants; and Macedonia is a net exporter of electric

power, mostly to other parts of the former Yugoslavia. Other exports include textiles,

leather, porcelain, glass, and cement. Imports include industrial and agricultural machinery

as well as food and consumer products. Until the Republic of Yugoslavia dissolved, most

import-export business between Macedonia and foreign countries was handled through

the federal capital in Belgrade. Strained relationships between Macedonia and Serbia in

the 1990s, as well as the international sanctions against Serbia, have weakened the

Macedonian economy (Garber, 1992).
BALKANS-2 43

Macedonia is the poorest country on the Balkan Peninsula, with a per capita GDP in

1998 of $1,050. This figure is less than half that of residual Yugoslavia, a fifth of that of

Croatia, barely a tenth of Slovenia’s per capital GDP, and less than one twentieth of

Germany’s. The composition of the Macedonian GDP by sector is industry 44%, services

32%, and agriculture 24%; and an important supplement to the GDP derives from

payments from a significant number of Macedonians working in Germany and other

Western European states. Although the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is

among the poorest of former Yugoslav republics, it is able to meet basic needs for food

and energy through its own agricultural and coal resources. The economy has begun to

rebound, but continued recovery will depend on Macedonia’s ability to redevelop trade ties

with Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro (Garber, 1992).

Table 9. Macedonian Time-Line.

Time-Frame Inhabitants/Rulers

Antiquity Kingdom of Macedon

146 BC Fell under Roman Control

395 AD Byzantine rule

6

th Century The Macedonians, a South Slav group, arrived

9

th – 14th Centuries Macedonia was contested by Constantinople, Bulgaria, and Serbia

14th – 19th Centuries Ruled by Ottoman Turks

Early 20th Century Claimed by Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria

1912-1913 Balkan wars establish present boundaries
BALKANS-2 44

1918 Joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes; name changed in 1929

to Yugoslavia

1941 – 1944 Occupied by Bulgaria, and Axis power

1946 Became a Yugoslav Republic

1992 Declared independence

1992 Greece protested use of the name “Macedonia”; Became known as

FYROM, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

Demographics

Macedonia is ethnically diverse, with approximately 67% Slav Macedonians, 20%

ethnic Albanians, 4% Turkish, 2% Serb, 3% Gypsies, and the balance Vlachs and other

smaller minorities. The majority of Slav Macedonians area Orthodox Christian (67%),

belonging to the Macedonian Orthodox Church, established in 1958 with the help of Tito—

a rare example of a Communist leader supporting the establishment and welfare of a

religious body. Muslims represent 30% of the population (CIA World Factbook, 1997).

Miscellaneous

Despite its dispute with Greece over the use of the name “Macedonia” and the

“Vergina sun” in Macedonia’s flag, an interim accord has been signed resolving the

dispute over constitutional issues and symbols. Greece has also lifted its economic

embargo on Macedonia. Of other concern, however are the claims made by Albanians in

Macedonia regarding discrimination in education, as well as to access to public-sector jobs

and representation in government. Macedonia gained its independence from Yugoslavia

on September 17, 1991. Kiro Gligorov has been president and chief of state of

Macedonia since January 27, 1991.

The latest information on Macedonia can be located online at:

http://www.governmentguide.com/govsite.adp?bread=*Main&url=http%3A//www.govern

mentguide.com/ams/clickThruRedirect.adp%3F55076483%2C16920155%2Chttp%3A//w

ww.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/mk.html

Terrain, History, and People: The Inextricable Mixture

The mountain chains that crisscross the Balkan Peninsula fragmented not only the

geography of the region, as we have already seen, but also its ethnic and political

development. The portions of the former Yugoslavia referred to as Bosnia-Herzegovina

and Montenegro are almost wholly mountainous, and Slovenia and Macedonia are

predominantly mountainous—a factor that served in some measure to isolate people,

encourage localism, and hinder the development of states. The mountains have also

permitted minority peoples to take refuge and to escape conquerors and large migrations,

thus in many instances permitting them to retain their identities rather than being

assimilated.

The isolation and physical compartmentalization, however, also undermined the

emergence of a cohesive ethnic or national identity. The presence of fragmented ethnic

identities and geographic divisions retarded the development of any single large power in
BALKANS-2 45

the region, leading instead, to several smaller, less powerful and competing states (Hosch,

1972; Johnsen, 1995).

Paradoxically, the geographic barriers that isolated local residents also provided ready

access to the region. The Danube provided access from either central Europe or the

Black Sea. Another route flowed down the Danube from Central Europe and diverged

along two paths: Either down the Vardar River through the Skopje Gate in Macedonia to

Thessalonica in Greece, or toward Sofia in Bulgaria and along the Maritsa River to

Constantinople. Yet another route began in Italy, crossed the Adriatic, moved across

Albania and northern Greece, and terminated in Constantinople. The extensive coastlines

of the Adriatic, Aegean, and Black Seas also opened the Balkans to penetration (Johnsen,

1995; Ristelhueber, 1971).

... the peninsula is a crossroads between Europe, Asia, and Africa. Here the

peoples and cultures of three continents have met and mingled, or clashed and

conquered. The major powers of each historical epoch have made their influence

felt here and left their marks upon the peoples. The great imperial powers of the

past—Greeks, Romans, Turks, Venetians, Austrians, Germans, French, British,

and Russians—all in their turn have dominated or sought to dominate this area.

(Jelavich, & Jelavich, 1965, pp. 2-3)
BALKANS-3 46

CHAPTER THREE

PEOPLE OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA

In order to understand the Balkans, it is necessary to know its people and how they

came to reside in their respective areas of the peninsula. This chapter is intended to

convey that information. It begins with an overview of original inhabitants and early

settlement and migratory patterns in the Balkans, attends to Greek traders and Roman

conquerors, and then focuses on linguistic, religious, and cultural differences that

contribute to the complex ethnic mélange that exists in the area. This account is not

intended as a comprehensive history of the region. Rather, it is intended to convey a taste

of the rich variety of different cultures and influences that have swept across the Balkan

Peninsula in the past three millennia. Our treatment begins in 1000 BC, approximately the

start of recorded history in the Balkans. An expanded treatment of the Balkan region

before 1000 BC can be found in Appendix D, The Makings of the Balkan Warrior Cult

and Appendix E, European and Balkan Prehistory.

Antiquity on the Balkan Peninsula

The Early Greeks

At the dawn of recorded Balkan history (1,000 BC), Greek-speaking peoples

occupied the southern tip of the Balkan Peninsula, in the region known today as Greece.

They lived in independent city-states on both the mainland and on many of the more than

2,000 islands scattered throughout the Ionian, Aegean, and Adriatic Seas. By 800 BC

they had developed a thriving maritime tradition and established a network of colonies

from Asia Minor (present-day Turkey) to Spain. Their Balkan excursions included a

string of island trading villages along the Adriatic Sea’s Balkan coastline, and a

corresponding string of villages on the Balkans’ eastern shoreline, from the Sea of

Mamara northward along the Black Sea to the mouth of the Danube and beyond. They

also navigated upstream on the Danube, establishing villages at least as far inland as

Vachia, ten miles from present-day Belgrade. The Greeks were an inquisitive and

intrepid people, but their principle interests were trade and commerce. Although they

occasionally took captives, to sell as slaves, they seem to have had no systematic interest

in subjugating the native inhabitants they found in the Balkans.

Indigenous Populations

The Greeks discovered 2three distinct indigenous populations in the Balkan interior,

Illyrians, Thracians, and Dacians. All three groups consisted mostly of herdsmen and

warriors. Each group also had its own language, variants of what today is known as the

Indo-European mother language. Thracian and Illyrian languages were members of the

Thraco-Illyrian family and Dacian was a precursor of modern-day Romanian. Both

 

2

 There was a fourth group if we consider the ancient Macedonians as a distinct, non-Greek population.

There is division of opinion now among scholars as to whether the Ancient Macedonians were Greeks, and

apparently there was also a division of opinion among the Ancient Greeks as well.
BALKANS-3 47

Thracian and Illyrian were represented in the Balkans until about AD 1100 and Dacian

was spoken until about AD 600, mostly in Romania. Although each of these languages is

now extinct, Albanian, related to both Illyrian and Dacian, survives. Albanian, spoken

today in the republic of Albania and in parts of Kosovo and Macedonia, is represented

principally by Geg and Tosk dialects.

The Illyrians. When the Greeks first arrived, they found the Illyrians, ancestors of

modern Albanians, living along the western coast of the Balkan Peninsula, inhabiting the

region from present-day Albania in the south northward through the coastal mountains of

Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dalmatia, and finally into the Istrian Peninsula

(between present-day Slovenia and Croatia). Illyrian settlements extended into the

Balkan interior to the Vardar River in present-day Macedonia and Serbia. No one knows

for how many millennia the Illyrians had lived in these regions, but today they are thought

to be the earliest inhabitants who maintained a continuous presence on the Balkan

Peninsula.

The Thracians. To the east of the Illyrians, early Greeks found a people they called

the Thracians, whose territory was bounded by the Danube River in the north, the Black

Sea in the east, the Aegean Sea in the south, and the Struma River in the west.

As with the rest of Europe, the Balkan peninsula first emerged from complete

historic darkness into a misty period for which our surviving evidence is chiefly

archaeological and anthropological. The peoples whom we discern at first, when

the curtain begins to go up on history, at the end of the Bronze Age and the

beginning of the Iron Age, perhaps about 1000 B.C., are two: the Illyrians living

in the western half of the area, and the Thracians in the eastern. (Wolff, 1974, p.

25)
BALKANS-3 48

The Dacians. A third indigenous population (not cited in the quotation above), the

Dacians, were living on the Transylvanian Plateau north of the Danube, in present-day

north central and western Romania. The Dacians were agriculturalists and miners of

silver, iron, and gold. As early as 400 BC, Dacians appeared in Greek slave markets; and

they subsequently engaged in trade with the Greeks, importing wine. Like their southern

counterparts the Illyrians and Thracians, the Dacians also spoke an Indo-European

language and were linguistically related to the Thracians, but they also were culturally

influenced by the neighboring Scythians and by invading Celts.

Illyrians and Thracians, according to ancient Greek (and later, Roman) historians,

were formidable fighters. They were described as fierce and warlike tribes who were

prevented from overrunning the lands of the northeastern Mediterranean only by their

constant political fragmentation (Curtis, 1992; Illyria, 1995; Jones, 1992a, 1992c; Minshall,

1992b; Thrace, 1995; Wolff, 1974).

Despite their early exposure to an advanced Greek civilization, Balkan indigenous

populations had little in common with the commercial and seafaring Greeks, and

accordingly adopted few of their ways, choosing instead to remain mostly herdsmen and

warriors (Illyrians and Thracians) or agriculturalists and miners (Dacians). Except for an

armed invasion by Alexander the Great (a Macedonian) in the 4th Century BC, Greeks

rarely played the role of conquerors in the Balkans, nor did they see the indigenous Balkan

populations as either competitors or equals, but rather as storehouses of natural resources

(including manpower, via the slave trade). The relationship of the Greeks with the

indigenous populations was for the most part quid pro quo. At times the locals were

exploited for their mineral resources, or even taken as slaves, but at other times they were

enhanced by the development of communication and transportation networks. In the

colonies of Dalmatia, for example, metallurgical and other craft works were established;

and manufactured goods were exchanged for raw materials produced in the interior by

the Illyrian tribes. Similar trading colonies along the eastern shorelines of the peninsula,

where the Thracians lived, and along the Danube, where the Dacians had settled, were

equally successful in promoting trade and shipping (Gianaris, 1982; Illyria, 1995; Jones,

1992a, 1992c; Landes, 1992; Wolff, 1974). Greek commerce, though, was based on

maritime contacts, principally through coastal villages and trading posts along major rivers

like the Danube. Inevitably, penetration of Greek civilization to interior regions of the

Balkan Peninsula was limited by mountainous and rough terrain.

Ancient Macedonians

Also present on the Balkan Peninsula in 1000 BC were the Ancient Macedonians (not

to be confused with present-day Slavic-speaking inhabitants of FYROM, the Former

Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia). Scholars disagree over the linguistic and ethnic

origins of the ancient Macedonians. Part of the confusion is that it is not known whether

the ancient Macedonian language was an independent language or a Greek dialect into

which a non-Hellenic vocabulary and other traits had been introduced. To further confuse

matters, Macedonian rulers abandoned the ancient Macedonian language in approximately

500 BC and began using Attic Greek for public administration. Despite their language

switch, many Greeks in the city-states to the south continued to view Macedonians as

barbarians (i.e., as non-Greeks).
BALKANS-3 49

Regardless of the dim view in which they were held by mainstream Greeks of the

time, Macedonians under King Phillip II had by 338 BC consolidated the Macedonian

tribes, subjugated the Greek mainland, repelled another onslaught of Persian invaders, and

organized an Hellenic League to further the dissemination of Greek culture. Through the

combined efforts of Phillip II and his son, Alexander the Great, Macedonians were

instrumental in aggressively disseminating Hellenism to the far corners of the then-known

world. After subduing the Balkans and Egypt, Alexander marched east through Asia

Minor and the Middle East, and eventually on to Persia and northwestern India. Along

the way, Alexander conquered the Persian Empire of Darius III and, after eleven years of

warfare, extended his empire to the Indus River. After the death of Alexander, a GrecoMacedonian state, incorporating the Balkans as well as other eastern Mediterranean

regions, survived until the area fell under the assault of Roman conquerors almost three

hundred years later.

Iranian Invaders

In addition to the well-documented attempts by Persians under Darius and Xerxes to

annex Greece, three other groups of Iranian peoples (Cimmerians, Scythians,and

Sarmathians) penetrated the Balkans between 1000 BC and approximately 300 BC. The

presence of Iranian peoples on the Baltic Peninsula is not commonly discussed by

historians and as a result it is difficult to assess their impact. They were nomads and

accomplished horsemen and warriors, but they also have been described as keen

huntsmen and fishermen, skilled at curing hides and in metal working. Those who settled

have been described as good agriculturalists. They also had a keen political sense and

administrative ability, and they carried on a lively trade not only with the inhabitants of

Central Asia but also with the Greeks, exchanging surplus goods and furs for Greek

luxuries such as fine ceramic wares. Their eventual fate is not fully understood. In some

instances it is likely they retreated back to Asia; in others it is likely they were assimilated

by indigenous populations.

The Roman Conquest

Rome’s history dates back to 753 BC, when the city itself was founded. The Roman

Republic dates to 509 BC, following the overthrow of the last of Rome’s seven kings.

Rome’s influence grew steadily until 146 BC, when its defeat and destruction of Carthage

in North Africa marked the beginning of an era of rapid expansion of Roman influence

throughout the Mediterranean area. Rome changed from a Republic to an Empire at

approximately the time of Christ, but the transition never impeded Rome’s expansionist

ambitions. After becoming an Empire, the passage of but a few years saw Roman

dominion spread over territories as far-flung as Germany and Britain in the north, North

Africa (including Egypt) in the south, and the Persian Gulf in the east. During this

expansionist period, the Romans defeated Syria, Egypt, Greece, Macedonia and its

environs, and eventually subdued the entire Balkan Peninsula, which it held for over 500

years, beginning well before the birth of Christ and lasting until Rome’s capitulation to the

Goths in 476 AD.

Indigenous Resistance

Of all Balkan peoples, the Illyrians offered the strongest resistance to the Roman

conquest. One Illyrian tribe—the Dalmatians—held out against Rome until the middle of

the 1st Century BC. Although the Illyrians had resisted Roman conquest, when they were
BALKANS-3 50

finally absorbed into the Roman Empire they proved to be extraordinarily valuable to the

empire, supplying for several centuries the best troops in the Roman armies (Illyria, 1995;

Thrace, 1995), including a number of generals and five soldiers who rose through the

ranks to become emperor, including Diocletian. Although Rome forced the Illyrians to

pay tribute, the Illyrian lands flourished under the Romans. The rest of the Balkans,

however, and especially Greece, suffered a steady economic decline under Roman

control.

For many years, the Dinaric Alps sheltered resistance forces, but Roman

dominance increased. In 35 B.C. the emperor Octavian conquered the coastal

region and seized inland Celtic and Illyrian strongholds; in A.D. 9, Tiberius

consolidated Roman control of the western Balkan Peninsula; and by A.D. 14,

Rome had subjugated the Celts in what is now Serbia. (Curtis, 1992, p. 5)

The influence of the Romans along the Dalmatian coast and in coastal towns was

increased by the settlement of many military veterans. Illyrian pirates and raiders from

the mountains initially brought considerable instability to Roman Dalmatia. As the coast

became Romanized, the Dalmatian towns became very similar to those in Italy. These

towns retained their Italian identity and were given various privileges and a degree of

autonomy that persisted throughout the Middle Ages (Fine, 1983).

Across the Blue Danube: The Dacians

By approximately the birth of Christ, Rome was deeply involved in the whole Balkan

region. Nonetheless, the newly acquired lands and diverse populations proved a challenge

to govern effectively. The Romans organized the conquered peoples into provinces under

the control of appointed governors who had absolute power over all non-Roman citizens.
BALKANS-3 51

Troops were stationed in each province, ready to exercise appropriate force if necessary

(Thrace, 1995).

In the north, the Romans at first used the Danube as their frontier. Roman influence

was eventually extended, however, north across the Danube, over most of present-day

Romania. In AD 106, Emperor Trajan crossed the river and conquered Dacia in presentday Romania. Although little is known about the first inhabitants of Romania, it is

generally accepted that at that time it was inhabited by Dacians—relatives of the

Thracians—who engaged mainly in agriculture, cattle raising, mining (gold and silver), and

domestic and foreign trade (Dacia, 1995; Gianaris, 1982; Roman Republic and Empire,

1995; Thrace, 1995). At the height of Roman expansion, the whole Balkan Peninsula was

brought under a single rule for the first time in its history.

Roman Governance, Commerce, and Cultural Contributions

A unified empire had far-reaching economic consequences, including the suppression

of piracy and brigandage and the establishment of relatively good communications.

Agriculture remained the basic economic activity in the Roman Empire although the city

was the dominant influence in Roman life. Absentee owners prospered due to their

possession of large estates on which free tenants tilled the soil, gradually replacing slave

labor. Rome lacked a degree of unity, however, failing to develop a means for ordinary

citizens to participate directly in political affairs (Wallbank, Taylor, Bailkey, & Mancall,

1970). To some extent, this shortcoming was rectified in AD 212, when all freemen of

the Roman Empire, which by this time included the entire Balkan Peninsula in addition to

many other holdings throughout the Mediterranean, Europe, North Africa, and the near

East, were granted Roman citizenship.

The construction of a well-organized network of paved highways, particularly one

stretching from the Adriatic coast to Salonika on the Aegean, provided the basis for the

development of trade to the Balkan interior at this time. This brought into existence local

industries, such as weaving, marble quarrying, mining, lumbering, and the production of

wine and table delicacies. Military camps in Belgrade, Ni”, Sofia, Plovdiv, and Edirne

expanded into trade centers (Curtis, 1992; Gianaris, 1982). Security of life and property

under the Roman system stimulated the permanent establishment of peddlers, soldiers, and

workers from Italy and other Mediterranean areas in the Balkans, especially in Romania.

The Roman administration, using highways built during the occupation AD 106 – 275,

imported people from Italy to work the rich lands of Dacia and the mines of Transylvania.

The western Balkan territories were divided into separate provinces; and new roads

were built to link fortresses, mines, and trading towns. The Romans introduced the

cultivation of grapes in Dalmatia, instituted slavery, and dug new mines. In the Danube

basin, agriculture thrived. Throughout the country, towns grew into urban areas with

forums, temples, water systems, coliseums, and public baths (Curtis, 1992; Gianaris,

1982). In the southern regions of the Balkan Peninsula, Roman merchants used the

Aegean islands for shipping and trading activities. During that period, the island of Delos

became an important nexus for the transport and exchange of commodities and slaves

from east to west. On the Adriatic Coast, slaves from Balkan countries were sold. More

than a million slaves from Macedonia, Thrace, and the rest of Greece were sold to Italy

and Sicily at a relatively high price because of the variety in their skills (Dacia, 1995;

Gianaris, 1982; Roman Republic and Empire, 1995; Thrace, 1995).
BALKANS-3 52

Although wealth was concentrated among limited numbers of people and the breach

between the classes widened, commerce and cottage industries flourished in Balkan cities

during the Roman period. Illyrian lands, especially, provided valuable raw materials used

by the growing commercial cities. Illyrian peasants, moreover, provided soldiers for the

Roman legions. The administration of justice, the roads, the comforts of the towns (with

their theaters and baths), and the granting of Roman citizenship to all freemen of the

empire in AD 212, facilitated business travel and enhanced the economic and cultural

development of the area (Byzantine Empire, 1995; Gianaris, 1982).

During most of the Roman Empire, Rome was the dominant power in the entire

Mediterranean basin, in most of western Europe, and in large areas of northern Africa.

The Romans possessed a powerful army and were gifted in the applied arts of law,

government, city planning, and statecraft. They also acknowledged and adopted

contributions from other ancient peoples, most notably the Greeks. As a result, much of

Greek culture was preserved. The Roman Empire was distinguished for its outstanding

army as well as for its accomplishments in intellectual endeavors, including Roman law.

Rome’s system of roads was without match in the ancient world, designed for

comparatively fast transportation. The roads formed a 50,000-mile transportation network

that extended from Britain to the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers in present-day Iraq and to Spain

and northern Africa. They were primarily for military use, but also were adapted to a

wide variety of functions, including commerce, agriculture, mail delivery, and pedestrian

traffic as well as the movement of military forces. Roman city planners achieved

unprecedented standards of hygiene with their plumbing, sewage disposal, dams, and

aqueducts. Finally, Latin became the medium for a significant body of original works

attributable to Western civilization (Mojzes, 1995; Roman Republic and Empire, 1995;

Roman Road System, 1995).
BALKANS-3 53

Residual Greek Culture

Eventually Rome controlled all remnants of the decaying Hellenistic Empire. As the

Romans continued to spread their own knowledge throughout the world-state, they also

disseminated Greek knowledge; and a synthesis of cultures took place among the diverse

peoples of the central and eastern Mediterranean. By assimilating and spreading Hellenic

elements and preserving Hellenistic culture in the eastern provinces, the Romans helped to

perpetuate the Greek legacy of economic expansion, growing cosmopolitanism, and

striking intellectual and artistic achievement.

Latin, the language of the Romans, was also one of many Indo-European languages

spread throughout the Balkans, especially among the Illyrians. At the same time, the

Romans, particularly the upper classes, were also being significantly influenced by Greek

culture and civilization, to the extent that many historians and social scientists call this era

the Greco-Roman Period. The Romans acknowledged a cultural debt to the Greeks:

The Roman world-state, while enriched by many cultural strains, was

predominantly a synthesis of Greek and Latin cultures. The Romans learned the

Greek language, copied Greek architecture, employed Greek sculptors, and

identified their Gods with Greek deities. Although Greek ways of life introduced

sophisticated habits which were often corrupting to the Roman virtues of selfreliance, personal integrity, family cohesion, and discipline, Greek influences

made the Romans on the whole less harsh and insensitive. Largely because of

their admiration for Greek culture and their belief in maintaining a diversity of

cultures within a political unity, the Romans succeeded in establishing a worldstate instead of a narrow national empire. (Wallbank, Taylor, Bailkey, & Mancall,

1970, p. 143)

Decline of the Roman Empire

By AD 271 – AD 275, however, Rome had reached its apex of territorial expansion

and was forced by invading barbarians to withdraw southward to the Danube. When the

Romans withdrew, under pressure from the Goths, they left behind the name of the state

of Romania as well as the fundamentals for the Romanian language (Dacia, 1995;

Gianaris, 1982; Roman Republic and Empire, 1995; Thrace, 1995).3

Emperor Augustus (born Caius Octavius) is credited with bringing the whole Balkan

Peninsula within the Mediterranean civilization. Augustus was the first Roman emperor,

and his reign spanned the beginning of the first millennium, from 27 BC to AD 14. What

Augustus consolidated, however, the emperor Constantine broke asunder. In AD 330 he

moved the capital to Byzantium, which was subsequently renamed Constantinople

(modern name: Istanbul). Byzantium, originally a Greek trading post where merchants

from the Aegean and Black Seas met with those from Asia and the Balkan interior, had

by this time developed into an important economic and cultural center. Upon the death of

Theodosius in AD 395, the Roman Empire was officially split into eastern (The Byzantine

Empire) and western (the Western Roman Empire) realms. In AD 476, the last emperor

of the west, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by Goths and the powerful and influential

western Roman Empire faded into history. The Byzantine Empire, however, with its

 

3

 Present-day Romanians take pride in the fact that they are the offspring of the ancient Dacians and Romans.

Recently, they even changed the spelling of their country’s name from Rumania to Romania.
BALKANS-3 54

capital at Constantinople, was to persist for another thousand years before capitulating to

the Ottoman Turks.

Table 10. A Short Chronology of the Roman Empire

753 BC

509 BC

390 BC

146 BC

200 BC – AD 200

AD 200

AD 212

AD 275

AD 330

AD 371-375

AD 395

AD 410

434 – 453

AD 476

AD 1453

Rome founded

Roman Republic founded, after overthrow of the last Roman king

Rome sacked by Celtic invaders who depart with a golden ransom

Rome defeats Carthage in north Africa

Roman influence envelopes the Balkans

Barbarian attacks on northern Balkans intensify

Roman citizenship granted to all freemen of the empire

Goths force Roman evacuation of Dacia (present-day Romania)

Constantine moves capital to Constantinople (previously Byzantium)

Goths cross Danube and conquer Roman territory

Empire splits into Byzantine Empire and Western Roman Empire

Rome attacked and occupied by Goths

Attila the Hun’s reign of terror

Collapse of the Western Roman Empire; European “Dark Ages” begin

Capture of Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks

Barbarians at the Gate

Through the millennia, the physiography of the Balkan Peninsula practically invited

invasions and migrations from the north and east and to a lesser extent from the west and

south. This invitation, far from being ignored by surrounding populations, was accepted

time and again by peoples in search of greener pastures. Successive waves of invaders

crossed the peninsula since the beginning of recorded time. Some merely passed through

or retreated after a brief incursion, leaving little record of their presence, but others left

more lasting impressions. Table 11 lists the main civilizations that invaded or immigrated

to the Balkans in the period from 1000 BC to AD 1000.

Table 11. Major Civilizations to Penetrate the Balkan Peninsula4

Civilization

(Approximate) Time

Frame Area(s) Occupied

Greeks

Phrygians

Ancient Macedonians

Persians

Cimmerians

Scythians

Sarmathians

Western Roman Empire

Goths

Byzantine Empire

Huns

Avars

Bulgars

1250 BC to 200 BC

1080 BC to 580 BC

1000 BC to 200 BC

525 BC - 400 BC

1000 BC - 600

700 BC - 600 BC

4

th Century BC

200 BC to AD 476

3

rd - 6th Centuries AD

395 – AD 1453

5

th Century AD

6

th - 8th Centuries

7

th Century

Greece, Macedonia, Adriatic and Black Sea

coastal regions, Danube Valley

Macedonia and eastern Thrace

Northern Greece and Macedonia

Thrace westward to Macedonia

Lower Danube, Dacia, eastern Thrace

Macedonia

Dacia, Thrace

Entire Balkan Peninsula

Most of the Balkan Peninsula

Most of the Balkan Peninsula

Much of the Balkan Peninsula

Much of the Balkan Peninsula

Dacia, Bulgaria, Greece, Dalmatia,

 

4

 This list presents only “major” invaders. For an expanded treatment of Balkan invaders, see Appendix G:

Indigenous Peoples, Invaders, and Immigrants in the Balkans.
BALKANS-3 55

Magyars

Slavs

9th – 10th Century AD

6

th – 21st Centuries

Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia

Entire Balkan Peninsula

The Roman Empire, with its pervasive Pax Romana, provided a powerful stabilizing

force for over half a millennia, but even Roman power eventually waned. As Roman

influence began to decline in the 3

rd Century, barbarian incursions into the Balkans

became more frequent and more intense. In AD 271-275 the Goths forced the Romans

to abandon Dacia (present-day Romania) and retreat to the Danube River. A hundred

years later Goths crossed the Danube and began occupying Roman territory in what is

now Bulgaria and Serbia. Upon the death of Theodosius in AD 395, the Roman Empire

was split into eastern (the Byzantine Empire) and western (the Western Roman Empire)

realms. Rome was the capital of the western realm, and Constantinople (ancient

Byzantium; present-day Istanbul) became the capital of the eastern realm.

The Romans brought order to the region, and their inventive genius produced

lasting monuments. But Rome’s most significant legacy to the region was the

separation of the empire’s Byzantine and Roman spheres (the Eastern and

Western Roman Empires, respectively), which created a cultural chasm that

would divide East from West, Eastern Orthodox from Roman Catholic, and Serb

from Croat and Slovene. (Curtis, 1992, p. 5)

Division of the Roman Empire into eastern and western realms had no substantial

mitigating effect on barbarian attacks. Moreover, Goths were not the only thorn in the

side of a progressively eroding Roman authority. For the next five hundred years, a

succession of barbarians poured south into the Balkans from the eastern European

steppes, including Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Magyars and Slavs. Perhaps no group was more

deleterious to Roman influence than the Huns who, as warriors, inspired unparalleled fear

throughout Europe. They were extremely accurate mounted archers, and their command

of horsemanship, their ferocious charges and unpredictable retreats, and the speed of their

strategic movements brought them overwhelming victories. When Attila became King of

the Huns in AD 434, he commenced a reign of terror against both Rome and its eastern

realm, the Byzantine Empire. His forays often targeted Roman provinces in the Balkans,

and his assaults were sufficiently vicious to eventually earn him the name Flagellum Dei

(Scourge of the Gods).
BALKANS-3 56

One year after becoming King of the Huns, Attila began extorting tribute from the

Romans, amounting to 700 pounds of gold annually in exchange for a promise not to

attack the empire’s northern frontier. In 441 the Romans were late in making a payment

and for retaliation Attila mounted a massive assault on the Balkans’ Danubian frontier. He

overran and captured Belgrade and negotiated a truce in 442. A year later, faced again

with recalcitrant Roman paymasters, Attila resumed his attack, sweeping south through

the heart of the Balkans. He destroyed Sofia and after defeating the main Roman forces

in a succession of savage battles, arrived at Constantinople, capital of the Eastern

(Byzantine) Roman Empire. The city proved to be impregnable, even for Attila the Hun,

but he nonetheless cornered the remaining Roman forces on the peninsula of Gallipoli, and

destroyed them to a man. After this crushing blow, Rome sued for peace and Attila's

terms were 6000 pounds of gold to end the war, and 2100 pounds of gold annually

thereafter for protection.

Attila attacked a second time in AD 447, again devastating the Balkan provinces as

he advanced. He forged his way south into Greece where he was finally stopped (but not

defeated) at Thermopylae. This time his treaty terms were even more severe: a wide

swath of territory south of the Danube, plus continuing annual tribute. In AD 450 the

Romans refused further payment. Attila attacked Gaul in AD 451, but the Romans

forged an impromptu alliance with the Visigoths, and their combined forces handed Attila

the only defeat of his life. Smarting from the unaccustomed humiliation of defeat, Attila

launched a direct attack on Italy, with Rome as his eventual target. He sacked Verona

and Milan but turned back before crossing the Apennines, apparently because Italy was

ravaged that year with a contagious plague. He headed east, to launch another attack

on Constantinople, but died en route.
BALKANS-3 57

Croats, Slovenes,

Bosnians, Serbs,

Montenegrins,

Macedonians , and

Bulgarians are all

Slavs.

Attila the Hun’s attacks and extortionist tactics significantly weakened Roman

defenses, and except for his early death (on his wedding night, no less), the Huns might

have eventually destroyed the Roman Empire. As it was, it was left to the Goths to

deliver the coup de grace, at least to the Western Roman Empire, thereby ending

Rome’s Mediterranean hegemony. In AD 476, the Ostrogoth chieftain Odoacer deposed

the last Roman emperor of the West, Romulus Augustulus (Gianaris, 1982; Roman

Republic and Empire, 1995) and occupied Rome. After more than a millennium of

existence, under forms of government as varied as monarchies, republics and

dictatorships, the Western Roman Empire had fallen, its glory never to be resurrected.

The eastern part of the Roman Empire—Byzantium—survived, however. By this time it

had grown richer and stronger than its western counterpart, due to wealth and stability

derived from the export of spices and other products. Despite subsequent raids by Goths,

Huns, Slavs, and Mongolians, moreover, the Byzantine Empire held its ground for another

thousand years before finally capitulating to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 (Fine, 1983;

Gianaris, 1982; Roman Republic and Empire, 1995).

The South Slav Migration

Origin of the Slavs & Their Migratory and Settlement Patterns

Of all the invasions and migrations listed above in Table 11, none had a more lasting

effect on the Balkans than that of the South Slavs. They originated near Kiev, in presentday Ukraine, and over a period of several hundred years, beginning in the 6th Century and

lasting approximately until the 10th Century, migrated east and west as well as south.

West Slavs became known as Poles and Czechs, while East Slavs subsequently became

known as Russians, Ukrainians, and White Russians. From the southward migration, the

Slavs of the Balkans emerged: Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Serbs, Macedonians,

Bulgarians, and Montenegrins.

South Slavs moved into the Balkan Peninsula in at least six

distinct waves. Slovenes settled first, along the upper Sava

River, and not long thereafter Croats chose the middle sections

of the Sava for their new home, while Bosnians adapted to the

rugged terrain of the upper Urbas and the Bosna River.

Sometime later, Serbs terminated their southerly migrations in

the mountains along the upper Ibar River, while still later

Montenegrins, Macedonians, and Bulgarians penetrated further south, with the

Montenegrins stopping in the southern Dinaric Alps, the Macedonians continuing to the

Vardar River valley, and the Bulgarians migrating into the southeast, where they

absorbed the indigenous Thracians.

The South Slavs’ movement into the Balkans differed from those of preceding groups

and they are considered to be the most significant of all the peoples who intruded into the

Balkans over the centuries. Although other peoples crossed the Balkans (Table 11), few

of them settled, as the Slavs did. While most of the Mongolian invaders were nomads,

dropping no roots in the Balkans, the Slavs kept advancing slowly to the south, steadfastly

creating agricultural settlements as they advanced.

.... they came as home seekers rather than as raiders, and were often temporarily

subjugated by various Asiatic invaders like the Avars, whose mission was
BALKANS-3 58

primarily one of plunder. In the process of their occupation the Slavs settled the

Balkan peninsula .... (Gewehr, 1967, pp. 7-8)

According to written sources of the time, Slavs first showed up north of the Danube

in the 5th century. They began crossing the Danube in force in the 6th Century. Their

migration was slow, however, and was not a mass movement. The early Slavic groups in

the Balkan Peninsula consisted primarily of groups of scattered—although related—tribes

who often were at odds with each other. Their advance was irregular, with no full-scale

military campaigns or formal sieges.

Slavic migration southward toward and across the Danube frontier of the

Byzantine Empire was not a sudden invasion of the kind which could be repelled

in battle, but a slow and inexorable infiltration, which could be retarded by a

consistent policy of frontier defenses, but which apparently could not be

arrested, any more than the movement of a glacier. (Wolff, 1974, p. 38)

The Byzantines adopted a variety of defense measures, but the Slavs just kept on

coming—often driven ahead by the Avars. The Slavs waged an occasional war,

particularly against the Greeks, but the Slav movement into and settlement in the Balkans

was largely peaceful (Mojzes, 1995; Wolff, 1974). In addition, wars between the

Byzantine and Persian Empires led to the subsequent collapse of the Byzantine’s Balkan

frontier along the Danube and Sava Rivers and opened the Balkans even further to Slavic

settlement (Fine, 1983). In the 6th and 7th centuries, combined pressures from Slavic

migrations and Persian invasions forced the Byzantine Empire to withdraw from a large

part of Macedonia, but the Slavs failed to take or destroy the important Macedonian cities

of Thessalonika, Serres, Edhess, and Veroia and Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, who ruled

from AD 610 to 641, was eventually successful in imposing the political authority of

Byzantium over the Slavic tribes (Mojzes, 1995; Singleton, 1985; Wolff, 1974). (In the 6th
BALKANS-3 59

and 7

th Centuries, “Macedonia” was based on ancient geographical definitions, and

covered approximately two-and-a-half times as much territory as the present-day Former

Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia [FYROM].)

By the 7

th century, Byzantium recognized the Slavs as permanent settlers.

Nonetheless, on several occasions the Slavs rebelled against Byzantine rulers in the

Balkans. To weaken the Slavs, Byzantine emperors forcibly transported some of them

from Macedonia to Asia Minor and replaced them with Scythians (Iranians), especially

along the lower portion of the Struma River, and with Christian Turks who settled near the

Vardar River (Gianaris, 1982; Hamp, 1995; Stoianovich, 1992b; Wolff, 1974).

But these were at best stopgap efforts, and resolutely the Slavs pressed ever

southward. Slavs occupied the entire Adriatic littoral as well as the interior of the Balkan

Peninsula and Greece itself by the 7th century —the period of their greatest southern

penetration on the Peninsula. They controlled Greece until approximately AD 800,

although the native Greek population ultimately absorbed the Slavs. In the area of

present-day Bulgaria and former Yugoslavia, however, the Slavs became the dominant

people (Wolff, 1974). In Bulgaria, Slavs in the 6th and 7th Centuries assimilated the local

Thracian tribes. Shortly thereafter, they also assimilated the Bulgars, who were originally

a Turkic tribe from central Asia. With the gradual obliteration of fragmented Slav,

Thracian, and Bulgar tribes, the three groups consolidated into a unified Slav people who

thenceforward retained the name of Bulgarians.

So inexorably did the south Slav migration advance, that with the exception of the

Albanians (descendants of the ancient Illyrians who found refuge in the Dinaric Alps),

Romanians (descendants of Romanized ancient Dacians), and Vlachs (thought to be

descendants of ancient Dacians who fled into mountain fastnesses to avoid plundering

barbarians from the north), the contemporary peoples in the Balkans north of Greece are

the descendants of the early immigrant Slavs. Only the Greeks managed either to repulse

or absorb the Slavs. Other indigenous groups not named above were absorbed into the

Slavic mainstream.

Slovenes

Among the first Slavs to arrive in the Balkans were the Slovenes. By the 6th Century,

Slovenes had settled in and just beyond the northern reaches of the Balkans. They lived

in present-day Slovenia, as well as in parts of present-day Austria in the eastern Alps, in

the northern part of Istria (a peninsula between present-day Slovenia and Croatia), in

parts of northeastern Italy, and in the extreme southwest of Hungary. Charlemagne

conquered the Slovenes in AD 778. From then, the Slovenes were under Teutonic

(ancient Germanic or Celtic) control, followed by Frankish and, later, by Austrian

domination until the end of World War I (Lavrencic, Allcock, & Barker, 1995; Minns,

1911b; Slovenia, 1995; Stoianovich, 1992e).

During the 6th century AD, ancestors of the Slovenes, now referred to by

historians as Alpine Slavs or proto-Slovenes, pushed up the Sava, Drava, and

Mura river valleys into the Eastern Alps and the Karst. There they absorbed the

existing Romano-Celtic-Illyrian cultures. (Lavrencic, Allcock, & Barker, 1995, p.

664)

Although Slovenes can be traced to the same tribes in the Ukraine from which all

other Slavic groups originated, their dominant historic influences have come from Western
BALKANS-3 60

Europe. Modern Slovenes use the Roman alphabet, belong to the Roman Catholic

Church, and in many ways feel more similar to their Alpine brethren in Italy and Austria

than to other Slavs in the Balkans.

Croats

Early in the 7th Century, a second migration of Slavs known as the “Croatians” and

the “Serbs,” arrived from northern regions beyond the Carpathians. The Croats formed

the western division of a migratory group of Slavic peoples who colonized the lands

between Bulgaria and the Adriatic. The Croats became associated with the Adriatic

coast and southward including the Dalmatian littoral, gradually coming under Italian

influence in the extreme west, and under Byzantine influence in the south and southeast.

By AD 806 the northern and northeastern districts were added to the empire of the

Franks, and hence under the influence of the Western (Roman Catholic) Church (Jayne,

1910b; Wolff, 1974).

Serbs

The Serbs, speaking substantially the same language as the Croats with slight

dialectical differences, appeared along the Adriatic Coast in approximately the 6th century

AD. As a rule, Serbs occupied regions to the east and south of the Croats, but they were

not separated by any clear geographical line, and in the region of Bosnia and Herzegovina

the two groups were inextricably mixed. The influence of the land once again left its

imprint.

Bosnian Serbs. The region known today as Bosnia had no separate name or history

until Slav settlement began. During the subsequent 300 years, Bosnia became the

generally accepted name for the valley of the Bosna River and, subsequently, for several

outlying tributary principalities. The old Illyrian population was either absorbed or

expelled, and autonomous Slavic tribal divisions replaced Latin institutions.

During the early Middle Ages, Bosnia never developed the sense of political

cohesion that was displayed by other regions in the Balkans, possibly owing in

large measure to the characteristics of its physical geography. (Seton-Watson,

PurkoviÉ, & Allcock, 1995, p. 621)
BALKANS-3 61

Macedonian, Montenegrin, and Bulgarian Slavs. Other Slavic groups pushed on

to the southward, including the group destined to become Macedonians, who today speak

a dialect intermediate between Bulgarian, which is spoken by the peoples to their east, and

Serbo-Croatian. Another Slavic group settled in the Montenegrin mountains. Some

Montenegrins consider themselves to be “Mountain” Serbs; others prefer to think of

themselves as a separate Slavic group. And as we have seen already, yet another Slavic

group moved into present-day Bulgaria, absorbed the indigenous Thracians, and later

assimilated the Turkic-speaking Bulgars. Today, this latter Slavic group is know as

Bulgarians.

Fate of the Indigenous Balkan Population

What was the fate of the indigenous population? Many were killed, while others

were carried off ... or fled .... Still others withdrew to the mountains or remote

regions, and their descendants reappeared later as Vlachs or Albanians who

begin to turn up in written sources in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The

Thracians [however] disappeared from history. (Fine, 1983, p. 37)

Considerable numbers of indigenous populations remained in the Balkans following the

massive Slavonic migration, either in isolated mountain enclaves or occasionally in the

same communities as the Slavs. The heaviest concentrations of Slavs were along the

main travel routes (Fine, 1983). Fewer Slavs penetrated into the more remote or less

fertile regions, such as much of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania. These regions initially

provided refuge areas where pockets of the original populations gathered for mutual

protection.

In these western refuge areas . . . it is likely that the ratio of indigenous people to

Slavs would have been higher. If so, this probably would have led to more
BALKANS-3 62

Ethnic distinctions

can be based on

race, religion,

language,

nationality, or

culture.

Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians,

Serbs, Montenegrins, and

Macedonians have a

common (Slavic) origin and a

common genetic stock,

which explains why they are

virtually indistinguishable

...physically.

indigenous influence on these Slavs, and the greater the number of remaining

pre-Slavic peoples, the greater would have been the intermixture of the two

groups and the greater the likelihood of their forming joint communities . . . .

(Fine, 1983, p. 38)

The Notion of Ethnicity

If there is a cultural constant in the Balkans, paradoxical as it may sound, it must

surely be the ubiquity of ethnic diversity. In few other localities are so many different

ethnic groups packed into a comparably sized geographic area.

The situation is so complex that it is perhaps well to begin with

basic definitions. First, what characteristics may be used to

define “ethnicity”? According to the American Heritage

Dictionary (1992), an ethnic group consists of people who share

“... a common and distinctive racial, national, religious, linguistic,

or cultural heritage.”

Racial Ethnicity

In the Balkans, the closest thing to a racial difference is probably the distinction

between Slavs and non-Slavs. Major non-Slavic groups consist of the Romanians,

Albanians, and Greeks, plus at least eight other distinct

ethnic groups with significant “pockets” of representation

(Ukranians, Czechs, Germans, Hungarians, Italians,

Slovaks, Turks, and Gypsies.)

As we have already seen, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians,

Serbs, Montenegrins, Macedonians, and Bulgarians are

all Slavs. Ethnically and linguistically (with the possible

exception of the Bulgarians, who absorbed a Turkicspeaking group from Asia called the Bulgars), all Slavs

they have a common origin and a common genetic stock, which explains why they are

virtually indistinguishable physically (Mojzes, 1995). Even alleged cultural differences

between different Slavic groups are frequently difficult to discern, especially for outsiders.

Differences between city folk and people from the countryside, for example, are often

considerably more marked than differences between Serb and Croat or Bosniac and

Slovene.

The Serbs, Muslims, and Croats clearly are an identical people, descendants of

the same Slav tribesmen who migrated south into the Balkans during the decline

of the Roman Empire. They speak the same language, and look

indistinguishable. All that really divides them are the different orthographic and

ritual peculiarities they inherited from their former imperial masters: the Croats

write their common language in Roman script instead of Cyrillic, and they are

Roman Catholics instead of Eastern Orthodox Christians. As for the Muslims,

they bear about as much resemblance to Islamic fundamentalists as Unitarians do

to Holy Rollers. Nonetheless, because of these acquired differences they are

killing each other. (Allman, 1993, p. 48)

While most outsiders can grasp the difference between Slav and non-Slav, this

distinction is by no means the mainstay of Balkan ethnic polarization. And in fact it is
BALKANS-3 63

important to recognize that some of the most intense ethnic animosities on the Balkan

Peninsula exist between different groups of Slavs. Some of these animosities date back

hundreds of years, such as the resentments that Christian Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes

harbor against other Slavs who voluntarily converted to Islam during the Ottoman

occupation in the 14th – 19th Centuries. Another religion-based schism, also dating back

many centuries, is the one between Orthodox Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats and

Slovenes. Religion, however, is not the only source of intra-Slavic friction, nor are all

antagonisms rooted in ancient misunderstandings. Some murderous antipathies have

developed during recent times. One of these, perhaps the most vitriolic intra-Slavic hatred

of all, is of relatively recent historic origin and has little direct relevance to religious

differences. It concerns the abject contempt in which Serbs hold Croats for having

perpetrated massacres and other atrocities against Serbian civilians during World War II.

At the behest of Italian and German fascists, Croatian Ustasha during WW II undertook

to systematically exterminate, incarcerate or deport every Serb (and Jew) in the Balkan

Peninsula. Such a vendetta is not soon forgiven; and possibly never forgotten.

Several observers of Balkan cultural conflict have commented that objective

differences are often less important than perceived differences. Individuals at odds with

one another often exaggerate any real differences that actually exist. Although most

Balkan groups are physiologically indistinguishable ....

The people are, however, rather convinced that they are each very different from

the others. They dwell far more often on what separates them than on what they

have in common. (Mojzes, 1995, p. 54)

The basic physical similarities between most Balkan ethnic groups is good to keep in

mind as we delve deeper into the inter-ethnic dynamics of this complex region. Again and

again it will be seen that a common tactic among warring factions is to deny, distort, or

obscure similarities and exaggerate differences. It may be more psychologically palatable

when enemies are fundamentally different, even in matters as seemingly irrelevant as

hand shape.

“.... Serbs are different. They aren’t real Slavs, they have Arab blood, or

something. You can tell by the shape of their hands.” She held out her own

hand, which had exceptionally long, narrow fingers. “Serbs have square fingers.

Let me see your hand. That’s not a Serb hand either. Where is your family from?

Do you have Croat background?”

“English.”

“Phu! Too bad for you.” She said it rather kindly, with genuine pity. “Look,

another way you can bell Serbs are not real Slavs is that their church isn’t really

Orthodox. It’s got some difference from the real Russian church, I can’t

remember what.” (Hall, 1994, pp. 20-21, from an interview with a Croatian woman

in Zagreb, Croatia, conducted in 1991)

And here it is important to understand that Slav is a superordinate term which refers,

basically, to any member of the most numerous ethnic and linguistic group in Europe, a

group that includes not just Slovenians, Croatians, Bosnians, Serbs, Macedonians,

Montenegrins, and Bulgarians on the Balkan Peninsula, but also anyone else in Europe or

elsewhere who speaks a Slavic language, including, Lithuanians, Latvians, Czechs,

Slovaks, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and Poles.
BALKANS-3 64

Thus was

introduced to the

Balkans a tripartite

religious

fractionalization:

Eastern Orthodox,

Roman Catholic,

and Islam.

Religious Ethnicity

Of the five characteristics (race, religion, language, nationality, and culture) upon

which ethnicity may be established, perhaps religion has been the most important in the

Balkans. Since the division of the Roman Empire into its western (based in Rome) and

Eastern (based in Constantinople) segments, the Balkans have been divided religiously into

Eastern Orthodox Christians in the east (Serbs,

Montenegrins, Macedonians, Bulgarians and

Romanians) and Roman Catholics in the west (Slovenes and

Croats). Moreover, with Ottoman subjugation came a policy

of voluntary Islamization. Conversion to Islam was not

mandatory during Ottoman occupancy, but it was

necessary in order to own land, hold office, or otherwise

aspire to become a functional member of society. Faced with

this choice, many citizens converted, especially in BosniaHerzegovina, Albania, and Kosovo. Many others, however, found the prospect of

converting from Christianity to Islam so revolting that they chose to be renegades instead

and literally headed for the hills, establishing remote enclaves in the less accessible

mountainous backcountry where they maintained traditional religious beliefs, languages,

and other customs. Thus was introduced to the Balkans a tripartite religious

fractionalization: Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Islam.

It is important to note that Muslim and Moslem are mere variations of the same term,

both denoting an adherent to the Islamic faith. Muslim seems to be a slightly more

modern variation, but some writers use Moslem and other writers use Muslim and since

we quote and cite authors from both camps, the two terms are used interchangeably in
BALKANS-3 65

this document. It is equally important to note that those professing the Islamic faith can

be Slav, non-Slav, Turk, Russian or any other ethnicity (as long as it is not an ethnicity

based on another religion). Virtually all Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, are

Muslim Slavs. They are Slavs who converted to Islam during the five hundred year

Ottoman occupation. In all other respects, including language and genetic makeup,

Bosnian Muslims are little different from the most rabidly nationalistic (and Christian)

Serbs or Croats. With “ethnic” Albanians, however, the issue is a little more complex.

While ethnic Albanians also converted to Islam during the Ottoman occupation, Albanians

as we have already seen are not Slavs, but rather trace their ancestry to one of the

Balkans’ earliest known inhabitants, the Illyrians. Thus ethnic Albanians are doubly

different than Serbs (on both religion and place of origin.) Moreover, there may be

consistent physical differences between Albanians and Slav groups, although this point is

probably debatable.

The Albanians of today are considered to be the descendants of the ancient

Illyrians, who were probably the original inhabitants of the western coastland ....

Despite a considerable admixture of Slav blood, the modern Albanian presents

certain physical characteristics which identify him with an earlier ethnic

substratum. (Gewehr, 1967, pp. 4-5)

Pinson (1993) discussed the notion that many Serbs feel that Islam is an alien entity

that moved into the Balkans. Their cry is to “let the alien Muslims go home.” Of course,

the same argument could be used against Slavs themselves, who arrived in the Balkans in

the 6th and 7th Centuries from their homeland in eastern Poland, Belarus, and the Ukraine.

Should the Slavs also be forced to return to their homeland? By extension, one could

argue that all Orthodox Christians in the Balkans should be sent back to Byzantium (now

Istanbul in Turkey). In similar fashion, one would divide Jews into Ashkenazic and

Sephardic groups and send them back to Germany and Poland, or to Spain, respectively.

Likewise, the Roma (Gypsies) would be returned to India. If such practices were

implemented, however, the Balkans would be stripped of most of its population, leaving in

place only some groups such as the Greeks and ethnic Albanians, whose ancestral

presence in the Balkans goes back several millennia.

Moreover, Bosnian Muslims are Slavs, for whom Turkey (or any other Muslim

country) would be alien in every respect except, possibly, religion. The reality is that the

Bosnian Muslims, as well as the Albanian-speaking Kosovar Muslims, are home where

they are within Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, respectively. Additionally, there are

significant Turkish minorities, almost all of whom practice Islam, in both Bulgaria and

Macedonia.

Nonetheless, religion has undeniably been a powerful fractionating force in the

Balkans. According to Toma”iÉ (1948), religious differences were responsible for

grouping the people of the former Yugoslavia into what resembled castes: The Eastern

Orthodox (Hri”Éani), the Roman Catholic (Latini), and the Moslems (Turci). Religious

influences led to the development of differences in dress, food, house type, and other

cultural patterns. Describing the period immediately following World War II, Toma”iÉ

wrote:

Although the three religious groups are often settled in the same village, they do

not intermarry and, as a rule, do not intermingle socially. They identify each

person with his social group mainly on the basis of his dress, his mode of
BALKANS-3 66

speaking [dialect], and the phrases he uses in greeting. (Toma”iÉ, 1948, pp. 97-

98)

By the time of Tito’s death in 1980, many of these cultural differences were

becoming blurred. More and more citizens of Yugoslavia, for example, were beginning to

identify themselves as “Yugoslavs” rather than as members of one of the prevailing

ethno-religious factions. After the fragmentation of Yugoslavia in the 1990’s, however, it

is unlikely that few residents, inside or outside Serbia, would still call themselves

Yugoslavs.

Few outsiders have failed to realize that religious differences have been a core issue

in the recent Balkan wars. It is less well understood among outside observers, however,

why religious differences have been so divisive. The schism between Orthodox

Christianity and Roman Catholicism, which has already been noted and which will be

elaborated in a later chapter, in many respects can be thought of as an unintended

byproduct of the progressive deterioration and eventual division of the Roman Empire.

When Rome separated into eastern and western divisions, one headquartered in Rome

and the other in Constantinople, correspondingly distinct versions of Christianity, with

progressively diverging practices and doctrine, developed alongside and as part of the two

forms of government. When the Western Roman Empire fell to the barbarians in AD

476, Roman Catholicism nonetheless survived. Both forms of Christianity thrived in the

Balkans. Over time, adoption patterns increasingly reflected the ancient Roman versus

Hellenic cultural split, with Roman Catholicism becoming the dominant religion in the west

and Orthodox Christianity preferred in the eastern Balkan territories.

The common - some might say pervasive - antipathy between Christians and

Muslims in the Balkans is also in many respects a byproduct of secular historic events.
BALKANS-3 67

The explanation for why the antipathy is often so intense will become clearer when, in the

next chapter, we consider the impact of the five hundred year Ottoman occupancy and

how the occupiers used religion as a wedge to divide the loyalties of the subjected Balkan

populations.

Linguistic Ethnicity

Language, in all its incredible multivariate complexity, has been called the hallmark

accomplishment of human culture. Long before the advent of genetic markers, language

was used to trace the origin and movements of various groups of people throughout

history. Patterns of language usage can reveal fundamental similarities between

ostensibly unrelated groups. Conversely, language also can have the power of

establishing separate origins and identities for ostensibly similar groups.

In this context, it is well to note that all Indo-European languages (including Greek,

Russian, German, English, Spanish, Italian, and a lot of others) are “descendants” of a

single ancestral language first spoken on the steppes surrounding the north shores of the

Black and Caspian Seas, north of the Caucasus Mountains, in what today is Russia,

Kazakhstan and the Ukraine. By 5000 years ago (3000 BC), at about the time ancient

Egyptians were beginning to establish their civilization along the Nile River in North

Africa, speakers of the Indo-European ancestral language were spreading throughout the

steppes of southwest Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and into eastern and northern Europe.

As these peoples dispersed, their ancestral Indo-European language split into a number of

dialects, each of which eventually developed into individual languages that ultimately led to

the Indo-European language families of today (see Table 12 below) (Cowgill, 1995; IndoEuropean Languages, 1995). By about 1000 BC, at the time we began our look at the

people who had settled on the Balkan Peninsula, languages of the Indo-European family

were spoken in most of Europe and much of southwest and south Asia.

Although the Slavs had already divided into several distinct groups (Croats, Slovenes,

Serbs, and so on) by the time they started their southward migrations in earnest in the 6th

Century, they nonetheless still shared a common language, uniform in its phonological and

grammatical structure, with important dialectal variations occurring only in the vocabulary.

This common Slavic language is known today as Proto-Slavic, or beginning Slavic (Ivanov,

1995). Slavic remained a single language until at least the 8th or 9th Century AD. By the

end of the 8th century AD, Slavic was spoken from northern Russia to southern Greece,

and from the Volga River in southern Russia to the Elbe River in Germany, throughout the

modern-day Czech Republic, and along the Adriatic littoral. With the migration and

expansion of Slavic tribes, however, the differences between regional dialects

progressively became greater, and by the 10th Century AD the ancestors of most modern

Slavic languages (i.e., Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian) had

appeared (Waxman, 1992). Nonetheless, not all present-day Balkan languages are Slavic.

As might be expected from its inherent multicultural plurality, the peninsula is home to an

almost bewildering array of languages and dialects. On the Balkan Peninsula as a whole,

languages from three of the four major language super families in Table 12 are spoken:

TABLE 12. Original Homelands of European and Southwest Asian Languages and Language

Families.
BALKANS-3 68

SUPERFAMILY AND HOMELAND FAMILY REPRESENTATIVES IN EUROPE AND

SOUTHWEST ASIA

HAMITO-SEMITIC: Languages descended from an

ancestral language spoken 8,000 to 10,000 years ago

in the area of the present-day Sahara Desert Semitic

*Akkadian, *Babylonian, *Old Canaanite,

*Moabite, *Phoenician, Hebrew, Modern

Hebrew, Aramaic, Classical Arabic, and

Modern Arabic dialects

URALIC: Languages descended from a language

spoken 7,000 to 10,000 years ago in the general area

of the northern Ural Mountains

Finno-Ugric Finnish, Estonian, Lapp, and Hungarian or

Magyar

ALTAIC: Languages spoken in a general area between

Tibet and China and extending into Siberia Turkic

Mongolic

Turkish, and Azerbaijani

Mongol

INDO-EUROPEAN: Languages descended from a

single language spoken more than 5,000 years ago in

the steppe regions north of the Black Sea, that split

into a number of dialects by about the 3rd millennium

B.C.

Hellenic

Indo-Iranian

Germanic

Balto-Slavic

Thraco-Illyrian

Romanic

Celtic

Greek and possibly *Ancient Macedonian

Romany (Gypsy), Persian (Farsi)

*Gothic, *Old Norse, Icelandic, Norwegian,

Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Flemish,

Afrikaans, German, Bavarian, Austrian,

Swiss, Yiddish, Frisian, and English

Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Czech, Slovak,

Russian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian, *Old

Church Slavonic, Croatian, Slovenian, SerboCroatian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian

*Thracian, *Illyrian, and Albanian

*Latin, *Dacian, Romanian, Dalmatian,

Sardinian, Sicilian, Italian, French, Catalan,

Spanish, and Portuguese

*Gaulish, Irish, Scotch Gaelic, Manx,

Welsh, *Cornish, and Breton

*Languages no longer spoken

v The Indo-European Language Super Family is represented by languages from five

of its Language Groups:

♦ The Romanic Language Group is represented by Romanian, Vlach, and IstroRomanian, or Dalmatian.

♦ The Balto-Slavic Language Group is represented by Ukrainian, Slovenian,

Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, and Pomak.

♦ The Thraco-lllyrian Language Group which is represented by Albanian.

♦ The Hellenic Language Group is represented by Demotiki and Katharevousa

Greek, and ...

♦ The Indo-Iranian or Indo-Aryan Language Group is represented by

Romany/Gypsy.

v The Uralic Language Family is represented by:

♦ Hungarian, which is related to such languages as Finnish and Estonian.
BALKANS-3 69

v The Altaic Language Family is represented by:

♦ Turkish.

Moreover, there are substantial minorities on the Balkan Peninsula who speak

German, Austrian, Czech, Slovak, Russian, Byelorussian, and Italian. One other language

listed in Table 12 deserves mention, and that is Old Church Slavonic in the Balto-Slavic

family of Indo-European languages. During the middle of the 9th century, two Greek

brothers, Cyril and Methodius, invented an alphabet based somewhat on the Greek

alphabet and began translating various religious texts into Slavic. The literary language

they developed - Old Church Slavonic - was a blend of the South Slavic MacedonianBulgarian dialect and the West Slavic Bohemia-Moravian dialect of Czechoslovakia. Old

Church Slavonic was the literary language of all Slavs for two centuries, and in many

areas, continued as the literary language until the 18th and 19th centuries. (Waxman,

1992).

Serbo-Croatian

If there is a generic language of the South Slavs, it would be Serbo-Croatian. Today,

however, this language is called Bosnian, Croatian, or Serbian depending on the political

and ethnic affiliations of the speaker. Bosnian is spoken by Bosnian Muslims (aka

Bosniacs or Muslim Slavs). Croatian is spoken by Croats. And Serbian is spoken by

Serbs. Both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets can be used with Serbo-Croatian, but Croatian is

usually written in the Latin alphabet and Serbian in the Cyrillic. Distinctions exist among

Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian languages in grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation.

Croatian shows German, Hungarian and Italian influences, whereas Serbian speech

shows Turkish and Russian influences. There are three major dialects of Serbo-Croatian:

Stokavian, Cakavian, and Kaukavian, plus several regional dialects (Ikavica, Jekavica,

Cakavica), and mixtures of Croatian and Italian on the Adriatic Coast (Talijanstina or

Croatian-Italian creole). In Serbia proper, the Stokavian subdialect Ikavian, also related to

Slovene, Macedonian and Bulgarian, is prevalent.

Slovenian

Although the Slovene language is traditionally considered to be South Slavic, strong

ties with the West Slavic Czech and Slovak languages have contributed to distinctions

between Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian (Lavrencic, Allcock, & Barker, 1995; Minns,

1911b; Slovenia, 1995; Stoianovich, 1992e). Like Croatian, Slovenian is also rich in loan

words from German, Italian and Hungarian. It is one of the most archaic of the Slavic

languages. Altogether, 47 Slovenian dialects have been documented, many of which are

distinct enough to be unintelligible to Slovene speakers of different areas.

Montenegrin

The Serbo-Croatian spoken in Montenegro, a Stokavian subdialect called Ijekavian, is

closer to Croatian than to Serbian, although the Montenegrins are sometimes known as

“Mountain” Serbs. The closest relatives of the Montenegrin subdialect are Slovenian,

Macedonian, and Bulgarian.

Macedonian

The Macedonian language, written in the Cyrillic script, is a Slavic dialect closely

related to Bulgarian and enriched with vocabulary borrowed from several other languages,
BALKANS-3 70

including Serbian. Culturally and linguistically, Macedonians are at least as closely aligned

with Bulgaria as with Serbia. Moreover, at least 20% of Macedonians are ethnic

Albanians who speak Albanian. Three of Macedonia’s largest cities, including Tetovo

and Gostivar, are predominantly Albanian, and Albanians form substantial minorities in at

least seven other cities. Other significant minorities include Vlachs, who speak a

language related to Romanian, and Turks (a legacy of the five hundred year rule by the

Ottoman Empire), who speak Turkish.

Summary of Languages in the former Yugoslavia

Table 13 conveys some of the multi-linguistic and ethno-religious complexity of the former

Yugoslavia.

TABLE 13. Ethnic, Linguistic, and Religious Diversity of the Former Yugoslavia.

Country Ethnic Group(s) Language(s) Religion(s)

BosniaHerzegovinaMuslim Slavs (43%)

Serbs (31%)

Croats (17%)

Bosnian

Serbo-Croatian

Croatian

Islam

Eastern Orthodox

Roman Catholic

Croatia Croats (78%)

Serbs (12%)

Croatian

Serbo-Croatian

Roman Catholic

Eastern Orthodox

Macedonia Macedonians (68%)

Albanians (20%)

Turks (5%)

Gypsies (3%)

Macedonian/Bulgarian

Albanian

Turkish

Romany

Eastern Orthodox

Islam

Islam

Varied
BALKANS-3 71

Montenegro Montenegrins (62%)

Muslim Slavs (15%)

Albanians (7%)

Serbs (9%)

Serbo-Croatian

Serbo-Croatian

Albanian

Serbo-Croatian

Eastern Orthodox

Islam

Islam

Eastern Orthodox

Serbia Serbs (63%)

Albanians (17%)

Montenegrins (5%)

Hungarians (3%)

Serbo-Croatian

Albanian (Kosovo)

Serbo-Croatian

Hungarian (Vojvodina)

Eastern Orthodox

Islam

Eastern Orthodox

Roman Catholic

Slovenia Slovenes (88%)

Croats (3%)

Serbs (2%)

Slovenian

Croatian

Serbo-Croatian

Roman Catholic

Roman Catholic

Eastern Orthodox

Serbo-Croatian (with its three dialects Stokavian, Cakavian, and Kaukavian, plus

several regional dialects (Ikavica, Jekavica, Cakavica), and mixtures of Croatian and

Italian on the Adriatic Coast (Talijanstina or Croatian-Italian creole), and Serbo-Croatian’s

three modern variations, Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, plus Slovenian, Montenegrin and

Macedonian are just the languages spoken in the former Yugoslavia. This does not

include languages spoken in other (non-Yugoslav) Balkan nations, nor the many languages

spoken by minority groups such as the Hungarians and Germans.

In addition to the spoken differences in language in Yugoslavia, two different

written scripts and alphabets are used:

Cyrillic, used by Serbs, Montenegrins, and Macedonians (this is the writing system

used in the former Soviet Union); and ...

Latin, used by Croats and Slovenes (as well as by the rest of Europe and the

Americas).

Cyrillic and Latin scripts normally are not used in the same place. The usage depends

for the most part on location and dominant ethnic group. For example, the NATO

operation referred to as IFOR looks like this in Cyrillic: 3KOC.

Languages in non-Yugoslav Balkan States

Ethnic composition in the four Balkan states that were not part of the former

Yugoslavia (Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and Romania) is equally diverse. Each country

has its own language and dominant ethnic group. Greece is the most homogenous

ethnically (99% Greek), with a language that has remained largely unchanged for three

millennia, and Romania is the least ethnically homogeneous (78% Romanian), with sizable

enclaves of Hungarians, Germans, Russians, and Ukranians. Bulgaria, though populated

predominantly by Slavic-speaking peoples, also has a significant Turkish minority, a

phenomenon observed only in Macedonia among the former Yugoslavian republics.

Albania’s population consists of 90% Albanians (with their own language, descended from

ancient Illyrian), plus a substantial Greek minority. As shown in Table 14, Eastern

Orthodox religions are the norm in three of the four non-Yugoslav Balkan nations, but

Albania is nonetheless predominantly Islamic, and so too, for that matter, is Kosovo, the

neighboring province in Serbia.

Albanian
BALKANS-3 72

Albanian is a Thraco-Illyrian language from the Indo-European super family of

languages, descended from ancient Illyrian. It is spoken in Albania, where it has two

primary dialects, Geg in the north and Tosk in the south. It is also spoken by the vast

majority of citizens in Kosovo, and by Albanian minorities in Macedonia and Montenegro.
BALKANS-3 73

TABLE 14. Ethnic, Linguistic, and Religious Diversity of Non-Yugoslavian Balkan Nations.

Country Ethnic Group(s) Language(s) Religion(s)

Albania Albanians (90%)

Greek (8%)

Albanian

Greek

Islam

Orthodox

Bulgaria Bulgarians (85%)

Turks (9%)

Bulgarian

Turkish

Orthodox

Islam

Greece Greek (99%) Greek Orthodox

Romania Romanians (78%)

Hungarians

Germans

Russians

Ukranians

Romanian

Hungarian

German

Russian

Ukrainian

Orthodox

Roman Catholic

RC or Protestant

Orthodox

Orthodox

Bulgarian

Bulgarian is a south Slavic tongue, spoken principally in Bulgaria, but also in Bulgarian

strongholds in southern Serbia.

Greek

Modern Greek language is little changed from the tongue spoken in Periclean Athens

in the 5th Century BC. Outside of Greece on the Balkan Peninsula, Greeks constitute a

substantial minority in only one other country, Albania.
BALKANS-3 74

Romanian

Romanian is a Romanic language, reflecting the lasting influence of Roman

occupation during the 2

nd and 3rd Centuries AD. The Romanic origin of today’s

Romanian is evident in both its grammar and syntax, but its vocabulary reflects influences

from Turkish, Albanian, Hungarian, and German.

Language, both written and spoken, plays a significant role in the way people identify

themselves. It structures their beliefs about themselves and forms links with others who,

because they share a common tongue, are considered “brothers” or at least compatriots.

In the Balkans, there are many “identities,” represented by at least eight separate, distinct,

and major languages (Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Greek,

Albanian, Bulgarian and Romanian), plus literally scores of dialects, subdialects, and

regional speech variations. Add to this diversity two fundamentally incompatible alphabets

(Cyrillic and Latin), numerous minority tongues, plus three major religions, and the reader

can begin to appreciate the multi-ethnic diversity of the Balkan Peninsula. And yet, all the

factors that determine ethnic fractionation are not yet in place. There are still the factors

of nationality customs to consider. Since customs are so complex that only the most

cursory coverage can be paid, let us first consider nationalities.

National Ethnicity

Confining our attention for the moment to only the area occupied by the former

Yugoslavia, we discover no fewer than ten primary ethnic identities (see Figure 9).

Albanians, constituting 90% of the population of the Serbian province of Kosovo, and

also constituting at least 20% (some estimates run as high as 30%, due to recent warrelated influxes from Kosovo) of the population of Macedonia.

Bulgarians, living primarily in southern Serbia along the Bulgarian border.

Croats, living primarily in Croatia with significant enclaves in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Hungarians, living in the Vojvodina province of Serbia.

Macedonians, living almost entirely within Macedonia.

Montenegrins, living almost entirely within Montenegro.

Moslem Slavs (aka Bosniacs), living primarily in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with enclaves in

Serbia and Montenegro.

Serbs, living primarily in Serbia or Montenegro, with significant enclaves in Croatia and

Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Slovaks, living almost entirely within Vojvodina, and

Slovenes, living almost entirely within Slovenia.
BALKANS-3 75

FIGURE 11. Ethnic Diversity in the Former Yugoslavia.

Kosovo, moreover, is currently agitating for independence from Serbia, and

Montenegro is threatening to withdraw from its alliance with Serbia. Four other nonYugoslav states already exist on the peninsula: Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania.

Altogether, the Balkan Peninsula is now home to ten autonomous states, with an eleventh

(Kosovo) in the wings. This does not include significant ethnic minorities such as the

Roma/Gypsies, Turks, or Hungarians. Within most of the currently existing Balkan

states, it is unlikely that any of these latter groups constitute a sufficient population base to

effectively militate for a national state of their own. Having said this, it should not be

forgotten that as late as the 1930’s Hungarians in Transylvania (about 31% of the

population in the Transylvanian region of Romania) were actively agitating for an

independent state.

Former Yugoslaviaa

Austria

Adriatic

Sea

L-A AlDanian HD rvV>nte"eßrn

1 ' Bulgarian i * Muslim

CD Croat Hi Serb

CD Hungarian H Slovak

IV Mace-Unian IV Slovene

1 1 Ho majority present

SUM IT M» a*« no" 1991 mam.

a )»—mm

1 i

fc i i

*i

[Albania

Greece

..
BALKANS-3 76

Of these ten ethnic identities, six have already attained national status within the

former Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and The

distribution of major ethnic groups in the six former republics of Yugoslavia is shown in

Table 15. For example, Macedonia’s population consists of 65.0% Macedonians, 21.0%

Albanians, 4.8% Turks, and a smattering of other minorities.

Multiethnic Cultural Plurality in Spades

To this point, we have examined race, religion, language and nationality as ethnic

determinants on the Balkan Peninsula. A complex picture has emerged, with many

possible combinations of ingredients.

Race

In the Balkans, it is safe to say that no pure ethnic or racial groups exist. There are

Slavs and non-Slavs, along with many subdivisions of these two basic groups. Yet there

has been extensive intermixing of Slavs with Greeks, Albanians and Romanians. Slavs

overran Greece in the 7th – 9th Centuries, for example, but eventually were absorbed into

the indigenous population. Bulgars intermixed extensively with Magyars, Slavs and Turks

before emerging as the ostensibly Slavic present-day Bulgarians. Romanians represent an

admixture of Dacian, Roman, Hun, Goth, Celt, Vlach, Mongol, Hungarian, German and

Slavic genes. Albanians may be the most genetically distinct group on the peninsula, and

although some writers attribute minor distinct physical characteristics to them, most would

agree that they do not constitute a distinct race in the sense of possessing physical

characteristics that readily set them apart. Ethnic antagonisms are not necessarily based

on the Slav versus non-Slav schism, either. One of the most intense antagonisms in the

Balkans, that between Croats and Serbs, exists between two Slavic sub-groups.

|m""""niiffm|i
BALKANS-3 77

Moreover, perceived differences are often more important than objective differences, and

even in circumstances where few if any physical differences exist, members of

antagonistic groups may insist that they do. Accordingly, Croats, Slovenes, Serbs,

Bosniacs, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Albanians, Greeks and Romanians all

consider themselves separate and distinct peoples.

TABLE 15. Minority and Majority Representation in Former Yugoslavia, from 1991 Census

Data. (Based on data from Bugajski, 1994)

Serbia Croatia BosniaHerzegovinaMacedonia Slovenia Montenegro

FORMER

YUGOSLAVI

A

% % % % % %

Croats 1.1 78.1 17.3 0.0 2.8 1.0

Macedonians 0.5 0.1 0.0 65.0 0.2 0.1

Montenegrins 5.0 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.2 61.5

Muslims 3.2 0.9 43.6 0.0 1.4 14.5

Serbs 62.6 12.2 31.4 2.2 2.4 9.2

Slovenes 0.8 0.5 0.0 0.0 87.8 0.1

Yugoslavs 0.0 2.2 5.5 0.0 0.6 4.2

OTHER

Albanians 16.7 0.3 0.0 21.0 0.2 6.6

Bulgarians 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

Czechs 0.0 0.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

Germans 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

Hungarians 3.3 0.5 0.0 0.0 0.4 0.0

Italians 0.0 0.4 0.0 0.0 0.2 0.0

Roma

(Gypsies)

1.3 0.1 0.0 2.7 0.1 0.0

Romanians 0.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0

Ruthenians 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0

Slovaks 0.6 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0

Turks 0.1 0.0 0.0 4.8 0.1 0.0

Ukranians 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0

Vlachs 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.4 0.1 0.0

Smaller

Minorities

0.0 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0

Regional

Affiliation

0.0 1.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0

No Affiliation 0.0 1.5 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0

Unspecified 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.5 0.0

Unknown 0.0 1.3 0.0 0.0 2.7 0.0

Others 4.5 0.0 2.2 4.3 0.2 2.2

Total 37.3 21.9 100.0 35.4 12.2 38.0
BALKANS-3 78

Serbia Croatia BosniaHerzegovinaMacedonia Slovenia Montenegro

Minorities

TOTAL 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Religion

Due mainly to the division of the Roman Empire into eastern and western realms in

395 AD, two forms of Christianity developed in the Balkans, one reflecting Byzantine

customs and traditions (in the east) and the other reflecting customs and traditions of the

Roman Catholic Church in Rome. Moreover, mid way through the second millennium, the

Balkans would reel under an even more powerful religious cleavage, that produced by the

introduction of Islam by the invading Ottoman Turks in the 14th and 15 Centuries. Not

only would the Ottoman Empire subjugate virtually the entire peninsula, they would also

induce a substantial proportion of the Balkan population to convert to Islam. Those who

resisted Islam and its associated Ottoman enticements, Orthodox Christians and Roman

Catholics alike, would forever more despise the Islam converts and consider them traitors.

Language

Counting nationalist minorities such as the Hungarians, more than a dozen major

tongues are spoken today in Balkan countries. Bear in mind this is in a geographic region

no larger than the state of Texas. Moreover, Balkan language fragmentation has been

compounded by development of different alphabets, Latin in the west and Cyrillic in the

east.
BALKANS-3 79

Balkan Nationality in the First Millennium

Balkan peoples may lack in some respects, such as in material standards of living (see

Figure 5), but with so many different ethnic identities, they seem rarely to have been

deficient in separatist nationalistic aspirations. Currently, ten autonomous states co-exist

on the peninsula, and an eleventh (Kosovo) may well appear in the near future. With the

emergence of so many nations recently, it is tempting to conclude that nationalism and the

creation of nation-states is a modern phenomenon. In many respects, it is a modern

tendency, encouraged especially by the Great Powers following World War I and the final

ejection of Turkish control. As we will see in the next chapter, however, national

consciousness is not entirely modern. Several efforts at building Balkan nation-states can

be traced back to the first millennium.

Kingdom of the Slovenes. Slovenes established their own kingdom as early as the

7

th Century under Samo, who reigned from 623 – 658. By 748, however, the Slovene

kingdom had come under Frankish control. After the brief period of Frankish domination,

Slovenia came under German and then Austrian control, and was little influenced at any

time in its history by the Byzantine Empire, which either dominated or greatly influenced

the rest of the Balkan Peninsula from its inception in AD 395 to its demise at the hands of

the Ottoman Turks in AD 1453. Significantly, Slovenia was never ruled by the Ottoman

Turks, either, although the Turks frequently raided Slovenia.

Kingdom of the Croats. The Croats were more affected by the Byzantine Empire

than were the Slovenes, suffering temporary subjugation in AD 877. After numerous

insurrections, however, Croats regained their independence in AD 910. They founded a

national kingdom that was ruled by a series of independent national rulers over a period of

nearly two centuries. Although this original Croat Balkan kingdom ended almost a

thousand years ago, it is still viewed by many Croats as the golden age of their country.

Kingdom of Bulgaria. The region between the Danube and Balkan Mountains was

first recognized as an autonomous Bulgarian state by the Byzantine Empire in 681,

following a defeat of the Byzantine army by Bulgar forces soon after their immigration

from the area north of the Black Sea. It was during the 9th and 10th Centuries, however,

that Bulgarian kingdoms, under the rules of Symeon (893-927), Peter (927-969) and

Samuel (997-1014) thrived. This period was connected with the literary activity of many

Bulgarian scholars who, using Old Church Slavonic language, not only translated Greek

texts into Slavic but also produced a small number of original works.

The First Pan-Slavic Nation State. The first Slavic national state was founded in

the 9th century in Great Moravia (central Czechoslovakia) in an attempt by the West Slavs

to counteract the influence of the Western Christian Church that was associated with the

German Empire. In 863, Prince Rostislav of Great Moravia invited St. Cyril and his

brother, St. Methodius, to create a national church with a language and writing system of

its own. As a result, through the introduction of the Old Church Slavonic language into

the liturgy in Great Moravia, different groups speaking West Slavic dialects were

temporarily united (Ivanov, 1995).

Each group represents distinguishable national and linguistic characteristics;

and some groups are related to each other and some not. Nor are the groups

easily defined. Are Montenegrins a separate nationality or are they simply Serbs

who live in the land of the Black Mountains (the native name for the country is
BALKANS-3 80

Crna Gora, meaning Black Mountain)? Are Macedonians a distinct Slavic group

or are they rather southern Serbs, or western Bulgarians, or northern Greeks—or

are they a mixture of ethnicities defined by the territory which they inhabit? Are

Dalmatians and Slovenians ethnically identical to Croatians, or were some of

them in the past a different nationality until defined by a common religion and a

common ruler? Why are 30 percent of the population in Serbia non-Serbs, while

a third of all Serbs live outside Serbia? History alone does not yield clear

answers to these questions. The predecessors of these modern “nationalities”

were not organized along ethnic lines, but were instead under the feudal claims of

powerful overlords or religious affiliations that united diverse clans and tribes,

and for whom ethnicity and language were of small concern. (Mojzes, 1995, pp.

15-16)

Ethnic Customs and Ways of Thinking

It would take a large book indeed to document the cultural practices of all the

fractionated Balkan ethnic groups. Some writers, however, have taken a different tact

and conjectured about “mindsets,” “world views,” or “Zeitgeists” that supposedly

characterize Balkan people as a whole and help explain the presumed underlying

disposition for inter-ethnic conflict and violence. With the high degree of ethnic

fractionalization that has developed on the Balkan Peninsula, one must examine such

hypothetical constructs with a healthy dose of skepticism, for it is arguable that any socalled “mindset,” or behavioral disposition, can accurately characterize such a disparate

collection of peoples. Nonetheless, samples of such anthropo-sociological theorizing are

herewith presented for the reader’s evaluation.

Mojzes’ Myths
BALKANS-3 81

Mojzes (1995) listed several themes that purportedly illustrate the thought processes

of Balkan peoples:

1. The myth of land and blood.

2. The crucifixion and resurrection syndrome.

3. A mythological, rather than chronological, understanding of time, and ...

4. The glorification of war and violence as the best way to keep or reclaim one’s

freedom.

The Myth of Land and Blood

The first myth portrays the land as the sacred home of ethnic groups. A “pureblooded” member of an ethnic group is seen as more patriotic and better than one who

has “mixed blood” in his or her ancestry. The assumption, whether real or imagined, is

one of ethnic continuity with an ancient, powerful state. Foreign rulers are seen as evil,

impeding the cultural progress of people of one’s own blood. Foreigners are considered to

be responsible for all present-day evil and suffering. The perception is that each local

ethnic group has had to defend itself against repeated, if not continuous, attempts to rob it

of its ethnic and religious identity (Mojzes, 1995).

As with all myths and/or stereotypes, there is at least a grain of truth in this one. No

one can deny that the Balkans have been assailed by a seemingly never-ending

succession of invaders, spoilers, and exploiters.

The Crucifixion and Resurrection Syndrome

[The Serbs] . . . like to see themselves as great martyrs, as well as great heroes.

In their ballads and in their school textbooks they present themselves as people

who have been unjustly persecuted by their enemies, and who have suffered to

save the world, but without being rewarded for it. In that respect they tend to

identify themselves with Christ, and talk in terms of ‘crucifixion’ and

‘resurrection’. This ability to glory in martyrdom, for instance, enabled the

Dinaric Serbs in the past to convert great national tragedies into a psychological

force that has worked in the direction of a national renaissance. (Toma”iÉ 1948,

p. 30).

The theme of the second myth focuses upon turning defeats into victories. The belief

is that if one is steadfast in spite of suffering, victory will result. It is through the so-called

“crucifixion and resurrection syndrome,” that the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 was converted

from a devastating rout at the hands of the Turks into the “high point” of Serbian history.

The Mythological Rendering of Time

In the Balkans, no matter how distant the past may appear to outsiders, it is

inextricably entwined with the present and extends into the future. Thinking processes

mix past and present so thoroughly that grievances from a time long past often are

perceived as present afflictions (Minogue, 1969; Mojzes, 1995). This occurs to such an

extent that the sense of real time can be destroyed, and people may come to believe that

present actions may not only vindicate—but also can actually eradicate and reverse—a

past defeat. Mojzes likens this to a pattern of thinking that one can “ ... repeatedly take a

make-up test for past failures” (1995, p. 40). Just as some people may weep
BALKANS-3 82

uncontrollably for a legendary person who lived thousands of years ago and is unrelated to

the mourner, many people in the Balkans allegedly have the same “inability to tell time.”

These thought patterns lead to a persistent need to relive traumas or add new ones,

resulting eventually in an inability to experience relief from past traumas and crimes.

There is a continual demand for payment in blood for what has been done since “time

immemorial.” In recent violent outburst, such as in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and

Kosovo, some observers have argued that many participants were caught up in a frenzy

to avenge both real and imaginary wounds of the past (Minogue, 1969; Mojzes, 1995).

The Glorification of War and Violence and the Aftermath of Learned Helplessness

It has been conjectured (Mojzes, 1995) that because Balkan economies have

developed as perpetual war economies, people stand ready to sacrifice all they have to

win a new round of fighting. In the Balkans, no tradition of nonviolent resistance or

pacifism has developed. To the contrary, the great heroes are those who have inflicted

the greatest damage to the enemy. The history of the region has been one of great

political, economic, and social discontinuity, producing a pervasive sense of insecurity in

the population and breeding resentment and chaos. The lack of economic stability has

made it seem futile to save money or to work hard to obtain it. Much has depended on

luck and fate, undermining efforts to nurture self-reliance. Most people feel they are the

puppets of fate (Mojzes, 1995).

Propensity for Violence

According to Tomasic (1948), a pattern whereby force is revered and violence is

glorified has characterized a significant segment of Yugoslavian society through the
BALKANS-3 83

centuries. Due to a lack of safety and an emphasis on physical strength that often has led

to violence, men frequently go heavily armed, never laying aside their weapons—a fact

that tends to increase rather than prevent violent clashes. This tradition “... combined

with the lack of emotional balance often led to bloodthirstiness, brutality and other

excesses ....” (p. 35).

Propensity for Deceit

Both Toma”iÉ (1948) and CvijiÉ (1930) cite a pervasive belief system, traceable to

early pastoral warrior times, which holds that the entire universe is deceitful, thus

justifying reliance upon unethical means to gain personally profitable ends. As part of this

“world view,” cunning is regarded as the highest order of astuteness.

Successful duping of others is regarded as a sign of high intelligence and

adroitness; in some regions, this type of behavior is very common and is known

as podvala (undermining) . . . . . when a man seizes the property of others . . . the

people do not say that he has stolen, but that he “likes it for himself” (Voli sebi).

This attitude justifies the seizure of public or private property by anyone who is

shrewd enough and bold enough to take it .... They seem ready to swear falsely

at any time, and to think nothing of it. In Montenegro, in the past, there was no

provision in the state laws for the punishment of perjurers, and the people

explain this omission by saying that it is for God to decide whether he wants to

punish them or not.... The general belief is that everybody is false as long as he

can get away with it. (Toma”iÉ, 1948, pp. 39-40, citing B. Bogi”iÉ, 1874, Gradja

u Odgovorima lz Slavenskog Juga, p. 592, Zagreb; & V. ArdaliÉ, 1899, Bukovica,

Zbornik za Narodni ðivot I ObiÖaje, Vol. 15, p. 256, Zagreb.

Toma”iÉ (1948) discussed the impact that these “habits of double dealing” have had

upon political and international relations, noting that such practices were employed both by

Chetniks and by Partisans with their enemies in World War II. He emphasized that the

history of Balkan society has been marked by numerous instances of “back-stabbing” and

“... the breaking of pledges in international deals” (p. 40).

In general, Toma”iÉ (1948) stressed that treachery is permitted as long as it is

successful, especially against one’s enemies. Treachery and violence in the context of

the Balkan citizen are aspects of the same mental process; self-aggrandizement is

identified with power, and power is identified with violence. If violence is not expedient at

the moment, “... the socially recognized way to fight superior strength is to outwit ... by

resorting to craftiness and deceit” (p. 41).

The Oral Tradition

Since time immemorial, oral traditions like storytelling have transmitted the history and

lore of the Balkan people. Even today, oral traditions transmit important historical—and

even mythical—knowledge. The importance of oral tradition in molding the Balkan

peoples’ view of themselves and their place in the world is difficult to over-emphasize.

As strange as this will sound to western ears, most people of the Balkan Peninsula have

learned of their past not through the formal study of history, but through heroic epic songs

and poetry that glorify the local ethnic hero and vilify the stranger and traitor. In these

epic songs, consistent with Tomasic’s hypothesized Crucifixion and Resurrection

Syndrome, defeats are transformed into victories.
BALKANS-3 84

For Westerners trying to thread their way through the complicated claims and

counterclaims of various groups in Eastern Europe, one major obstacle is a lack

of information. In some cases, the apprehension felt by one group about its

survival or about the threat posed by another group may be based on an event

or condition that appears to a modern Western observer so historically remote as

not to be worthy of consideration. However, to the extent that the event or

condition has been kept quite alive in the consciousness of a group—in its oral

traditions and textbooks—it is a current psychological reality and cannot easily

be dismissed as merely an arcane academic concern. (Pinson, 1993, pp, xi-xii)

Exaggerated Expectations and the Oral Tradition

In the Balkans, expectations of greatness, though ubiquitous, have seldom

materialized. This has caused much grief and disappointment, but objectively measurable

shortcomings are often obscured by an oral tradition of myths, exaggerations, and outright

distortions. This obscurationist tendency has been aided and abetted by the fact that

much of Balkan history is still on the level of mythical storytelling. Every generation

reinvents its collective memory, and history is perceived as primarily supplying the

required justification for the current national and political interests. Thus, although most

people of the Balkans have been perennially downtrodden, their dreams of greatness

persist. And in their collective memories, periods of greatness are inflated in importance

and duration. Their ambitions are to experience a “Greater Serbia,” “Greater Croatia,”

or “Greater Albania,” for example. Because the Balkan Peninsula is limited in size,

however, territorial ambitions are mutually incompatible and most often unattainable.

Brief periods of cooperation and unity have nearly always been succeeded by longer

periods of strife and conflict. “Times of troubles” have been frequent (Mojzes, 1995).

The Balkan people’s struggle for sheer survival is perennial and the belief that

life is a constant trouble gives them a dismal sense of despair. Since one never

knows how long one will live or how much one will have, the tendency is for

immediate gratification of desires. Hence, amid pain there will be outbreaks of joy

or ostentatious consumption; the next hour, it may all have been in vain.

(Mojzes, 1995, p. 44)

Serbs, in particular, have been attributed a collective character trait similar to the

exaggerated pride or self-confidence exhibited in Greek tragedies:

... a disdainful and ostentatious mockery of fate by exceeding one’s abilities.... an

inability to back down from a disaster .... Most peoples of the Balkans oscillate

between extremes, with little propensity for moderation. It is either freedom or

slavery, either mutiny or loyalty, either war or capitulation, either love or hate,

either hospitality or rejection, either self-denigration or narcissism . ... National

leaders ... have a tendency to resort not to diplomacy, negotiation, or

compromise but, rather, to gamble for all or nothing. (Mojzes, 1995, p. 43)

Immaturity

Even though the peoples of this region recognize obstinacy, spite, and defiance

as both virtues and vices, they generally excuse themselves by saying that they

are Balkan traits and that people around the world will simply have to make an

attempt to understand this mentality if they want to deal with them.... It is always

that the rest of the world must understand and adjust to the Yugoslav and/or

Balkan idiosyncrasies. This is recognized as a trait of teenage mentality.

Perhaps, therefore, it would be accurate to say that collectively many peoples of
BALKANS-3 85

the Balkans, despite their age-old history, behave in an immature way, as if their

growth were stunted by deprivation and oppression.... The peoples of the

Balkans have been in colonial dependency for so long a time that now, when

they are in a position to control their own destiny, they act belatedly like juvenile

delinquents. (Mojzes, 1995, p. 52)

For further anthropological theorizing, the interested reader is referred to Appendix A,

Balkan Social Character and Cultural Personality; Appendix B, Human Adaptation and

the Law of the Land: Roots of the Balkan Cultural Personality; and Appendix C,

Anthropology: A Way of Looking.

Chapter Conclusions

The myriad possible combinations of Balkan races, religions, languages, nationalities,

and cultures is practically staggering. Even if we confine our attention only to the

complex ethnic mosaic that existed in the former Yugoslavia, we cannot help but ask:

“How was it ever put together in the first place?” And this simple question is followed by

the grammatically and logically more complex question: “How was it kept together, and

why did it come apart?” which leads to the admittedly loaded and infinitely more

demanding question: “Will each of the parts of the former Yugoslavia be able to stand

alone, or will the future witness some reincarnation of what was once Yugoslavia?”

Undoubtedly, by this time other questions have occurred to the reader. Hopefully, we will

answer some of these questions as we continue.

The people who live in the space formerly constituting Yugoslavia, and the

conditions under which they live, are exceedingly diverse. In the six republics of

former Yugoslavia there were six nations, several national minorities . . . people

spoke three or four languages depending on whether one considers the language

spoken by Croats and Serbs one language or two, (which is most often a political

question); there were three religions, and two civilizations which collided or

flowed into one another. Furthermore, between the Yugoslav North and South

there is a gap in development of global proportions. The river Drina has been,

and is, the link—or border—between the Eastern and Western Empires, and,

today, between Western and Eastern Europe. Therefore, the Croat and Serb

peoples, who are perhaps the most kindred in spirit and who speak literally

identical languages, belong in fact not only to two different religions but also, in

some measure, to different civilizations. Composed of such heterogeneous

elements, Yugoslavia was, indeed, a very complicated construct. The question

is, could something so complex function at all? (Lovric, 1993, p. 278)

What’s more, Lovric’s comments (immediately above) were directed specifically to

Yugoslavia – or rather to the Slavic-dominated six autonomous states that constituted the

former Yugoslavia. Yet the reader will be well advised to keep in mind that these six

former republics are but a part of the Balkans. As persistent and culturally absorbing as

the Slav migration proved to be, it never completely enveloped the Balkans. In fact, due

to heavily populated Romania with its population of 23,000,000, Slavs are not even a

majority when the Balkans are considered as a whole.

Distinct from the Slavs are ten million Greeks, with their own language and customs,

and four million or more Albanians (including ethnic Kosovar and Macedonian Albanians),

who trace their ancestry back to one of the earliest known inhabitants of the Balkans, the

Illyrians. The Thraco-Illyrian Albanian language is non-Slavic and the Albanian religion is
BALKANS-3 86

predominantly Muslim, in contrast to the Orthodox Christianity which Serbs practice and

the Roman Catholicism to which Croats and Slovenes gravitate. Bulgarians add even

more complexity to the already complicated patchwork of Balkan ethnicities. Although

Bulgarians today are considered Slavs, the Bulgars were originally a Turkic-speaking

Asiatic group that migrated across the Danube in the Seventh Century. Later, however,

they were assimilated by the south Slavs and both the Bulgarian people and their language

are now considered Slavic. And finally, Romanians are Romanized descendants of the

ancient Dacians, and their Romanic language, though still in the Indo-European super

family, is definitely non-Slavic. Roman legions conquered the Dacians and briefly

colonized Romania in the 2nd and 3rd Centuries AD, but fell back to the Danube under a

constant onslaught of barbarians from the north, leaving the Romanian region to be

overrun successively by Goths, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Magyars, Mongols, Ottoman Turks,

Russians, and even, to some extent, Slavs. Although the Romanian pedigree is complex,

possibly the most eclectic on the peninsula, present-day Romanians are not considered

Slavs5.

 

5

Some scholars believe that some of the original Dacians retreated to fastnesses in the Carpathian Mountains

in order to escape the barbarian onslaughts, where they engaged in herding and subsistence farming for several

centuries before migrating across the Danube and into Bulgaria, where they emerged many years later as the

Vlachs. Today, Vlachs are also found in Serbia and Macedonia.
BALKANS-3 87
BALKANS-5 88

CHAPTER 4

MIDDLE HISTORY

In AD 395, on the death of Emperor Theodosius I, the Roman Empire was divided

into eastern and western halves. The Western Roman Empire, with its capital in Rome,

provided the political, administrative, legal, and military model for both realms, but there

the commonalities abruptly stopped. In Constantinople, capital of the eastern realm, a

very different kind of Roman Empire developed.

The Byzantine Empire (AD 395 – AD 1453)

The eastern realm came to be known as the Byzantine Empire, taking its name from

Byzantium, its capital. The history and location of the city of Byzantium says much about

the empire that developed in the Balkans following the division of the Roman Empire.

Byzantium, which began as a Greek trading village in the 7th Century BC, is strategically

located on the Bosporus, a narrow strait between Asia Minor and the Balkan Peninsula.

The Bosporus separates not only Asia Minor from Europe, but also the Black Sea from

the Aegean Sea, and thus forms a natural four-way pivot between Asia to the east and

Europe to the west, as well as between interior Europe to the north and the

Mediterranean world to the south. The city had been wrested from Greek control by the

Romans in AD 196, and in AD 330 the Roman Emperor Constantine I rebuilt it and

renamed it Constantinople. With the formal division of the Roman Empire in AD 395, it

became capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, more commonly known as the Byzantine

Empire.

Because of its location and history, Byzantium reflected more Middle Eastern cultural

influences than did Rome. Whereas Rome can be thought of as facing west, with strong

ties to northern and western Europe, Byzantium was immersed in eastern European and

Middle Eastern traditions. Whereas the language and culture of Rome was Latin,

Byzantium was thoroughly Greek in both language and culture. Byzantium’s backyard

was Asia Minor, and its heart and soul was the Balkan Peninsula. Consequently, one

result of a divided Roman Empire was that the Balkans became a contested region

between Byzantine and Western Roman influences. Once again geography played a role.

Because of their geographic proximity to Italy, Slovenes and Croats - and to a lesser

extent other peoples along the Adriatic littoral - fell under the influence of Italian and other

western European cultures, while Serbs and the rest of the Balkans were dominated by

Byzantine influences.

Less than a hundred years after the division of the empire, the Western Roman

Empire capitulated to the Goths (AD 476). The Byzantine Empire, on the other hand, was

destined to endure for another millennium (Fine, 1983). Moreover, the geographical

position of the Balkan Peninsula, with its mountainous areas and the protection given by

the Danube to the north, was instrumental to the survival of the Byzantine Empire. Over

the next millennium, Constantinople was to become a major commercial and industrial

center. Jewelry, pottery, weaponry, shipping, and textiles (mainly silk goods) were its
BALKANS-5 89

main industries (Byzantine Empire, 1995; Gianaris, 1982; Teall & Nicol, 1995). For more

details on this period of Balkan history, see Appendix G, Indigenous Peoples, Invaders,

and Immigrants in the Balkans During the “Dark Ages.”

Two Forms of Christianity

Although the year AD 476 is often cited as the end of the Western Roman Empire

and commencement of the Dark Ages in Europe, Rome nonetheless continued to be a

powerful cultural influence, with much of its power mediated through the Roman Catholic

Church. The Byzantine Empire, on the other hand, never accepted Catholicism.

Reflecting its Greek origins and receptivity to eastern influences, it developed its own

version of Christianity, known as Eastern Orthodox.

Thus, Latin and Greek civilizations in the Balkans developed more or less

independently for several centuries, and ultimately led to different forms of the Christian

church. By the 6th and 7th centuries, moreover, invasions from the north as well as by sea

impaired east-west communication, enhancing the differences between the western and

eastern parts of the old Roman Empire, and fomenting separate political ambitions (Fine

1983).

The line dividing the two parts of the empire was basically the same as the old

Greek-Latin cultural line and the later Orthodox-Roman Catholic line. This

boundary ran through the Balkans from Sirmium on south to Skadar. Thus the

Balkans became the border region between Old Rome and New Rome

(Byzantium) and between Latin and Greek. The Balkans also served as a

borderland between civilization (the empire) and the barbarian world beyond the

Danube . . . . When the Roman Empire was centered in Italy, the Balkans had

been a distant borderland. The establishment of the capital in Constantinople

brought the Balkans much nearer the center of things. More Roman influences

penetrated the peninsula, which, owing to its proximity to the capital, became

more important for the empire to defend and hold. Now there was more Roman

activity here; more officials and troops were present than had been the case

when the imperial center lay in Italy. (Fine, 1983, pp. 15, 18)

Religion of the Byzantine Empire

Over time, the Byzantine Empire grew less and less concerned with the West, and

was transformed into a medieval empire that differed considerably from its Roman

predecessor. Perhaps the most significant cultural feature of the Byzantine Empire was

the type of Christianity that developed. It was more mystical and adhered more to a

prescribed body of rites for public worship than Roman Christianity. Because of age-old

ethnic hostilities in the region, it was also less unified. The clergy in Syria, Egypt, and

other Byzantine provinces generally conducted religious services in the native languages

and adhered to doctrines that were contrary to the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church

(Byzantine Empire, 1995; Teall & Nicol, 1995).

A Stirring in the East: Islam

Even as Christianity was slowly splitting into Eastern and Roman variants, a new faith

– Islam – was born in Arabia during the 7th century. It was the religious force that unified

the desert subsistence nomads—the Bedouins—with the sedentary dwellers of the oases.

Within a century, Islam spread throughout most of the present-day Arabic speaking world

and beyond, into central Asia and to the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). Before
BALKANS-5 90

long, Muslims launched an ambitious campaign against the eastern and southern provinces

of the Byzantine Empire. Before the century ended, their armies subjugated much of the

Byzantine Empire, including Palestine, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and part of Asia Minor.

Their navies seized Cyprus and Rhodes and harassed Byzantine shipping in the Aegean.

In 673 and 717, the Arabs launched direct attacks against the capital of the Byzantine

Empire, Constantinople. An Arabian fleet and army besieged Constantinople until the

Empire, plagued simultaneously by attacking barbarians from the north, was at risk of

losing its grip on the Balkans (Byzantine Empire, 1995; Fine, 1983; Gianaris, 1982; Teall &

Nicol, 1995; Wallbank, Taylor, Bailkey, & Mancall, 1970). Byzantium successfully

withstood these assault—marking a turning point in the empire’s long struggle against the

invading Turks. Although the Arabs failed to take Constantinople, they were destined to

return again and again, and eventually (AD 1453) overran the city.

Internal disputes within the Christian church undoubtedly contributed to the sweeping

successes of Arab invasions that began in the years after the death of the prophet

Muhammad, in AD 632. Protracted religious arguments, including a dispute over the use

of religious images or icons in the 8th and early 9th centuries, weakened the Byzantine

Empire (Byzantine Empire, 1995; Teall & Nicol, 1995).

Byzantine Resurgence

An era of relative good fortune for the Byzantine Empire, marked by literary

renaissance and a brief resurgence of military and naval power, occurred under the

Macedonian dynasty (867-1057) founded by the peasant adventurer, Basil, who murdered

his way to the throne. A succession of Macedonian emperors also reversed many of the

military defeats experienced by their Byzantine predecessors, reclaiming large areas from

the Arabs and Bulgars, who had moved into the Balkans in the 7th Century. Under Basil

II (976-1025), the empire reached its zenith of power and prosperity, stretching from the

Danube into Syria, with Byzantine influence reaching deep into Russia. (Wallbank,

Taylor, Bailkey, & Mancall, 1970, p. 229)

Doctrinal Dissension

By the 11th century, Rome and Constantinople had separated into two distinct

obediences—Catholic and Orthodox (Barraclough, 1978). Soon, the Eastern Orthodox

church split into factions and became further alienated from Rome. In 1054, a formal

schism between Eastern and Western churches was mutually agreed upon, whereby the

Christian church was split into two branches—Western Christianity in the form of the

Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Christianity in the form of the Eastern Orthodox

Church. The split concerned both doctrine and ritual, as well as disputes over the

infallibility of the Pope. By that time, the Eastern Orthodox Church had been revitalized

by successful missions among Russians, Bulgars, and Slavs. Literacy was spread along

with Christianity in Slavic lands through the work of the monks Cyril and Methodius,

inventors of the Slavonic alphabet (still called “Cyrillic”), into which they translated the

Bible (Barraclough, 1978; Byzantine Empire, 1995).

The formal division of Christianity in 1054 into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox

branches cemented a Balkan schism that had first appeared in AD 395 with the division

of the Roman Empire. In 1054, Slovenes and Croats formally adopted Western Europe’s

Roman Catholicism, while other Slavic peoples joined with the Greeks in their allegiance

to Eastern Orthodoxy. Several centuries later, this fundamental schism would be
BALKANS-5 91

complicated enormously by introduction of yet another major faith, Islam, the religion of

invading Ottoman Turks.

The division of the Balkans into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox segments was

paralleled and compounded by adoption of different alphabets. Slovenes and Croats, in

common with most peoples of western Europe, chose the Latin alphabet. Other Slavicspeaking Balkan populations, however, adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, developed by two

(Eastern Orthodox) monks, Cyril and Methodius. Slavs took great pride in their new

alphabet, and in the Old Church Slavonic language that it enabled. Many religious texts

were translated into Slavonic. Paradoxically, introduction of a supposedly unifying Slavic

language also had the effect of undermining the power of Greek, which heretofore had

been the official administrative language of the Byzantine Empire as well as the unofficial

but ubiquitous language of Byzantine commerce.

The Crusades (1095 – 1291)

In addition to repelling wave after wave of Islamic Turks from the east, parts of the

Byzantine Empire and the Balkans were also traversed by Christian pilgrims from the

west, intent on rescuing Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Seljuk Turks and Muslim

domination. The Crusades had their instigation late in the 11th Century when, besieged by

yet another wave of Muslim invaders, Emperor Alexius I of the Byzantine Empire asked

for outside help. He appealed to Venice, to whom he offered commercial concessions

that later would make it a great maritime power. He also appealed to the Pope in Rome,

who in turn appealed to the feudal rulers of the West. In the end, Alexius I got much

more than he had anticipated. His “allies” turned the ensuing Crusades into a series of

plundering expeditions not only against the Turks but also against the heart of the

Byzantine Empire, including its capital at Constantinople. Spanning three centuries, from

1095 to 1291, the Crusades comprised a major part of medieval history. Portions of the

Balkans were directly impacted between AD 1096 – AD 1204. The Crusades ....

.... attracted every social class in western Europe. Kings and commoners, barons

and bishops, knights and knaves, all participated in these expeditions to the

easternmost shores of the Mediterranean. The motives of those who took up the

cause of the Cross were mixed: some sought to enrich themselves, others were

seeking adventure, many were moved by faith alone. The crusaders derived their

name from the Latin word for “cross”—crux. A crusader went to the Holy Land

with a cross of cloth sewn on the breast of his garment: when and if he returned,

he had a similar cross stitched on its back. (Krueger, 1992, p. 507)

Fall of the Byzantine Empire: AD 1453

The Fourth Crusade resulted in the fall of Constantinople to the Venetians and

Crusaders in 1204 and the establishment of a line of Latin emperors. The empire was

recaptured by Byzantine exiles in 1261, but by that time it was little more than a large citystate besieged from all sides. In the 14th Century, Ottoman Turks replaced the Serbian

Emperor Stefan Dusan as the Byzantine Empire’s premier enemy. Most of the Balkan

Peninsula fell to the Ottomans; but their siege of Constantinople, begun in 1395, was

prolonged by the city’s strategic position and by Turkish factionalism. The Ottoman siege
BALKANS-5 92

of Constantinople finally ended in 1453 when the last emperor, also named Constantine,

died fighting on the walls (Byzantine Empire, 1995).

It wasn’t the Turks alone, however, that killed Byzantium. The Crusaders and

Venetians also played key roles. In 1364, during a crusade sent by Pope Urban V,

crusaders committed so many atrocities against Orthodox Christians in Bulgaria that the

local population came to believe that an alliance with the Turks would be preferable to

rule by the Norman crusaders. Meanwhile, the Venetians had become determined

competitors of Byzantine merchants in the lucrative eastern Mediterranean shipping

business. Ultimately, the Venetians were better organized in shipping and in foreign trade.

They also shrewdly settled in a number of ports and other strategic areas around the

Balkan Peninsula. In league with the Crusaders, they captured Constantinople in 1204

and annexed many islands and coastal areas, where they established a feudal system.

(Gianaris,1982).

Other major factors in the fall of the Byzantine Empire included recurrent barbarian

invasions from eastern Europe, territorial incursions by Austria, Germany, and Hungary,

acrimonious divisions within the Orthodox Church, and incipient nationalist movements

within the Balkans, the latter of which often included establishment of autocephalous

national churches, such as the Serbian Orthodox Church. The early Serbian kingdom

began to take form as early as the 9th Century, and reached its peak in the 14th Century

under Stefan Dusan, who reigned from 1331 to 1346 as King of Serbia and from 1346

until his death in 1355 as self-proclaimed Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks. Soon after

ascending to the throne, Dusan married the sister of the Bulgarian emperor, thus ensuring

peace with his most powerful potential opponent. He then commenced an aggressive

campaign of expansion against Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina,

Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece, and the Byzantine Empire itself. At the peak of his

power, Dusan controlled a vast territory that extended from the Sava and Danube Rivers

in the north to the Bay of Corinth in the south, and from the Adriatic and Ionian Seas in

the west to the Aegean Sea in the east. This extensive Serbian empire constitutes what

modern-day Serbs consider their “Golden Age” of Serbian culture and political power.

Although Dusan’s empire disintegrated soon after his death in 1355, so great was his

power during his lifetime that he posed a real and present threat to the Byzantine Empire

itself. During his reign, Dusan launched several campaigns against the Byzantine Empire

and for several years actively plotted with the Venetians for the overthrow of

Constantinople. Until his death in 1355, Dusan’s presence was also a powerful deterrent

against Ottoman Turk forays into the Balkans.

The Ottoman Empire (AD 1341 – AD 1913)

As one of the successor states to the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire at its

inception (AD 395) claimed the Balkan Peninsula south of the Danube plus all of

Anatolia. (Anatolia is another name for Asia Minor, or modern-day Turkey.) Neither the

Balkans nor Anatolia, however, was uncontested. As in Roman times, a succession of

European and Asian barbarian tribes continued to attack the northern tier of Balkan

provinces during the Byzantine Empire’s long tenure (AD 395 – AD 1453), while to the

south and east of Constantinople there arose an even more persistent threat, that posed

first by the Seljuk and then by the Ottoman Turks, both of whom considered themselves

warriors for the regionally ascendant faith of Islam. It was almost as if the Byzantine
BALKANS-5 93

rulers, while preoccupied with political, economic, military, and religious matters at home

and in the Balkans, as well as with the Mongol threat from the east, somehow failed

utterly in their efforts to control Turkish horsemen in their own back yard. It was to

become an insuperable mistake.

The Turks . . . of the Ottoman branch . . . . first appeared in the northwest corner

of Asia Minor about the middle of the thirteenth century and were able to

establish the foundations of an empire upon the ruins of the decaying Seljuk

Turk state and the effete Byzantine empire. After about an even hundred years

they crossed into Europe and gained their first foothold on Gallipoli peninsula.

In the course of another century they conquered most of the Balkan lands, taking

Constantinople in 1453. Before this latter event, they had destroyed the

remnants of Slavic power in the peninsula. The battle of Kosovo, fought in 1389

on the plains of Macedonia, really marked the doom of the Serb state which had

reached its greatest development just prior to the coming of the Turks. It is

significant that Constantinople with its almost impregnable defenses was able to

hold out for more than a half century after Kosovo; its capture, therefore, was

really the completion of the Turkish conquest of Balkania. (Gewehr, 1967, pp. 8-

9)

The battle of Manzikert in 1071, fought against Seljuk Turks, was a pivotal loss for the

Byzantine Empire, resulting as it did in the forfeiture of central and eastern Anatolia.

Despite their territorial gains as a result of Manzikert, Turkish invasions continued and,

except for coastal areas, the rest of Anatolia gradually fell into the hands of the Turks.

By 1270, moreover, even most Byzantine coastal strongholds were abandoned to the

Turks. In 1354, the Ottoman Turks turned their eyes upon Europe. They advanced on

the Strait of Dardanelles in northwestern Anatolia, a narrow body of water that connects

the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea and separates Europe from Asia. Over the

next few years, Ottoman Turks gradually moved into the Balkan Peninsula, initially

bypassing Constantinople due to its near-impregnable fortifications and the Turks’ internal

squabbling. In 1396, Bulgaria came under the heel of the oppressor, and other Balkan

states eventually followed suit. By the late 1300s, notwithstanding Constantinople’s

refusal to capitulate, the Ottoman Empire held much of the Balkan Peninsula and virtually

all of Anatolia (Gianaris, 1982).

What’s more, Anatolia and the Balkans were only the beginnings of Ottoman

conquests. At its apogee in the 16th and 17th Centuries, the Ottoman Empire extended

from Austria to the Arabian Sea, and from the western Mediterranean to the Caspian

Sea. Across a span of more than five hundred years, from the latter part of the thirteenth

century until the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire held sway in parts of Europe,

Africa, and Asia. In the West, the Ottoman Turks twice laid siege to Vienna, conquering

in the process Hungary, Transylvania, and the Balkan states of Bulgaria, Serbia, BosniaHerzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, and Greece. Across North Africa, the

Empire extended from Egypt to Morocco, including the Nile Valley, Algiers, Tunis, and

Tripoli.

Ottoman pirates from North Africa, moreover, carried a naval jihad as far as the

British Isles and Iceland. To the east and south, in addition to Anatolia, the Ottomans also

conquered the Crimea, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Mesopotamia (modern Iraq),

portions of Persia (modern Iran), Syria, Palestine, and parts of Arabia to the Persian Gulf

(Lewis, 1995).
BALKANS-5 94

Resistance Movements

Even a force as pervasive and powerful as that of the Ottoman Empire encountered

resistance, however. Twice it laid siege to Vienna, but neither time could it overcome that

great symbol of Western power and culture. And although the Ottomans overran much

of the Balkans, they never really captured Slovenia, nor could they do better than partition

Croatia with the Austro-Hungarian powers. Romania and Montenegro were trouble spots

as well, the former principally due to its remoteness from Ottoman power centers and the

latter due to its mountainous terrain. Both regions eventually acknowledged Ottoman

suzerainty but managed their own internal affairs, while the city of Dubrovnik, on the

Adriatic coast, remained free of direct Ottoman interference through suzerainty

agreements first with Venice and Hungary and later with the Ottoman Empire itself.

Moreover, until his death in 1355, Stefan Dusan of Serbia also posed a thorny impediment

to Ottoman territorial aspirations in the central Balkans. (For more on Stefan Dusan, see

the section in this chapter on the Fall of the Byzantine Empire.)

The Crucifixion and Resurrection Syndrome Revisited

A mere thirty-four years after Stefan Dusan’s unexpected demise, nonetheless,

Ottoman Turks clinched their Serbian campaign with a decisive victory at the Battle of

Kosovo. Over six centuries later, June 28 of 1389 is still regarded (and celebrated) as a

sacred day by most Serbs. On that day, the Ottomans decisively defeated an army

composed of Serbs and other Slavic-speaking loyalists, and although it may seem

anomalous to celebrate a major defeat, to this day both the battle and its location, Kosovo

Polje—the Kosovo Plain—hold special significance for Serbs. It is a symbol of past—and

hopefully—future glory. Kosovo Polke is also a symbol of staunch resistance to outside

forces, even in the face of overwhelming odds. Through an oral tradition that is still very

much alive in the Balkans, abetted by Tomasic’s (1948) so-called “crucifixion and

resurrection syndrome” (see Chapter 3), the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 has been converted

from a devastating rout at the hands of the Turks into the “high point” of Serbian history.

[The Serbs] . . . like to see themselves as great martyrs ... who have been

unjustly persecuted by their enemies, and who have suffered to save the world,

but without being rewarded for it .... This ability to glory in martyrdom ...

enabled ... Serbs in the past to convert great national tragedies into a

psychological force that has worked in the direction of a national renaissance.

(Toma”iÉ 1948, p. 30).

Thus can defeat be turned into victory, a theme not far removed from that of the

crucifixion of Christ. The belief is that if one is steadfast in spite of suffering, victory will

result eventually. According to Tomasic (1948), it is through this so-called “crucifixion

and resurrection syndrome” that the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 was converted from a

devastating rout at the hands of the Turks into the “high point” of Serbian history.

Devastating rout or historic high point, the indisputable fact is that by 1459 Turks had

overrun Dusan’s former Kingdom of Serbia.

Albanian Resistance

Resistance to Ottoman subjugation was intense and protracted in Albania, and

consequently was met with harsh punishment by the Ottoman Turks, resulting in

widespread destruction of the region’s economy, commerce, art, and culture. Although

the Turks rarely attempted to force Islam on conquered populations, they made an
BALKANS-5 95

exception for Albania, where resistance was unusually staunch. Toward the end of the

16th Century they instituted a concerted program of Islamization that drove a quarter of

the population abroad to Italy, Sicily, Dalmatia, and other destinations. Of those who

remained, about two-thirds eventually converted to Islam, principally to avoid persecution

and paralyzing taxes that were imposed on resistant Christians. Nonetheless, resistance

continued, mainly from inaccessible mountain enclaves where Christians clung to their

traditional beliefs. Although Ottoman Turks ostensibly ruled Albania for over four

hundred years, they were never able to effectively exert their control over the entire

country. In the more mountainous and inaccessible regions, resistance often approached

open rebellion, and refusal to pay taxes, serve in the army, or surrender weapons became

more or less the norm.

Much of Albanian resistance was modeled on the life and career of George Kastrioti,

an historical figure who has come to be known as Skanderbeg. As a boy Skanderbeg

was taken hostage by Turks, removed to Edirne, Turkey where he was educated,

instructed in the Islamic faith, and eventually inducted into military service. During a

military assignment to Serbia in 1443, Skanderbeg defected, renounced Islam, embraced

Christianity, and joined his Albanian countrymen against the Turks. Subsequently, he

organized a league of Albanian princes and became their commander-in-chief, using

guerrilla tactics to defeat the Ottoman armies of Murad II and his son Mohammed II.

Between 1444 and 1466 Skanderbeg successfully repulsed 13 Turkish invasions and

briefly became a hero of the West, hailed at one point as an “athlete of Christendom”

(Gianaris, 1982, p. 17). Even after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Skanderbeg

resolutely resisted Turkish efforts to establish a beachhead on Albanian soil.

Eventually, nonetheless, Skanderbeg died, and none of his followers was able to pick

up the pieces of his remarkable career. In 1468, Albania came under control of the Turks

(Gianaris, 1982, p. 17). Skanderbeg’s death, coupled with the demise of Constantinople,

which for a thousand years had served as both political and economic center of

Byzantium and symbol of Christianity throughout the Balkans, widespread and organized

resistance to the Ottoman Empire effectively ceased. Within a few decades, the whole

Balkan Peninsula was under repressive Ottoman rule. The height of Ottoman supremacy

would be achieved a hundred years after the capitulation of Constantinople, under the rule

of Suleyman the Magnificent (1520 - 1566). Periodically, outside powers such as Spain,

Venice, Hungary, Poland, Austria, and Russia engaged the Turks in wars, but – at least

until the 19th Century – with limited success (Gianaris, 1982, p. 18).

Ottoman Rule

The [Balkan] peninsula has suffered incredibly diverse fortunes over the

centuries. At times united under a single rule—the ephemeral empire of

Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire for four centuries, the Byzantine Empire

whose frontiers were threatened by the Slav wave, and then the Ottoman Turks

who seized the great capital of the Basileus, Constantinople. After its fall, the

Balkan peninsula experienced political unity. It was a sad unity—that of the

Ottoman yoke for about five centuries . . . . the Turks dominated as masters

without any real opposition, crushing all national consciousness and liberation

movements, covering the entire peninsula with a stifling veil. (Ristelhueber, 1971,

p. ix)
BALKANS-5 96

Paradoxically, it was during foreign occupations (especially those of the Romans and

Ottoman Turks) that the Balkans appear to have experienced the least ethnic strife and

the most unity (or perhaps the least disunity). Under Roman rule, for instance, there was

a common legal system, an ultimate arbiter of political power, thriving commerce, and

(except occasionally along frontier borders) absolute military power. After AD 212,

moreover, Roman citizenship was available to every freeman who wanted it. There were

vast differences, however, between Roman and Ottoman rule, not the least of which

concerned religion.

Romans arrived in the Balkans without a religion (or at least without a unified

monotheistic religion), but later adopted and promoted Christianity to resident pagans. The

Ottoman Turks, on the other hand, were faced with the much more daunting task of

convincing Balkan populations to substitute one monotheistic religion (Islam) for another

(Christianity). The rub was that, depending on ethnic group and locality, Christianity in

many instances had been in place for a millennium, or longer. Its rites and rituals had

taken root; they were institutionalized. And although adoption of Islam was in most

instances voluntary (Albania excepted), participation in local governance was possible

only after conversion to Islam. (Collection of taxes and maintenance of order within the

community were responsibilities, for instance, of religious leaders.) Conversion was

therefore a de facto requirement for citizenship rights, such as they were in a feudal

society.

Faced with both legal land fiscal incentives, many Balkan peoples of the time

converted to their conquerors’ religion, Islam, thereby creating deep resentments among

both Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians who remained faithful. In Serbia, the

hatred was particularly acute as Turk invaders slaughtered Serb nobles and handed over

their land to Muslim immigrants and converts (MSNBC, 1997; Gianaris, 1982). Rates of

conversion to Islam varied greatly by region. It was especially high in Albania, where

Turks undertook a program of forced Islamization, and in the Bosnia-Herzegovina region,

with its substantial representation of Bogomils, who were considered heretics by both

Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians and thus had an added incentive to convert to

Islam. By publicly renouncing Christianity, with which they were already greatly

disaffected, and accepting Islam, the Bogomils were allowed to preserve many of their

customs while also joining an elite military caste of landlords, with authority over

(Christian) serfs. For the Bogomils, it was sweet retaliation for having been ostracized

from the Christian church, and instant transformation from pariah to land-owning

aristocrat. It also earned them everlasting enmity from their Serb, Croat, and Slovene

neighbors who resisted the temptations of conversion.

The usual practice of the Ottoman Turks was to distribute conquered lands to their

warriors (who were then called spahis) who were responsible for supervising serfs and

profitably operating their allocated lands. The spahis were also obligated to provide

mounted troops, in proportion to the amount of land they controlled, in order to ensure the

sultan’s military supremacy. By converting to Islam, it was possible for a former

(destitute) Christian to become a landed spahi (an aristocrat, in effect) as well as a

potential leader in the Ottoman army. Many converts amassed considerable wealth from

the spoils of war as they frequently rose to high military and administrative positions

(Jayne, 1910). Over time, only the Islam faithful were allowed to own any land other than

gardens and residential properties. Meanwhile, Slavic (i.e., Christian) peasants worked
BALKANS-5 97

the land as virtual slaves, paid rent to their Muslim landlords, and then paid taxes to the

Ottoman Empire.

On top of this economic oppression, Christians were subjected to a special tax called

the devsirme, which amounted to a levy on male youth, who were taken from Christian

households, instructed in Islam, and trained for administrative or military positions within

the Ottoman Empire, including possible appointment to the elite Janissary corps of the

sultan’s military forces. For four centuries the vast majority of Balkan peoples were

disfranchised, forced to pay rent on their own properties, virtually enslaved by Islam

converts, and subjected to devsirme and other forms of ruthless exploitation. And

perhaps worst of all, they were systematically isolated from the spiritual, intellectual, and

technological forces that soon were to transform western European society.

The Turks established their dominion over ... [the Balkans] ... just as the

Renaissance began to unfold in Europe, so that, cut off from contact and

exchanges with western Europe ... [the Balkans] ... had no chance to participate

in, or benefit from, the humanistic achievements of that era. (Ottoman Empire,

2001)

The Ottoman Legacy

Western historians often view the Renaissance as constituting the transition from

Medieval to Modern times. Medieval times (formerly known as the Dark Ages) are

commonly dated from 476, which marks the fall of the Western Roman Empire, to 1453,

the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. By shielding the Balkans from most outside

influences during the 15th through the 19th Centuries, the Ottoman Turks effectively froze

the peninsula in a permanent Middle Ages mentality and prevented the Medieval-toModern transformation from occurring. Ristelheuber (1971) refers to the Ottoman

occupation as a “... prolonged period of oppressive torpor ....” (p. x) The Croats and

Slovenes, with their longstanding cultural and political ties to the mainstream European

pattern, were much less affected, just as they were much less dominated by the Ottoman

Turks. Croats and Slovenes, more than other Slavs, experienced the philosophical,

political, and economic changes that were taking place in the West, such as Humanism,

the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the French and Industrial

revolutions. Following invasions first by Mongols and then by the Ottoman Turks,

however, other Balkan Slavs remained for many centuries without close contact with the

larger European community. During this time, they evolved a system of bureaucratic

autocracy and militarism that tended to retard the development of urban middle classes

and to prolong the conditions of serfdom, and the supremacy of the state over the

individual tended to become more firmly rooted (Slav, 1995).

Ottoman occupation precluded extensive contact with the larger European

community, and this isolation unquestionably restricted economic development in the

Balkans. Turkish domination also exacerbated and complicated ethnic conflicts. Christian

populations were frequently on the move in an effort to avoid Turk-dominated areas. A

pattern developed wherein Turks often controlled valleys while Christians retreated to the

mountains, producing crazy quilt distributions of languages, dialects, and other ethnic

characteristics even within the same region. Significant artistic, intellectual, and

technological developments that were sweeping western Europe and the New World

were rarely introduced or disseminated within the Balkans. The Ottoman system was
BALKANS-5 98

inherently inflexible. It was promulgated as the implementation of God’s will on earth, and

thus could not be changed in any way.

Decline of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire had dominated the eastern Mediterranean and much of Eastern

Europe since the 15th century, reaching a state of maximum territorial expansion in the

16th Century during the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent. The first chink in the

Ottoman façade of invincibility, however, occurred at the beginning of the 17th century

when Austria penetrated into Serbia. Although their forces later retreated, this foray

effectively made Serbia the border territory between the Austrian and the Ottoman

Empires. This epic struggle between Austrian and Ottoman forces lasted two centuries,

during which both empires used the local populations—mainly the herders—for purposes

of guerilla warfare. Late in the 17th Century, in 1683, after its second failure to capture

Vienna, Austrians in the west and Russians on the eastern front began to actively push

back Ottoman frontiers. In 1699, Croatia and Romania reverted to Habsburg control.

Throughout the 18th Century, the Ottoman Turks experienced further defeats. In 1718, to

buttress its southern border, Austria invited Serbs to settle in Habsburg border areas

(principally in Croatia, but also to some extent in Slovenia), and thus introduced pockets of

Orthodox Slavs into territories that had formerly been predominantly Roman Catholic.6

The Balkan Peninsula in the 19th Century

By the beginning of the 19th Century, the Ottoman Empire was in irremediable

decline, a development that presaged a major shift in the Euro-Mediterranean balance of

power. It was no longer a question of whether the Turks could be ousted from the

Balkans, or even of when it would happen, but rather of which European power would be

able to optimize their Balkan influence in the aftermath of the inevitably forthcoming

revolutions. The Balkan Peninsula - positioned at the interface between Russia, Turkey

and Eastern Europe - became the focus of complex international maneuvering and

“intrigues.” Every great power in Europe, from Britain to Russia, used every financial,

political, and military means available to enhance their regional influence. They also

deployed full diplomatic strength to prevent the emergence of any power vacuum that

could be exploited by their competitors. As the Ottoman decline continued, the western

powers (France, England, and Germany), the Austro-Hungarian Habsburgs, and the

Russians grappled with the so-called “Eastern Question,” i.e., which of these great

powers would be able to step in and fill the vacuum created by the waning Ottoman

Empire?

. . .the so-called Eastern Question, which runs like a red thread through European

diplomatic history, was essentially the question of how the European powers

should divide amongst themselves the Balkan territories of the declining sultan.

But the several powers that had designs on the Balkan lands neutralized each

 

6

 Almost 300 years later, following Croatia’s independence announcement in 1991, these

concentrated pockets of Serbian irredenta would provide a rationale for Serbian intervention and

almost four years of bloody conflict.
BALKANS-5 99

After a bloody struggle,

Greece gained

independence from the

Ottoman Empire in 1829.

other in the long run. In the Indian Ocean, the British navy was unchallenged

and so the whole of the Indian peninsula fell under British rule. But the Balkan

Peninsula was vulnerable not only to British warships but also to French

warships and to Austrian and Russian land forces. Consequently the Balkan

Peninsula was never taken over by any one of the European powers....

(Stavrianos, 1963, p. 199)

Consequently, the central Balkan theme as the 19th Century unfolded was the creation

of nation-states on what had formerly been Ottoman territory. Although indigenous ethnic

groups were eager to throw off the oppressive yoke of Ottoman domination, in most

instances serious independence movements were out of the question without outside

intervention, or at least collusion between Balkan groups and outside powers.

After this prolonged period of oppressive torpor [under the Ottoman Empire], the

conquered peoples began to awaken at the beginning of the 19th century. They

stirred, acquired a new consciousness, and gradually revived, claiming their

places in the sun with the aid of the great European powers .... (Ristelheuber,

1971, p. x)

The Greek War of Independence (1921 – 1829)

Greece was the first Balkan region to successfully revolt against the Ottomans, and

their struggle for independence was a long and bloody affair (1821 – 1829). Greek

insurrectionists needed little if any outside inspiration to initiate their revolution, but as their

initially favorable positions deteriorated over the protracted course of the struggle, they

increasingly looked to the Great Powers for deliverance. The Great Powers, in turn, were

initially as much concerned with each other’s objectives as they were

with aiding the Greek revolutionaries. Gradually, however, a growing

concern with protecting their Mediterranean commercial interests

disposed them toward a more interventionist stance. Britain, Russia,

and France commenced a mediation policy in 1927 that eventually

resulted in direct military intervention and the destruction of the

Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Navarino in October 1827. And thus a

precedent was established of outside intervention serving to expedite a Balkan

independence movement. In this instance, as in subsequent instances, multiple European

powers were involved and the multiple powers were balanced off against one another,

preventing any one country from gaining ascendancy on the peninsula.

Russian Influence During the Period of Ottoman Decline

No European power was more intensely interested in Balkan affairs during the period

of Ottoman decline than Russia. Not only did it support Greek secessionist efforts early in

the 19th Century, it also had experienced recurrent conflicts with the Ottoman Empire

during the 18th Century. As a result of the Treaty of Kucuk Kaynaria in 1774, Russia had

gained a foothold on the Balkan Peninsula by winning the Ottoman’s recognition as

protector of Orthodox Christians in Romania. Indeed, Russian leaders professed to be the

logical protectors of subjects in the Balkan countries not only because of a common

religion (Eastern Orthodox), but also because Balkan peoples, like the Russians, were

primarily Slavs. Perhaps more to the point, Russia also had territorial designs on the

straits connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. Possession of these straits
BALKANS-5 100

As a result of Russian

intervention in 1877-1878, the

Balkan states of Bulgaria,

Montenegro, Romania, and

Serbia were wrested from

Ottoman control and brought

into the sphere of Russian

influence.

would give Russia uncontested access to the Mediterranean, a potential outcome that

several western European powers, especially the British, wanted to avoid because they

feared the Russians would jeopardize established trade routes by attacking their merchant

ships in the Mediterranean. Consequently, the British were disposed to support the

Ottomans on many issues for no reason other than to keep the Russians in check.

Several other European powers — among them France, Austria, Prussia, and Italy — had

imperial ambitions in either the Balkans or the Mediterranean, and hence were also keenly

interested in any Balkan partition that might occur (Barraclough, 1978).

The Crimean War (1853-1856)

An International Straits Convention in 1841 closed the Bosporus Straits (connecting

the Mediterranean with the Black Sea) to Russian warships. This was a daunting setback

to Russian expansionist ambitions, but a decade later Russia countered by invading the

Ottoman Empire’s Danubian provinces, Moldova and Romania. They captured large

tracts of land, thereby gaining a territorial toehold in the Balkans. By 1853, they had also

gained control of the Black Sea by sinking the sultan’s fleet. Alarmed by Russia’s

territorial expansions, Britain and France declared war against Russia in 1854 and

subsequently invaded the Crimea—a Russian peninsula that extended into the Black Sea

southwest of the Sea of Azov. The Crimean War (1853 - 1856) centered on Britain’s

contention that Russia was trying to control the Dardanelles, and thus threaten England’s

Mediterranean sea routes. With the support of France, Austria, and Sardinia, Great

Britain supported the Ottoman Empire and in doing so effectively opposed Russian

expansion (Gianaris, 1982). In retrospect, it is instructive to note that Austria, which for

two hundred years had been under direct siege by the Ottoman Empire, actually sided

with the Ottomans on this issue because by this time in history they saw Russia as a

greater threat.

Defeat in the Crimean War again served to temporarily restrain Russian expansionist

ambitions in the Balkan region. Under the Treaty of Paris, reached in 1856, Russia was

no longer allowed to have battleships in the Black Sea or in the Straits or to maintain

bases on its shores, leaving her with a sorely exposed southern border. Nonetheless,

unable to overcome combined British and French influence, Russia accepted the terms of

the Peace of Paris in 1856, relinquishing Moldavia, Walachia, and Bessarabia, thereby

temporarily strengthening and extending Ottoman hold on the Balkan Peninsula

(Barraclough, 1978; Gianaris, 1982).

The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878

In the 1870’s, Russia seized on yet another opportunity to augment its Balkan

presence. Following Slavic uprisings against Turkish overlords in Serbia, Montenegro,

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Russia invaded Bulgaria in

1877. Russian successes in Bulgaria forced the

Ottomans to concede regional dominance in the

Treaty of San Stefano, signed in March, 1878, an

agreement that fundamentally altered the balance of

power in the Balkans. It created an autonomous and

greatly augmented Bulgaria (which had been under

Turkish rule since the fourteenth century), stretching
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from Serbia to the Black Sea, with extensive territory in Thrace, abutting the Aegean Sea.

Moreover, it created independent states of Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro.

These Balkan States, which had been under direct Turkish control, now came under

the Russian sphere of influence. The sudden expansion of Russian influence in the

Balkans, however, alarmed other European powers (especially Austria-Hungary) who

feared that Russia would become the dominant force in the Balkans. Because the Balkan

Peninsula is strategically vital to the security of all of Europe, the remaining “Great

Powers” were soon planning to rescind the Treaty of San Stefano and thereby undermine

growing Russian influence. Spearheaded by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and

British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, the Treaty of San Stefano was supplanted later

in 1878 by the Treaty of Berlin, signed at the Congress of Berlin on 13 July. It was an

agreement between the Ottoman Empire on one side and the Russians, Austro-Hungary,

France, Italy, Germany, and Great Britain on the other. It largely succeeded in

dismembering the Ottoman Empire’s European holdings. It also stripped the Russians of

much of their newfound Balkan power and influence, but fearing another Crimean War,

they had little choice but to acquiesce. Under terms of the Congress of Berlin, complete

independence of Montenegro, Romania and Serbia was recognized, and the territory that

San Stefano had allocated to the new Principality of Bulgaria was dramatically reduced

(Barraclough, 1978).

Had the Treaty of San Stefano been allowed to stand, the newly independent states of

Bulgaria, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia would have most likely fallen under Russian

control, shifting the entire European balance of power. Other European nations, however,

feared that with these initial Balkan states as a foothold, Russia would gradually expand to

occupy the entire peninsula. Consequently, as a result of actions taken at the Congress of
BALKANS-5 102

Berlin, Russian influence in the region was dramatically reduced, no single power was

allowed to dominate the Balkans, and the peninsula remained fragmented. Although

Bulgaria, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia had in common their newly-found

independence, these states were not ethnically homogenous, and in no way could they be

thought of an emergent, unified “Balkania.” To add to the existing fractionation created

by the Congress of Berlin, moreover, Turkey continued to control Albania and Macedonia;

Bosnia and Herzegovina were placed under Austrian control, where Croatia and Slovenia

already resided; the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, in southwestern Serbia also was placed under

Austrian control; Crete, Thessaly and parts of Macedonia went to Greece; Bulgaria was

divided into thirds with only the territory north of the Balkan Mountains retaining the

autonomy granted under San Stefano; Russia annexed Bessarabia; and Britain controlled

Cyprus.

Table 16. Control of Balkan Territories in 1878.

Territory Controlled By:

Albania Ottoman Turks

Bessarabia Russia

Bosnia-Herzegovina Austria

Bulgaria Independent

Crete Greece

Croatia Austria

Cyprus Great Britain

Greece Independent

Macedonia Partitioned among

Bulgarians, Greeks,

Serbians, and Turks

Montenegro Independent

Novi Pazar Austria

Romania Independent

Serbia Independent

Slovenia Austria

Thessaly Greece

Macedonia continued to be a bone of contention, disputed as it was by Bulgaria,

Greece, Serbia, and the Turks. Disagreements became so acute that in 1885 Serbia and

Bulgaria briefly went to war over its partition. The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary

Organization (IMRO) was founded in 1893 at a time when Bulgarian, Greek, and Serbian

irregulars were roaming all over Macedonia. IMRO’s ostensible goal was to oust the

Turks, but beyond that the competing parties could agree on little, some favoring

autonomy for Macedonia while others, such as the Bulgarians, harbored annexation

motives. In 1903, the IMRO ordered an uprising, the Ilinden Uprising, in which 25,000
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Macedonian Slavs fought skirmishes against numerically superior Turkish forces.

Through the Ilinden Uprising, Macedonia’s plight came to the attention of the outside

world (Palmer & King, 1971) and the Balkans were recognized as a powder keg with the

distinct potential, due to the intense involvement of every major competing European

power, of igniting a larger conflagration. Curiously, at the beginning of the 20th Century,

as at the beginning of the 21st Century a hundred years later, Macedonia lay at the heart

of the Balkan controversy. In the 20th Century, along with Albania, it served as the

raison d’etre for both the first and second Balkan Wars. At the beginning of the 21st

Century, both Macedonia and Albania, along with the Serbian province of Kosovo, are

again at the center of Balkan conflicts.

In the days of the Ottoman administration the Balkan herdsmen had much

opportunity to engage in brigandage and to wage guerilla warfare . . . as a means

of gaining riches and local fame and of revenging themselves against the

arbitrariness of the local Turkish autocrats. They were encouraged in these

activities and often were hired as mercenaries by the neighboring powers, such

as Venice, Austria, and Russia, who were interested in undermining the Turkish

rule in the Balkans. When the Ottoman Empire finally began to disintegrate and

the Turkish army gradually withdrew from the Balkans, these native guerrillas

and avengers placed themselves at the head of uprisings and political

movements for national liberation. Thus, former outlaws and mercenaries became

military leaders and statesmen. This is how Greece, Serbia, Montenegro,

Rumania, Bulgaria, and Albania, in the course of the nineteenth and in the

beginning of the twentieth centuries, re-established their national independence

with the help of Russia and of Western powers, which were struggling for

spheres of influence. (Tomasic, 1946, p. 133)

For an organized time-line of Balkan history, the interested reader is referred to

Appendix F, Chronology of Historic Events in Europe and the Balkans.
BALKANS-5 104

MM
BALKANS-5 105

CHAPTER 5

WARS, WARS, AND MORE WARS:

THE FIRST BALKAN WAR (1912 – 1913)

THE SECOND BALKAN WAR (1913)

WORLD WAR I (1914 – 1918)

WORLD WAR II (1941 – 1945)

By the beginning of the 20th Century, five of today’s ten Balkan states (Bulgaria,

Greece, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia) had achieved independence. Three other

states (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Slovenia) were under Austo-Hungarian rule.

Turkish domination had been reduced to Albania and parts of Bulgaria and Macedonia.

To the long-oppressed peoples of the Balkans, however, any continuing Turkish presence

was unacceptable. Two regional wars, which came to be known as the first and second

Balkan Wars, were waged in order to repulse residual Turkish forces from Balkan

territory.

The First Balkan War (1912 – 1913)

Following the Turkish Revolution of 1908-1909 and the Turko-Italian War of 1911-

1912, the Balkan states sensed unprecedented weakness on the part of their former

oppressor, the Turks, and saw an opportunity to finally oust them from the Balkans. In
BALKANS-5 106

March 1912, Serbia and Bulgaria stopped feuding long enough to secretly agree on a

division of Albania and Macedonia, once those territories were wrested from Turkish

control. The secret agreement was that Serbia would receive Albania and Bulgaria would

occupy Macedonia. Greece subsequently joined the Balkan league against the Turks,

when it concluded a military convention with Bulgaria in May 1912. On August 14

Bulgaria demanded that the Turks grant Macedonia autonomy. Eight days later

Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire, followed within the week by the other

Balkan states, including Greece. Turkey responded with its own declaration, and the First

Balkan War was off to the races.

The Balkan Alliance won a series of decisive victories over the Turks during the next

two months, forcing them to relinquish Albania, and Macedonia, and practically all their

other holdings in southeast Europe. Serbia captured Skopje in Macedonia, the Greeks

took Salonika (considered the southern reach of “geographical Macedonia”), and Albania

declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire. Failing to reach a truce, the war

continued into 1913 with Turkey suffering heavy losses (Tsamaidis, 1997; Knowledge,

1997). By the war’s conclusion in May, 1913, the Ottoman Empire had lost nearly all its

territory in Europe to the ever-increasing demand for national, ethnic, and religious

independence (Gravity’s Rainbow, 1997; Barraclough 1978). Albania had gained its

independence. Serbia had gained large areas in Macedonia, and Bulgaria was in

possession of Adrianople (now Edirne, Turkey) as well as lands in western Turkey and

southern Macedonia, stretching to the Aegean Sea. Greece had taken Crete and other

islands as well as part of Macedonia. And the Montenegrins had conquered Scutari (now

Shkoder, Albania)

The Turks had been soundly trounced, but even so there was little happiness among

the victors. Old rivalries soon re-emerged, exacerbated by new arguments over the spoils

of war (Barraclough 1978). Bulgarians, Serbs and Greeks squabbled over Macedonian

territories. Montenegrins were dissatisfied because the treaty concluding the war forced

them to cede occupied territory back to Albania. In addition, the pact that Bulgaria and

Serbia had entered into in 1912 stipulated that Serbia was to receive Albania, giving Serbia

access to the Adriatic Sea. Albania’s independence at the end of the First Balkan War

deprived landlocked Serbia of her coveted access to the Mediterranean. On the other

hand, Bulgaria received the territory agreed upon by the secret pact, giving her not only

possession of much of Macedonia but also access to both the Black Sea and the Aegean.

Accordingly, Serbs were outraged, not only because of losing Albania and thereby their

coveted outlet to the Adriatic, but also by Bulgaria’s refusal to recognize Serbia’s claim to

certain Bulgarian-held portions of Macedonia. Serbia wanted to ask Russia to mediate

the division of disputed parts of Macedonia, but Bulgaria, lacking confidence in the Czar,

refused. The Bulgarians were buoyed by support from Austria-Hungary, who also were

wary of Serbia’s rising power. To counter the Bulgarian menace, and the Bulgarians’

potential collusion with the Austro-Hungarians to the north, the Serbs signed a treaty of

alliance on June 1, 1913, with Greece. Thus, Balkan nations, rather than exultantly uniting

after their overwhelming defeat of the Turks, were yet again squabbling among

themselves, dangerously polarized, and ready for more hostilities.
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The Second Balkan War (1913)

The Second Balkan War was to be shorter but even bloodier than the first. The

Second Balkan War began with a Bulgarian attack on the night of June 29-30, 1913. On

that date, a Bulgarian general, acting without orders from his government, launched an

attack on Serbian defensive positions. The Bulgarian government disavowed this attack;

but on July 8, Serbia and Greece declared war. Within the next two weeks, Montenegro,

Romania, and the Ottoman Empire entered the war against Bulgaria. Unable to withstand

the combined forces of this coalition, on July 30, Bulgaria, asked for and received an

armistice.

In the Treaty of Bucharest, signed on August 10, 1913, Bulgaria paid dearly for its

truculence. It lost much of the territory it had taken from the Ottoman Turks in the First

Balkan War, managing to keep only western Thrace and a small corner of Macedonia.

The agreement, among other things, consigned nearly 3,000 square miles to Romania, and

awarded most of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece. By later agreements, Bulgaria also

yielded a large territory to the Turks, including Adrianople and most of eastern Thrace.

Aftermath of the Balkan Wars

The Second Balkan War peace settlement saddled Europe with a whole new agenda

of problems and a general uneasiness concerning the Balkans. Serbia’s enhanced power

following the wars was of special concern. Serbia’s increased prestige encouraged the

Slavs of Austria-Hungary to renew their efforts for independence. By creating a strong

and ambitious Serbia, the peace settlements engendered fear and anti-Serbian sentiment in

neighboring Austria-Hungary. The Habsburg Empire had no intention of losing any part

of its Balkan holdings (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Slovenia) to Serbia or any panSlavic federation. Austria-Hungary made numerous attempts to quell the Serbs, but
BALKANS-5 108

without lasting success. The tension between Austro-Hungarians to the north and Slavs

to the south helped kindle the volatile conditions that led to the outbreak of World War I,

and thereby profoundly influenced the subsequent course of European history. Moreover,

the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and severe weakening of Bulgaria created equally

dangerous tensions in southeastern Europe. These latter developments were seen by

some as an irresistible enticement for further Russian expansion. One observer has noted

that at the close of the Balkan Wars in 1913, the Ottoman Empire had been replaced in

Europe by “... a complex of dissatisfied and mutually antagonistic Balkan states ....”

(Barraclough, 1978, p. 251). By 1914, the Ottoman Turks had been dispossessed of

virtually all their European possessions and the European powers had divided into two

rival camps, aligning themselves into a dangerously polarized system. On the one side

was Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy (the “Triple Alliance”). On the other side was

Great Britain, France, and Russia (the “Triple Entente”). Russia gave wholehearted

support to its sole Balkan ally, Serbia. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, supported and

encouraged by Bulgaria, wanted to remove or at least reduce Russian presence in the

Balkans. It was only a matter of time before an incident occurred, giving AustriaHungary the pretext it desired to lay blame at Serbia’s, and by extension, Russia’s feet.

That event occurred when the Austrian heir-presumptive, Archduke Franz Ferdinand,

visited Sarajevo, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, on June 28, 1914. While in Sarajevo, he was

assassinated by a Serbian terrorist. It was the spark that triggered World War I.

World War I (1914 – 1918)

In the years between the end of the Russo-Turkish War (1977-1878) and the

beginning of World War I, as it became obvious that it was only a matter of time until the

oppressive Ottoman yoke would be thrown off, nationalism became the objective of every

minority group in the Balkans, and Serbia slowly but surely became the model for

dissatisfied Slavs everywhere, including those in Austrian-held Bosnia-Herzegovina,

Croatia, and Slovenia. Croats, Slovenes, and Bosnians all aspired to establish independent

states modeled on Serbia. Austria-Hungary, meanwhile, fully intended to maintain its

control over these states while in the newly invigorated independent Serbia, aspirations of

a greater Slavic state were finding expression. Serbian territorial ambitions, already

having found partial realization in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, convinced AustriaHungary that Serbia was an imminent threat. This three-way tug of war, with “greater”

Serbian ambitions on one side, the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the other, and Croatian,

Slovenian, and Bosnian nationalistic ambitions caught in the middle, catapulted the world

into war.
BALKANS-5 109

Austria had gained control over Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1978 as a result of the

Congress of Berlin. In 1908, Austria went a step further and formally annexed BosniaHerzegovina, an action that had inflamed Bosnian Serbs, not to mention Serbs in the

Serbian homeland itself. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian heir presumptive,

visited Bosnia on 28 June 1914, many Serbs, including Gavrilo Princip, interpreted the

timing of his visit as a deliberate insult to all Serbs (Hall, 1994). Since 1389, the day of

June 28 had been held as sacred among Serbs, commemorating as it does the Battle of

Kosovo, a Serbian symbol of past—and hopefully—future glory. Seething with

resentment at the intrusive presence of an Austrian “enemy” on Balkan soil on a Serbian

holy day, Princip shot and killed both the Archduke and the Archduke’s wife (Hall, 1994).

. . . June 28 was Vidovdan, or St Vitus’ Day, which happened to be the Serbs’

most important nation day. The Battle of Kosovo had taken place on Vidovdan

in 1389, and ever since then the Serbs had marked it with a mixture of deep

mourning and fanatical pride. For them, Vidovdan represented blows struck—

whether successfully or suicidally, it hardly mattered—against tyranny. It

represented all that was recklessly glorious about the Serbs. Franz Ferdinand’s

visit to captive Sarajevo on Vidovdan would seem like a deliberate challenge—

“Shoot me if you can.” (Hall, 1994, p. 146)

After receiving assurances of support from Germany, an enraged Austria declared

war on Serbia. Russia protested that Austria should not be allowed to destroy Serbia and

began mobilizing for war. Other declarations of war followed, and soon all major

European powers were involved, including France and Great Britain. Germany, intent on

establishing itself as the preeminent military force on the European continent, invaded

Belgium and France and approached the English Channel. Turkey, sensing an opportunity

to regain lost Balkan territories, joined forces with the Central Powers. On the Eastern
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Front, German forces attacked Russia, thereby preventing Russia from intervening on

Serbia’s behalf. Austria, meanwhile, invaded Serbia and Montenegro, forcing Serbian

military forces south and across the mountains into Greece. Bulgaria and Turkey were

the only Balkan countries to side with Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I.

Italy, which had earlier sided with Germany and Austria, quickly found reasons to renege

on their agreement and disengaged themselves. France became a leading ally of Balkan

countries. Japan entered the war, declaring war on Germany. By 1917, a persistent

German submarine campaign forced the United States to declare war. By this time a

conflict that began as a localized European war had escalated to a world conflagration,

marking the historic transition from an age of European predominance to an age of global

politics.

The Germans were stopped just short of Paris and an Allied counteroffensive was

successful. Russia negotiated a ceasefire. Turkey, Bulgaria, and the Austro-Hungarian

Empire surrendered to the Allies. Revolution erupted in Germany and an armistice was

soon signed. When the smoke finally cleared, the face of Europe had been changed

forever. A total of 65 million men and women had served in the armed forces of one or

another of the involved combatants. Ten million casualties had resulted from hostilities,

plus an estimated 20 million wounded. Four empires (German, Austro-Hungarian,

Russian, and Ottoman Turk) had disappeared. In their places had arisen a hodgepodge of

governments ranging from kingdoms to sheikhdoms to constitutional republics to the

Marxist state of the USSR (The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

Aftermath of World War I:
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The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes

(Aka: Yugoslavia)

With the demise of the old Habsburg, German, Turkish, and Russian Empires, the new

Marxist socialist state of the USSR would come to dominate the eastern European scene

for the next seven decades. Juxtaposed between the USSR and western European

powers, moreover, was a new set of “buffer” states. Each of these would be greatly

influenced by, and in many instances directly controlled by, the USSR. These new nations

included Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and, on the Balkan

Peninsula, a monarchy called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes that, eleven

years later in 1929, changed its name to “Yugoslavia,” land of the south Slavs (MSNBC,

1997; Tsamaidis, 1997; Gow, 1992).

The Birth of Yugoslavia as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes

... Yugoslavia was a sovereign state containing many separately-identifying

national groups. Each brought to Yugoslavia its own legacy of the past—

including perceived adversaries and defining characteristics of nationhood.

(Duncan, 1994, p. 22)

Yugoslavia was a multinational patchwork such as could be created only by autocratic

dictate at the conclusion of a cataclysmic World War, a crazy quilt conglomeration of

seven separate ethnic groups (Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Albanians, Slavic Muslims,

Montenegrins, and Macedonians) each of whose national consciousness had crystallized,

more or less independently, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The new state,

constructed without regard to the region's economic requirements, was heterogeneous in

almost every imaginable respect: ethnically, linguistically, religiously, economically,

politically, geographically, and culturally. Moreover, the new state was surrounded by

major populations of Albanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Romanians, Greeks, and Turks,

each ethnic group with its own language, customs, suspicions of other ethnic groups, and

age-old animosities toward outsiders. And these were merely the major ethnic groups

that came into play. Other researchers have identified more than a dozen other

distinguishable ethnic national groups in the Balkans. (Duncan, 1994; Glenny paraphrasing

Babic, 1992).

Before Yugoslavia became a nation, the Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Montenegrins,

Bosnians, Macedonians, and Albanians had virtually independent histories. The

Slovenes struggled to define and defend their cultural identity for a millennium,

first under the Frankish Kingdom and then under the Austrian Empire. The

Croats of Croatia and Slavonia enjoyed a brief independence before falling under

Hungarian and Austrian domination; and the Croats in Dalmatia struggled under

Byzantine, Hungarian, Venetian, French, and Austrian rule. The Serbs, who

briefly rivaled the Byzantine Empire in medieval times, suffered 500 years of

Turkish domination before winning independence in the nineteenth century.

Their Montenegrin kinsmen lived for centuries under a dynasty of bishop-priests

and savagely defended their mountain homeland against foreign aggressors.

Bosnians turned to heresy to protect themselves from external political and

religious pressure, converted in great numbers to Islam after the Turks invaded,

and because a nuisance to Austria-Hungary in the late nineteenth century. A

hodgepodge of ethnic groups peopled Macedonia over the centuries. As the

power of the Ottoman Empire waned, the region was contested among the Serbs,

Bulgars, Greeks, and Albanians and also was a pawn among the major European
BALKANS-5 112

powers. Finally, the disputed Kosovo region, with an Albanian majority and

medieval Serbian tradition, remained an Ottoman backwater until after the Balkan

wars of the early twentieth century. (Curtis, 1992, pp. 6-7)

Yugoslavia came into being following the Paris Peace Conference and Treaty of

Versailles at the end of World War I. It was one of several new states to be created in

central and eastern Europe based on the principle of self-determination, and was to be

created out of elements of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia,

and Slovenia), the Kingdom of Serbia, Montenegro, and remnants of the old Ottoman

Empire consisting principally of several thousand square miles of Macedonian highlands.

At first the new creation was a monarchy, known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and

Slovenes (Duncan, 1994). At the time it probably seemed much more logical than it does

today, a way of uniting disparate Slavs into a single nation state, or kingdom. In central

Europe, other Slavic peoples—Czechs and Slovaks—were united into the state of

Czechoslovakia, a union that at the time also probably seemed the essence of logic

(Ziegler, 1993), but which today has broken into the separate nations of Slovakia and the

Czech Republic.

Despite common South Slav origins, the histories and cultures of Yugoslavia’s

nationalities were remarkably distinct. In the north, Slovenia and Croatia, which had been

part of the Habsburg Empire, were the most prosperous regions of Yugoslavia. They

were influenced by centuries of close contact with Austria, Hungary, Italy, Roman

Catholicism, the Latin alphabet and orientation toward western and central Europe. The

Slovenes were described by Wolff (1974, p. 39) as “... the least turbulent and volatile of

the south Slav peoples. They were deeply affected by the cosmopolitan culture of the

Hapsburg Empire, and were ... the most literate and well-read of all the south Slavic

peoples” (Wolff, 1974, p. 39). The Slovenes, advanced and cultivated relative to other

south Slavs, were sometimes called the Czechs of Yugoslavia because of their diligence

and talents.

The Croats, too, viewed themselves as vastly different than Serbs and other south

Slavs. Croats traditionally regarded themselves as highly civilized westerners, and tended

to think of Serbs as highly uncivilized easterners. Serbs, on the other hand, ignoring the

fact that Croats were often in bitter opposition to alien misgovernment, traditionally

scorned Croats for their long period of subjection to the Hungarians. Serbs affected to

despise the highly vaunted Croatian culture, and pointed instead to their own struggle

against the Turks. Wolff (1974) has conjectured that mutual suspicion and dislike

between the two peoples poisoned the whole period between the two world wars, the first

twenty years of Yugoslavia’s existence.
BALKANS-5 113

Bosnians also had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but their exposure to

Habsburg culture and rule had begun only recently. Formerly, they, along with Serbs,

Montenegrins and Macedonians, had been ruled by Ottoman Turks for 500 autocratic,

repressive years. Consequently, Bosnians, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Serbs were

less developed economically than the Croats and Slovenes. Although a Christian

majority—that of Eastern Orthodoxy—was retained in the lands once ruled by the

Ottomans, Islam was strong in both Bosnia and Kosovo, even after the end of Ottoman

rule and physical departure of the Turks. Serbs, embittered about former Muslim

domination, viewed Bosnian Muslims as Slavs who had “sold out” to Ottoman rule

(Duncan, 1994).

Troubled Beginnings for the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes

The new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes got off to an auspicious beginning,

but it was admittedly a beginning marred by disturbing undercurrents. The Kingdom’s

first leader, Peter I, died in 1921 and his son Alexander inherited control. Alexander’s

rule is perhaps the closest Serbs have ever come to the often-expressed ideal of a

“greater Serbia” covering all of the Balkan states. Alexander installed Serbs in key

positions throughout the kingdom, promoted Eastern Orthodoxy as the official religion,

imposed one official language—Serbo-Croat—and changed the country’s name to

Yugoslavia, land of the south Slavs.

From the very beginning, however, there were powerful, and undeniable,

crosscurrents of political dissension. Not surprisingly, given its regional ascension to

power in the years shortly before and after the Balkan Wars, Serbia dominated other

regions of Yugoslavia. Serbs also were the dominant population group, constituting
BALKANS-5 114

approximately 36% of the population of the new state. But Croats, comprising about 20%

of the state’s population, were the next most numerous group. Also not surprising, given

their vastly different history, heritage and culture, the Croats began almost immediately

agitating for their own national recognition. Alexander responded by brutally suppressing

Croatian nationalists. In reaction to Alexander’s policies, extremist Croats formed the

Ustasha, a Croatian terrorist organization that later would become notorious for

passionate, aggressive hostility against the whole Serbian nation. In 1934, the Ustasha

assassinated Alexander. Peter II was heir to the throne, but he was only 11 at the time

and his cousin, Prince Paul, took power, continuing Alexander’s policies.

World War II (1941 – 1945)

Twentieth-century history came from the Balkans. Here men have been isolated

by poverty and ethnic rivalry, dooming them to hate. Here politics has been

reduced to a level of near anarchy that from time to time in history has flowed up

the Danube into Central Europe. Nazism, for instance, can claim Balkan origins.

Among the flophouses of Vienna, a breeding ground of ethnic resentments close

to the southern Slavic world, Hitler learned how to hate so infectiously. (Kaplan,

1994, p. xxiii)

The peninsula’s integrity was breached first by the Italians in 1939, who invaded and

occupied Albania, seeing it as a bridgehead for further military ventures in the Balkan

interior. In 1940 the Italians invaded Greece, but were quickly thrown back into Albania.

They were poised and ready, nonetheless, when Hitler’s troops marched south in the

Spring of 1941. As Nazi occupation grew imminent, Yugoslavia’s leader, Prince Paul,

was in favor of siding with the Nazis in spite of protests by a maturing Peter II. Peter II

asserted his lineage and wrested control from Paul, but the plan backfired as the Nazis
BALKANS-5 115

rolled into Yugoslavia and Peter II was forced to flee. And thus began the war-related

partition of Yugoslavia and the rest of the Balkans.

Nothing about the Balkans is simple. Ever. Even its partition by Axis powers during

WW II was nightmarishly complex. To begin, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania joined

Germany and Italy. Italy had already occupied Albania, and now with Hitler’s consent

they joined Albania and Kosovo, forming an ethnically united Albania. Later in the war,

Albania would be occupied by Germany. Bulgaria occupied the Yugoslavian (Serbian)

and Greek parts of Macedonia, as well as part of Serbia. Serbia’s sympathies were with

the Allies, especially the Soviet Union, but the country was nonetheless overrun by

Germans. Hitler divided Slovenia between Germany, Italy, and Hungary. Italy took much

of the Croatian region of Dalmatia and constructed a protectorate over Montenegro.

Parts of Croatia went to Hungary, as did much of Vojvodina. Germany and Italy

occupied Greece and the rest of Yugoslavia. Turkey remained neutral during most of the

war. Until October 1944, Germany and Italy controlled most of the peninsula (Tsamaidis,

1997).

The Croatian Ustasha

The Ustasha, led by Ante PaveliÉ, saw the German invasion as a means whereby

they could eliminate repressive Serbian domination while also achieving Croatian national

independence. They aligned themselves with the Nazis and in return were handed control

of the so-called Independent State of Croatia, consisting of Croatia (less the regions in

Istria and Dalmatia already given to Italy), Bosnia-Herzegovina, and a small slice of

Serbia, lands in which almost half the population consisted of non-Croats, including 1.9

million Serbs and 750,000 Muslim Slavs. With encouragement from their Nazi patrons,

the Croatian Ustasha undertook a Balkan version of Hitler’s Final Solution and proceeded

to ethnically cleanse the region, enthusiastically adopting Nazi goals of racial purification

through a concerted program of ethnic eradication. Their targets were Jews, Gypsies and

Serbs. The Ustasha goal with respect to Serbs was to convert one third to Catholicism,

incarcerate or deport one third, and exterminate the remaining third. From all historical

evidence, the Ustasha undertook their mission with single-minded determination.

Although the Ustasha lacked popular support, they benefited from concentrated

pockets of sympathizers, especially in Bosnia-Herzegovina which, along with Croatia, had

often been on the receiving end of Serbian excesses during the years between the wars

and was now determined to get even (Bennett, 1995). The Ustasha exterminated most of

Bosnia’s 14,000 Jews and assaulted Serbs on an even more massive scale. Bosnia

during WW II was truly a killing field, with all combatants (German soldiers, Serbian

freedom fighters, Bosnian Muslims, Communist Partisans, and Croatian Ustasha) grimly

slaughtering each other. Recent estimates place the number of deaths (in Bosnia alone)

during WW II at 164,000 Serbs, 75,000 Muslims, and 64,000 Croats (Bosnia and

Herzegovina, 2001).

The Ustashe set out with ruthless determination to eliminate the Jews, Gypsies,

and Serbs.... Acting under careful German tutelage, the Ustashe by 1944 had

transported many of the 30,000 Jews living in the “Independent State of Croatia”

to Nazi labor or death camps, where almost all perished. Some Jews survived by

fleeing to the forests ... and fighting against the occupying forces. A few Jews

remained in Zagreb, Sarajevo, and other towns of the former Ustasha state, but
BALKANS-5 116

by the end of the war their numbers had been reduced by 90% or more. (Donia &

Fine, 1994, p. 139)

Serbs were far more numerous than either Jews or Gypsies, however, and the

Ustasha attacked Serbs with a vindictiveness born of years of oppression suffered under

King Alexander and Prince Paul. In their vendetta against Serbs, the Ustasha

conveniently ignored the fact that Croats and Serbs share a common Slavic genetic pool.

The Croats were, in essence, murdering their own people when they killed Serbs.

The Ustashe brutally killed many Serbs in their churches, streets, and villages in

front of other inhabitants. (Donia & Fine, 1994, p. 139)

The Ustashas viewed being a Serb as an act of political aggression against their

Croatian state, and [planned] to kill a third, expel a third to Serbia, and convert

the remainder to Catholicism.... they began in June, July and August 1941 a cycle

of massacres which continued throughout the Second World War.... Bands of

Ustashas turned up unannounced at Serb villages and wiped out every last man,

woman and child. The orgy of violence then continued at concentration camps

which the Ustashas set up to eliminate their remaining opponents, both Serbs

and non-Serbs... At Jasenovac, the most infamous camp ... [t]here were no gas

chambers, nor were the Ustashas willing to waste bullets on their victims.

Instead, death was by beating, starvation or knives. (Bennett, 1995, pp. 44, 46)

Thus, one Slavic group (Croats) were pitted against another Slavic group (Serbs) with

what proved to be savage ferocity. Estimates of the number of Serbs killed by the

Ustasha during WW II range from 200,000 to 750,000 (Duncan, 1994; Zametica, 1992, 6-

7). No accurate tallies were kept, of course, and to this day mass graves are occasionally

uncovered (Mojzes, 1995). One historian has noted that during World War II, “... as
BALKANS-5 117

many as a million Yugoslavs died at the hands of their own countrymen” (Zametica, 1992,

6-7). To make matters even worse (and more complicated), yet another Slavic group,

Bosnian Muslims, often cooperated with the Ustasha in their genocidal campaigns. In

fact, the genocidal struggle between Serbs and Croats was felt most strongly in BosniaHerzegovina. Collaborations between Ustasha and Muslim elements was particularly

common in Herzegovina and in eastern and southern Bosnia. Throughout BosniaHerzegovina, fatality rates among Serbs was higher than among Muslims. It has been

said (Glenny, 1992) that four Serbs died for every Moslem, a ratio bitterly remembered

today throughout Bosnia by monuments listing Serbs who died fighting for freedom during

WW II. Muslims also reportedly served in the German army, an act that incensed Serbs

almost beyond measure.

The Chetniks

Serbs retaliated by forming irregular bands of guerrilla fighters called Chetniks

(Duncan, 1994, p. 24), which initially constituted the main resistance force to both German

and Italian occupation, as well as the primary mechanism of retaliation against Ustasha

depredations. Chetnik strongholds were in Italian-controlled areas of Croatia and BosniaHerzegovina, the very areas that half a century later would again become the center of

hostilities in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

Ustasha atrocities aroused great antagonism and incited the desire for revenge

by Serbs. In retaliation, Serbian Chetnik units slaughtered Croats, Muslims, and

others suspected of Ustasha sympathies. (Donia & Fine, 1994, p.140)

The Chetniks took their name from the armed bands of Serbs who, as bandits,

had challenged Ottoman rule in Serbia, Bosnia, and Macedonia.... Chetnik leaders

espoused a Greater Serbian ideology and hoped to restore the Serbian royal

family as rulers of a reconstituted Yugoslavia. (Donia & Fine, 1994, p. 143)

Chetniks, however, were not notably successful against either occupation forces or the

Croatian Ustasha.

First. . .the Chetniks were committed to a strategy of delaying active resistance

until the Allies invaded the Balkans; then they were to rise and harass Axis

communications lines in support of the broader Allied effort. Furthermore, [they

were] deterred from active resistance by Hitler’s ... directive of September 1941,

that 100 Serbs should die for every German soldier killed by resistance forces.

(Donia & Fine, 1994, pp. 143-144)

The Partisans

Another group of resistance fighters, the Partisans (or Partizans), was led by Josip

Broz Tito, who began his communist-backed uprising in 1941 in opposition to German rule

in Serbia. Although Tito was a Croat-Slovene by birth, his Communist revolt was carried

by a massive reservoir of recruits from among Serb peasantry who had escaped Ustasha

genocide. As the war progressed, Tito steadily expanded his organization, attracting

adherents from much of Yugoslavia. By 1943, the communist Partisans consisted of a

multinational fighting force with widespread popular support among (non-Croat) south

Slav peoples.
BALKANS-5 118

A War Within A War: The Yugoslavian Civil War During WW II

At first, the Chetniks allied themselves with the Partisans, but the political

philosophies of the two resistance groups became progressively polarized and Chetniks

eventually came to see Partisans as more evil than Nazis. In an effort to destroy the

Partisans whatever the cost, Chetniks began to tolerate and even collaborate with their

German and Italian occupiers (Donia & Fine, 1994, p. 144). The result was a state of

almost unimaginable mayhem, as a full-blown civil war (Chetnik against Partisan) erupted

within the ongoing effort to repel German and Italian occupation forces. And as if a civil

war within a world war was not sufficiently complicated, these two major conflicts were

overlain by efforts of the Ustasha, who were busy killing Serbs of every stripe, Chetnik

and Partisan alike. Thus, Partisans were killing Germans, Italians, Ustasha and Chetniks

while Chetniks were killing Partisans while sometimes killing Germans, Italians and

Ustasha and other times collaborating with them against their arch enemy, the Communist

Partisans. Amidst the chaos, Muslims systematically eliminated Serbs whenever the

opportunity arose.

In Western Europe and the United States, World War II was experienced

principally as a colossal struggle against Nazi Germany and its fascist allies. In

the Yugoslav lands, however, the war was multidimensional, involving three

distinct conflicts. First, the war was a struggle of the occupied against the

occupiers, a battle of Yugoslav resistance movements against the Germans and

Italians. Second, it was a civil war involving rival national extremists and the

competing domestic resistance movements. Finally, it became a struggle for a

revolutionary social transformation, since the Communist Party of Tito and his

partisans espoused an ideology that advocated an end to the old order. These

three conflicts were interwoven and at times indistinguishable. They resulted in
BALKANS-5 119

violence and devastation of unprecedented proportions. (Donia & Fine, 1994, p.

136)

Collusion with the Germans, however, cost the Chetniks dearly. It led to an erosion of

popular support. Moreover, it lost them the support of the Allies. Beginning in 1943,

Britain and the Allies shifted their support to the Partisans. When the Chetniks lost Allied

support, they also lost any real hope of prevailing in their domestic struggle with the

Partisans. In essence, civil war victory was handed to the Communists, and the fate of

post-WW II Yugoslavia was sealed.

The communists, led by Josip Broz Tito, won because they were the best

organized fighting force in Yugoslavia and because they had the most to offer

most Yugoslavs.... Tito’s “Partisans” ... fought more often and more

convincingly than the main Serb resistance force, the Chetniks. The latter

initially waited for an Allied invasion which they could support; later, they

collaborated with the Axis powers to fight the Partisans, something that also cost

them support. (Gow, 1992, pp. 21-22)

Tito’s Partisan forces had yet another card to play, one that found immense popularity

among Yugoslavia’s diverse population.

At the core of the Partisans’ appeal was the nationality policy of the Communist

Party.... Unlike the discredited assumption of royal Yugoslavia that the South

Slav peoples would homogenize into a single Yugoslav nationality, the

Communist-led Partisans asserted that the nations of Yugoslavia were distinct

and should be treated equally. The principle of national equality stood in

contrast both to the royal Yugoslav government’s practices of Greater Serbian

centralism, endorsed and continued by [the] ... Chetniks, and to the extreme

Croatian nationalism of the Ustashe, who aimed by one means or another to

create an all-Croatian state.... the Partisan policy was a refreshing blend of

national liberation and a centrally-imposed discipline that could preclude

nationalist excesses. (Donia & Fine, 1994, pp. 146-147, 148)

By the end of WW II, Tito and the Partisans seemed to have it all going for them:

widespread popular appeal, support from both Western allies and the Communist Party,

and a utopian vision designed to treat all ethnic groups equally and thereby “...preclude

national excesses.”
BALKANS-5 120
BALKANS-6 121

CHAPTER 6

THE “MODERN” ERA

During World War II, while Yugoslavia was involved in a desperate attempt to throw

off the yoke of Hitler’s fascist rule, its people was also embroiled in a bloody civil war that

would determine the nature of post-war Yugoslavian government. The two conflicts, a

war against fascism and bloody internal civil strife, raged simultaneously, and the effect

upon Yugoslavian infrastructure, as well as upon its civilian population, was devastating.

Hundreds of thousands of Yugoslav civilians died during WW II, possibly as many as a

million. Tragically and ironically, most died not at the hands of invading soldiers, nor as a

result of aerial bombardments, but rather at the hands of fellow Yugoslavs as a result of

vicious inter-ethnic vendettas. Croats killed Serbs who killed Slavic Muslims who killed

Serbs who killed Partisans who killed Chetniks who killed .... It was an endless, vicious,

and (at least to outsiders) senseless circle of hatred and animosity.

Even as hostilities raged, however, the Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito was busy

planning a post-war communist state that would break the endless circle of senseless

death, that would ensure equal treatment for all ethnic groups, and in which all wartime

atrocities would be forgotten. In 1943, when the proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel”

was first glimpsed through granting of Allied support for Partisan combat efforts, Tito met

with a coalition of his supporters and laid the foundations for the new post-war state:

In the event of a communist victory Yugoslavia would become a federation

consisting of Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Montenegro and BosniaHerzegovina. Exactly two years after the ... meeting a communist-dominated

constituent assembly ... proclaimed the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia.

(Bennett, 1995, p. 53)

The division of the country into federal units, or republics:

... was not meant to divide the country but to create as equitable a balance as

possible between Yugoslavia’s peoples and to prevent conflict over disputed

territories. Borders between republics were drawn up on a mixture of ethnic and

historic principles. In this way, Macedonians won recognition of their separate

national identity and their own republic. Montenegro, too, became a republic in

its own right in respect of its independent history, while Bosnia-Herzegovina

maintained its former Ottoman contours including a segment of the Adriatic

coast. The border between Croatia and Vojvodina meandered between villages

depending on whether they had a Croat or a Serb majority. Kosovo became an

autonomous region and Vojvodina an autonomous province within Serbia

because of the large non-Serb populations living there. (Bennett, 1995, p. 53)
BALKANS-6 122

Constructing the Communist State

and Reuniting Old Enemies

During World War II, royalist Chetniks had hoped for an Allied invasion in the

Balkans. It never came, of course, and when liberation did come it was delivered by the

Red Army. Unquestionably, liberation of the peninsula by Soviet forces did much to

shape the future of the region. Another factor was willingness on the part of Western

leaders, specifically Winston Churchill, to use the Balkans as a bargaining chip in efforts

to improve relations with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Churchill conceded dominant

influence in Romania and Bulgaria to the USSR in return for Western hegemony in

Greece. It was agreed that influence in Yugoslavia and Hungary would be shared

equally. This unofficial agreement played directly into the hands of Josip Broz Tito, who

wasted no time in establishing the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a multinational

federation of sovereign states, wherein no single nation was to be allowed to dominate.

Tito’s view was that all Yugoslav peoples had contributed equally to the defeat of

fascism, and that all peoples would to be allowed to join the new state free from any

“historical mortgage.”

Upon its liberation from the occupying fascist forces and a dreadful retaliation

against the “national traitors”—primarily the ustashe and chetniks and the

Slovene White Guard—Yugoslavia emerged a Communist-ruled country. The

borders between the states were drawn by the Communist Party (some say by

Tito personally) and were without discussion or question accepted—some

thought forever. The new federal system seemed to work for the next thirty years

.... Tito followed a very careful policy of balancing all national claims and

conflicts .... to make sure that no one group could claim that it had been

discriminated against. (Mozjes, 1995, pp.. 75-76)
BALKANS-6 123

NATO Members

1949 Belgium*

1949 Canada*

1999 Czech Republic

1949 Denmark*

1949 France*

1955 Germany

1952 Greece

1999 Hungary

1949 Iceland*

1949 Italy*

1949 Luxembourg*

1949 The Netherlands*

1949 Norway*

1999 Poland

1949 Portugal*

1982 Spain

1952 Turkey

1949 United Kingdom*

1949 United States*

*Original signatory

Tito reunited Serbs and Croats who had fought each other so viciously during World

War II. Macedonians also were granted ethnic recognition. For a short time following

Tito’s initial success in unifying Yugoslavia, it seemed possible that the entire Balkan

Peninsula might be united under a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist banner. It was a prospect

that received serious consideration (Balkans, 2001). Political unity, however, required

ideological conformity, and that was unattainable, even under the powerful influence of

communism. Following WW II, Yugoslavia was the dominant political force in the

Balkans, and the only way Tito would accept additional countries into his federation was if

they agreed to enter as additional republics in the south Slav state of Yugoslavia. This

was unacceptable to Bulgarians, who saw themselves as equals to Yugoslavs, and this

was much the perspective of Romanians as well. Albania, too, had reservations about

joining a Slav-dominated federation. In the end, prospects of a Balkan federation died not

from internal squabbling (which, given time, probably would have ended it anyway), but

from a powerful external force: Joseph Stalin. By 1947 he had become wary of the

power base Tito was building. That same year he vetoed a Balkan federation. A year

later, he expelled Yugoslavia from the communist camp.

The Global Balance of Power

Following World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the

world’s two “super-powers.” Their conflict of interests, which began as a conflict over

central Europe and the divided Germany, became known as the Cold War. The Soviets

feared that the US would attempt to restore a liberal economic and political system in

eastern Europe, and the US feared that the USSR would overrun western Europe. And

indeed the communists made a good faith effort to

accomplish this latter goal. In 1947 and early 1948,

Soviet-dominated governments were set up in Bulgaria,

Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. In

southeastern Europe, only Yugoslavia, due in large part

to Tito’s refusal to be dominated by any outside

influence, retained a degree of independence. Many

observers saw Yugoslavia as a strategic “steppingstone”

toward Soviet achievement of its western European

territorial aspirations. Yugoslavia turned out to be,

however, a steppingstone with a very slippery surface.

In the initial years following World War II,

Yugoslavia was a faithful supporter of the Cominform, a

Moscow-based association through which all communist

parties could be controlled. In 1948, however, partly due

to his personal suspicion and jealousy of Tito, Stalin

expelled Yugoslavia from the Cominform, citing two

primary reasons: 1)Yugoslavia’s display of independence

on international issues, and 2) its rejection of Soviet

control within Yugoslavia. These fundamental

ideological differences led to an irreconcilable break with

the Soviet Union in 1949. Following this break, Yugoslavia looked to the West for support

and began to lead the developing movement of “nonaligned” nations (Gow, 1992). At the

time, a primary aim of US policy was to “contain” the USSR by a series of encircling
BALKANS-6 124

Part of the Communist dogma

in eastern Europe was that

the fraternal cooperation of

Socialist states should not be

marred by national conflict or

territorial disputes.

alliances and bases. Tito, however, chose to walk a thin line of “nonalignment.” Though

he was ostensibly free of Soviet control after 1949, Tito never stopped being a communist,

nor did he significantly abate his longstanding programs of socialization and centralized

economic controls. Consequently, US bases were never built on Yugoslavian soil, nor did

the two countries enter into formal defense alliances. On the other hand, to protect

European interests, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established in

1949. Only in recent years have east European nations been admitted to NATO, (Poland,

Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999), and the organization contains no Balkan

nations.

The Suppression of Nationalism

The new communist government in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was

built on a base of “Brotherhood and Unity,” a concept with widespread appeal to a people

weary of seemingly endless bloodshed in the aftermath of WW II. Tito’s rendition of

communism held out the prospect of equality to all minorities who had experienced

injustice in the past, regardless of ethnicity or nationality. His federation was promoted as

the constitutional embodiment of equality for all peoples within Yugoslavia.(Gow, 1992).

Titoist communism suppressed conflicts based on ethnicity, as citizens were dealt with by

“class and mass” rather than as members of specific ethnic groups. Part of the

Communist dogma in eastern Europe was that the fraternal cooperation of Socialist states

should not be marred by national conflict or territorial disputes.

Tito was remarkably successful in achieving his goals of unity. By focusing on the goals

of the federation and suppressing more narrow-based expression of nationalism, his

policies also minimized overt expressions of ethnic biases. From the end of WW II in

1945 until his death in 1980, there is little question that

his strict management of nationalistic tendencies

successfully reduced overt ethnic strife within

Yugoslavia. Tito’s program in communist Yugoslavia

emphasized self-management, using a model of

decision-making that was based on an industrial context.

His policies promoted secularism, gender equality, and

ethnic coexistence.

 [World War II] losses on all sides meshed politics and ethnicity so inseparably

that burying the details along with the victims appeared the most feasible course

to those Yugoslavs of all ethnicities who rallied together after the war to

reconstruct the country along the lines of the Titoist compromise: a federation of

republics, interlinked through the Communist organizational structure, in the

spirit of the slogan “brotherhood and unity.” . . . The party continually used

accusations of nationalism to stifle open discussion of ethnic matters. (Denich,

1994, p. 370)

And if verbal accusations failed to stifle dissent, there was always the purge, a series

of which were applied ruthlessly not only in Yugoslavia to root out suspected Titoist

opposition (“Cominformists”) but also in other communist-dominated Balkan countries

such as Albania, Bulgaria and Romania where trouble-makers were likely to be called

“Titoists.” Whatever label the victims received, the effect on the larger population was
BALKANS-6 125

The banning of the play

“The Pigeon Cave”

represented Tito’s

policy of suppressing

reminders of WW II

interethnic conflicts, in

the interests of

promoting a multiethnic

state.

invariant. Purges produced terror, intimidation, and abject subservience, all in the name of

“brotherhood and unity.”

Beneath the ostensibly tranquil surface, however, old ethnic hatreds were smoldering,

even with the overlay of threat and intimidation imposed by totalitarian governments.

Through the Titoist decades, scattered through the republics of both Croatia and BosniaHerzegovina, were unmarked burial sites and limestone caves that entombed the remains

of tens of thousands of Serbians who had been massacred by the Ustasha during WW II.

Local villagers knew of the sites and quietly remembered the dead and the horror of that

time, but Communist authorities discouraged villagers from openly commemorating the

dead and strictly forbade opening the sites and removing the remains for proper reburial

according to Orthodox rituals (Denich, 1994).

During the early 1980s, a play called “The Pigeon Cave” (Golubnajaca) was

banned after being performed in Serbia. The drama portrays peasant life in a

Dalmatian mountain village in the region known as Krajina [in Croatia], where

both Orthodox Christian Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats live along the border

that once divided Christian realms from the

Ottoman Empire. In the background of the village

looms the limestone cavern that the villagers call

the pigeon-cave, which conceals pigeon nests and

the skeletal remains of the villagers’ relatives who

were massacred during the Second World War.

The villagers are Serbs; their relatives were

massacred by Croats from neighboring villages

who had joined the nationalist Ustasha movement

that ruled the so-called independent state of

Croatia, established in 1941 under the wing of Hitler. That Croatian state

extended the Nazi genocidal policy to remove from its territory Serbs, in addition

to Jews and Gypsies. The banning of the play represented the policy of Titoist

Yugoslavia to suppress reminders of that vicious interethnic conflict, in the

interests of a multiethnic state ... (Denich, 1994, p. 367)

The Titoist legacy has been characterized as one of “divide and rule.” Both Croatia

and Serbia, especially, were kept in check, while “nation-building” was encouraged for the

Macedonians (to offset competing claims by Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece) and, in the

1960s, for the Muslim “nation” in Bosnia (to balance Serb-Croat rivalry there). Major

attempts to reformulate the national problem in Yugoslavia through a democratic process

were crushed. In 1971, the crackdown on the Croatian Spring reform movement and the

purge of its leading figures destroyed the last chance to provide an answer to Croatia’s

national aspirations within democratized federal institutions. The following year, the liberal

Serbian leadership was purged—an action that paved the way for the eventual succession

of Slobodan Milosevic almost twenty years later (International Commission, 1996).
BALKANS-6 126

By 1974, nonetheless, political parties in each of the constituent elements of the

federation were demanding increased self-government. In 1974, the Yugoslav

Constitution was amended to shift both economic and political power from the federal

center in Belgrade to the six republics and two autonomous provinces (Kosovo and

Vojvodina). Veto power was vested in each constituent republic, an action that was later

criticized as “. . . always searching for the lowest common denominator and . . . paralysis

of the political system” (International Commission, 1996, p. 24). The Communist party

was also federalized at this time; and rather than being a unifying factor for Yugoslavia, it

divided the federation along national lines. Tito’s solution to increased demands for selfgovernment among his constituent republics was to preserve the federation while ensuring

that no nationality—no matter how politically frustrated or economically disadvantaged—

would feel its existence to be threatened. Veto power, however, was a poor mechanism

for realizing his goals. Unwittingly, Tito had laid the groundwork for the end of his

federation. It would be another fifteen years, not until after Tito’s death and the

dissolution of the Soviet Union, before the constituent republics would deliver their

ultimate vetoes, in the form of votes for secession.

Tito’s Death and the Rebirth of Nationalism

In a sense, Tito was walking a precarious tightrope, on an international level threading

his way between the demands of megalithic eastern and western power blocs without

ever complying fully with the wishes of either side, while on the domestic front constantly

juggling the often conflicting wishes of his constituent republics, making a concession one

day first to this republic, then next day to a different one. Tito was a master manipulator,
BALKANS-6 127

and for many years he successfully imposed his will, but in the end there were too many

conflicting demands, and eventually nobody was satisfied with the outcome. Most of all,

there was rampant dissatisfaction with the stagnant economic system. Communism was

first and foremost a dogma based on materialism, and when, year after year, the promised

enhancements in standard of living never arrived but instead progressively deteriorated,

the people grew weary of all the false promises and looked for alternatives. A commonly

available alternative, available equally to every major ethnic group, was incipient

nationalism. The following excerpt was written from the perspective of dissatisfied Serbs,

but with a switch in ethnic identities and a change in issues, it could apply equally to

Croatians, Slovenes, Kosovo Albanians, Macedonians, or Montenegrins.

To ... many ... Serbs, Tito’s Yugoslavia signified—like the former Turkish

Empire—just another anti-Serbian plot. This was because Yugoslav nationalism,

as Tito (a half-Croat, half-Slovene) defined it, meant undercutting the power of

the numerically dominant Serbs in order to placate other groups, particularly the

Croats and the Albanians. By giving the Albanians their own autonomous

province, Kosovo, and by placing this province within the Yugoslav Republic of

Serbia, Tito thought he had reconciled the aspirations of both the Albanians and

the Serbs. The Serbs thought differently. Why should these Muslim foreigners,

who came only 300 years ago to Old Serbia, the historic heartland of our

nation, have autonomy there? Never! (Kaplan, 1993, pp. 38-39)

Complicating the overall economic issue was the immense differences in standard of

living among the constituent republics (see Figure 5). These differences were particularly

acute between relatively affluent Slovenia and Croatia in the northwest, and less

economically advanced Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia to the

south.

In the post-war communist federation, the imbalance between Slovene

sophistication and the developing-world conditions prevailing in Kosovo,

southern Serbia and Macedonia could only be rectified by massive state control

of the economy. This created resentment in the prosperous north, the fruits of

whose productivity were transferred to the dusty climates of the south where

they rotted in the sun. Above all, a taut mistrust grew up between Slovenia and

Croatia, where a more industrious work ethic was the tradition, and Serbia, the

borderland of the Ottoman empire’s corrupt economic values. (Glenny

paraphrasing Babic, 1992)

There was another bugaboo just beneath the surface. Communist rule involved

ideological control over representations of history. Any horrifying events that would

disrupt interethnic co-operation could not be mentioned, unless it was as part of a

collective category, such as “victims of fascism,” or “foreign occupiers and domestic

traitors.” The communists commemorated mass deaths at the Jasenovac camp, the

largest of many Croatian Ustasha internment site, rather than providing details about

individual deaths in hundreds of other locations. The pigeon caves and other unmarked

burial sites scattered throughout Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were quietly

remembered by local villagers who had survived the massacres. Bereaved villagers,

however, were forbidden by the communist authorities from opening burial sites and

removing the remains for proper reburial (Denich, 1994). Despite its consistent efforts,

the Titoist regime was never able to put to rest the antagonisms that had led to the

outburst of genocidal violence during World War II (Denich, 1994).
BALKANS-6 128

From the viewpoint of the Titoist regime, the danger was not so much in the

genocide itself, and its reminders, but in the nationalist ideologies that led to the

World War II fratricide and persisted like a dark shadow during what appeared to

be the successful establishment of a multinational state. (Denich, 1994, p. 370)

Tito’s communist party consistently forbade the open discussion of ethnic matters.

As mentioned earlier, communist dogma explicitly decreed that the fraternal cooperation

of Socialist states should not be marred by national conflict or territorial disputes and the

open discussion of ethnicity and ethnic-related problems was deemed a dangerous threat

to fraternal cooperation for the greater good. The official party line was that ethnicity

was irrelevant. Its mere discussion was brutally squelched. Beneath the surface,

however, in literature, in history, and in national traditions, were the memories of WW II

atrocities. They were suppressed in public but readily available in private. Indeed, it is

possible that the restrictions on public expression may have encouraged the private

expression of pre-existing nationalist ideas and sentiments (Denich, 1994).

When the inability to mourn is chronic, grievances connected with it are passed

on from the older to the younger generation. The generation unable to mourn its

losses seems to pass on its unfinished business . . . . [T]he third generation is

often ready to erase the humiliation suffered by grandparents . . . . At this point,

the original trauma has been mythologized and historical truth has been replaced

by emotional narrative, which in a group is apt to be altogether one-sided.

(Volkan, 1988, p. 176)

Tito and his personal authority were supported by a web of political offices designed

to prevent the consolidation of excessive power, and to forestall the chance that either

communist or nationalist “demagogues” would ever be given the chance to seize control

of the country. As long as Tito was alive, his Byzantine system, although progressively

experiencing strains from an inherently unworkable economic system, nonetheless held

together. When he died, however, it was only a matter of time until it began to unravel.

Without Tito’s overwhelming personal influence, this diffuse system left no one with

enough power or authority to act decisively, no one who could be held responsible for

crisis, chaos, and the lack of an adequate political response in the face of escalating

crises.

After Tito’s death in 1980, rising tides of nationalism swept through Serbia, Croatia,

Slovenia, Bosnia, and other republics of the Yugoslav federation. It seemed that

everywhere nationalistic sentiments were simultaneously coalescing and finding

expression. Before Yugoslavia fragmented, there had been a trend for more and more

people to classify themselves as “Yugoslavs”—as citizens of Yugoslavia—rather than

identifying themselves as “Serb,” “Croat,” or such. As a result of rising nationalistic

sentiments, however, this process reversed. Increasing numbers of people began

reverting to the older ethnic labels, revealing that these ethnic nationalisms must not have

been far beneath the surface.

The banned performance of “The Pigeon Cave” was but a forerunner of events

that became frequent and widely publicized during the late 1980s, when

nationalism burst from its hiding places and swept people by the hundreds of

thousands into mass movements, then elections, then into confrontations that

escalated, with astonishing speed, to civil war. (Denich, 1994, p. 367)

Tito was unique among world communist leaders, recognizing and adapting to the

power of ethnic nationalism. Following his death, the genie of ethnic nationalism was
BALKANS-6 129

again out of the bottle. Within a few years after Tito’s death, the compromises that had

enabled the Titoist system to weave Yugoslavia’s ethnic mosaic into a common state

were failing. Within the constituent republics of Yugoslavia, rivalries were growing. In

particular, the Serbian intellectuals began advancing the notion that too many Serbian

national interests had been relinquished in exchange for bargains that were no longer

being kept by the leaders in the other republics (Denich, 1994).

In one sense, Tito’s death can be thought of as the event that precipitated the

fragmentation of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav federation was in many ways Tito’s personal

construction. More than any other individual he was responsible for its formation and

early direction. Certainly his demise was instrumental to the federation’s fragmentation,

but viewed from a larger perspective, his demise was probably not the definitive event. In

a larger sense, Yugoslavia’s fragmentation was only one small part of an historical

dialectic set in place almost a hundred years earlier with the Russian revolution, a dialectic

that was eventually to culminate with the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself. By

1985, only five years after Tito’s death, a new generation of Soviet leaders represented by

Mikhail Gorbachev had come to power in the USSR. Gorbachev and US President

Reagan agreed to cut back on the presence of both super-powers in Europe, and to

moderate their ideological competition. Gorbachev’s concessions were symptoms of far

greater issues at home, and less than a decade after Tito’s demise, the communist system

itself slipped irrevocably into its own death throes. The closing decade of the twentieth

century witnessed the fall of communism in Poland and Germany, foretelling a far more

rapid conclusion to the Cold War than anyone could have imagined possible. The Berlin

Wall fell, and the two Germanys were reunited. As the eyes and ears of the world tuned

to the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia and their struggle to be free of the

USSR, many states within the Soviet Union also began yearning for independence. Many

former Soviet-Bloc states, including Balkan nations, finally faced up the fact that

communism as an economic system was not working, and struggled with the transition

from communism to capitalism, drawing intense concern and interest from the rest of the

world.

Thus, while the fragmentation of Yugoslavia was arguably inevitable, the violently

bizarre particulars of its unraveling was peculiarly “Balkanesque,” aided and abetted by

avaricious politicians and particularly virulent strains of ethnocentrism. It is well to take a

look at some particulars of the underlying ethnocentrism, for these are the ideas that were

waiting to “burst forth” as Yugoslavia came unraveled.

Serbian Ethnocentrism

For much of the 20th Century, Serbian intelligentsia advanced strong ethnocentric

views tied to political activism and created a “history” emphasizing the greatness of Serbs.

For example, Jovan CvijiÉ, a sociologist and theorist of Serbian expansionism, attempted

to establish the superiority of what he called the Dinaric race, and stressed the necessity

of transforming other Yugoslav types into subordinate groups under the leadership of

Serbia.

According to CvijiÉ, the best situated of all Balkan “natural regions” for

geographic and geopolitical points of view is the region of the Morava and

Vardar rivers, the region of contemporary Serbia and Yugoslav Macedonia. The

dominating part of this central region is “umadija, where the uprisings against

Turkish domination started and where the Serb state of the nineteenth century
BALKANS-6 130

It goes without saying that

such a situation hampers

tremendously the

normalization of the

relations between Serbs and

other peoples of Yugoslavia

Milan Sufflay, a Croatian

historian and sociologist ,

taught that Croatians had

nothing in common with

Orthodox Balkan Serbs, and

that a durable union between

the two nations was an

unrealistic expectation.

originated. This region is the best in the Balkans not only from the geographical

and economic points of view but—and this is most important—also because it is

settled by the best type of southern Slav, the “umadija variety of the Dinaric

race. (Toma”iÉ, 1974, p. 54)

Writing in 1922, CvijiÉ defined the qualities of the Dinaric man as consisting of:

... live spirit, sharp intelligence, deep feelings, rich fantasy, impulsiveness

provoked by nonmaterial motives, national pride, and the ideas of honor, justice

and freedom. Dinaric man is a born statesman, and his main urge is to create a

powerful state, to resurrect the “Czardom of Du”an,” the medieval Serb political

community abolished by the Turks in the battle of Kosovo. (Toma”iÉ, 1974, pp.

54-55)

Toma”iÉ (1941) recounted CvijiÉ’s view of other racial types of southern Slavs in

comparison to Dinaric man. The most inferior was the Pannonian type to which belonged

the majority of Croatians and some Serbs. In his view, the Croatian peasants, with no

land of their own, were ordinary serfs who did not play any role in politics. They were

seen as having degenerated nationally under the cultural

influence of the Germans and were culturally and

politically separatist, distrustful and suspicious, lacking in

national consciousness, having no democratic feelings, and

greatly under the influence of the Catholic clergy. In a

similar vein, CvijiÉ considered the Slovenes to be strongly

under the influence of German culture and the Catholic

clergy. CvijiÉ also considered the Macedonians to be

inferior to the Dinaric type, but with some qualities considered socially useful and with the

potential of development when brought into contact with Dinaric man—confirmed when

Serbia “liberated” Macedonia. “In short, according to CvijiÉ’s findings, all other inferior

types in Yugoslavia are going to be transformed into useful subjected groups under the

leadership of Serbia” (Toma”iÉ, 1941, p. 55).

CvijiÉ’s ideas greatly influenced Serbia’s cultural and political life, and her

historians, sociologists, and politicians undertook studies and political activities

in accordance with them. (Toma”iÉ, 1941, p. 55)

CvijiÉ’s ideas influenced Serbia’s leading historian, Professor StanojeviÉ, as well as

another sociologist and historian, D. J. PopoviÉ, and

a professor of economics, Dragoljub JovanoviÉ, all

of whom published in the late 1920s and the early to

mid-1930s. According to StanojeviÉ,

. . . of all tribes which in the early Middle Ages

settled the Balkan Peninsula the Serb tribe

excelled in “physical and moral qualities and

became as early as that time the representative of

the Serb race and the bearer and propagator of

all Serb racial qualities.” (St. StanojeviÉ, 1934, Postanak srpskog narodo,

Beograd, cited by Toma”iÉ, 1941, pp. 55-56)

According to Toma”iÉ (1941), these ideas and attitudes of Serb superiority were

accepted and persisted in the minds of many Serb intellectuals, becoming a part of their

common culture. Some intellectuals who otherwise professed leftist and socially radical

ideas were also strongly affected by them. “It goes without saying that such a situation
BALKANS-6 131

hampers tremendously the normalization of the relations between Serbs and other peoples

of Yugoslavia” (p. 57).

Croatian Ethnocentrism

In Croatia, another set of influences led to a fundamentally different world view and

completely different nationalistic orientation:

Since the days when Croatians settled on the shores of the eastern Adriatic, they

were in constant contact with Latin culture, the Roman Church, and western

European civilization. (Toma”iÉ, 1941, p. 60)

There was a history of Croatian towns being formed and settled by merchants and

craftsmen from neighboring countries, primarily Swiss and Austrian Germans, and some

Hungarians, Italians, Greeks, and Serbs. Subsequently, under pressure from the Austrian

Germanization policy, many German-speaking state employees and army officers settled

in Croatia’s towns, with the result that the German language was common. In the course

of the development of Croatian nationalism during the 19th century, the immigrants and

their descendants were gradually assimilated; and those of Catholic faith identified with

Croatians, while the Greek Orthodox adherents identified with Serbs. Although

Catholicism was dominant in Croatia, the Serb Orthodox merchants prospered; and Serb

politicians supported an Austrian policy of destroying Croatia’s autonomy—factors which

led to the intensification of Serbo-Croatian conflict (Toma”iÉ, 1941).

This conflict inspired the ideas, works, and activities of Milan “ufflay, a Croatian

historian, sociologist, and politician, who stressed the racial, cultural, and mental

differences between Serbs and Croatians. In 1928 he argued that a durable union

between the two nations was an unrealistic expectation. He suggested that as Catholics

and Westerners, Croatians had nothing in common with Orthodox Balkan Serbs

(Toma”iÉ, 1941).

Even a Balkan federation would have a deteriorating effect on Croatian culture,

because in such a federation Croatians would lose the best they have: their

sense for Western civilization and their sense for humaneness. (Toma”iÉ, 1941,

p. 64, referring to “ufflay, 1928)

According to “ufflay, the collective memory of a people was important for the

preservation of the culture. He felt that the survival of the Croatian nation was important

not only for Croatians but also for the Western world, due to Croatia’s location on the

frontier of the Mediterranean West. Croatian nationalism was necessary for the

preservation of all that was good in western European civilization. His view of the

conflict between Croats and Serbs was that the Serbs drew their strength from the past

and one could not fight that world view with ideas of the future (Toma”iÉ, 1941).

Although “ufflay was assassinated for his ideas, they became the backbone for part

of the Croatian separatist movement. According to Toma”iÉ (1941), “ufflay’s ideas

gave rise to differing groups. There were those who believed that Croatians, unlike Serbs,

were not of Slavic but of German origin, and that Gothic tribes formed the first Croatian

political community. There were also those who stressed the opposition between the

Roman Catholicism of Croatians vs. the Greek Orthodoxy of the Serbs, advocating the

necessity of an ever-close relation of Croatians with the Vatican as a means of self

preservation.
BALKANS-6 132

The Serbian

press and

government

leaders called the

Croat people

ustashoid and

genocidal ...

... while the Croats

and Slovenes

thundered that all

Serbs everywhere

and at all times were

hegemonistic,

byzantine, imperial,

and Communist.

“ufflay is not a contemporary theorist. His work dates back almost a hundred years

and the same can be said about CvijiÉ, StanojeviÉ, PopoviÉ, and JovanoviÉ in Serbia. It

would be comforting to think that such racist drivel had long since been buried in the

sandbox of time. Sadly, such optimism is not entirely justified. Without doubt, “ufflay’s

theories influenced the actions of Croatian Ustasha terrorists during WW II. How much

it influenced them is a matter of conjecture, but many observers say that such overtly

racist and demagogic theorizing has historically been closely linked to Balkan political

activities. This was certainly the view of Toma”iÉ (1941). Every ethnic group, it seems,

has an oral history that chronicles its past greatness, future promise, and inherent

superiority.

The Belgrade regime headed by Slobodan Milosevic clearly has demonstrated

racism, expediency, a ruthless will to power, and a disregard for the West’s

ethical standards, as evidenced by all the cease-fire violations, the bombing of

civilian targets, and other acts that have rightly been condemned by the West as

crimes against humanity. To be sure, the Croats and Bosnians have also

engaged in war crimes, yet the world’s collective consciousness has concluded

clearly that the overwhelming preponderance of the human rights abuses were

perpetrated by the Belgrade regime. (Mestrovic, 1993, p. ix)

Preludes to War:

 Belligerent Posturing and the Expression

of Nationalistic Chauvinism

Tito had made a conscious effort to stress “brotherhood and unity,” and to meld the

many parts of Yugoslavia into a cohesive whole. After his death, however, the

“brotherhood and unity” propaganda machine broke, and all the king’s horses and all the

king’s men couldn’t put it back together again. At times there

seemed to be an almost frenetic

outpouring of chauvinism, ethnocentrism,

and jingoism. Mojzes (1995) reported that

in the late 1980s, “... an unholy alliance

between nationalistic political leaders and

the media and the press began to blossom

....” (p. 54). Nationalist political leaders

established a monopoly or near-monopoly

over communications and began releasing slanted interpretations that were served up as

facts, imputing statements to their opponents that had never been made and subsequently

criticizing them as “anti-Yugoslavian” or “anti-Serbian.”

As one of Belgrade’s remaining critical journalists has characterized it, it was

journalism of “spitting,”—namely, denigrating, distorting, humiliating, and

clearly libeling people . . . without giving those people the right to retort . . . .

Entire nations were indicted. The Serbian press and government leaders called

the Croat people ustashoid and genocidal, while the Croats and Slovenes

thundered that all Serbs everywhere and at all times were hegemonistic,

byzantine, imperial, and “Communist.” (Mojzes, 1995, pp. 55-56)

With few exceptions, most people accepted this steady barrage of “information” that

“documented” their latent suspicions and hostilities. All of the new nations became
BALKANS-6 133

Croats

perceived

Serbs as

expansionist

and arrogant,

while ...

... Serbs saw

Croats as passive,

timid, and inclined

to collaborate with

foreign and

subversive

elements.

poisoned with this propaganda, and their citizens soon became hypercritical of the

others—the “bad guys”—while remaining uncritical, defensive, and self-righteous about

the “good guys” (Mojzes, 1995).

According to Denich (1994), when the 1990s conflicts arose, rather than seeking

strategies for reconciliation, the Serbs and Croats “... consciously revived the same

nationalist ideologies that had been implicated in the wartime conflagration” (pp. 368-369).

Instead of establishing egalitarian citizenship criteria, they combined the notion of a single

ethnic “nation” (people) with their notions of “statehood” or legal institution, excluding

nonmembers from their state, by definition.

National Identities and Ethnic Stereotyping

In considering the following quote, it is

informative to note the year in which it was

published: 1974. At the time the observations were

made Tito was alive and prospering and actively

suppressing the expression of inter-ethnic conflicts.

Nonetheless ....

The ethnic tensions plaguing Yugoslavia are underscored

by persistent ethnic stereotyping. One study finds that in 1971

Croatian self-images emphasized their love of justice and peace, thousand yearold culture, and “We sternness.” Serbian self images, in contrast, focused on the

historic character of the Serbs and their role as guardian of Yugoslavia. Croats

perceived Serbs as expansionist and arrogant, while Serbs saw the Croats as

passive, timid, and inclined to collaborate with foreign and subversive elements.

Slovenes viewed themselves as superior (love of order, efficiency at work, and
BALKANS-6 134

Former symbols of Croatian

nationhood were revived,

particularly an emblem

composed of red and white

squares, the “chessboard”

(sahovnica), which was chosen

to replace the Communist red

star on the new Croatian flag.

cleanliness), viewing other ethnic groups as inefficient. Slovenes were viewed

by other ethnic groups as unsociable and unfriendly. (Duncan, 1974, p. 23)

Croatian Nationalism

One of the first two republics to declare its independence was Croatia, where seeds

of Croat-Serbian ethnic discord stretched back over many generations. Late in the 19th

century, Croat nationalism, as exemplified by the Party of Croatian Rights, led by Ante

StarÖeviÉ, advocated xenophobic Croatian nationalism, suggesting that all Serbs could be

included in the Croat nation if they would give up their own national consciousness and

“become Croats.” He regarded Serbs as an inferior and evil race and initiated a

xenophobic notion that promoted the suppression and even extermination of all who had a

differing national consciousness (Duncan, 1994).

This version of extreme Croatian nationalism was the predecessor to the Ustasha

independent movement during the 1930s and into the World War Two period.

The Ustasha was notorious for a passionate and aggressive hostility against the

whole Serbian nation. The Ustasha, which borrowed heavily from European

fascist movements and during World War Two formed the Independent State of

Croatia (NDH), allied itself with the Germans and killed thousands of Serbs—

estimated from 200,000 to as high as 750,000. The Serbs retaliated against

Croatia, forming irregular bands called Chetniks. Ultimately . . . as many as a

million Yugoslavs died at the hands of their own countrymen. (Duncan, 1994, p.

24

Following World War II in Germany, there were efforts to “sanitize” and “relativize”

Nazi genocides in order to provide Germans with a “usable past.” In a similar manner, in

1990 as the Yugoslav Republics were preparing for independence, the Croatian president,

Franjo Tudjman, published a history book that “supported calculations that greatly reduced

the numbers of Serbian victims [at Jasenovac] and referred to Jasenovac as a ‘myth’ ”

(Denich, 1994, p. 376).

In 1990, Tudjman addressed the founding convention of a new political party, the

Croatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica, HDZ) and proclaimed

self-determination and state sovereignty for the

Croatian people. He also declared that the

Independent State of Croatia that had been declared in

World War II was more than a quisling formation, that

it was an expression of the historical aspiration of the

Croatian people (nation) for an independent state that

incorporated Croatia’s historical boundaries. He

defined Croatia’s nationhood to include Bosnian

Moslems, an act intended to justify incorporation of

Bosnia-Herzegovina within the Croatian national state.

... far from disassociating itself from the fascist, genocidal history of the Ustasha

state, the new nationalist party reaffirmed its continuity with that history.

(Denich, 1994, p. 377)

Unlike Tito’s definitions of the state as representing all its citizens regardless of ethnic

or other origins, nationalist formulations emerging in the 1990’s emphasized the

ascendancy and privilege of those for whom the state comprised a birthright, and

relegated all others to secondary status.
BALKANS-6 135

The Croatian “Chessboard” Flag

During the Croatian election campaign in 1990, the HDZ and other nationalist parties

took on a revitalizing character, with mass rallies in Croatia calling for the sovereignty of

Croatia as the national state of the Croatian people, with its own foreign policy, army, and

money, maintaining only a nominal confederal relationship with other Yugoslav republics.

Former symbols of Croatian nationhood were revived, particularly an emblem composed

of red and white squares, the “chessboard” (sahovnica), which was chosen to replace

the Communist red star on the new Croatian flag. The problem for Serbs and other

anti-fascists was that the same emblem had been at the center of the wartime flag

of the Ustasha state. Now Croat militants took every opportunity to ecstatically wave

their “chessboard” and sing patriotic songs, many of them also resurrected from wartime.

Emphasizing the “chessboard” as the key symbol of Croatian nationhood in the last

decade of the 20th Century simultaneously erased regional distinctions among Croats and

emphasized the exclusion of those who associated that symbol with fascism and genocide

(Denich, 1994).

While the wartime symbols stirred up the forbidden past on the part of Croatian

nationalists, arousing a new sense of collective identity for the younger

generation, the same symbols evoked the wartime experience of victimization on

the part of Serbian communities and portended adversely for the future. Serbs in

Croatia started to hold their own mass rallies and organized a nationalist party to

oppose the degradation of their constitutional status within Croatia, as well as

the separation of Croatia from Yugoslavia. (Denich, 1994, p. 378)

Serbian Nationalism

Serbian nationalism and authoritarianism are rooted in centuries of violence and

struggle against foreign oppression. The Serbian dreams of a “Greater Serbia” date back

to the end of their empire following their defeat by the Turks at Kosovo in 1389. The

holiest days in Serbian folk mythology do not commemorate a great Serb victory, but

rather a defeat that led to nearly 500 years of Ottoman domination. The Serbs see the

fateful Battle of Kosovo (1389) as a symbol of a proud and fierce resistance to

domination, similar to the Balkan Wars against the Turks in 1912-1913—wars which also

spawned epic poems and ballads (Duncan, 1994).

More recently, Serb experiences in World War II fueled their concepts of oppression

and victimization, especially in relation to the status of Serbian minorities in Croatia, in

Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in Kosovo:

While Serbs were exterminated en masse in [Croatian] Ustasha massacres and

internment camps, many escaped into the mountains, where they organized

Chetnik bands or joined the Communist-led partisan resistance. As such, they

provided much of the mass peasant base of the resistance that enabled the

eventual Communist victory. Thus, the defeat of the Axis meant that the

Ustasha’s final solution was not final after all. Serbs returned to their homes in

Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where their traumatized memories survived,

along with the remains that lay buried in the pigeon-caves .... (Denich, 1994, pp.

375-376).
BALKANS-6 136

Most Bosnian

Muslims are

descended from

Slavic Croats and

Serbs who

converted to Islam

during the 500 years

of Ottoman rule.

Serbian Nationalist Loyalty in Croatia

In 1989, Serb intellectuals in Knin, Croatia founded the Serbian cultural society, Zora

(Dawn). One of the founders of Zora was subsequently arrested for making an

unauthorized speech (in conjunction with a 600th anniversary celebration of the battle of

Kosovo) and held in jail for two months awaiting trial, before the charges were dropped.

His explanation for why Serbs in Croatia were reviving a separate cultural identity was

that under Yugoslavia, they didn’t question their national consciousness and national

institutions. They considered Yugoslavia to be their state, and the republic boundaries as

only administrative. They claimed to be Yugoslavs. As there began to be fewer and

fewer Yugoslavs and more and more Croats, Slovenians, Serbs, Albanians and so on, they

realized that Serbs in Croatia needed to return to their own national identity. Confronted

with what they perceived as real dangers and existential fears, it seemed normal to unite

in the framework of the national idea and to use that principle to defend themselves

(Denich, 1994).

The Serbian identity in Croatia seems to have been forged largely in response to the

recurring perception of a sense of threat and of their potential victimization as a minority

population within another nation. Nonetheless, it should be noted that at the time (1991)

Serbs dominated the officer corps in the Yugoslav military, the civil service, and the secret

police.

National Identity of Bosnian Muslims

Most Bosnian Muslims are descended from Slavic Croats and Serbs who converted

to Islam during the 500 years of Ottoman rule. Slav Muslims formed a nation in BosniaHerzegovina that was identified not by language or ethnicity but by its religion. Under

Tito’s rule, their identity became increasingly pronounced, due

to his ambitious educational program and development of a

Muslim intelligentsia who articulated the needs of a distinct

Muslim community inside Yugoslavia. This “new” nation

received official recognition as an official Yugoslav nation in the

1974 Constitution, following formal recognition on the 1971

census forms. At the time that Bosnia-Herzegovina declared

independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1992, Muslims

constituted 44% of the population, and Serbs and Croats

constituted 31% and 16%, respectively. Both Bosnian Croat and Serb leaders felt

threatened by the new Muslim nationalist force (Duncan, 1994). Based on Serbian

memories from WW II, their concerns were not without some factual basis.

It was in Bosnia that the impact of the Second World War and the genocidal struggles

among Serbs, Croats and Muslims were felt most keenly. During World War II, in Bosnia

and especially in Herzegovina, the majority of Muslims co-operated with the Croat

fascists—the Ustasha—against Tito’s Partisans and against the Serbian-dominated

Chetniks. At one point in 1944, Bosnian Muslims actually joined an SS division in order to

exact reprisals against Serbian Chetniks.

In 1990, these memories were vivid in the minds of many Serbs, who saw Bosnian

Muslims as two-time traitors, once for having sold out their Christian principles to the

Ottoman Turks, and again for having sided with the Hitler-supported Croatian fascists
BALKANS-6 137

during WW II. Given the slightest opportunity, Serbs were predisposed to exact revenge

for perceived past injustices.

During recent hostilities, rather than attempting to reconcile conflicts using

formulations and strategies designed under Tito, both Serbian and Croatian

political leaders have consciously revived nationalist ideologies from the World

War II Yugoslavian civil war.... The late 20th century wars, for the most part, can

be considered expressions of Serbs’ unwillingness to occupy common territory

with Croats, Bosnian Muslims, or Kosovo Albanians, especially when these

territories were likely to come under non-Serbian rule (Denich, 1996).

Preludes to War:

Revisiting WW II Genocide

Beginning in approximately 1990, and occurring with increasing frequency thereafter,

Serbian genocide victims in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were reburied with Orthodox

rites following exhumation of their collective graves (Denich, 1994). Throughout 1991, the

ceremonies increased in scale. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, caves were exhumed and mass

public burials were shown over television throughout Serbia.

At one of these ceremonies, Radio Belgrade described the line of coffins as

extending for one-and-a-half kilometers. The liturgy was sung by the Patriarch of

the Serbian Orthodox Church, and speeches by prominent Serbian politicians and

intellectuals dramatized the pan-Serbian significance of the event. (Denich, 1994,

p. 382)

Along with exhumations, details that had previously been concealed about Ustasha

massacres became a frequent theme of the media in Serbia. Magazines and newspapers

published historical sources and personal memoirs that revealed horrifying descriptions to

the public in Serbia and reiterated in detail what previously had been known only through

word-of-mouth from survivors who had found refuge in Serbia during World War II.

These reports inflamed pre-existing animosities toward Croats and toward the Croats’

emerging sense of nationalism (Denich, 1994).

The mass deaths of World War II ... represented a reservoir of powerful emotion

that could be released in various ways. As the nationalist confrontation

exploded to the surface in Croatia, traumatic memories on both sides became

instruments in the power struggle. (Denich, 1994, p. 383)

The Ustasha atrocities of WW II had been perpetrated against Serbs, Jews and

Gypsies living predominantly in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially the latter

country, which during WW II was ceded to the Ustasha state (the Independent State of

Croatia) by the Axis powers. By and large, Serbs in Serbia itself had not experienced

atrocities at the hands of the Ustasha. Their wartime suffering had come, instead, at the

hands of Germans and other foreign occupiers, rather than from Croats. Nonetheless,

since many refugees from Ustasha terror had fled east to Serbia during World War II,

and many had settled permanently in Serbia, the genocide was not an abstraction, either.

It was indirectly experienced through the personal knowledge of survivors living

throughout Serbia. Although these memories had lain fallow throughout the Titoist years,

the lifting of the taboo on both the literal and the symbolic exhumation of victims of the

Ustasha resonated powerfully throughout Serbia, as reported through the mass

communication media (Denich, 1994).
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With the victims of World War II mass executions were buried memories and

motives for revenge. The exhumation of the hidden grave sites in the

atmosphere of nationalist revival revealed the power of these bodies to re-incite

violence in later generations, not as the remains of individual human beings

mourned by those who remembered them, but as symbols to incite reprisals and

justify aggression on the part of strangers whose emotions were stirred as

members of the same ethnic community or nation. (Denich, 1994, p. 382)

And so, in the context of renewed Serbian/Croatian conflict, the genocide issue

represented a powerful emotional trigger for Serbs everywhere. Psychiatrist John Mack

(1990) observed that ethnonationalist demagogues had a seemingly endless source of

hatred and fear based on historical hurts and grievances, which they could mobilize

whenever they chose. In Serbia, such ethnonationalist leaders were represented by the

Milo”eviÉ regime and the nationalist ideologues who were in control of the mass

communications media. Rather than remaining an issue of minority rights within Croatia,

the rebellion of Serbian communities in Croatia became a call to arms for all Serbs in

Yugoslavia. When hostilities began, Serbian rebellions in Croatia were used to justify

increasingly brutal attacks by the Yugoslav army throughout Croatia (Denich, 1994).

According to Mack (1990), groups with strong ethnic or nationalist ties, especially

those who have been traumatized by repeated suffering at the hands of other groups,

seem to have little capacity to grieve for the hurts of other peoples or to take responsibility

for the new victims created by their own warlike actions. As a result, there emerges a

pattern of victims killing victims through unendingly repeated cycles, transmitted from one

generation to another, that are bolstered by stories and myths of atrocities committed by

the other people, and by heroic acts committed in defense of the nation and its values.

Apter (1987) asserted that such events create what can be called a “disjunctive

moment” in history, when relations of power are transformed through a reformulation of

ideology that combines theory with myth and results in polarization. According to Denich

(1994), the timing of this “disjunctive moment” in Yugoslavia was set by a larger

disjunction—the abrupt collapse of Communism among its Soviet bloc neighbors during

the fall of 1989.

When confronted with the prospective dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Croatian Serbs

opted for a so-called “greater Serbia” formulation that would maintain all Serbian regions

in a common polity stretching across Bosnia and Serbian-inhabited areas of Croatia.

Ethnic cleansing was seen as an acceptable method to achieve ethnic homogenization,

retaliate against Croats for WW II atrocities, and achieve pan-Serbian victory (Denich,

1994). Suppressed memories of genocide evoked atrocities of the past, prompting the

revival of symbols and tactics associated with the World War II massacres. By this point,

ethnic conflicts and old hatreds had escalated to the very brink of open hostilities.
BALKANS-6 139

Preludes to War:

A Skeleton in the Closet?

Or Thousands of Skeletons in Pigeon Caves?

As Yugoslavia began to unravel in the 1990’s, Croatian historians made a concerted

effort to minimize the scope and significance of the Ustasha genocide that had been

perpetrated during World War II against Serbs. Part of this revisionist campaign was

based on the discovery, during the spring of 1990, that not all WW II era atrocities had

been perpetrated by the Ustasha. Communist Partisans had committed their share of

atrocities, too, or so the Croatians said. According to reports surfacing in 1990,

communist-led Partisan troops (i.e., Serbs) had herded unarmed Croatian Ustasha, home

guard recruits, Slovenian home guards, and even Serbian nationalist Chetniks into caves at

the conclusion of WW II and shot them. Narrative accounts of survivors and witnesses,

although perhaps lacking the sadistic variety of Ustasha atrocities of the same era, largely

paralleled already well-documented descriptions of gruesome Ustasha massacres

committed against Serbs (Denich, 1994).

The publication of these revelations led to the discovery of actual burial sites. In

June, word reached the Zagreb media of a cave called Jazovka. Like the pigeoncaves of massacred Serbs, its existence had been known to nearby villagers, who

now revealed the secret. The media in Croatia published pictures of the 40-meterdeep cavern, piled with killing-field relics. A Croatian emigrant publication

described the cave as “full of bones of innocent Croat postwar victims of

Communist savagery.” (p. 378, citing Nova Hrvatska, 1990, July 15, Dokazi

poratnog Partizanskog bezumlja (Evidence of postwar Partisan madness, No.

14, p. 4)
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The head of the renamed Communist Party of Croatia proposed a peacemaking

ritual to be performed by both Croatian and Serbian leaders at both the newly

found Jazovka site and the site of a major massacre of Serbs. Serbian leaders

rejected this proposal, however, on the basis that where the Ustasha had

massacred whole villages of noncombatant Serbian men, women, and children,

the Jazovka skeletons included Ustasha perpetrators of those same massacres.

The manner in which the caves had been discovered, however, as well as the

grim contents that were presented to the public, effectively recast all the

murdered captives as victims because their skeletal remains were

indistinguishable from one another (Denich, 1994).

Other symbolic representations of the former Ustasha were “resurrected” as well.

They included long-abandoned linguistic innovations of the wartime Ustasha state. The

new Croatian government issued lists of words coined to exaggerate the minor distinctions

between the Croatian and Serbian variants of the literary languages (Denich, 1994).

Among the vocabulary changes was the term for “police” (redarstvo),

resurrected from the Ustasha state. The linguistic revisions provided an identity

marker for “good Croats,” who were also expected to shed regional attachments

in favor of a Croatian culture both unitary and non-Serbian. Regional identities

were eliminated: Dalmatia was renamed “southern Croatia.” As a further

infringement upon Serbian status, the Latin alphabet was designated as the sole

official alphabet throughout Croatia, limiting recognition of the Cyrillic alphabet

to communities with Serbian majorities. The new government took control of the

media, turning television and newspapers into articulators of the linguistic

innovations and other cultural constructions of the new Croatian state. (Denich,

1994, p. 379)

Other symbols were revitalized following the conflicts of 1989-1990. The most visible

of all we’ve already discussed, the “chessboard” emblem on the Croatian flag. As

tensions grew and tempers flared preparatory to overt hostilities, the chessboard emblem

became omnipresent.

The symbolic presentations of the newly elected Croatian government held

opposite meanings for supporters and opponents of Croatia’s reconstitution.

July 25, 1990, the day that the new government of Croatia officially took office,

turned into a public ritual of division and ethnic opposition. As the official

ceremony celebrated the fulfillment of the “thousand-year aspiration of the

Croatian people for their own state,” it also ritualized the exclusion of non-Croats.

Far from separating church and state, the Roman Catholic Cardinal of Zagreb was

given a role in inauguration ceremonies co-equal to that of the republic’s new

president. The emotional peak of the ceremony held in Zagreb’s main public

square was the flag-raising ceremony that replaced [the old flag] with a flag

bearing the “chessboard” coat-of-arms, with its dual meanings for Croatian

nationalists ... who associated that emblem with the Ustasha state. (Denich,

1994, pp. 379-380)

In addition to Serbs, others, including Croat antifascists and Tito loyalists, were also

deeply disturbed by the new flag. Thousands of Serbs gathered in an open field in a

village that was portentously named “Serb” (spelled Srb) to protest the reconstitution of a

Croatian state that symbolically excluded them. They protested the deletion of Serbs as a

“constituent nation” of Croatia, as well as numerous other policies, particularly those

involving the revival of symbols associated with the fascist wartime state. (Denich, 1994).
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The masses gathered at Srb cheered as the leader of the new Serbian Democratic Party,

Jovan Raskovic, called for “a new Serbian uprising,” but one “without violence.”

Knin Police

The detested chessboard symbol figured prominently in the Knin standoff, yet another

dramatic prelude to actual hostilities. It was part of the planned program of installing

revitalized symbols of domination throughout Croatia—starting with the new “chessboard”

flag.

In Knin, a largely Serbian town in the Dalmatian mountains, local police objected

to renaming the militia with the resurrected Ustasha term redarstvo and refused

to replace the red stars on their caps with the hated “chessboard” insignia.

When republic officials attempted to discontinue the regional authority of the

Knin police station and place it under Croatian command, the Knin police took

charge of their own station, supported by local men who organized volunteer

brigades and commandeered weapons from police storerooms. Virtually

overnight, Serbian and Croatian men formed armed patrols to guard their own

villages—from each other. The Serbs cut off the region with roadblocks, from

which they fended off Republic of Croatia police forces. Serbian women and

children sought refuge at the nearby Yugoslav Army barracks, where they

camped on the open ground. Visitors to the area reported widespread terror at

the sight of the Croatian police and armed HDZ activists, flaunting their

chessboard insignia and brandishing weapons. (Denich, 1994, p. 380)

Preludes to War:

The Usual Suspects

Suppressed ethnic antagonisms were unquestionably major contributing factors in the

outbreak of Balkan hostilities in the 1990s, but as in all major historic events, the causative

etiology was both complex and multifaceted. Other contributing factors included

economic inequality, Serbian resistance to political liberalization, competition between

former Yugoslavian republics for relationships with the outside world, religion, and

avaricious politicians (Duncan, 1994).

Economic Inequality

Underlying and sustaining the conflicts in the 1990s was mistrust among the more

prosperous Slovenians and Croatians, who saw Serbs as having a less industrious work

ethic. The Slovenes, in particular, resented the apparent lack of political reforms and

economic productivity in the rest of Yugoslavia. They felt that there was little economic

future in staying in the state of Yugoslavia. For example, at independence, Slovenia

represented 8% of the population, yet was responsible for 20% of the national productivity

and 25% of the exports. Slovenia was paying 4.5 times as much in Federal taxes to

subsidize the “backward” underdeveloped southern republics as it was receiving through

the Yugoslavian Federal financial program (Duncan, 1994).

Serbian Hard-line Resistance

Hard-line Serbian resistance to political liberalization and increased autonomy for

other republics contributed to the escalation of ethnic tensions. Yugoslavia had become a

Serb-dominated, centrally controlled state after World War II, but other groups within

Yugoslavia were desirous of more autonomy and a looser political structure. The
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multiparty elections held in Slovenia and Croatia in 1990 represented the first contested

multiparty elections in 51 years. As such, they brought significant displeasure to Serbian

leaders, especially Milosevic. Even more threatening were the victories the opposition

won over the ruling communist parties. Subsequent demands for greatly increased

autonomy for the Yugoslav republics led to mounting tensions, as did the formation of noncommunist governments and constitutional changes. According to Duncan (1994), Serbia

remained firmly in the authoritarian hands of its neo-Stalinist leadership (Milosevic) while

Slovenia and Croatia moved increasingly toward democratic forms of government.

Outside Relations

Additional barriers to inter-ethnic harmony in Yugoslavia resulted from the various

republics’ competing relations with the outside world. Serbs remembered the WW II

alliance between Germany and Croatia and feared its revival. On the other hand, Croatia

feared Milosevic’s hard line, neo-Bolshevik administration and its opposition to western

free market democracy. And, to one extent or another, these fears were realized in the

1990s, as Slovenia and Croatia, as in the past, once again became allied with Germany

and Austria, an alliance that had the effect of galvanizing Serbia’s longstanding ties with

Russia. In addition, Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina attracted support from Turkey, Saudi

Arabia, and Iran. These external ties immensely complicated conflict resolution at a time

when it was desperately needed (Duncan, 1994).

Religions Divisions

And yes, religious battle lines in the Balkans in the 1990s were also, to some extent,

the same ancient lines that had divided the Byzantine Empire in the East from the Roman

Empire in the West. The Croats represented the age-old Catholic and German front of

Central Europe; the Serbs, the Orthodox “Byzantine” Church; while Bosnia represented

an Islamic state in Europe (Duncan, 1994).

Demagoguery as a Tactic for Escalating Nationalist Tensions

... revived Serbian nationalism found a political advocate in the Communist

leader Slobodan Milosevic, who led an insurgent faction to take over the

Communist party of Serbia in the fall of 1987. Milosevic then challenged the

Titoist political apparatus by encouraging the organization of a massive

revitalization movement, the so-called “happening of the people,” which

legitimated the revival of pre-Communist concepts about the Serbian people as a

“nation.” Mass rallies and marches focused on the grievances of Serbs within

the Kosovo “autonomous province” that was formally within the Republic of

Serbia, but where Serbs were a 10 percent minority among a predominantly

Albanian population. The claim of Kosovo Serbs that they were being pressured

to emigrate from Kosovo turned into a metonym for the resistance of Serbs to

foreign domination, melding history, myth, and the grievances of Serbian

minorities elsewhere in Yugoslavia . . . . as the most dispersed of the Yugoslav

ethnicities, the Serbs were also those most threatened by the loosening or

cessation of bonds among the republics. (Denich, 1994, pp. 371, 372)

Despite all the other contributing influences, Balkan tragedies of the 1990’s probably

would not have occurred without the timely contributions of key demagogues (Duncan,

1994). Given the region’s authoritarian political culture and lack of democratic traditions,

it is perhaps no surprise that strong personalities played a large role in recent Balkan

politics, producing such figures as Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman, both of whom
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... the dominant tools of

Balkan politics: “ ...

deception, corruption,

blackmail, demagoguery

and violence.”

adeptly traded communism for nationalism in the 1990’s and then went on to craft their

own variants of an ideology of nationalism. They were also adept at defining and blaming

“outside enemies” and eschewing the exercise of any control over internal policy by

outside powers. Their nationalist ideologies have served numerous political ends, not the

least of which has been legitimizing their own political power. Until recently, both men

managed to forge popular compliance and support of policy decisions without exclusive

reliance on threat or use of coercive force, in turn making it possible for them to remain in

office (Duncan, 1994). Only recently (2000) did Milosevic’s aggressive and brutal

suppression of Kosovar militants lead to a NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, an

event so aversive that it turned the majority of his people against him and led to his ouster

from office. Even so, and notwithstanding the fact that he had already been indicted for

war crimes and crimes against humanity by the The Hague international war crimes

tribunal, Milosevic remained in Belgrade for some time following his ouster from office,

where his mere presence posed a continuing threat to the delicate stability of the Kosovar

ceasefire agreement. Only the following year (2001) was he finally arrested by

Yugoslavian police and remanded to the custody of the war crimes tribunal.

Many Croatians, Serbs, and Muslims lived peaceably side-by-side in both Croatia and

Bosnia-Herzegovina until demagogues like Tudjman and Milosevic began to arouse their

latent ethnic passions following Tito’s death in 1980. The result of this political discontent

was that many once-peaceful communities erupted with

violence in the 1990s. For example, Tudjman’s drive to

create a Croatian state relied on the use of offensive

symbols, such as the checkerboard flag, Croatian heraldry,

and a stress on nationalist iconography, that, in effect,

demoted Croatia’s Serbs to a denigrated minority.

Milosevic’s turn from Marxism to nationalism also led him to use the rhetoric and

symbolism of nationalism to arouse nationalist passions among Serbs in Croatia and in

Bosnia (Duncan, 1994).

Leadership styles and operational codes of men like Tudjman and Milosevic set the

tone for their underlings. For example, beginning in 1989, Milosevic:

. . . organized a series of demonstrations in Serbia, in Kosovo and in the northern

Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, where a substantial Hungarian minority

lives. These were bizarre manifestations which perfected the fusion of

communist, Serbian and Orthodox Christian iconography. Above all, the

hundreds of thousands of Serbs who came to worship at this movable temple

gave homage to Milosevic, whose stern but flap-eared visage and shaving-brush

hair-style became the central artifacts in this new religion. (Glenny, 1992, p. 33)

While many Serbs at home and abroad condemned Milosevic’s programs of ethnic

cleansing, Serbian paramilitary groups continued to commit atrocities throughout the

1990’s and into the third millennium, first in Bosnia and then in Kosovo (Duncan, 1994).

Both Serbian and Croatian politicians found ways to perpetuate violence and showed little

interest in forging peaceful resolutions to the many conflicts that plagued the Balkans.

Milosevic, for example, repeatedly promised to abide by peace accords during the period

from 1991–1993, only to turn around and subsequently break every promise. In a

similarly duplicitous manner, Tudjman repeatedly launched surprise offensives to force

Serbs from UN supervised territories. Speaking of both men, Duncan said, “Integrity was

distinctly not the name of the game” (p. 32). By arousing uncompromising nationalist
BALKANS-6 144

passions in the quest of nationalist aims, these and other Balkan leaders used what Glenny

referred to as the dominant tools of Balkan politics: “. . . deception, corruption, blackmail,

demagoguery and violence” (p. 36).

The Outbreak of Hostilities

The sections above make eminently clear that the Balkan nationalist wars that erupted

in the 1990s were in many ways a manifestation of unfinished business from WW II.

Some issues, to be sure - especially those of a religious nature - trace back many

centuries, to the Ottoman occupation in the 14th through 19th Centuries and even to the

division of the Roman Empire in 395 AD. Nonetheless, other salient issues that led

directly to hostilities concerned unresolved conflicts, prejudices, and vendettas from the

last world war. Most Westerners know little of Balkan history. This seems to be

especially true of relatively recent history. Even for those with a reasonably good

knowledge of WW II events, the Balkans barely enter the picture. It was not a region of

critically important engagements between Axis and Allied powers. American and British

forces fought pitched battles across North Africa, on Sicily, in Italy, in western Europe

from Normandy Beach to Berlin. American or British troops, however, never set foot on

Balkan soil at any time during the war. For most Westerners considering WW II in

Europe, the Balkans just kind of lay there, inactive ... dormant. Yet our brief study of

WW II events and their aftermath reveals that nothing could be further from the truth.

Genocide on an almost unimaginable scale occurred in the Balkans, especially in Croatia

and Bosnia-Herzegovina, from the time Yugoslavia was partitioned by the Axis powers in

1941 until the Red Army arrived in 1945. The Croatian Ustasha perpetrated many of

these atrocities. Serbs, Jews and Gypsies were their targets and Bosnian Muslims were
BALKANS-6 145

frequently their accomplices. This genocidal program was carried out with ruthless

tenacity.

... the Ustase set about exterminating its Serb, Jewish, and Gypsy inhabitants

with a brutality that shocked even the Germans and occasionally obliged the

Italians to intervene. (Ustase, 2001)

Tito’s tactic to restore balance after 1945 had been to bury the recollection of these

horrendous acts in history’s deep freeze. Believing that only drastic measures could erase

the memory of hatred, he enforced communal life on Serbian, Croatian, and Moslem

populations as if nothing had ever happened, using repression and violence, if necessary

(Glenny, 1992). But forgetting such atrocities is not human nature. It may not even be

humanly possible. One thing is sure: no one forgot anything; especially not the Serbs.

Tito’s tactic was, of course, flawed because when the resentments were taken

out of the historical deep freeze, the memory of hatred proved to be as fresh as

ever after it thawed. (Glenny, 1992, p. 147)

Yugoslavia's break-up at the close of the 20th Century consisted of not one, but

several, ethnic wars which complicated efforts by the outside world at conflict

management.

When the Communist ideology began to collapse in the late 1980s, all of the

former Yugoslav republics except Montenegro seized the opportunity to free

themselves from Serbian oppression. In response to these freedom movements,

the Belgrade government reinforced its hard-line leanings and engaged in a

pitiless war against its neighbors, in its openly proclaimed quest to establish a

Greater Serbia. (Mestrovic, 1993, pp. vii-viii)

Slovenian Secession

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BALKANS-6 146

Slovenia began the parade of secessionist announcements with a drive for

independence in 1989 and 1990, formally withdrawing from Yugoslavia in June 1991.

This announcement was followed by sporadic battles with the Serb-dominated Yugoslav

People's Army (YPA). Slovenian forces suffered little loss of life in defeating the ineptly

commanded YPA in what Slovenes soon called the “Ten-Day War.” The last Yugoslav

soldier was shipped out from Koper exactly four months after Slovenia declared its

independence.

Croatian Secession

After Slovenia successfully exited Yugoslavia, Croatia followed suit, setting up

conditions for more battles with Serbia. The war in Croatia—to a far greater degree than

was the case in Slovenia—involved militant Serb minorities inside Croatia. Serbian

President Slobodan Milosevic also manifested much greater intention to expand

territorially into Croatia in order to create a “Greater Serbia.” Franjo Tudjman, the newly

elected Croatian leader, was equally determined to oppose Serbian expansionism.

Tudjman and other political leaders, however, had failed to respect the complexities of

Serb societies within their borders. Tudjman failed to realize that modern, urban Serbs

typical of those residing in Zagreb—who have been characterized as passive and

adaptable—were significantly different from Serbs living in the countryside outside

Zagreb. Especially in the Knin district of Krajina, Serbs were militant with a:

 . . .warrior consciousness and strong affinity with weaponry. Similarly,

Tudjman’s Croat representatives living in the republic’s extremities harbored

strong antipathy toward Serbs, sentiments hardly like the laid-back Croat

academics drafting Tudjman’s policies in Zagreb. All this constituted a recipe for

violence (Duncan, 1994, p. 26).
BALKANS-6 147

For Serbs in Knin, Tudjman’s victory and the ascendance of the Croatian Democratic

Union (HDZ) revived fear of Croat extremism and memories of the Ustasha in WW II.

The answer for rural Serbs was a call to arms and a demand for a “Serb autonomous

region” comprised of districts where they held majority. Ultimately, a “Serbian

Autonomous Region of Krajina” was declared (Duncan, 1994).

From the day Croatian independence was declared in June, 1991, armed clashes

broke out between Serbian loyalists and Croatian forces in Serb-dominated enclaves

throughout Croatia. These clashes gave the YPA an excuse to launch an all-out attack

on Croatia. Soon, one-third of Croatian territory was under Serbian control, the city of

Vukovar in Slovenia was leveled, and Dubrovnik was shelled. Hostilities temporarily

ended when UN troops were installed in disputed territories. The UN-imposed ceasefire

did not last, however. Hostilities resumed and continued intermittently until June, 1996,

when the last Yugoslav troops withdrew from disputed areas and Croatia reclaimed its

territory.

The Bosnian Breakaway

Bosnia declared independence in 1992 despite knowing that Serbia had responded

aggressively to both Slovenian and Croatian independence declarations. Bosnia’s action

led to three wars:

. . . (1) a battle for territory between Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats, (2) a fight

for territory between Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims throughout Bosnia,

with Bosnian Serb militias led by Radovan Karadzic, backed by Milosevic and

the YPA, and (3) a struggle for land between Bosnian Croats and Bosnian

Muslims. (Duncan, 1994, p. 20)

The war in Bosnia was even more intense, and complex, than the one in Croatia.

This war, like others in the Balkans during the 1990s, partly stemmed from and was

certainly fed by the existing ethnic mix. Ethnic minorities, especially the widely dispersed

Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia, were powder kegs ready to explode upon declarations of

independence by Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. At the time of these moves toward

independence, Serb irredenta constituted 17% of the population in Croatia and 30% of the

population in Bosnia. Seventeen percent of the population in Croatia proved, after five

long years of struggle, to be insufficient, ultimately capitulating to Croatian military forces.

In Bosnia, however, with its 30% Serbian population base, the outcome was different.

With a tripartite ethnic population mix, it was also infinitely more complex.

First, Bosnia had never existed as an independent state since the medieval

kingdom. It lacked the political culture and experience of independent

governance. Second, Bosnia had survived historically by virtue of a protective

shield from the Yugoslav state or its predecessors, the Austrian or Ottoman

Empire. Third, in addition to its internal stability being guaranteed by an external

power, it broke for independence without consulting its minority national

populations—notably the Serbs—at a time when the state had no overarching

political party spanning the three national communities inside Bosnia. Yet the

dilemma for Bosnian Muslim president Alija Izetbegovic, was that Croatia’s and

Slovenia’s declared independence and world recognition forced him to do the

same, because Muslims would not accept life in a smaller Yugoslavia dominated

by Milosevic and the Serbian political elite in Belgrade, against which they would

have little protection. (Duncan, 1994, pp. 26-27).
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Milosevic moved rapidly in Bosnia to support Bosnian Serbs and Serb militia units, and

to implement a policy of ethnic cleansing. As a result, old ethnic conflicts and vendettas

were revived, giving rise to some of the most gruesome fighting tactics since WW II—

including the slaughter of innocent women and children, forced imprisonment of civilians,

and use of mass rape as an instrument of war (Duncan, 1994).

In March 1994, Muslims joined with Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina to form a CroatMuslim federation). Eighteen months later, the Dayton Accord (signed in Dayton, Ohio,

USA, in November 1995) recognized the Croat-Muslin federation as a largely autonomous

political entity under the name Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to exist alongside a

second one to be called the Serb Republic. As of early summer, 2001, a delicate but

apparently effective ceasefire continues in Bosnia-Herzegovina under NATO supervision.

Kosovo

Under the post-WW II Yugoslavian government arrangement, Kosovo was an

autonomous province, and a de facto republic. But Slobodan Milosevic, a politician who

based his career on the crafty manipulation of Serb grievances, stripped Kosovo of its

autonomous status soon after he assumed control of Yugoslavia in 1989. By this time

Kosovo had become predominantly Albanian, and Serbs resented the fact that their

homeland was controlled by non-Slavs. After Milosevic’s action, Serbia took direct

control of Kosovo’s governmental administration. Kosovar Albanians protested violently,

but Milosevic responded with Yugoslav military units. At the same time, he dissolved the

province’s assembly and closed every school in which the Albanian language was used.

Albanians voted overwhelmingly to secede from the Yugoslav federation, but the vote

was unofficial and non-binding. For several years, as wars raged in Slovenia, Croatia and

Bosnia-Herzegovina, ethnic Albanians in Kosovo adhered to a policy of nonviolence. In
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1996, however, members of the militant Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a small ethnic

Albanian guerrilla organization, began attacking Serbian police. In 1997 the attacks

intensified and in 1998 the Yugoslav Army retaliated with a major action against the rebelcontrolled Drenica region. Yugoslav troops acted with such indiscriminate brutality that

hundreds, and possibly thousands, of new recruits flooded the KLA’s ranks. More

importantly, world opinion turned sharply against the Serbs as their unprincipled attacks

forced tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians to flee for their lives. By the end of 1998

the Serbs were engaged in a full-scale offensive against the KLA. The harder the Serbs

pressed the issue, however, the more negative world opinion turned against them. NATO

launched an air bombardment of selected targets in Yugoslavia, including targets in

Belgrade, the Serbian capital, in an effort to force an end to attacks against civilians in

Kosovo, but Belgrade’s hard-line response was to launch a campaign of ethnic cleansing

against all Albanian Kosovars. By June of 1999 the refugee flow had grown from tens

of thousands to hundreds of thousands, as ethnic Albanians flooded out of Kosovo and

into neighboring Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro. Altogether, more than 800,000

ethnic Albanian refugees poured out of Kosovo, mostly into Albania and Macedonia. The

combination of NATO bombardment, economic sanctions, adverse world opinion, and fear

that continued hostilities would motivate Montenegro to withdraw from the new Yugoslav

federation, finally persuaded Slobodan Milosevic to concede. By year’s end Serb forces

had been withdrawn from Kosovo and replaced by NATO peacekeeping troops. A year

later, in September 2000, Milosevic was voted out of office. At the time of this writing,

late 2001, an uneasy peace prevails in Kosovo, presided over by several third party

peacekeeping missions (see Chapter 7: Balkan Peacekeeping Missions).

Macedonia

In 2001, the uneasy peace in Kosovo was broken periodically as remnants of the

officially disbanded but nonetheless still active KLA clashed with Serbian police and

Army troops along the Serbian and Macedonian borders. In March 2001, ethnic Albanian

insurgents in Macedonia, increasingly dissatisfied with the alleged second class citizenship

rights accorded to them by the Macedonian government, clashed openly with government

troops. After several days of sporadic clashes, the ethnic Albanian insurgents withdrew

and a ceasefire was implemented. This ceasefire, like a lot of other Balkan ceasefires

over the years, didn’t last long. By summer of 2001, both the scope and intensity of the

hostilities had intensified considerably. The Macedonian government appealed to NATO

for intervention and as of September, 2001 NATO troops are on Macedonian soil in an

operation dubbed ESSENTIAL HARVEST, ostensibly for the purpose of collecting and

destroying insurgents’ weapons.

Serbia: The Balkan Keystone

The sudden end of Yugoslavia as a multicultural state in the 1990s once again

restored the Balkan Peninsula to its historic reputation, returning it to a zone of endemic

ethnic conflict necessitating continuing international intervention (Denich, 1994). As the

third millennium begins, peacekeeping interventions continue in Croatia, BosniaHerzegovina, Kosovo, and Macedonia, spearheaded by UN, NATO, OSCE, and WEU

forces, as well as by numerous international humanitarian organizations serving a variety

of administrative and monitoring functions. Although the Dayton Accord brought

ostensive peace to Bosnia-Herzegovina, the region is still a trouble spot. Attainment of
BALKANS-6 150

self-government has proven to be a painstaking undertaking, and beneath the placid

surface, old animosities seethe and churn, threatening to break forth anew at any time.

Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia currently have the attention of the world, but Serbia is at

least equally important to future peace. After the collapse of Slobodan Milosevic’s

disastrous 13-year reign in 2000, the country found itself in a shambles, with its economy

shattered and its infrastructure in ruins.

After 13 years of economic mismanagement, as well as international sanctions

and the costs associated with several armed struggles sponsored by the

Milosevic regime, most Yugoslav citizens at the end of the millennium were

experiencing widespread poverty and low wages, and suffering the effects of a

badly deteriorated healthcare system and a failing economic infrastructure.

Unemployment is estimated at roughly 50 percent, inflation at 70 percent

annually, and some 40 percent of the people on live on less than $2 a day.

(Cohen, 2001, p. 105)

Vojislav Kostunica, Serbia’s new President, does not appear to be a proponent of the

“Greater Serbia” expansionism that proved to be the bane of the entire peninsula during

the 1990’s, as well as the downfall of his predecessor Milosevic. On the other hand,

Kostunica is known to resent the unyielding foreign pressure that was applied to

Yugoslavia during the 1990’s. After taking office, for example, he refused for several

months to extradite Slobodan Milosevic, even though Milosevic had been indicted in 1999

by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague, for war

crimes and for crimes against humanity perpetrated during Serbia’s brutal subjugation of

Kosovo. Even though it had been the first time ever that a serving head of state has been
BALKANS-6 151

accused of the most serious crimes under international law, extradition was not a high

priority for Kostunica, who insisted that Milosevic should first stand trial in Belgrade for

his crimes against the Serbian people.

To his credit, Kostunica finally relented, undoubtedly prodded by copious skepticism

from abroad regarding Serbia’s ability to mete out appropriate justice. On 1 April, 2001

Milosevic was taken into custody by Serbian police and confined in a Belgrade prison,

pending determination of formal charges. Later in the year he was remanded into the

custody of the Yugoslavian War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
BALKANS-7 152

CHAPTER 7

BALKAN PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS:

PROSPECTS FOR PEACE IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM

The Yugoslavian wars of the 1990’s came on the heels of a series of global social and

political changes of almost unprecedented magnitude. With all these other momentous

events demanding the attention of world leaders, no wonder it was often difficult if not

impossible for them to simultaneously maintain focus on the perennially troublous Balkans.

For example, in 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became Secretary General of the Soviet

Communist Party, commencing a decade-long alteration in the relationship between

NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries. The signing of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces

(INF) Treaty in 1987 eliminated that class of nuclear weapons, with profound implications

for NATO’s nuclear strategy. By 1990, moreover, the North Atlantic Cooperation

Council (NACC) —the highest political authority in NATO— issued the London

Declaration, announcing a radical transformation of NATO by the Allies, including

provisions for joint NATO-Warsaw Pact declarations of intent to cooperate and refrain

from future threat or use of force. Also included were provisions that as Soviet forces

withdrew from Eastern Europe, and with implementation of the Conventional Forces in

Europe (CFE) Treaty, NATO’s military structure would change. Needless to say, these

developments profoundly altered the political balance of power throughout the existing

Balkan states.

Even as the forces that led to the eventual outbreak of hostilities in Yugoslavia

mounted and eventually erupted, the eyes of the world were focused far more upon the

historic disbandment of the Warsaw Pact than upon events in the Balkans. Disbandment

of the Warsaw Pact was correctly perceived as an event with momentous import for

world peace, and hence properly commanded the attention of world leaders. And then,

near the end of 1991—on December 25—came yet another earth-shaking news event,

the resignation of President Gorbachev. In the midst of these critical events, the North

Atlantic Council adopted a new Strategic Concept for peace, crisis, and war, stating that

NATO's security policy was based on dialogue, cooperation, maintenance of a collective

defense capability, and ability to manage crises. At about the same time, the Rome

Declaration on Peace and Cooperation institutionalized the relationship of consultation and

cooperation on political and security issues with the countries of Central and Eastern

Europe. And then new initiatives were proposed to strengthen the Conference on

Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).

In short, the Yugoslavian wars developed at a time when European and world

security was undergoing fundamental reevaluation, a process unequivocally mandated by

the unforeseen termination of the Warsaw Pact, dissolution of the Soviet Union, end of

the cold war, and rending of the Iron Curtain. Faced with the sudden eruption of

Yugoslavian hostilities in the imminent wake of these momentous events, European and

other world leaders found themselves unsure of what constituted an appropriate response

to crisis on the European continent, or anywhere else in the world for that matter.

Moreover, there was no agreement among Western governments with respect to which
BALKANS-7 153

crises were strictly European, rather than Atlantic or pan-European. If there was initial

hesitation in responding to the crises, the hesitation sprang not from lack of conviction, but

rather from uncertainty as to the proper method and appropriate degree of intervention.

Nonetheless, the response to the rapidly-escalating hostilities in Yugoslavia has been

criticized as largely ad hoc and without direction (Carlson, 1995). One outcome of the

initial hesitation is virtually indisputable: by failing to employ preemptive military

intervention, the larger European and world communities inherited the thankless task of

crisis management, an effort that has been largely unsuccessful in deterring further

carnage.

One of the largely unexamined circumstances surrounding the war in former

Yugoslavia is the fact that hostilities began while the West’s military staffs were

suffering a lapse of direction. The fall of the Warsaw Treaty Organization and

the Soviet Union removed the threat that had driven military planning for 40

years. With the danger of general war removed, European states entertained the

notion that they had outgrown the need for the United States to provide for their

security. The American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) seemed

inconsistent with the self-reliant spirit of European integration. (Carlson, 1995, p.

87)

A New Kind of Conflict and a New Kind of Military Response

Efforts at conflict resolution were stymied by other factors as well. According to

Blank (1995), both the complexity and the intractability of the wars in Yugoslavia were

major impediments to effective early intervention. Moreover, the fragmentation of

Yugoslavia, resulting as it did from nontraditional causes, also demanded a nontraditional

response, one that world powers were initially ill-prepared to offer.

States usually break up in the wake of military defeat, which is the way in 1917-

1918 four European empires—the Hapsburg, the Ottoman, the Prussian, and the

Russian—met their end.... The new thing about break-ups in our own day is that

they happen in peacetime by implosion, rather than as a result of military

defeat.... No military factors, either direct or indirect, were involved in

Yugoslavia’s demise in 1991. The outside world did not expect—and most

definitely did not want—its breakup, which occurred precisely at a time when

Europe was beginning to make arrangements for the post-Cold War era.... (Cviic,

1994, p. 89)

The nontraditional, ethnicity-based conflicts in Yugoslavia were part of a

fundamentally changed world security environment. The end of the Cold War and the

easing of East-West confrontations enhanced cooperation at the level of the United

Nations’ Security Council, and reduced the chances of a direct confrontation between the

world’s two super powers. At the same time, however, numerous smaller but highly

intense conflicts began to erupt that involved claims of sub-national identity based on

ethnicity, religion, culture, and language (Layne, 1995; Luck, 1995; United Nations, 1996).
BALKANS-7 154

As a result of the spate of new-era micro wars, peacekeeping operations actually

proliferated, both in number and complexity, with the end of the Cold War. These micro

conflicts differed in significant ways from “traditional” war scenarios, and they demanded

equally different intervention and peacekeeping efforts. In acknowledging the unique

challenges for the militaries involved in such operations, Segal and Eyre (1996) suggested

that

Peace operations need to be viewed, not as unique missions generated by

idiosyncratic political events, but as a response to fundamental changes in U.S.

national security interests and the world security environment. Peace operations

require traditional military skills, but also present new challenges and will require

focused attention and effort if they are to be understood, prepared for, and

sustained. (Segal & Eyre, 1996, p. 3)

The events that unfolded in parts of the former Yugoslavia during the last decade of

the 20th Century have been described as the “failed state” syndrome, a breakdown of

political authority accompanied by the collapse of civil society producing, among other

effects, ecological disaster, economic decline, micro-nationalism, suppression of minorities,

crimes against humanity, mass killings, massive refugee flows and displacement of

populations, ethnic cleansing, arms smuggling, general banditry, and pervasive chaos.

Conflicts in failed states, moreover, threaten the political stability of neighboring countries.
BALKANS-7 155

The Nature of Balkan Peacekeeping Initiatives

The response to Balkan violence has been multilateral and multinational, characterized

in virtually every instance by shared contributions for common security interests, and

involving members of the following organizations:

the United Nations (UN)

the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), formerly known as the

Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE)

the Western European Union or the European Union (WEU/EU)

the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC)

Multiple initiatives have been undertaken under a variety of cooperative arrangements

involving member states of these organizations. Table 17 summarizes membership (or

other association) in these organizations, broken out by country and continent.
BALKANS-7 156

TABLE 17. Membership in European Political, Economic, and Security Institutions, by Country

and Continent (Adapted from MacNair Paper #40).

NAME OF

CONTINENT

AND

COUNTRIES

Formerly

in

Yugoslavi

a

Formerly

in USSR

Former

Warsaw

Pact

Country

WEU

Status

EU

Status

NATO

Status

NACC

Status

PfP

Status

OSCE

Status

NORTH

AMERICA

United States * * * *

Canada * * * *

EUROPE

Albania 1955-1968 * * *

Austria * 2 * *

Belgium * * * * * *

BosniaHerzegovinaIndep. G *

Bulgaria 1955-1991 P 3 * * *

Croatia Indep. G *

Cyprus *

Czech

Republic

1955-1991 P 3 * 1997 * * *

Denmark O * * * * *

Finland * O * *

France * * * * * *

FYROM Indep. G O

Germany * * * * * *

Greece * * * * * *

The Holy See *

Hungary 1955-1991 P 3 * 1997 * * *

Iceland A * * * *

Ireland O * *

Italy * * * * * *

Liechtenstein *

Luxembourg * * * * * *

Malta *

Monaco *

Montenegro FRY 6

Netherlands * * * * * *

Norway A 1 * * * *

Poland 1955-1991 P 3 *1997 * * *
BALKANS-7 157

Portugal * * * * * *

Romania 1955-1991 P 3 * * *

San Marino *

Serbia FRY 6

NAME OF

CONTINENT

AND

COUNTRIES

Formerly

in

Yugoslavi

a

Formerly

in USSR

Former

Warsaw

Pact

Country

WEU

Status

EU

Status

NATO

Status

NACC

Status

PfP

Status

OSCE

Status

Slovakia 1955-1991 P 3 * * *

Slovenia Indep. * * *

Spain * * * * * *

Sweden * 2 * *

Switzerland *

Turkey A * * * *

United

Kingdom

* * * * * *

EURASIA

Armenia 1955-1991 * * *

Azerbaijan 1955-1991 * * *

Belarus 1955-1991 G * * *

Estonia Indep. 1955-1991 P 4 * * *

Georgia Indep. 1955-1991 * * *

Kazakhstan 1955-1991 * * *

Kyrgyzstan 1955-1991 * * *

Latvia Indep. 1955-1991 P 4 * * *

Lithuania Indep. 1955-1991 P 4 * * *

Moldova Indep. 1955-1991 G 5 * * *

Russia 1955-1991 G 5 * * *

Tajikistan 1955-1991 * *

Turkmeni

stan

1955-1991 * * *

Ukraine Indep. 1955-1991 G 5 * * *

Uzbekistan 1955-1991 * * *

LEGEND: WEU – Western European Union, est. October 1954.

 EU – European Union, formerly European Community, est. April 1965. Name changed January 1994. 

 NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organization, est. September 1949.

 NACC – North Atlantic Cooperation Council, est. November 1991.

 PfP – Partnership for Peace, est. January 1994. NATO Summit invited all members of NACC and

CSCE, able and willing to contribute, to participate in PfP program.

 OSCE – Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, est. in 1973 as the Conference on

Security and Cooperation in Europe; name changed 1 January 1995.

* -- Member O – Observer A – Associate Member G – Guest P – Associate Partner
BALKANS-7 158

1 – Norwegian referendum rejected accession to EU on 28 November 1994

2 – Austria and Sweden are not members of NACC, but, together with Finland (which has Observer status),

participate in the NACC Ad Hoc Group on Cooperation in Peacekeeping

3 – Signed “Associate Agreements.”

4 – Negotiations on “Associate Agreements” began in December 1994

5 – Signed “Partnership and Cooperation Agreements”

6 – FRY “Yugoslavia” has been suspended from OSCE

Overview of United Nations and NATO

Peacekeeping Initiatives in the Balkans

Founded in 1945 to promote international peace, security, and economic development,

as well as to solve social, cultural and humanitarian problems, the United Nations (UN) is

the successor to the post-World War I League of Nations. The UN Charter contains six

principal organs, three of which are designed and commissioned to deal directly with

peacekeeping matters: The General Assembly, the Security Council, and the Secretariat.

As far as peacekeeping operations are concerned, the Security Council authorizes, the

General Assembly budgets, and the Secretariat manages. In the 40 years following its

creation, the UN relied on a number of non-coercive dispute settlement techniques under

Chapter VI of its Charter. These included mediation, good offices, fact-finding,

arbitration, monitoring, humanitarian assistance, and traditional peacekeeping activities.

All of these implied that there was some sort of “peace” to keep, that there was some

form of peacekeeping agreement or cease-fire among the parties, and that the parties to

the dispute consented to the deployment of impartial UN forces (Bowens, 1998/1999;

McClure & Orlov, 1999).
BALKANS-7 159

Employment of these methods also depended upon the unanimous consent of the

Security Council's permanent members—China, France, the Russian Federation, the

United Kingdom, and the United States. In the years following World War II, especially

during the height of the cold war era, the frequent lack of unanimity between permanent

members of the UN Security Council often led to stalemates. As a result, the UN

General Assembly provided a new model for classical peacekeeping in the UN

Emergency Force (UNEF I), established in 1956. This model required the consent of the

protagonists, impartiality on the part of UN forces, and agreement to resort to arms only in

self-defense. The goal was to facilitate conditions for development of comprehensive

peace agreements and offer combatants an opportunity to stop fighting and to explore

fresh avenues toward peace (Segal & Eyre, 1996; United Nations, 1996).

Chapter VI versus Chapter VII

In the aftermath of the Cold War, however, numerous struggles for national identity

and self-determination - underpinned by ethnic, religious, and political fragmentation –

demanded more forceful interventions. Chapter VII of the UN Charter, in contrast to

Chapter VI, authorizes the use of “all necessary means,” including military force, to

maintain or restore international peace and security. In further contrast to Chapter VI

deployments, consent is not needed for Chapter VII operations deemed necessary by the

Security Council to overcome threats to, or breaches of, international peace and security.

In the post cold war years, the UN increasingly undertook a variety of coercive

peacekeeping measures, authorized under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (Bowens,

1998/1999; Layne, 1995; Luck, 1995; Weiss, 1995; Whitman & Bartholomew, 1995). In

total, the UN has sponsored 54 peacekeeping missions since its inception. Two-thirds of

these missions (36) have been launched since 1991. At the end of 2000, the last year for
BALKANS-7 160

which complete data are available, 15 missions were ongoing, deploying approximately

38,000 peacekeeping personnel. Three of the 15 current missions are on the Balkan

Peninsula.
BALKANS-7 161

The Failed State Syndrome

Another difference in post cold war UN peace efforts concerned the aforementioned

transition from interstate conflicts to predominantly intrastate fragmentations. Early UN

peacekeeping operations usually involved responses to interstate conflicts, or

disagreements between or among two or more antagonists, which were undertaken by

disinterested third parties—the impartial UN “blue helmets”—with the consent of those

involved in the conflict. Post cold war conflicts, however, more often were concerned

with a single state, often where government no longer functioned—what has come to be

known as the “failed State” syndrome (Berdal. 1995; Luck, 1995; United Nations, 1996).

Yugoslavia as an Example of the Failed State Syndrome

Yugoslavia epitomized the so-called failed state syndrome. Following the death of

Josip Broz Tito in 1980, Yugoslavia experienced a decade of progressively worsening

economic and political crises, social and nationalist unrest, and inter-ethnic tensions. By

June 1991, popular referenda had been held in the Republics of Slovenia and Croatia,

during which both countries declared themselves independent of the other Yugoslavian

republics. The Republic of Macedonia held a referendum on September 8, 1991 that

supported its independence. In October, a vote in the assembly of the Republic of Bosnia

and Herzegovina, supported by Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, also was in favor of

independence. In every instance, however, the Republic of Serbia expressed strong

disapproval of the declarations of independence, signaling its staunch opposition to further

disintegration of the Yugoslav federation.

Shortly after declarations of independence by Slovenia and Croatia in June, 1991,

fighting began. Hostilities were short-lived in Slovenia, but they persisted in Croatia,

where the Republic of Serbia, through indigenous pockets of Serbian loyalists and the

Yugoslav People's Army (YPA), made a concerted effort to stop Croatia’s secession and

preserve the Yugoslav federation. Efforts by the European Community to end hostilities

in Croatia proved unsuccessful. As a result, on September 25, 1991, the United Nations

Security Council unanimously adopted SR 713, calling on all member states to immediately

implement a “... general and complete embargo on all deliveries of weapons and military

equipment to Yugoslavia” (United Nations, 1996, p. 488).

Cyrus Vance, former US Secretary of State, was appointed as the UN SecretaryGeneral's Personal Envoy for Yugoslavia. In November, 1991 he convened a meeting in

Geneva attended by the Presidents of Serbia and Croatia, the Yugoslavian Secretary of

State for National Defense, and Lord Carrington, Chairman of the European Community's

Conference on Yugoslavia. Although the parties reached agreement on an immediate

cease-fire and expressed a desire for a UN peacekeeping operation, the cease-fire broke

down almost immediately. A plan for a possible peacekeeping operation was approved on

December 15, 1991 under Resolution 724, and a small group of military officers, civilian

police and UN Secretariat staff traveled to the area to prepare for implementation. On

February 15 1992, the Secretary-General recommended that the Security Council

establish the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR; United Nations, 1996). For

the first time in the history of the United Nations, a UN peacekeeping operation was to be

deployed on European soil. UN forces were soon in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Later in the decade, they would be deployed in Kosovo and Macedonia (UNPREDEP;

see below).
BALKANS-7 162

Since implementation of the first UN peacekeeping operation on European soil in

1992, the United Nations has maintained a continued and varied presence on the Balkan

Peninsula. Not only were these UN peacekeeping missions the first to be sent to

continental European soil; they also included one mission with an entirely new focus—the

prevention of hostilities where none presently existed, in the Former Yugoslav Republic of

Macedonia. In many instances, UN troops (supplied by UN member nations) and civilian

personnel were dispatched to the trouble spots. In other cases, enforcement duties were

delegated to NATO. As the decade passed, moreover, NATO’s role progressively

expanded. In February 1999, for example, the People’s Republic of China vetoed the

reauthorization of UNPREDEP. The mission ended and the forces were transitioned to

NATO’s control. By this time, although the fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina had ended

and a fragile peace between the Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Muslims was in place under

the Dayton Accord, ethnic cleansing was again underway. This time the conflict was in

Kosovo, where the majority population of ethnic Albanians was being uprooted, displaced

by the hundreds of thousands into Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro, and otherwise

“cleansed” by members of the Serbian police and paramilitary forces. Beginning on

March 24, 1999, NATO forces began an air war against the Federal Republic of

Yugoslavia, including targets in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, in an effort to force an end

to attacks against civilians in Kosovo - an act challenged by some as violating the NATO

charter that restricted NATO responses to the use of defensive actions.

Nonetheless, the combination of NATO bombardment, economic sanctions, adverse

world opinion, and fear that continued hostilities would motivate Montenegro to withdraw

from the new Yugoslav federation, finally persuaded Slobodan Milosevic to concede. By

year’s end Serb forces had been withdrawn from Kosovo and replaced by NATO

peacekeeping troops. A year later, in September 2000, Milosevic was voted out of office.

In April 2001, Milosevic was arrested by Serbian police and subsequently remanded into

the custody of the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Though an uneasy

peace prevails in Kosovo, presided over by several third party peacekeeping missions (see

Tables 18 and 19), the quiet is disrupted frequently as remnants of the officially disbanded

KLA clash with Serbian police and Army troops along the Serbian border and with army

and peacekeeping troops along the Macedonian border.

Macedonia

Throughout the Balkan hostilities, Macedonia has posed a special challenge to

peacekeepers. Macedonia is considered pivotal to continued Balkan peace due to its

geographic location and the interlocking territorial claims that have been made upon its

lands by regional powers. Although Macedonia is a small, land-locked, undeveloped, and

predominantly mountainous country, it is also situated at the crossroads of Europe, Asia,

North Africa, the Middle East, the Adriatic, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. It

straddles age-old north-south trade routes linking central Europe with the Aegean, the

Mediterranean, and North Africa, as well as equally ancient east-west routes linking Italy

and the Adriatic and points westward with the middle East. Moreover, Macedonia has

been a key point of territorial contention historically. In the past, parts of Macedonia have

been claimed by Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Albania (and hence,

by implication, by ethnic Albanians in Kosovo). It is a powder keg of contention precisely

because it focuses so many competing territorial claims in one geographic location.
BALKANS-7 163

Perhaps this is why Macedonia was the site of the first UN preventive deployment in

history.

Although Macedonia itself was not the site of any armed conflict during the war in

Bosnia-Herzegovina, it was always a region of high tension. Beginning in 1992 it hosted

various monitoring missions, including a monitoring mission dispatched by the Conference

on Security and Cooperation in Europe—the OSCE Spillover Monitor Mission to Skopje.

The United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) (December 1992 to March 1995),

the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) (April 1995 to February

1999) and, subsequently, the NATO-directed DETERMINED GUARANTOR were also

deployed in Macedonia. The purpose of these missions was to monitor and report any

developments in Macedonia’s border areas with Serbia (her [former] sister republic),

Albania (a neighboring sovereign nation), and Kosovo (ostensibly a Serbian province, but

populated predominantly by ethnic Albanians) which could undermine the confidence and

stability of Macedonia and threaten its territory. Secondary purposes of the OSCE

Spillover Mission were to promote respect for the territorial integrity of Macedonia and to

maintain peace, stability and security while helping to prevent conflict in the region. These

missions were also “firsts” in the sense that UN-mandated military forces were being

used in Macedonia to prevent a war before it could begin, a novel concept at the time.

Although the majority of Macedonians are Slavs, at least 20% of the country’s

residents are Albanians who trace their histories all the way back to the ancient Illyrians

who inhabited much of this region. When Milosevic began his program of genocide in

neighboring Kosovo, moreover, as many as a million ethnic Albanians fled for their lives,

many of them across the border into Macedonia, thereby swelling the ethnic Albanian

population in this small, mountainous country. At least a tenth of Macedonia’s

municipalities have Albanian majorities and a full third of them have significant Albanian

minorities. Some unofficial estimates now place Macedonia’s ethnic Albanian population

as high as 33% of the total residents.

Ethnic Albanians in Macedonia have long complained of the second class citizenship

and offical discrimination accorded them by the Macedonian government. With their

growing numbers in recent years, their complaints became more vociferous, and in In the

Spring of 2001 open hostilities burst forth between government troops and ethnic Albanian

insurgents. Several ceasefires were established and successively violated until finally the

Macedonian government requested NATO intervention. Interestingly, NATO

intervention was welcomed by both factions, and the official mission of NATO troops was

to disarm ethnic Albanian groups and destroy their weapons. Meanwhile, Albanian

insurgents continue to demand greater rights for ethnic Albanian Macedonian citizens.

Given the complexity of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, it is no wonder that it

is difficult to grasp not only the breadth but also the interconnection of the various

missions and operations—both civilian and military—that were designed to manage the

conflicts. The following sections will clarify matters by chronologically listing and

describing all UN missions, including their objectives. These data are summarized in

Table 18. A timeline of each peacekeeping mission, together with NATO military

operations, can be found in Figure 12, at the end of this chapter.

The primary source of the UN data is The Blue Helmets (United Nations, 1996), with

additional sources noted, as appropriate. Further details on the missions, including a
BALKANS-7 164

comprehensive listing of all UN Security Council Resolutions relating to Yugoslavia, can

be located at the UN home page: http://www.un.org/english/ Once at the UN home

page, click on Documents to access resolutions, which can be displayed and printed using

Acrobat Reader software. Once at the English site, alternate sites in Arabic, Chinese,

French, Russian and Spanish can be accessed.

A Chronology of UN Peacekeeping Initiatives

TABLE 18. UN Peacekeeping Missions in the Former Yugoslavia, 1992 to Present.

TIME

PERIOD

LOCATION UN MISSION OBJECTIVES OF MISSION

February 1992

– March 1995

Croatia

Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Former Yugoslavian

Republic of Macedonia

UNPROFOR

(United Nations

Protection Force)

Create conditions of peace and security in

Croatia, and ensure demilitarization of 3 UN

Protected Areas. Expanded to provide security

for Sarajevo Airport in Bosnia-Herzegovina,

provide humanitarian assistance, and monitor

no-fly zone.

March 1995 –

December 1995

Bosnia and Herzegovina UNPROFOR

(Reauthorization)

Continuation of above; terminated with

establishment of IFOR

March 1995 –

January 1996

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Croatia

The Former Yugoslav

Republic of Macedonia

UNPF-HQ

(United Nations Peace

Forces - Headquarters)

Joint Headquarters for UNPROFOR, UNCRO,

and UNPREDEP

March 1995 –

January 1996

Croatia UNCRO

(United Nations

Confidence Restoration

Operation in Croatia)

Assist crossing of military personnel,

equipment, supplies, and weapons over

international borders; provide humanitarian

assistance for Bosnia-Herzegovina; monitor

demilitarization of Prevlaka

January 1996 –

January 1998

Eastern Slavonia,

Baranja, and Western

Sirmium

(All in Croatia)

UNTAES

(United Nations

Transitional Administration for Eastern

Slavonia, Baranja and

Western Sirmium)

Successor to UNCRO: Supervise and facilitate

demilitarization; monitor refugee return

January 1998 –

October 1998

Eastern Slavonia,

Baranja, and Western

Sirmium

(All in Croatia)

UNCPSG

(United Nations Civilian

Police Support Group)

Successor to UNTAES, to continue monitoring

police performance regarding return of displaced

persons

January 1996 –

Present

Prevlaka Peninsula,

Croatia

UNMOP

(United Nations

Mission of Observers in

Prevlaka)

Successor to UNPROFOR and UNCRO:

Monitor demilitarization of peninsula, decrease

tension in region; protect strategically important

port of Dubrovnik

March 1995 –

February 1999

The Former Republic of

Macedonia

UNPREDEP

(United Nations

Preventive Deployment

Force)

Successor to UNPROFOR in FYROM, to

monitor and report on developments in border

areas with Serbia and Albania, terminated

effective March 1 by Chinese veto on Security
BALKANS-7 165

TIME

PERIOD

LOCATION UN MISSION OBJECTIVES OF MISSION

Council resolution to extend mandate.

Responsibilities transferred to NATO; see

DETERMINED GUARANTOR in NATO

table.

December 1995

– June 2001

Bosnia and Herzegovina UNMIBH

(United Nations

Mission in Bosnia and

Herzegovina)

Coordinate activities relating to humanitarian

relief and refugees, demining, human rights,

elections, rehabilitation of infrastructure,

economic reconstruction, and court-monitoring

program

December 1995

– June 1999

Bosnia and Herzegovina IPTF

(International Police

Task Force)

Train and advise local law enforcement

personnel; monitor and inspect law enforcement

activities; report human rights violations

June 1999 –

Present

Kosovo UNMIK

(United Nations Interim

Administration Mission

in Kosovo)

Coordinate interim civil administration (UNled), humanitarian affairs (UNHCR-led),

reconstruction (EU-led) and institution building

(OSCE-led), in cooperation with a NATO-led

international security presence.

UNPROFOR (UNITED NATIONS PROTECTION FORCE)

Authorization Period: February 21, 1992 -- March 31 1995.

Location: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia

and Montenegro) and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

Headquarters: Initially Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina; later Zagreb, Croatia.

Function: UNPROFOR was established for an initial period of 12 months by resolution

743 (1992). It was to be an interim arrangement for creating the conditions of peace and

security that were necessary in order for an overall settlement to be negotiated within the

framework of the European Community’s Conference on Yugoslavia. Full deployment of

the Force was authorized by UN SR 749 (1992) on April 7, 1992. UNPROFOR was

initially established in Croatia. Its mandate was to ensure that the three UN Protected

Areas (UNPAs) in Croatia were demilitarized, and that all persons residing in them were

protected from fear of armed attack.
BALKANS-7 166

Throughout 1992, the mandate was expanded to include monitoring functions in certain

other areas of Croatia--the so-called “pink zones.” The mandate also included enabling

the Force to control the entry of civilians into the UNPAs as well as immigration customs

functions at international frontiers, monitoring the demilitarization of the Prevlaka

Peninsula (Dubrovnik), and ensuring the safety of the Peruca dam which was situated in

one of the pink zones.

In June of 1992, as the conflict intensified and spilled over into Bosnia and Herzegovina,

UNPROFOR's mandate and strength were enlarged to ensure the security and

functioning of the Sarajevo airport and delivery of humanitarian assistance to Sarajevo and

the surrounding area. By September 1992, the mandate was again enlarged to facilitate

support of efforts to provide humanitarian aid and relief throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina

and to protect convoys of civilian detainees when requested by the International Red

Cross. UNPROFOR also monitored the “no-fly” zone which banned military flights in

Bosnia and Herzegovina and UN “safe areas” established around five Bosnian towns and

the city of Sarajevo. UNPROFOR was authorized to use force in self-defense within

these areas if attacked and to coordinate with NATO regarding the use of air power to

support its activities. Similar arrangements were later extended to the territory of Croatia.

UNPROFOR monitored implementation of cease-fire agreements signed by the Croatian

Government and local Serb authorities in March 1994, as well as cease-fire agreements

negotiated between Bosnian Government and Bosnian Serb forces, which became

effective on January 1, 1995.

In December 1992, UNPROFOR was also deployed in the former Yugoslav Republic of

Macedonia. Responsibilities were to monitor and report any developments in border areas

that could undermine the confidence and stability of FYROM and threaten its territory.
BALKANS-7 167

Strength: Authorized: 44,870 all ranks, with provision for nearly 1,000 international

civilian staff, 1,500 international contractual personnel and more than 3,000 local staff.

Maximum strength on September 30, 1994: 39,322, including 38,614 troops, 637 military

observers and 671 civilian police. March 31, 1995: 38,848, including 37,421 troops, 677

military observers and 750 civilian police.

Fatalities: TOTAL until March 31, 1995: 167 (military observers: 3; other military

personnel: 159; civilian police: 1; international UN staff: 2; and local staff: 2).

UNPROFOR (UNITED NATIONS PROTECTION FORCE) REAUTHORIZATION

The UN Security Council restructured UNPROFOR on March 31, 1995, replacing it with

three separate but interlinked peacekeeping operations. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the

mandate of UNPROFOR was extended; in Croatia, the United Nations Confidence

Restoration Operation (UNCRO) was established; and within the former Yugoslav

Republic of Macedonia, UNPROFOR became known as the United Nations Preventive

Deployment Force (UNPREDEP).

Authorization Period: March 31, 1995 -- December 20, 1995.

Location: Bosnia and Herzegovina

Headquarters: Zagreb, Croatia

Function: After restructuring on March 31, 1995, UNPROFOR continued to perform

functions engendered by the Security Council resolutions as they pertained to conditions in

Bosnia-Herzegovina. In November 1995, an initiative by the United States led to the

Peace Agreement signed by leaders of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and the Federal

Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) in December 1995, known as The

Dayton Accord/General Framework Agreement (See Appendix K: Summary of the

Dayton Accord). The mandate for UNPROFOR terminated with the establishment of a

NATO-led multinational Implementation Force (IFOR) effective December 20, 1995 (see

IFOR below).

Strength: Maximum strength (August 31, 1995): 30,869, including 50,574 troops, 278

military observers, and 17 civilian police. Fatalities: TOTAL March 31, 1995 -- December

20, 1995: 40 (military personnel: 38; civilian police: 1; local staff: 1).

UNPF-HQ (UNITED NATIONS PEACE FORCES HEADQUARTERS)

Authorization Period: March 31, 1995 -- January 31, 1996.

Location: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia

and Montenegro) and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

Headquarters: Zagreb, Croatia

Function: The UN Security Council restructured UNPROFOR on March 31, 1995,

replacing it with three separate interlinked peacekeeping operations. In Bosnia and

Herzegovina, the mandate of UNPROFOR was extended; in Croatia, the United Nations

Confidence Restoration Operation (UNCRO) was established; and within the former

Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, UNPROFOR became known as the United Nations

Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP). Joint headquarters for these three
BALKANS-7 168

theaters is known as United Nations Peace Forces headquarters (UNPF-HQ). UNPFHQ is responsible for liaison with the government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

(Serbia and Montenegro) as well as other concerned governments and NATO. UNPFHQ was phased out following positive developments in the former Yugoslavia, the

termination of the mandates of UNCRO and UNPROFOR, and establishment of new UN

missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.

Strength: Authorized strength, including UNPROFOR, UNCRO, UNPREDEP and

UNPF-HQ: 57,370 all ranks; supported by international and local civilian staff as detailed

under UNPROFOR above.

Fatalities: TOTAL: 9 (military observers: 1; other military personnel: 2; civilian police:

2; international UN staff: 3; and local staff: 1).

UNCRO (UNITED NATIONS CONFIDENCE RESTORATION OPERATION IN CROATIA)

Authorization Period: March 31, 1995 -- January 15, 1996 .

Location: Croatia

Headquarters: Zagreb, Croatia

Function: UNCRO was established (see UNPF above) to perform the functions

anticipated in the cease-fire agreement of March 29, 1994. The functions included 1)

facilitating implementation of the economic agreement of December 2, 1994; 2) facilitating
BALKANS-7 169

implementation of all relevant Security Council resolutions; 3) assisting in controlling the

crossing of military personnel, equipment, supplies, and weapons, over the international

borders between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia and the Federal Republic

of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro); 4) facilitating the delivery of international

humanitarian assistance to Bosnia-Herzegovina through Croatia; and 5) monitoring the

demilitarization of the Prevlaka peninsula.

Croatia reintegrated Western Slavonia and the Krajina region in May and August 1995,

effectively eliminating the need for UN troops in those areas. In Eastern Slavonia, which

was the last Serb-controlled territory in Croatia, the mandate of UNCRO remained

essentially unchanged. This issue was resolved through negotiation. UN-sponsored talks

concluded with the signing of a Basic Agreement on the Region of Eastern Slavonia,

Baranja, and Western Sirmium on November 12, 1995, providing for peaceful integration

of that region into Croatia. A transitional administration was established by the Security

Council to govern the region during the transition period (see UNTAES below). Following

establishment of UNTAES, the mandate of UNCRO terminated.

Strength: Maximum (May 31, 1995): 15,522, including 14,663 troops, 328 military

observers, and 531 civilian police. At withdrawal: 3,376, including 3,110 troops, 98

military observers, and 168 civilian police.

Fatalities: TOTAL: 16 military personnel.

UNTAES (UNITED NATIONS TRANSITIONAL ADMINISTRATION FOR EASTERN

SLAVONIA, BARANJA AND WESTERN SIRMIUM)

Authorization Period: January 15, 1996, extended through January 15, 1998.

Location: Eastern Slavonia, Baranja, and Western Sirmium, Croatia.

Headquarters: Vukovar, Croatia (Eastern Slavonia)

Function: The United Nations Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja

and Western Sirmium was set up for an initial period of 12 months as the successor to

UNCRO with both military and civilian components. The military component supervises

and facilitates the demilitarization of the Region, and monitors the voluntary and safe

return of refugees and displaced persons to their home of origin in cooperation with

UNHCR. By its presence, it also contributes to the maintenance of peace and security in

the region, and otherwise assists in implementation of the Basic Agreement.

The civilian component has established a temporary police force, defined its structure and

size, developed a training program and maintained oversight over its implementation, and

monitored treatment of offenders and the prison system. It has also undertaken tasks

relating to civil administration and the functioning of public services, facilitated the return

of refugees, organized elections, assisted in their conduct, and certified the results. The

civilian component has also assisted in the coordination of plans for the development and

economic reconstruction of the Region and monitored compliance with human rights

commitments, promoting an atmosphere of confidence among local residents regardless of

ethnic origin. It has maintained an active public affairs element.
BALKANS-7 170

UNTAES cooperates with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Member States are authorized to take all necessary measures, including close air support,

to defend or help withdraw UNTAES.

Strength: Authorized: 5,000 troops, 100 military observers, and 600 civilian police. There

is also provision for approximately 480 international civilian staff, 720 locally-recruited

staff, and 100 UN Volunteers. On May 30, 1996: 4,849 troops, 99 military observers, and

401 civilian police. On August 31, 1997, following the first stage of the draw down, the

force strength was 2,385 troops, 412 civilian police, and 101 military observers. By

November 15, 1997, phase two of the draw down was completed, leaving the region

fewer than 800 UNTAES military personnel.

Fatalities: TOTAL: 2 military personnel as of April 30, 1996.

UNCPSG (UNITED NATIONS CIVILIAN POLICE SUPPORT GROUP)

Authorization Period: January 16, 1998 through October 15, 1998

Location: Eastern Slavonia, Baranja, and Western Sirmium, Croatia

Headquarters: Vukovar (Police HQ) and Zagreb (UN Liaison Office UNLO), Croatia

Function: To continue monitoring the performance of the Croatian police in the Danube

region, particularly with respect to the return of displaced persons. The period of

authorization is for a single nine-month period.

Strength: As of June 30, 1998: Mission total of 210 uniformed personnel, including 179

police and 31 troops.

Fatalities: None reported.

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BALKANS-7 171

UNMOP (UNITED NATIONS MISSION OF OBSERVERS IN PREVLAKA)

Authorization Period: January 15, 1996 through the Present.

Location: Prevlaka Peninsula, Croatia

Headquarters: Dubrovnik, Croatia

Function: The Prevlaka Peninsula, where the city of Dubrovnik is located, is a

strategically-important port in the Adriatic. UN military observers have been deployed in

this region since October 1992 when the UN Security Council authorized UNPROFOR to

assume responsibility for monitoring the demilitarization of the area. Following the

restructuring of UNPROFOR in March 1995, those functions were carried out by

UNCRO; and following termination of the UNCRO mandate in January 1996, the

Security Council authorized continued monitoring of the demilitarization of the peninsula

for a period of three months. Upon reports that an extension of the mandate would

continue to help decrease tension in this region, additional periods have been authorized.

Strength: Authorized: 28 military observers. As of March 31, 2001: 27 military

observers, supported by 3 international civilian personnel and 9 local civilian staff.

Fatalities: None reported.

Other Information: UNMOP is one of 3 current UN peacekeeping missions in the

Balkans. For more information, access the UNMOP web site at:

http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/cu_mission/body.htm

UNPREDEP (UNITED NATIONS PREVENTIVE DEPLOYMENT FORCE)

Authorization Period: March 31, 1995, extended through November 30, 1997, replacing

UNPROFOR in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; extended in six-month

intervals, the last being to August 31, 1998, pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution

1142 (1997). The Secretary-General’s Report (UN S/1998/644) of July 14, 1998,

recommended further extension of the mandate to February 28, 1999, due to the conflict

in Kosovo. After Macedonia improved relations with Taiwan, China vetoed the Security

Council resolution that would have extended UNPREDEP’s authority, thus ending the

mission effective March 1, 1999. The troops transitioned from their role as “Blue

Helmets” to assignments under NATO. The “Backgrounder” to the UN Preventive

Deployment Force Mission in Macedonia is included as Appendix J.

Location: The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)

Headquarters: Skopje, Macedonia.

Function: According to U.S. Secretary of State Albright, this mission was established to

monitor and report developments in the border areas with Albania and the Federal

Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). The mission was designed to help

prevent Balkan fighting from spreading south. The focus was to be on activities that (1)

could undermine confidence and stability in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

and threaten its territory, or (2) might cause the conflict to spread into and possibly beyond

the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia. In Secretary Albright’s words, the
BALKANS-7 172

mission represented “. . .the first purely preventive peacekeeping force in UN history”

(Albright, 1996) [emphasis added].

The mandate of UNPREDEP remained essentially the same as that for UNPROFOR--to

monitor and report any developments in the border areas which could undermine stability

and confidence in the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia and which could

threaten its territory. Effective February 1, 1996, following the termination of the

mandates of UNCRO, UNPROFOR, and UNPF-HQ, UNPREDEP became an

independent mission, reporting directly to the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

The change in status did not change the operation. By adopting Resolution 1082 (1996) in

November 1996, the UN Security Council extended the mandate of UNPREDEP for a

six-month period through May 31, 1997 (United Nations, 1996, 1997).

Citing worsening of conditions in the area over the previous six months—including the

crisis in Albania—since the previous agreement on the gradual reduction of the force

component in Macedonia, the United Nations Security Council further extended the

mandate through November 30, 1997 (under Resolution 1110-1997). Effective October 1,

1997, the UN ordered the commencement of a two-month phased reduction of the

military component by 300 all ranks, taking into account the prevailing conditions at that

time (MILS News, 1997; UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, 1997).

In response to the crisis in Kosovo, patrols along the border with Yugoslavia were

increased, using both ground and air assets. Temporary observation posts were also

established to provide for 24-hour monitoring and reporting on activities at the border

throughout the areas of operation. Patrolling by boat has also commenced at Lakes Ohrid

and Prespa. There was danger of renewed violence in the area due to developments in

Kosovo and the serious repercussions such violence could have upon the security situation
BALKANS-7 173

in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Until “ethnic cleansing” by the Serbs in

Kosovo escalated, triggering massive displacement of ethnic Albanians into Albania,

Macedonia, and Montenegro, the spillover of external conflicts in Albania and Kosovo to

FYROM was successfully prevented, in part due to the presence of UNPREDEP.

Strength: Authorized: 1,050 troops, 35 military observers, and 26 civilian police. There is

also provision for 76 international staff and 127 locally-recruited staff. As of May 31,

1998: Mission total of 824 uniformed personnel, comprised of 763 troops, 35 military

observers, and 26 civilian police provided by 27 nations.

Fatalities: None as of May 31, 1998.

UNMIBH (UNITED NATIONS MISSION IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA)

Authorization Period: December 21, 1995, extended through June 30, 2001.

Location: Bosnia and Herzegovina

Headquarters: Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Function: On December 21, 1995, the UN Security Council established the UN

International Police Task Force (IPTF) and a UN civilian office. These were to be in

effect for one year in accordance with the Peace Agreement signed by the leaders of

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and

Montenegro). The operation has come to be known as the UN Mission in Bosnia and

Herzegovina (UNMIBH). The tasks included 1) monitoring, observing and inspecting law

enforcement activities and facilities, including those associated with judicial organizations,

structures, and proceedings; 2) advising and training law enforcement personnel and

forces; 3) facilitating the parties' law enforcement activities; 4) assessing threats to public

order and advising on the capability of law enforcement agencies to deal with such

threats; 5) advising government authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina on the organization of

effective civilian law enforcement agencies; and 6) providing assistance to law

enforcement personnel as they carry out their responsibilities.

The Task Force also considers requests for assistance, with priority being given to

ensuring the existence of conditions for free and fair elections. The UN Coordinator of

the Mission coordinates activities relating to humanitarian relief and refugees; de-mining,

human rights, elections, and rehabilitation of infrastructure and economic reconstruction.

The UNMIBH also cooperates closely with the NATO-led multinational Implementation

Force (IFOR) to help ensure compliance with the provisions of the Peace Agreement.

Strength: Authorized: 2,057 civilian police and 5 military liaison officers. There is also

provision for approximately 380 international staff and 900 locally-recruited staff. On

March 31, 2001: 1,816 total uniformed personnel1, including 1,811 civilian police personnel

and 5 military liaison officers, supported by 350 international civilian personnel and 1,623

local staff.

Fatalities: None reported.
BALKANS-7 174

Other Information: UNMIBH is one of 3 current UN peacekeeping missions in the

Balkans. For more information, access the UNMIBH web site at:

http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/cu_mission/body.htm

IPTF (INTERNATIONAL POLICE TASK FORCE)

Authorization Period: December 21, 1995, extended through June 21, 1999

Location: Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Headquarters: Co-located with IFOR Headquarters, where possible.

Function: As an outgrowth of the General Framework Agreement (The Dayton Accord),

the UN was requested to establish the International Police Task Force to carry out

various tasks which included training and advising local law enforcement personnel.

Monitoring and inspection of law enforcement activities and facilities was part of the

agreement. IPTF personnel were instructed to report any credible human rights violations

to appropriate organizations.

UNMIK (UNITED NATIONS INTERIM ADMINISTRATION MISSION IN KOSOVO)

Authorization Period: June 30, 1999 through Present.

Location: Kosovo

Headquarters: Pristina, Kosovo.
BALKANS-7 175

Function: On 10 June 1999, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1244

authorizing the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to

begin the long process of building peace, democracy, stability and self-government in the

shattered province. To achieve this goal, UNMIK has been acting as the transitional

administration for the region. Working closely with Kosovo's leaders and citizens, the

mission performs the whole spectrum of essential administrative functions and services

covering such areas as health and education, banking and finance, post and

telecommunications, and law and order.

The first phase of civil registration was completed throughout Kosovo in mid-July 2000,

forming the basis of an electoral roll for municipal elections that were held successfully on

28 October. Together with a Kosovo-wide election expected in 2001, this paved the way

for self-government.

In a first-ever operation of its kind, UNMIK initially brought together four “pillars” under

United Nations leadership. With the emergency stage over, Pillar I (humanitarian

assistance), led by the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), was

phased out at the end of June 2000. The other pillars are: 1) Civil Administration, under

UN auspices, 2) Democratization and Institutional Building, led by OSCE, and 3)

Reconstruction and Economic Development, managed by the EU. The head of UNMIK

is the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Kosovo (SRSG). As the most

senior international civilian official in Kosovo, he presides over the work of the pillars and

facilitates the political process designed to determine Kosovo's future status. The civilian

executive powers come from the UN Security Council, which also authorized an

international military presence, KFOR (Kosovo Force).

Strength: Authorized: 5 Regional Administrators and 30 Municipal Administrators,

supported by internationally-recruited UNMIK Police, later in conjunction with the newlyfounded Kosovo Police Service. A Kosovo Protection Corps was created to provide

emergency response and reconstruction services.

Fatalities: None reported.

Other Information: UNMIK is one of 3 current UN peacekeeping missions in the

Balkans. For more information, access the UNMIK web site at:

http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/cu_mission/body.htm

NATO’s Role in Balkan Peacekeeping

Created in the years after World War II to protect its member nations from attack,

and especially from Soviet aggression, NATO today has 19 member states. With the end

of the cold war, NATO agreed to expand its traditional military scope and also use its

forces for peacekeeping missions in non-member countries. By June of 1992, NATO

Foreign Ministers stated that NATO was prepared to support peacekeeping activities

under the responsibility of the CSCE (subsequently renamed the Organization for Security

and Cooperation in Europe—OSCE) on a case by case basis. One month later, the

NATO Foreign Ministers approved Operation MARITIME MONITOR in the Adriatic in

coordination and cooperation with WEU naval forces. By December 1992, NATO had

also stated its readiness to support peacekeeping operations under the authority of the UN

Security Council.
BALKANS-7 176

NATO has been involved in several naval, land, and air operations during recent

Balkan hostilities. The NATO-led military operations in support of peacekeeping missions

in the former Yugoslavia from 1992 to the present are summarized in Table 19. A

timeline of all NATO military operations, along with UN Peacekeeping missions, can be

found in Figure 12 at the end of this chapter. For additional information on NATO

operations, see the NATO homepage at http://www.nato.int Check the NATO

Handbook at this site for a guide to this multifaceted information source.

A Chronology of NATO Peacekeeping Missions

MARITIME MONITOR

Authorization Period: July 16, 1992 - November 22, 1992

Mission: Surveillance of cargo being transported through the Adriatic to the former

Yugoslav Republic. STANAVFORMED (NATO’s Standing Naval Force

Mediterranean), a naval force made up of vessels from various allied nations, was

directed to deploy to the Ionian Sea on July 11, 1992 to be prepared for future operations

in connection with monitoring compliance with UN Resolutions 713 and 757. The first

units of STANAVFORMED entered the Adriatic Sea on July 16, 1992 to take part in

NATO’s Operation MARITIME MONITOR.
BALKANS-7 177

TABLE 19. NATO-Led Military Operations in the Former Yugoslavia, 1992 to Present.

TIME PERIOD LOCATION

MILITARY

OPERATION OBJECTIVES OF MISSION

July 1992 –

November 1992

The Former Yugoslavia MARITIME

MONITOR

Surveillance of cargo to Former Yugoslavia

November 1992

– May 1993

The Former Yugoslavia MARITIME

GUARD

Enforce embargo against Former Yugoslavia

April 1993 –

December 1995

Bosnia- Herzegovina DENY FLIGHT Enforce no-fly zone over Bosnia- Herzegovina

August 1995 –

September 1995

Bosnia- Herzegovina DELIBERATE

FORCE

Air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs

July 1992 –

March 1996

Bosnia- Herzegovina PROVIDE

PROMISE

Provide and protect humanitarian relief

operations

June 1993 –

October 1996

The Former Republic of

Yugoslavia (Serbia and

Montenegro) excluding

Bosnia

SHARP GUARD Enforce UN embargoes and sanctions

December 1995

– December

1996

Bosnia-Herzegovina IFOR (NATO-led

Multinational

Military

Implementation

Force)

Implement the peace by supporting the

implementation of arms control agreements per

stipulations of the Dayton Accord and UN

Security Council Resolution 1031

December 1995

– December

1996

Bosnia- Herzegovina JOINT

ENDEAVOR

Implement military aspects of the Dayton

Accord (The General Framework Agreement)

December 1995

– December

1996

Bosnia- Herzegovina DECISIVE EDGE Support peace implementation force (IFOR);

enforce no-fly zone

December 1995

– December

1996

The Former Republic of

Yugoslavia (Serbia and

Montenegro)

DECISIVE

ENHANCEMENT

Enforce maritime sanctions against Serbia and

Montenegro

December 1996

– June 1998

Bosnia- Herzegovina SFOR (NATO-led

Multinational

Military

Stabilization Force)

Follow-on to IFOR to stabilize the peace through

supporting the implementation of arms control

agreements. (See Follow-on to SFOR [below] for

continuation details.)

December 1996

– June 1998

Bosnia and Herzegovina JOINT GUARD Implement military aspects of Dayton Accord

(The General Framework Agreement)

December 1996

– June 1998

Bosnia-Herzegovina DELIBERATE

GUARD

Enforce no-fly zone

December 1996

– June 1998

Operating out of

Adriatic Sea

DETERMINED

GUARD

Continuation of SHARP GUARD and

DECISIVE ENHANCEMENT to enforce

sanctions against Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

(Serbia and Montenegro)
BALKANS-7 178

TIME PERIOD LOCATION

MILITARY

OPERATION OBJECTIVES OF MISSION

June 1998 Albania and the Former

Yugoslav Republic of

Macedonia

DETERMINED

FALCON

NATO air exercise to demonstrate capability to

project power rapidly into the region, in support

of political solution to bring an end to violence in

Kosovo

June 1993 –

February 1999

The Former Yugoslav

Republic of Macedonia

ABLE SENTRY Observe sanctions and violations on borders

between Macedonia and Serbia, and—

commencing with Serbian aggression in Kosovo—

monitoring borders with Kosovo and Albania

(reassigned to NATO – see below)

June 1998 –

Present

Bosnia-Herzegovina (NATO Follow-on

Force to SFOR)

Deter resumption of hostilities and facilitate

civilian implementation of Dayton Accords

June 1998 –

Present

Bosnia-Herzegovina JOINT FORGE Continuation of JOINT ENDEAVOR

(DECISIVE ENDEAVOR) and JOINT GUARD

to support NATO-led follow-on force in

implementation of Dayton Accords

June 1998 –

Present

Bosnia-Herzegovina DELIBERATE

FORGE

Continuation of DECISIVE EDGE and

DELIBERATE GUARD to support NATO-led

follow-on force in enforcement of no-fly zone

March 1999 –

Present

Macedonia DETERMINED

GUARANTOR

Reassignment of forces to NATO control

following termination of UNPREDEP

March 1999 --

June 1999

Kosovo, Serbia,

Montenegro (Federal

Republic of Yugoslavia)

ALLIED FORCE NATO air strikes in response to Serbian “ethnic

cleansing” in Kosovo

March 1999 –

June 1999

Serbia, Montenegro

(Federal Republic of

Yugoslavia)

ALLIED

HARBOUR

NATO naval forces assigned in response to

Serbian “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo

June 1999 –

Present

Kosovo, Serbia KFOR (NATO-led

international

security force)

Deter resumption of hostilities in Kosovo and

take such actions as required to ensure

compliance with implementation of the Military

Technical Agreement and the Peace Settlement

June 1999 –

Present

Kosovo, Serbia JOINT

GUARDIAN

Establish and maintain secure environment for all

citizens of Kosovo and provide for support and

authorization of the international security force,

KFOR

MARITIME GUARD

Authorization Period: November 1992 -- May 1993

Mission: Enforcement of the UN sanctioned embargo against the former Yugoslav

Republic. STANAVFORMED also participated in Operation MARITIME GUARD for

its duration. MARITIME GUARD and SHARP FENCE were merged into Operation

SHARP GUARD (see below), effective June 1993 (United States Navy Posture, 1997).
BALKANS-7 179

DENY FLIGHT

Authorization Period: April 12,1993 - December 21, 1995

Mission: Enforcement of the UN sanctioned no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina in

support of UNPROFOR, until the multinational military Implementation Force (IFOR)

assumed responsibilities for the implementation of the military aspects of the Peace

Agreement on Bosnia-Herzegovina. The operation, NATO’s contribution toward the

enforcement of the UN embargoes on the former Yugoslavia conducted in coordination

with the WEU Operation SHARP FENCE, was in effect for nearly 1,000 days,

effectively preventing the warring parties from using belligerent air as a medium for

warfare. The mission was 1) to conduct aerial monitoring and to enforce compliance with

UN Security Resolution 816 banning flights by fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft in the

airspace of Bosnia-Herzegovina—the “No Fly Zone” (NFZ); 2) to provide close air

support to UN troops on the ground at the request of, and controlled by, UN forces under

the provisions of UNSCRs 836, 958, and 981; and 3) to conduct, after request by and

coordination with the UN, approved air strikes against designated targets threatening the

security of the UN-declared safe areas.

On December 15, 1995, the UNSCR 1031 terminated resolutions 781, 816, 824 and 936

which provided authority for Operation DENY FLIGHT. The NAC terminated DENY

FLIGHT on Transfer of Authority to the Implementation Force (IFOR). Forces

associated with DENY FLIGHT were transferred to Operation DECISIVE EDGE, as

part of the overall NATO Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR, to provide support to IFOR

and close air support for the UNCRO forces in Croatia.

DELIBERATE FORCE

Authorization Period: August 30, 1995 - September 20, 1995

Mission: The operation consisted of NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb military

targets in response to Serb shelling of Sarajevo and refusal to withdraw heavy weapons

from a 20 kilometer radius of Sarajevo. The plan was designed to reduce military

capability to threaten or attack safe areas and UN forces. DELIBERATE FORCE

targets included fielded forces/heavy weapons, command and control facilities, direct and

essential military support facilities, and supporting infrastructure/lines of communication.

The aforementioned included targets that had been approved for planning through the

Joint Targeting Board established by NATO and the UN as a result of 1) the warring

factions’ disregard for UN mandates regarding Safe Areas and heavy weapons exclusion

zoned (EZs), 2) targeting of NATO and UN aircraft and ground forces, and 3) increased

factional fighting during the Fall and Winter of 1994.

PROVIDE PROMISE

Authorization Period: July 1, 1992 - March 15, 1996

Mission: A joint operation between the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy, involving both

naval carrier aircraft and land-based air, protected humanitarian relief efforts in the

besieged cities in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Vital support was supplied to United Nations

(UN) forces Navy and Marine Corps aircraft, a Marine aerial refueling squadron, a
BALKANS-7 180

military police unit, a Navy fleet hospital manned with both active and reserve personnel,

and on-call Marines from the European theater’s amphibious ready group (ARG) and

Marine expeditionary unit (special-operations capable) (MEU [SOC]) (United States

Navy Posture, 1997).

SHARP GUARD

Authorization Period: June 15, 1993 - October 1, 1996 (suspended on June 19, 1996)

Mission: On June 15, 1993, Operation MARITIME GUARD (under NATO) and

Operation SHARP FENCE (under the WEU) were merged in the combined

NATO/WEU Operation SHARP GUARD. U. S. Naval forces, including surface

combatants, intelligence-gathering attack submarines, and active and reserve maritime

patrol aircraft, operated with NATO and the Western European Union WEU) to enforce

the UN sanctioned embargo against the former Yugoslavia (amended Nov. 1994 to

exclude Bosnia), in accordance with UNSCRs 713, 757, 787, and 820. The operation

prevented all unauthorized shipping from entering the territorial waters of the Federal

Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and all arms from entering the former

Yugoslavia.

In November 1992, operations were amplified to include the commencement of boarding

and search operations. STAVANFORMED conducted embargo enforcement operations

until the termination of the UN arms embargo against the Former Yugoslavia on June 18,

1996. Operations SHARP GUARD and DECISIVE ENHANCEMENT were combined,

forming Operation DETERMINED GUARD, effective December 1996 (United States

Navy Posture, 1997).

IFOR (MULTINATIONAL MILITARY IMPLEMENTATION FORCE)

Authorization Period: December 20, 1995 to December 20, 1996.

Mission: The multinational military Implementation Force (IFOR) operated under Chapter

VII (peace enforcement) of the UN Charter, with a NATO-led unified command under

the political direction and control of NATO’s North Atlantic Cooperation Council

(NACC). Overall military authority was in the hands of NATO's Supreme Allied

Commander Europe (SACEUR), General George Joulwan. The IFOR operated under

NATO rules of engagement that provide for clear and robust use of force if necessary.

At the close of the one-year authorization for IFOR in December 1996, NATO deployed

a follow-on force to IFOR—the Strategic Force (SFOR)--(Woodward, 1997). Further

details on IFOR operations can be found by going to the NATO homepage

http://www.nato.int/ and and typing IFOR into the search feature.

JOINT ENDEAVOR

Authorization Period: December 20, 1995 - December 20, 1996

Mission: NATO operation to implement the military aspects of the Dayton Peace

Agreement, also referred to as Operation DECISIVE ENDEAVOR by U.S. military

(Smith, 1996).. With expiration of mandate for IFOR/JOINT ENDEAVOR, activities

were transitioned to SFOR/ JOINT GUARD (United States Navy Posture, 1997).
BALKANS-7 181

DECISIVE EDGE

Authorization Period: December 20, 1995 - December 20, 1996

Mission: Joint/combined operation to support peace implementation force and enforce nofly zone. Operation DECISIVE EDGE transitioned from Operation DENY FLIGHT to

support the Implementation Force (IFOR) and Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR.

Operation DECISIVE EDGE then transitioned to Operation DELIBERATE GUARD in

support of the Stabilization Force (SFOR) and Operation JOINT GUARD.

DECISIVE ENHANCEMENT

Authorization Period: December 1995 - December 1996

Mission: Combined operation to enforce maritime sanctions in the Adriatic. Transitioned

into DETERMINED GUARD (see below).

SFOR (MULTINATIONAL MILITARY STABILIZATION FORCE)

Authorization Period: December 20, 1996 to Present

Mission: SFOR (Strategic Force) is the follow-on NATO force to IFOR. It is responsible

for supporting the implementation of arms control agreements (Woodward, 1997). The

SFOR web site can be accessed at http://www.nato.int/sfor/index.htm Other

information on peacekeeping activities in Bosnia-Herzegovina can be located online at the

official Department of Defense web site for information on military operations in

operation JOINT FORGE (see below): http://www.dtic.mil/bosnia/

JOINT GUARD

Authorization Period: December 20, 1996 to June 20, 1998

Mission: JOINT GUARD is the follow-on operation to JOINT ENDEAVOR,

commencing on expiration of the mandate of JOINT ENDEAVOR.
BALKANS-7 182

DELIBERATE GUARD

Authorization Period: December 20, 1996 to June 20, 1998

Mission: DELIBERATE GUARD is the air operation to enforce the no-fly zone over

Bosnia-Herzegovina. Successor to Operation DECISIVE EDGE, in support of the

NATO-led SFOR.

DETERMINED GUARD

Authorization Period: December, 20 1996 to June 20, 1998

Mission: DETERMINED GUARD is the continuation of Operations SHARP GUARD

and DECISIVE ENHANCEMENT, operating out of the Adriatic Sea to enforce

sanctions in the former Yugoslavia (United States Navy Posture, 1997).

DETERMINED FALCON

Authorization Period: June 1998

Mission: DETERMINED FALCON was a one-day NATO air exercise in which forces

from the Unites States European Command and 12 other NATO nations participated. It

was conducted with the agreement of the governments of Albania and the Former

Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and involved flying within 15 miles of their shared

borders with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia, including Kosovo, and

Montenegro). The objective was to demonstrate NATO’s capability to project power

rapidly into the region, to support a political solution ending the violence in Kosovo, to
BALKANS-7 183

provide an enhanced status for Kosovo, and to safeguard the human and civil rights of all

inhabitants of Kosovo, whatever their ethnic origin.

ABLE SENTRY

Authorization Period: July 12, 1993 to Present

Mission: Combined UN operation to observe sanctions/violations along

Serbian/Macedonian border and to monitor and report activities that could undermine

confidence and stability or threaten the territory of FYROM. In Operation ABLE

SENTRY, a reinforced mechanized infantry company observes and reports from the

former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as part of the U.N. Preventive Deployment

Force (UNPREDEP) (Defense Issues, 1997).

MULTINATIONAL SPECIALIZED UNITS (NATO FOLLOW-ON FORCE)

Authorization Period: June 21, 1998 to present

Mission: Continuation of IFOR and SFOR, this follow-on force is slightly reduced in size

from SFOR and supports implementation of arms control agreements, providing a safe

and secure environment for implementation of the Dayton Accords.

JOINT FORGE

Authorization Period: June 21, 1998 to present

Mission: Continuation of JOINT ENDEAVOR and JOINT GUARD, this operation

provides support for NATO-led Follow-on force to SFOR in implementation of Dayton

Accords. For more information, see: http://www.dtic.mil/bosnia/

DELIBERATE FORGE

Authorization Period: June 21, 1998 to present

Mission: Continuation of Operations DECISIVE EDGE and DELIBERATE GUARD,

this operation continues to enforce the no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina.

DETERMINED GUARANTOR

Authorization Period: March 1, 1999 - Present

Mission: Continuation under NATO of UNPREDEP preventive deployment mission in

Macedonia. For the latest information on NATO involvement in Macedonia, refer to the

section below on OPERATION ESSENTIAL HARVEST.

ALLIED FORCE

Authorization Period: March 25, 1999 to June 10, 1999

Mission: NATO air strikes against Serbian assets in Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo, in

response to Serbian policy of ethnic cleansing directed against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo

Province.
BALKANS-7 184

ALLIED HARBOUR

Authorization Period: March 25, 1999 to June 10, 1999

Mission: NATO naval support of air strikes under ALLIED FORCE.

KFOR (KOSOVO INTERNATIONAL SECURITY FORCE)

Authorization Period: June 11, 1999 to present

Mission: Deploy and operate without hindrance within Kosovo, with the authority to take

all necessary action to establish and maintain a secure environment for all citizens of

Kosovo.

For more information go to the NATO homepage http://www.nato.int/ and type “KFOR”

in the ISN search feature.

A history of NATO’s Kosovo involvement, along with the latest developments, can be

found online at: http://www.boston.com/news/packages/kosovo/

JOINT GUARDIAN

Authorization Period: June 11, 1999 to present

Mission: JOINT GUARDIAN is the follow-on operation to ALLIED FORCE,

commencing on termination of the air strikes under ALLIED FORCE. For more

information, consult this web site: http://www.nato.int/kosovo/jnt-grdn.htm

ESSENTIAL HARVEST

Authorization Period: Officially launched on 22 August, 2001 and effectively started on

27 August, 2001.

Mission: Up to 3,500 NATO troops, with logistical support, were authorized to enter

Macedonia and disarm ethnic Albanian groups and destroy their weapons. This plan was

initiated in response to a request for NATO assistance from Macedonian President

Trajkovski and implemented by NATO on the condition that the political dialogue between

the various factions in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia continue and that a

cease-fire be respected. The latest developments in Macedonia can be obtained by going

to the NATO homepage http://www.nato.int/ and clicking on the Operation ESSENTIAL

HARVEST link or by going directly to the ESSENTIAL HARVEST web site

http://www.nato.int/ess-har/home.htm

Role of the United States

in Balkan Peacekeeping Efforts

Following the end of the Cold War, a central security goal of the United States,

replacing the goal of containment of Soviet expansionism, became one of containment of

local conflicts in order to prevent their escalation. In the context of European conflicts,

the view was that by taking the lead in collective interventions, under either the United

Nations or NATO, the United States could help root out the causes of global instability,

whether of interstate or intrastate origin, and prevent humanitarian disasters (Layne,

1995; Luck, 1995). Accordingly, in 1992 American military forces joined other forces
BALKANS-7 185

under NATO direction for deployment to the Balkans as part of a unified and coordinated

peacekeeping force. It was the first peacekeeping mission in the history of the United

Nations to be sent to the soil of continental Europe.

As part of the NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR), the [US] Army played a

vital role in helping to end the Bosnian civil war. For the Army, this was a

seminal step in the transition from a tight focus on conventional warfighting to

more wide-ranging support of U.S. National Security Strategy. The importance of

this cannot be overestimated: the Army’s successes in the Balkans have been as

impressive as its combat victories in the Gulf War. (Metz, 2001, p. 1.)

Currently, US troops are deployed as part of either NATO or UN peacekeeping

missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and along the Macedonian border in Kosovo.

In Macedonia, deployment of the UN Preventive Deployment Force

(UNPREDEP) in 1993 staved off impending disaster but that small country still

faces substantial problems, particularly concerning Kosovo refugees and border

disagreements with Serbia and Albania. More ominously, tensions between

ethnic Macedonians and Albanians in Macedonia could spark armed conflict.

Such an event might disillusion the American public on the prospects for

stability in the Balkans and intensify demands for disengagement. (Metz, 2001,

p. 28)

As predicted by Metz in the above citation, armed conflict was indeed sparked in

Macedonia in April, 2001 between Albanian rebels and the Macedonian Army. Open

hostilities began west of Skopje, near Tetovo, and continued until the time of this writing

(June, 2001) at several locations along the Kosovar border. Tensions remain high

throughout the region. Tension is also high along the Serbia-Kosovo border, where ragtag

elements from the officially disbanded KLA continue to provoke incidents with Serbian

police and army troops. Another source of tension, although not of overt hostilities, exists

between Serbia and Montenegro. The latter country continues to agitate for

independence, a move that arouses no small amount of opposition in Serbia.

Amidst all this contention, the United States continues to play a pivotal role in

guaranteeing European security, exemplified by its support of the UN and NATO, and its

commitment to Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia. Currently, there is debate as to whether

future US involvement in European security should be curtailed. An important

determinant of the US’s future Balkan role will be the outcome of the ongoing

Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). Although history teaches us that European stability

is fundamental to world security, and although most observers will agree that European

stability depends on the Balkans becoming stable, prosperous, and eventually integrated

into Europe, there remains considerable disagreement as to how these objectives should

be achieved and what role US military forces should play in their attainment. Moreover,

by law and by presidential order, the U.S. Department of Defense is mandated to review

US Balkan involvement during 2001.

While the United States is unlikely to depart the Balkans unilaterally or

precipitously, the present administration has reservations about using the U.S.

military for protracted peace operations in areas of limited national interest.

These reservations resonate among many sectors of the U.S. elite and the

general public. (Blank, 2001, p. 1)

Support for continued US involvement in Balkan peacekeeping efforts is by no means

assured.
BALKANS-7 186

Unfortunately, eternal vigilance is the inevitable price of

peace, and it is unlikely in the days ahead that defenders of

Democracy will find the Balkans any less deserving of close

continuous scrunity than has been the case in past decades.

At the time that President Clinton committed U.S. forces to Bosnia in 1995, 55

percent of the respondents in a Time/CNN poll disapproved. During the air

campaign against Serbia in 1999, less than 50 percent of those polled considered

vital U.S. interests at stake. In May 2000, the Senate narrowly defeated a bill cosponsored by Senate Armed services Committee chairman John W. Warner (RVa) that would have pulled U.S. troops out of Kosovo by July 2001. The next

Congress ... is likely to remain lukewarm in its support for involvement in the

Balkans. While the American people may not be seized with the urge to abandon

the Balkans immediately, support for extensive U.S. involvement could easily

crumble in the face of something like attacks on U.S. forces in the region which

result in casualties.... (Metz, 2001, p. 20)

Another critical determinant of continued US Balkan involvement is the development

of competing strategic threats to global security. A prime example is potential hostilities

between mainland China and Taiwan, whose relationship can only be described as brittle.

Moreover, relations between the U.S. and China deteriorated significantly in 2001

following the downing and capture of a U.S. spy plane off the Chinese coast, an event

that followed closely on the heels of a heated dispute over the United States’ sale of high

tech weaponry to Taiwan.

Perhaps the most critical determinant of all is the United States’ recent promise, in the

wake terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, to root out and

eradicate the forces of international terrorism. While direct attacks on the United States

and its territories will always receive top priority (and rightly so), it is nonetheless well to

remember that Slobodan Milosevic’s brand of terrorism is, in its own insidious way, just as

repugnant as the version promulgated by Osama Bin Laden. If history has taught any

lesson during the last hundred years, surely it is that the United States of America,

geographically separated as it admittedly is by two great oceans, can no longer in any

way, form, or fashion be considered as isolated from the rest of the world. Like it or not,

Americans have been swept up in the vast interplay of contemporary global events. In

today’s ever-accelerating technological environment, every country in the world is

fundamentally interlinked. Shakespeare was right, all the world really is a stage. And on

today’s global stage, even bit players like Macedonia and Bosnia and Afghanistan can be

critical determinants of the play’s final outcome. The stakes are high: world peace in the

best case and, at the other unspeakable end of the continuum, humankind’s very existence

in the event the worst scenario should unfold. In today’s world, peace is quintessentially a

global endeavor and terrorism, whether originating in Yugoslavia or Afghanistan or some

other overnight hot spot yet to be identified in tomorrow’s headlines, is the enemy.

Unfortunately, eternal vigilance is the inevitable price of peace, and it is unlikely in the

days ahead that defenders of Democracy will find the Balkans any less deserving of close

continuous scrunity than has been the case in past decades.

Meanwhile, US troops continue to be deployed on several peacekeeping missions in

the Balkans, including 3,900 Americans serving in the Bosnia SFOR, and 5,300 American

troops fulfilling KFOR duties in Kosovo. Significantly, American peacekeeping troops
BALKANS-7 187

have been drawn from both Active and Reserve Components. In fact, it might be said

that one of the distinguishing characteristics of American troop deployment in the Balkans

has been the successful integration of Active and Reserve Components.

The deployment of a large contingent of the 49th Armored Division of the Texas

Army National Guard in March 2000 represented the largest activation of the

National Guard since the Korean War, and was one of the few times in Army

history when a Guard unit commanded active duty forces. Beginning in June

2001, Army National Guard divisions will command six of the next nine SFOR

rotations. (Metz, 2001, p. 18)

Depending on the exact nature of the United State’s continuing responsibilities in the

Balkans, and of course the length and scope of its recently declared war on international

terrorism, it is possible that the role played by Reserve Components in Balkan

peacekeeping missions could increase. Peacekeeping missions make high demands on

combat support and combat service support units, and a high proportion of these forces

are in Reserve Components. At the very least, future US Army forces deployed to the

Balkans for peacekeeping purposes will almost certainly be a mix of Active and Reserve

Components.
BALKANS-7 188 UN Peacekeeping Missions NATO-Led Military Operations

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001

 

 UNPROFOR UNPROFOR UNMIBH

 Croatia Bosnia-Herzegovina Bosnia- Bosnia-Herzegovina

 Herzegovina

UNMOP

Southern Coastal Croatia

 UNTAES UNCPSG

 Eastern Croatia 

UNCRO

Croatia

UNPF-HQ IPTF

Croatia,

Bosnia-Herzegovina, and

Macedonia

 UNPREDEP

 The Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia

UNMIK

Kosovo

ABLE SENTRY DETERMINED GUARANTOR

 IFOR SFOR

 JOINT

 ENDEAVOR

JOINT GUARD JOINT FORGE

DENY FLIGHT DECISIVE

EDGE

DELIBERATE

GUARD

DELIBERATE FORGE

PROVIDE PROMISE KFOR

 

 MARITIME MARITIME

 MONITOR GUARD

(WEU) SHARP FENCE

SHARP GUARD

 

 DECISIVE

 ENHANCEMENT DELIBERATE

 FORCE

DETERMINED

GUARD

 DETERMINED

FALCON

ALLIED

HARBOR

 ALLIED

 FORCE

JOINT GUARDIAN

Figure 12. Chronology 

and Location of 

Peacekeeping and 

Military Operations in 

the Former Yugoslavia, 

from 1992 until mid2001.
BALKANS-8 189

CHAPTER 8

LESSONS LEARNED

The Balkan Peninsula is approximately the same size as the state of Texas. Perhaps

as well as any other region of comparable size anywhere on earth, the Balkans reinforce

the old adage that geography is a powerful force in shaping the course of history and of

human development itself. Largely because of its geographic location, this region has

been buffeted harshly by historic forces. Since time immemorial, the Balkans have stood

at the crossroads of geographic and human history, often serving as a critical staging

ground for conflicts among powerful European, Asian and Mediterranean civilizations. In

this context, the Balkans have known the influence of (and often felt the heel of)

civilizations and conquerors as diverse as Persians from the middle East, Vikings from

Scandinavia, ancient Greeks from the Aegean, Attila the Hun from north of the

Carpathians, Genghis Kahn from Mongolia, Ottoman Turks from Anatolia and Arabia, and

Roman legions from Italy. Across the centuries, this peninsula’s inhabitants have reeled

from military defeats handed it by conquerors like Alexander the Great and Odoacer the

Despoiler, shuddered under the horrific despotism of Adolph Hitler and his SS troops, and

cringed under the rule of home-grown tyrants like Slobodan Milosevic. Surely few other

regions on earth have suffered so severely and so repeatedly.
BALKANS-8 190

Cultural and Linguistic Diversity

At least on a par with its geographic centrality, the Balkans also serve as a major

religious and cultural crossroads. Three major world religions (Orthodox Christianity,

Islam, and Roman Catholicism) vie for influence in this region, along with myriad other

lesser-represented religions and sects. Two of the world’s principal alphabets are in

contention, Latin and Cyrillic. Commonly-used languages range from Turkish and

Mongol from the Altaic language superfamily to a plethora of Indo-European languages,

including Greek, Persian, Czech, Slovak, Russian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian, SerboCroatian, Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian, German, Bavarian, Austrian, Yiddish, Macedonian,

Bulgarian, Albanian, Romanian, Dalmatian, and Italian. Indo-European languages span six

of seven extant language families, including Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, Germanic, BaltoSlavic, Thraco-Illyrian, and Romanic. Currently, nine major nationalities are represented

on the Balkan Peninsula: Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian, Romanian, Yugoslavian, Bulgarian,

Greek, Macedonian, and Albanian. Arguably, contemporary Yugoslavian could be divided

into Serbian, Montenegrin, and Kosovar Albanian constituents. Also, the country of

Bosnia-Herzegovina consists of the Serb Republic and the Federation of Bosnia and

Herzegovina, both semi-autonomous states. Also, Serbia contains the de facto political

entity of Kosovo, currently under international (i.e., NATO) governmental administration.

Without a separate national identity, but nonetheless represented within most Balkan

nationalities, especially Romania, are the Gypsies (or Rom) with their own language

(Romany) and cultural traditions dating back to their 15th Century migration from India.

Culturally and linguistically, the Balkans are resplendently diverse, and geography has

played no small role in producing this state of affairs. On the one hand, Balkan geography

provided invading armies with ready access to the peninsula. (Arguably, navies had ready

access, too, via the Black, Aegean and Adriatic Seas, as well as the Danube River.) On

the other hand, geography also served to compartmentalize the Balkans. Formidable

mountain ranges created barriers to travel, trade, transport, and communication, in many

instances encouraging and supporting the existence of a myriad of isolated cultural

enclaves, each often with its own language and ethnic traditions. In no small part due to

its predominantly mountainous terrain, language and other cultural vestments in the

Balkans are, even to this day, often so compartmentalized that residents of one area are

unable to understand the speech of those from the next valley.

Near the beginning of the preparation of this document, the first author likened the

geo-cultural complexity of the Balkans to a colorful mosaic, as shown in Figure 13 on the

next page, where each complete block represents a republic of the former Yugoslavia and

is an abstraction of the colors and symbols in the flags of the individual republics. The

partial blocks at the top and bottom represent Austria and Greece, respectively.

Beginning from the top, the mosaic blocks represent Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia

and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro (linked as present-day Yugoslavia), the former

Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), and Greece.
BALKANS-8 191

Figure 13. A mosaic Representing the Geographic, Cultural, and Political

Complexity of the Balkan Peninsula.

Not only are the Balkans complex, they are also in a state of flux. During the last

decade of the 21st Century, events were transpiring at a sometimes frighteningly rapid

pace. With coordinated interventions by UN and NATO forces, supported by numerous

European nations and other countries from around the world, events have stabilized

considerably. Nonetheless, the quickly developing recent unrest in Macedonia, a state

that until recently had managed to avoid open warfare, served as a lesion in just how

quickly explosive conditions can develop and erupt even with peacekeeping missions

currently in place. Given the constant political flux, present and potential Balkan

peacekeepers, as well as those merely interested in monitoring Balkan events, may want

to monitor developing news stories on a regular basis. Internet web sites offer a splendid

way to accomplish this objective. A good starting point is Mario’s Cyberspace Station

(http://www.mprofaca.cro.net/mainmenu.html), with over a thousand web pages and a

special section on late-breaking Balkan news. (If “Balkan News” is not featured as a

clickable icon, then type “Balkans” in the search feature and click “Go.”)

:^4 -

m
BALKANS-8 192

For news from Balkan media sources (translated into English), consult

http://www.tfeno/archives. Other news sources include: http://www.tfeagle.army.mil,

http://www.domovina.net/News/tno.html, and http://www.igc.org/balkans/index3.html.

Divide and Conquer?

Or ...

Co-opt and Subjugate?

Geographic compartmentalization has combined with the availability of numerous

separate and distinct ethnic traditions to produce a patchwork of fiercely independent,

rarely cooperative and often antagonistic, ethnic subgroups. At no time in history have

these groups managed to coalesce into a unified national or cultural identity, making them

easy pickings for every successive foreign invader, from the ancient Persians to the 19th

Century Russians and 20th Century Nazis.

Another by-product of pervasive ethnic fractionalization has been the ease with which

many foreign invaders have been able to pit indigenous ethnic groups against one another,

thereby preventing unified resistance to invading forces while simultaneously laying the

groundwork for enduring hatreds and animosities between the manipulated indigenous

groups. Thus did the Ottoman Turks, during their five-hundred-year occupation, co-opt

Bogomil Christians to convert to Islam and then join in the systematic and brutal

subjugation of Christian Slavs. In a similar fashion the Nazis, during their World War II

occupation of the Balkans, commissioned Croatian Ustashe radicals to launch a program

of systematic annihilation aimed at Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. In both cited instances, coopted locals carried out their assignments with an efficiency and enthusiasm that often

surprised (and sometimes dismayed) the conquering forces (Bennett, 1995; Glenny, 1992;

Zametica, 1992), including German SS troops who had been explicitly schooled in the

tactics of racial hatred.

Recurrent Balkan Themes

From the discussion thus far, two recurrent themes are evident: 1) Pervasive ethnic

diversity, and 2) A propensity (often encouraged by foreign powers) for inter-ethnic

conflict. To these themes can be added at least four others:

1. Pervasive ethnic diversity

2. A propensity for inter-ethnic conflict

3. The influence of foreign powers

4. Reversion to local political power following the dissolution of central (usually

externally imposed) authority

5. Resistance to foreign ideas

6. Undeniability of human emotion
BALKANS-8 193

The influence of foreign powers

To a great extent, a history of the Balkan Peninsula entails the systematic chronicling

of a succession of foreign invaders. When the invasions began no one can say for sure

because the earliest invasions are shrouded in the mists of prehistory, but just within the

relatively brief span of recorded history the Balkans have been invaded by Persians,

Greeks, Macedonians, Romans, an assortment of barbarian tribes from northern and

eastern Europe such as the Ostrogoths and Huns, and the Mongol horde from across the

vast stretch of Asia. In more recent times there have been the Ottoman Turks, the

Austro-Hungarians, the Russians, the Nazis, and the Communists. And these are just the

major invaders. (See Chapter 3 and Appendices D and G for more details.) Some

invaders, like the Huns, made brief but unforgettable forays and then left, never to return.

Others, like the Ottoman Turks, stayed for hundreds of years and left an indelible imprint

on everything from religious institutions to the mindset of many of today’s residents.

Reversion to Local Political Power Following the Dissolution of Central Authority

One of the many paradoxes of the Balkans is that the region’s greatest degree of

unification occurred during a period of foreign occupation. Under Roman control, the

region benefited from a uniform code of law, an extended period of peace and freedom

from foreign invasion, and substantial economic development. Even Roman citizenship

was available for those seriously interested. When Roman domination crumbled,

however, political power quickly reverted to the local level. This pattern has repeated

itself time and again throughout Balkan history. One might even say that this was one of

the fundamental processes underlying the disintegration of Yugoslavia during the final

decade of the second millennium. When Soviet influence waned (through the death of

Tito and dissolution of the Soviet Union), Balkan political control reverted to the local

level. Avaricious demagogues, notably Slobodan Milosevic, rushed in to fill the political

power voids. Soon the demagogues were battling one another for local influence, building

their political and military campaigns atop ancient and possibly ineradicable edifices of

ethnic animosities. Although unification efforts have been launched from time to time,

notably ones based on notions such as a “greater Serbia” or “pan-slavic state,” none has

achieved lasting status.

Resistance to foreign ideas

Given that the introduction of foreign ideas have most often been accompanied by

invading forces, and invading forces rarely have been inclined to refrain from looting,

pillaging, plundering or general subversion, it is perhaps not surprising that diverse cultural

groups in the Balkans exhibit a more or less uniform suspicion of – and even hostility to –

foreigners and their ideas. Although there are isolated exceptions (such as the

aforementioned Romans), as a general rule it can be stated that foreign occupation has

not redounded positively to the Balkan peoples. They have been repeatedly exploited and

suppressed, sometimes systematically exterminated, often driven into remote hinterlands in

order to maintain old customs and beliefs, and commonly turned against their neighbors

and even other kin in order to discourage organized resistance and further the selfish

objectives of their oppressors. Under the ruthlessly suppressive and exploitative hand of

the Ottoman Turks, for example, Balkan peoples were largely denied participation in –

and in many instances even awareness of – revolutionary movements and cultural

developments that were sweeping across western Europe. In a sense, Balkan society
BALKANS-8 194

missed out on the Renaissance. In many respects, and arguably as a direct result of the

suppressive hand of a foreign conqueror, the Balkans are still mired in a morass of feudal

social and governmental institutions, characterized by localized control, suspicion of

outsiders, and a propensity to settle disputes with violence.

Undeniability of Human Emotion

To most Westerners, the amount of human suffering that has occurred on the Balkan

Peninsula is staggering, and probably incalculable in any meaningful sense. Since time

immemorial invading armies have swept across the peninsula, leaving widespread rape,

pillage and plunder in their wake. Even more devastating have been invaders, such as the

Ottoman Turks and German Nazis, who managed to pit indigenous groups against one

another, thus introducing hatreds and vendettas that became savagely self-perpetuating

even after conquering forces were defeated or withdrawn. Thus did Croats become arch

enemies of Serbs, after Serbs were targeted for persecution and systematic annihilation

by Croatian Ustasha at the instigation of Italian and German Fascists during World War

II. And thus did Orthodox Christian Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats come to hate and

resent Islamic Bosniacs after the latter were suborned by the Turks to renounce their

traditional religious beliefs and systematically subjugate Christians. In a similar manner

was an enduring metaphysical wedge driven between ethnic Albanians and Christian

Serbs, even though Albanians had little if any choice in their forced conversion to Islam.

The inevitable accompaniment of these machinations, both those of recent vintage as

well as the ones from as long ago as the initial Ottoman invasions, has been a succession

of unspeakable atrocities and human rights violations, including in all too many instances

genocide and acts of so-called “ethnic cleansing,” producing a complex mosaic of

lingering inter-ethnic animosities, hatreds, and vendettas that, to outsiders, often seem

misplaced if not downright irrational. To the Balkan peoples, however, these emotions are

both perpetually salient and based on manifestly real events. The animosities, hatreds and

vendettas, constructed as they often are on the remembered slaughter of loved ones, are

not easily forgotten, and as long as such atrocities are repeated regularly, as they were

throughout the final decade of the second millennium in either Bosnia, Croatia, or Kosovo,

it seems safe to say they never will be forgotten.

Clearly, the Balkans can no longer be permitted to settle internal disputes violently. In

today’s global society, there is simply too much potential for local conflicts to spread to

adjacent regions and explode into international conflagrations. With today’s technology,

local conflicts can escalate to international status virtually overnight. Accordingly, it is

incumbent upon the international community to promote peace in the Balkans, thereby

undergirding European stability and contributing significantly to world peace.

How do we stop inter-ethnic conflict in the Balkans? The harsh but incontrovertible

truth is that killing begets more killing. Each new atrocity must be avenged, and the

record is cumulative. The longer killing is permitted to continue, the more difficult it will

be to stop it. The key is to break the age-old pattern of violence, to superimpose a period

during which no further atrocities are allowed to occur and during which a process of

healing can begin. This process will take time. It will require commitment. It will require

understanding. Just as the egregiously iterative process of hatred and retaliation was in all

too many instances instigated by foreign forces, its rectification almost surely will require
BALKANS-8 195

the presence of foreign peacekeepers. It is hard to imagine how enduring peace will

otherwise be established in the Balkans.

The Peacekeeping Challenge

It is unfair, and ultimately impractical, to ask peacekeepers to function in a vacuum.

They need (and deserve) to understand the sociological, psychological, and economic

circumstances of the region where they are deployed. As for the Balkans, one of the

most important tools a peacekeeper can possess is an understanding of how the myriad

inter-ethnic hatreds developed in the first place. In February 1994, the U.S. Army

Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI) sponsored a workshop

on peace operations (Simutis & Johnson, 1996). Participants included the U.S.

Departments of Defense and the Army, as well as other U.S. services, major Army

commands, and operations units (from both the U.S. and NATO) that had participated in

peacekeeping operations up to that time. Discussion topics included peacekeeping

doctrine, selection of soldiers for peacekeeping missions, support of peacekeepers and

their families, and the content of soldier training. Subsequent to this workshop, Segal and

Eyre (1996) examined the literature regarding these topics to identify the knowledge

needed to “. . . provide guidance to the soldiers who operate on the ‘social battlefield’ of

peace operations” (p. xii). Based on the literature and on interviews with military leaders

who had served in peace operations, two of the most highly recommended areas of

needed knowledge development included:

1. training soldiers to understand differences among cultures, and

2. cultural knowledge of the particular population with whom the peacekeeping force

is working.

Segal and Eyre (1996) emphasized the need to translate sociological and political

concepts into a form military leaders can use:

Almost any discussion of the dynamics of these conflicts with Army officers

today will elicit acknowledgement that ethnic/religious/civil conflicts are

something that we do not fully understand. Classic models of insurgency and

“revolutionary warfare,” grounded in part in Cold War views of the world,

capture only part of the reality of these conflicts . . . . Research is needed on the

dynamics of ethnic and religious conflict, focusing on sociological and socialpsychological understandings of identity formation and activation, group

formation and cohesion, and political sociology . . . While various elements of

the Army are focusing on the development of doctrine, it is not clear that this

doctrine is adequately informed by research on these basic topics. (p. 38)

It is hoped that this document has served as a building block toward achieving Segal

and Eyre’s goal of providing useful information to military personnel. From the

introduction, it will be recalled that this paper’s goal was to provide the reader with

enough information to begin to understand why the most recent Balkan wars occurred,

and why these conflicts saw participant ethnic groups (Croats, Serbs, ethnic Albanians,

Bosniacs, and Slovenes, for example) pitted against one another with such ruthless and

unforgiving ferocity. A multi-faceted investigation was needed in order to unravel the

Balkan conundrum, including geographical, historical, economic, sociological and

psychological information. At no point was the reader led to expect a simple outcome.
BALKANS-8 196

Balkan society is inarguably characterized by diversity, complexity, and multicultural

plurality. The paper has been successful if readers who have persisted to this point can

say they have achieved an enhanced understanding of the forces and circumstances that

dictate the conditions of life on the Balkan Peninsula today. For these readers, it is hoped

that the paper can be returned to time and again, not just as a repository of facts and

findings, but also as an instrument of insight into the heart and psyche of the Balkans.

It is evident that the Balkans will forever form a significant bracket around the 20th

Century. One hundred years ago, events in the Balkans were so volatile that they

eventually precipitated World War I. Now, at the dawn of the new millennium, the

Balkan “powder keg” is again smoldering and will likely threaten to flare up well into the

21st Century. Unfortunately, this region once again has the potential to trigger a

widespread conflagration by drawing non-European nations into its internecine conflicts.

This is an outcome that must be avoided. Pursuant to preventing further hostilities, and as

a summary of the material reviewed in this document, three straightforward conclusions

may be deduced:

1. Balkan inter-ethnic conflict is not a recent development. Although these conflicts

were exacerbated by the events of World War II, especially the horrific genocidal

pogroms associated with the Yugoslavian civil war that occurred concurrent with

World War II, conflicts have nonetheless been building for centuries. Recent

eruptions of violence are merely the latest manifestations of inter-group

antagonisms that in some instances date back at least to the initial Ottoman

invasions and occupations of the 15th and 16th Centuries. Because these conflicts

are longstanding, they are unlikely to be resolved simply, easily, or quickly. This is

not to say that the antagonisms are ineradicable, but it is to say that meaningful

and lasting conflict resolution will take time. Balkan conflicts did not

development overnight. Ergo, they will not be resolved overnight.

2. History has shown repeatedly that European stability is critical to world peace.

Moreover, history also has shown that European peace and prosperity rests upon

a platform of Balkan stability. Metz (2001) stated: “Balkan instability threatens

wider European security by generating refugees; challenging rule by law, respect

for human rights, and the peaceful resolution of conflicts; and by having the

potential to divide European states against one another, draw them into the

conflict, or spark terrorism.”(p.9) The instigation of World War I can be traced

directly to events transpiring in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in July 1914; namely, the

assassination of Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian terrorist group.

And although World War II cannot be traced specifically to the Balkans, it has

been cogently argued (Kaplan, 1994) that Nazism itself originated on the Balkan

Peninsula, and only later flowed up the Danube to infect central Europe. Hence,

world peace may well depend upon successful conflict resolution in the

Balkans. Unresolved conflicts in this region are likely to erupt into

further hostilities, which in turn have the potential of spreading to

adjacent regions and involving major world powers, thereby undermining

European stability and hence world peace.

3. In the short-to-intermediate timeframe, Balkan peace depends critically upon the

stabilizing influence of outside powers. Until democratic traditions and forms of
BALKANS-8 197

government can be established, this region will be susceptible to further outbreaks

of violence. Stability requires the presence of external peacekeeping and

stabilization forces. Balkan peacekeeping is an unwelcome job, but the

world community is obligated to see that it is done responsibly. World

peace may very well depend upon it.
BALKANS-BIBLIOGRAPHY 198

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BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-1

Appendix A

Balkan Social Character and Cultural Personality

. . . Communism in the former Yugoslavia was rooted in a fierce social character

that preceded it, and . . . following the much-touted fall of Communism in the late

1980s, this type of social character may yet transform itself into another

autocratic system that will be every bit as harsh and autocratic as Communism

ever could be. (Mestrovic, 1993, p. vii)

Mestrovic (1993) credited the authorship of the idea of the ‘fierce Balkan social

character’ to Dinko Toma”iÉ, a Croatian sociologist, whose 1948 work was banned by

Tito. In the course of reviewing the formation of political states in Eastern Europe from

the Middle Ages to post World War II, Toma”iÉ specifically delineated:

. . . three distinct types of social character operating in Yugoslavia as well as the

Soviet Union: the power-hungry, aggressive Rodopian-Dinaric or Ural

herdsman; the peaceable, rural-plains farmer; and the urban-industrial

cosmopolitan type. (Mestrovic, 1993, p. 51)

Toma”iÉ (1948) observed—as have many others—that the region from the Baltic Sea in

the north to the Mediterranean in the south was the focus of ongoing struggles between

East and West, representing a crossroads of conflicting cultures, religions, and political

and economic systems. What is unique about Toma”iÉ’s work was his view that

Such a situation has made Eastern Europe a particularly important “laboratory”

for the study of intercultural, interpersonal and power relationships. Eastern

Europe has been also a standing challenge to social scientists to find ways to

stabilize a “problem-area” whose upheavals, convulsions, and warfare have often

spread far beyond its borders, and have twice in the recent past inflamed the

whole world. (p. 9)

Toma”iÉ’s (1948) work, published more than fifty years ago, continues to provide

significant insights into the ‘mosaic of ethnic groups and nations’ with their confusing

array of conflicting claims, outlooks, and aspirations that continue to be problematic in

eastern Europe—and particularly in the Balkans. Despite the passage of time, the

significant actors in the drama—the city dwellers, the ‘farming folk’ in the valleys, and the

herdsmen in the prairies and mountains—have remained relatively consistent.

It is this social heritage that is primarily responsible for the internal strife,

disorders, conspiracies and revolutions, as well as for the international tensions

and warfare, which have characterized the centuries of social and political

development in this part of the world . . . . Since the economic techniques of the

countries of Eastern Europe are still predominantly agricultural and pastoral, and

since between sixty and eighty per cent of its population still lives in small rural

communities, rural strata play an important role, not only in the economic

development of these countries, but in their cultural and political growth as well.

It is for this reason that the interrelations of the three basic structural elements of

the countries of Eastern Europe—the herdsmen, the peasantry and the urban

strata—appear to be of primary importance in the understanding of the events in

that part of the world . . . . Both historical sources and comparative enthnological
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-2

[sic] studies indicate that these two societies, the Dinaric and the Zadruga, well

represent the two main types of migrations that flooded Eastern Europe from the

first centuries of the Christian era up to the end of the Middle Ages. (pp. 10-11)

Toma”iÉ (1948) based his work on detailed field studies of the cultures, personality

development, and political roles of both the sheep raisers and warriors and the peasant

agriculturalists whom he referred to as ‘Dinaric herdsmen,’ and ‘Zadruga plowmen,’

respectively. The herdsmen were located in the rugged mountains—the Dinaric Alps of

western Yugoslavia—and the farmers resided mainly in the valleys and plains of

northeastern Yugoslavia (refer to Figure 5 in chapter 3). Toma”iÉ delineated the area of

the herders as between the Morava River and the Adriatic Sea (western Serbia, Kosovo,

Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and southern Croatia/Dalmatia). He placed the

farmers in the valleys and plains between the Drava and Sava Rivers (Slovenia, western

Croatia, eastern Croatia/Slavonia, northern Serbia, and Vojvodina).

The Zadruga culture is closely related to the culture which existed among the

Slav farming folk in the marshy plains of Polesie at the beginning of the Christian

era, and which was spread by these soil cultivators throughout Eastern Europe.

The Dinaric culture, on the other hand, is fundamentally identical with the culture

and social organization of the Ural-Altaic sheep raisers and horse breeders who

invaded Europe in a series of waves of conquest in the course of the Middle

Ages. These two contrasting types of culture and social organization have

preserved themselves until today, in a greater or lesser degree, among the

peasants and the herdsmen in the rural areas throughout Eastern Europe.

(Toma”iÉ, 1948, p. 11)

Toma”iÉ (1948) based his study of city dwellers and the formation and dissolution of

political elites and dominant classes and political ideologies on comparative analysis of

historical and political developments throughout Eastern Europe from Poland to Greece.

Special attention was given to the study of the effects of personality and culture

on power in the Balkans, since the interrelations between men of arms and men of

the soil, and the resulting processes of social change, can today be observed in

their original form in this area where the five hundred years of Ottoman rule have

extended the Middle Ages to our own times . . . . the most important result of this

inquiry is to identify some of the principal insecurity-producing factors whose

control is essential to the reduction of political conflict. Failure to cope

successfully with the basic factors will keep alive a vortex of discord which has

complicated European and world politics for many centuries. (pp. 11-12)

In this chapter, aspects of social character are explored to see the manner in which

Toma”iÉ’s ‘power-hungry,’ ‘aggressive vs. peaceable,’ and ‘cosmopolitan,’ urban vs.

rural dichotomies are portrayed in the literature. The people of the Balkans are a people

who in many ways are fundamentally different from the western soldiers who have been

sent to the Balkans to keep the peace. In order to increase our understanding of the

South Slavic people of the former Yugoslavia, the link, if any, between the development of

these types of social character and the dominant subsistence or food-getting strategies

(the herdsman, the farmer, and the city dweller) are also examined.

CULTURE AS HUMAN ADAPTATION

At the outset, it should be understood that the analysis presented in this report does not

presuppose any sort of biological determinism. Any notion that social character is
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-3

uniformly distributed among all members of a society is not intended. Neither is social

character to be conceived of as permanently fixed or unchangeable. Instead, as is

discussed in Appendix A, ‘culture’ is to humans as ‘instinct’ is to the lower animals.

Culture takes the place of instinct and provides a blueprint for human behavior. We are

not born with that blueprint fixed in our genes, however. Culture is learned. The way in

which culture molds the personality of a child is reflected in the psychological makeup of

adults in that culture. Whatever is learned, however, can be unlearned or modified even

though the process may not be quick or easy.

Enculturation

In the process of being brought up in a society, every person is trained (often

subconsciously) to accept the values of the group and to follow its unwritten rules of

behavior. We are taught to believe in our culture, to feel that it is the right way and the

best way to live. Because of the way we are taught, our outlook or worldview is centered

on our own way of life. The values that are part of our cultural heritage are not seen

simply as the ones that fit our particular way of life. They are considered the best for

everyone .

The strength with which these beliefs mold our behavior is considerable. For example, we

are aware that we can recognize differences from one ‘nationality’ to another. A

significant portion of what we perceive as a difference in nationality reflects the kind of

diversity among the world’s many cultures that falls within what can be understood as

what Toma”iÉ (1948) referred to as social character. Consider the following observation:

It occurred to me, gazing at this statue, that there was something distinctly

French about the Serbs. Like the French, and unlike the Croats, Serbs never

doubted who they were. Their history, from the Turks to the Ustashas, had

forced them to define themselves, and to clutch that definition to their chests.

Like the French, they believed that the word “glorious” could only, strictly

speaking, refer to themselves. Like the French, they were possessed by an

unassailable conviction that the greatest blessing they could confer on another

people was to allow them to become Serbs. From this conviction followed an

inability to distinguish between Serbia and Yugoslavia (France and her empire)

and a sort of muddled, angry hurt, an outrage over ingratitude, when the colonies

(Croatia, Algeria) rejected the embrace. (Hall, 1994, p. 112)

Ethnocentricity

This belief that one’s own patterns of behavior are the best, the most natural, beautiful,

right, or important is ethnocentric. It is the way all people feel about themselves as

compared with outsiders. A person’s outlook or world view is centered on his or her own

way of life; and to the extent that other people live differently, it is common to consider

that the standards of the other folks are inhuman, irrational, unnatural, or wrong. Any

view that one’s own culture is better than all others is ethnocentric; and no matter how

liberal or open-minded one may claim to be, there is no one who is not ethnocentric to

some degree. When we encounter behaviors and practices that do not follow the same

value system that we adhere to, we may feel the other person is wrong. We may even

think that their behavior is repugnant. Such feelings and thoughts are ethnocentric.
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-4

The evidence of ethnocentricity can be seen in many aspects of culture, including myths,

folk tales, and proverbs, as will become obvious. The accounts presented in this and

following chapters are graphic. The reader may even experience some ‘culture shock’

upon reading the accounts and descriptions of life and conflict in the former Yugoslavia.

Culture shock itself can be a powerful lesson in relative values and in understanding

human differences. It is an indication that one is not prepared for the differences being

encountered. It is important to be aware, however, that when tempted to make value

judgments, one should look objectively at the system and take his or her biases into

account.

Cultural Relativity

Although aspects of social character may be ascribed with ‘positive’ as well as ‘negative’

aspects, these distinctions are culturally relative. What seems good to one person may

seem bad to another. In general, it is important to remain neutral and to avoid making

judgments about the merits of one culture over another. Each group has a distinct

history, and whatever a culture is like today is a result of its own development. To the

extent possible, our judgments and interpretations of the behavior and beliefs of others

should reflect sensitivity to their traditions and experiences. The goal here will be to form

a greater understanding of what makes Balkan peoples ‘tick’ in order to facilitate

development of culturally-relative approaches to humanitarian as well as military

interventions presently being staged. Just as one would not expect an Eskimo to readily

understand and embrace the notions and practices of an Australian Aborigine, it is equally

ludicrous to expect a Balkan peasant to quickly adapt to Western democratic ideas and

principles. Likewise, it is futile to expect an American soldier to quickly and fully grasp

the function and importance of many beliefs and practices that are common among

Balkan peoples. It is possible, however, to better grasp the Balkan mindset.

Cultural Personality

Culture refers to patterned ways in which members of a population think, feel, and

behave. Personality also refers to patterned ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving, with

the difference that the individual rather than the group is emphasized. Personality is

commonly understood to refer to consistencies in attitudes, values, and modes of

perception that underlie and account for human behavior. It is a tendency for people to

behave in certain ways regardless of the specific setting. Although each individual begins

with certain broad potentials and limitations that are genetically inherited, studies have

shown that there is some kind of nonrandom relationship between enculturation (the

process of transmitting culture from one generation to the next through a process of

teaching and learning) and personality development. For example, in some cultures,

certain child-rearing practices seem to promote the development of compliant

personalities, while in others, different child-rearing practices seem to promote more

independent, self-reliant personalities. Although there is no particular system of child

rearing that is inherently better or worse than any other, what matters is whether the

system is functional or dysfunctional in the context of a particular society.

Cultures vary a great deal in terms of the personality traits that are looked upon with

admiration or disapproval. Discussion of the personality of a group of people must involve
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-5

recognition that each individual in the group is unique to a degree, in inheritance or genetic

endowment, and in life experiences—in nature and in nurture. Although it is not

necessarily easy to characterize cultures in terms of particular personalities, the concept

of modal personality has been somewhat useful. The concept of modal personality7

recognizes that in any human society there is a range of individual personalities, with some

more ‘typical’ than others. The use of the concept of modal personality to deal with

group personality is presents certain difficulties, however. The complexity of the

measurement techniques, involving various perception and projective tests, combined with

the difficulty of carrying out the tests in the field has limited their utility. In addition,

obtaining a representative sample is also problematic, not only in regard to determination

of the ‘genuineness’ of the sample but also in assuring the availability of the time and

personnel needed to administer the tests. Each of these factors have limited the use of

this approach to defining the personality of groups.

There has been a long history, however, of what have been referred to as studies of

‘national character.’8

. . . national character studies were begun seeking to discover basic personality

traits shared by the majority of the peoples of modern nations. Along with this

went an emphasis on child-rearing practices and education as the factors that

theoretically produce such characteristics . . . . During World War II, techniques

were developed for studying “cultures at a distance” through the analysis of

newspapers, books, and photographs. By investigating memories of childhood

and cultural attitudes, and by examining graphic material for the appearance of

recurrent themes and values, researchers attempted to portray national character.

(Haviland, 1989, p. 346)

Critics of ‘national character’ studies have emphasized their subjectivity and the tendency

of these works to be based on unscientific and over-generalized data. They have also

pointed out the fact that occupational and social status tends to cut across national

boundaries, producing ‘personality’ characteristics that are less linked to a specific nation

than to a shared way of life or subsistence pattern. The idea that personality develops as

an adaptation to the basic food getting pattern of a society is not new in anthropology.

Studies have shown that cultural maintenance systems, such as the basic economy and

technology, combined with aspects of social organization, such as residence practices and

kinship beliefs, set parameters for child rearing practices. These, in turn, shape the adult

personality in ways that are reflected in other cultural elements such as religious beliefs

and folklore and overall cultural values (Whiting, 1969). In spite of the inherent difficulties

and the valid criticisms of the attempts to define the ‘national character’ of one country or

another, there remains a degree of urgency to such studies. “Without them, we will

probably never really understand what motivates the leaders and civil servants of modern

nations” (Haviland, 1989, p. 348, citing Hsu, 1979).

In this report, a unitary ‘national character’ is not ascribed to the peoples of the former

Yugoslavia. Instead, obvious ‘personalities’ are defined that relate more or less to each

 

7 Haviland (1989) defines ‘modal personality’ as “The personality typical of a society as

indicated by the central tendency of a define frequency distribution” (p. 345).

8

It appears that Toma”iÉ’s (1948) reference to ‘social character’ is similar to what, in the West,

have been referred to as ‘national character.’
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-6

of the main subcultures that are defined by the type of subsistence technology (herding,

farming, or city-dwelling) that has been practiced in the Balkans. It is assumed that the

differing ‘cultural personalities’ that become apparent are related to the way that

individuals learn the cultural content specific to their family, friends, and neighbors, and to

their lifestyle. Obtaining this knowledge involves the patterning of one’s attitudes and

values as well as the shaping of one’s external behaviors, in ways that are often

unconscious to the individual and the group. The cultural personality reflects the way that

individuals learn to respond to, and to behave in, the world in culturally-selected ways

(Nanda, 1980).

BALKAN ‘HABITS OF THE HEART’:

SITUATING PEOPLE IN THE LANDSCAPE

. . . one can search for stable constant factors . . . in the culturally based habits of

the heart of Eastern Europeans . . . . The advantage of such a cultural approach is

that it focuses on underlying, chronic, and persistent factors that cast the

surface events into their proper context. It is possible to argue that beneath all

the apparent transitions, there exist pockets of social character in the Balkans

that are unsuited to democracy as it is practiced in the West, and that there exists

a real danger of regression to previous, undemocratic forms of government.

(Mestrovic, 1993, p. 25)

The following section consists of narratives and observations that bring to life and provide

some evidence of the Balkan cultural personalities. Unlike other portions of this report, the

following sections will contain many somewhat lengthy accounts presented verbatim.

Rather than paraphrase, or put things into my own words, these ‘up close and personal’

accounts are powerful in their immediacy and yield considerable insight into the Balkan

personalities. I have organized them using various elements that have played a part in the

separation of the Yugoslav republics from one another. Mestrovic called them “. . .

centripetal forces that bespeak the habits of the heart” (1993, p. 18). Instead of being a

force that has homogenized these peoples into a unitary population, these are factors that

have caused them to fall inwards—to exaggerate their differences from one another.

Examples of Toma”iÉ’s types—the contrast between the urban and the rural, the

cosmopolitan city dweller and the peasant of the countryside, and between the peaceable

farmer and the aggressive pastoralist—are discussed first. In addition, the following

patterns and organizing principles have emerged in my reading about ‘things Balkan:’

v the relationship between ethnocentrism and nationalism;

v the evidence of beliefs and behaviors that can be characterized as

‘macho’/authoritarian; and

v the obsessive memory of, and overall propensity to, brutal violence.

Many of the passages that I have chosen to illustrate Toma”iÉ’s Balkan personality types

have been drawn from Brian Hall’s 1994 book, The Impossible Country: A Journey

Through the Last Days of Yugoslavia. Hall’s account was based on travel in

Yugoslavia from May to mid-September of 1991—what he saw as a “. . . distinct period

in the country’s slow and agonizing slide toward its bloody demise” (p. ix). Another

primary source was Robert Kaplan’s 1994 book, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-7

History. Kaplan traveled in the Balkans in the 1980s, living in Greece for 7 years. His

observations of ‘brewing troubles’ that grew out of reporting trips in the early 1980s failed

at that time to interest editors or the general public, but he returned in late 1989-1990 to fill

in details for his book. He provided a fascinating use of “. . . landscape as a vehicle to

reveal the past and the historical process” (p. ix). I have chosen these two ‘travelogues’

for the primary reason that they provide a view of the Balkan cultures that emanated from

the words of Balkan people.

Another perspective was provided by Slavenka DrakuliÉ, a Croatian woman, whose book,

The Balkan Express: Fragments from the Other Side of War, began as a series of

articles for Western news magazines that grew into a book dedicated to her daughter.

She described her work:

Balkan Express picks up where the news stops, it fits somewhere in between

hard facts and analysis and personal stories, because the war is happening not

only at the front, but everywhere and to us all. I am speaking about the other,

less visible side of war, the way it changes us slowly from within . . . . my short

half-stories, half-essays are to convey . . . to the reader . . . the change in values,

in one’s way of thinking, one’s perception of the world, that occurs on the inner

side of war—a change that overtakes the inner self until one can scarcely

recognize oneself any longer. (1993, pp. 3-4)

Finally, Paul Mojzes’ 1995 book, Yugoslavian Inferno: Ethnoreligious Warfare in the

Balkans, provided a view both from the inside and from the outside. Mojzes—a native of

Croatia—grew up in Serbia as the son of a Protestant minister who was killed in a

Hungarian labor camp in 1942. He came to the United States in the late 1950s. His

account derived from a “ . . . need for understanding the cause of the present great

convulsion . . . .” (p. xvi). It was based on his personal insights formulated through a

combination of experience, scholarly and journalistic reports, and interviews from the

period of January and August/September 1993. His was a unique perspective—that of an

insider minority citizen (Protestant) who lived both in Croatia and Serbia, who left

Yugoslavia, and returned as an outsider (US citizen).

Urban vs. Rural, City vs. Countryside, Cosmopolitan vs. Peasant

Urbanization has been a notable characteristic of European society for centuries, and

movement from rural to urban areas, combined with industrialization, following World War

II was extremely common in most parts of Europe. Despite this, until the last few

decades, conditions in Yugoslavia have remained largely agricultural. The capital city of

each republic was the urban hub for the population. Small towns surrounded by peasant

farming communities characterized the remainder of the countryside.

Peasant farming communities are not autonomous. Although the rural peasant farmers

cultivate the land primarily for their own consumption, their surpluses are transferred to

the state economy that uses the surplus to support its own operations and to distribute the

remainder to non-farming groups. In this way, peasant communities are tied into a wider

political and economic system that controls and, to a degree, exploits their activities. The

peasant community is a part of the larger state that includes many different people with

diverse ethnic backgrounds who may speak different languages and worship different

gods; and it is dependent upon continual communication and trade between the local

community, other regions, and the urban centers. Each village and region participates in
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-8

the wider community, while retaining local traditions that are not shared with outsiders.

The peasant villagers are dependent to a degree on the urban folk in intellectual matters

as well as in aspects of religious and moral life. A certain tension between the urban and

the rural persists in peasant societies—and in more developed societies as well—as

peasants are often viewed as ‘backward’ (Wolf, 1966; Redfield, 1956).

. . . the countryside is far removed from the centre of power and hence from

identification with the state, which it tends to see as external and superordinate.

At the same time, the countryside is the domain of the small community,

sensitive to any ‘incursions’ from outside, all of which tend to be viewed as

foreign, though the degree of perceived ‘foreignness’ varies, depending on

whether the outsider is only from the next village or from an entirely different

nationality and region . . . . The city, by contrast, with its ethnic and cultural

heterogeneity, tends inevitably to be more cosmopolitan, which is to say, less

‘ethnic’ (less oriented to the ethnos), and by the same virtue, more ‘civic’, that is,

more oriented towards the community in its political aspect. With additional

levels of religious and sexual heterogeneity, the city also has some built-in

factors that encourage social tolerance, while in the countryside the much lower

levels of heterogeneity dispose the local population to social ignorance and

unconscious intolerance . . . . whereas ethnic values predominate in the

countryside, civic values dominate in the city . . . . the countryside traditionally

teaches one what it is to be a good national, while the city teaches one what it is

to be a good citizen. (Ramet, 1996, p. 72)

The contrast between countryside and city and the strength of one’s connection to one or

the other appears frequently in the literature. Hall spoke of a Serb family in Belgrade that

spent each day lounging by a fountain in the middle of the city:

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1991] [They were] . . . Serb villagers who retained a country appreciation

for sitting outside and listening to the gurgle of water, even here, where the parked cars so

crowded both sidewalks and the narrow street that the trolleybuses sometimes got stuck. The

woman crocheted white table covers which she later tried to sell to the rare tourists in

Kalemegdan, while her children chased each other around the bench. They occupied the

ground-floor apartment opposite and even on rainy days seemed to live half outdoors, as they

kept their windows thrown open and leaned out to greet passers-by. You could stop on the

sidewalk and watch their television with them. Svetlana sniffed a little, because this failure to

distinguish properly between inside and out was a mark of the peasant. (Hall, 1994, pp. 70-71)

***

During Hall’s travels in Bosnia, he went with a Muslim acquaintance to the man’s home

village and recorded the following passage in which the strength of this man’s tie to the

countryside of his youth is illustrated:

[Cim, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991] “There is an old village saying,” Mustafa said. ‘“Nema

Cima do Rima.’” It could only be translated badly: “There is not another Cim between here and

Rome.” Under the blue sky, in the bower of cherry trees, among the lavender flowers, I felt I

could easily believe it.

Here was a fleeting glimpse of the rural past, when the world was much smaller, when every

hamlet had its own traditions, its own proverbs. A man from Cim would have been called a

cimac, and when he boasted he would have begun, “Now, we cimci, we . . .” The men of Cim

would have protected each other, partly because they were all cousins, partly because no man

could survive alone in those hard, lawless times. You had to be as a brother to those from

whom you might some day require a service only a brother could be expected to fulfill—to

avenge your death, or take in your widow. To reinforce that crucial sense of solidarity, there had

to be an Other, and since the world was small, that role was fulfilled by a neighboring village,

like Ilica, over the next hill. Perhaps they had red piping on their jackets over there, not the blue
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-9

of Cim. Perhaps cimci looked in their coffee and called the floating grounds ilicani. Perhaps

they said the only virgins in Ilica were those girls quick enough to outrun their brothers.

How much of Yugoslavia’s present turmoil could be blamed on its recent peasant past, and on

that past’s tribal culture? Roads had been built, and the world had been enlarged. Cimci had

become Herzegovinians, who scorned the Bosnians as ”ljivari or “plum eaters,” because figs

and cherries could not grow in that colder climate. Then they all became Bosnians, and they

said that when the Turks came, many Bosnians fled into the sea and drowned, but those with

empty heads floated, and became the Dalmatians.

Highways joined republic to republic, but the way between the faiths remained narrow, the gate

strait. Dalmatians expanded to Croats—and stopped. Cim’s blue piping was gone, and the

cimci with it, but Muslims, far from giving up the fez, were returning to it.

Yugoslavia had tried to move into the “modern” world . . . but it had fallen short in the

transition . . . . The peasant tribalisms lingered. Perhaps they could be considered the genetic

predisposition to cancer, while religion was the insult to the cell that triggered the disease.

(Hall, 1994, pp. 183-184)

***

Consistent with the dual nature of a peasant agricultural state, not all people in a peasant

society favor the rural life, however; and many are more closely tied to the city than to the

countryside:

[Near Croatian border with Serbia, 1991] We were approaching the Serbian border. “Not

many people going to Belgrade,” I observed, after walking up and down the empty train.

“Village people!” Miroslav said scornfully. “They think Belgrade is like the countryside, where

someone will cut your throat.”

He was on his way to see his girlfriend, a Serb. “My girlfriend and I are city people. I feel

completely normal in Belgrade.” He added, “There won’t be war. I am sure of that. People

have too much to lose.” (Hall, 1994, p. 64)

***

The tension between rural and urban, between city and countryside, can be seen in yet

another sense. In countries with sizeable peasant populations, as is true in many parts of

the Balkans, the peasantry/countryside often defines itself in opposition to the city.

These beliefs tend to play themselves out in an ethnocentric fashion. The rural population

claims to be purer than the city folk, and efforts are made to preserve the old values that

are seen as tarnished by the city folk. Ironically, however, there is an inherent

contradiction. The culture and way of life of the countryside is ultimately dependent on

the very city that it abhors. The city, by contrast, is the hearth of patriotism, and tends to

be more concerned about threats to the constitution and civic order. In times of stress,

these alternative modes tend to become antagonistic. Renewed campaigns for ‘traditional

values’ are representative of cultural encroachment of the countryside on the city (Ramet,

1996).

According to Ramet (1996), Karl Marx suggested that the countryside was the hearth of

the most entrenched, traditional, and reactionary values and first used the expression, ‘the

idiocy of the countryside.’ He associated progressive values with the urban proletariat

and radical intelligentsia. His development of these concepts included the suggestion that

historical progress necessitated the displacement of rural values and ways of life by those

of the city. In a somewhat differing nuance of meaning, Berry (1989) linked the

derivation of ‘idiocy’ with the ancient Greek word, idios, meaning private, which he

contrasted with the ‘political’ or public and communal aspects of life.
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-10

In this sense, the countryside is indeed ‘idiotic’ [private]: the concerns of the

village are for the harvest, for the neighbourhood, for the local roads, for the

stability of social mores. Needless to say, when the countryside is mobilized,

there is a danger that its leaders will see the nation as the village-writ-large, and

adopt the mores of the village as their model for the nation. (Ramet, 1996, p. 71)

The significance of the urban/rural contrast cannot be overstated. During the early

months of the current war, Slovene and Croat leaders did not anticipate the ferocity with

which Serbia would resist their secession movement. Hindsight revealed that there was a

misreading of the level at which Serbia—and her nationals living within Croatia and

Bosnia-Herzegovina—would oppose their actions, because Croatian officials, in particular,

were basing their actions on the opinions of the ‘citified Serbian intellectuals’ who lived in

Zagreb. They had failed, in essence, to take a reading of the sentiment in their

‘countryside.’

According to Ramet (1996), the mobilization of the countryside has direct consequences

for political discourse about national values, and “. . . in times of social crisis, the

‘conservatism’ of the countryside has the potential to assume an aggressive, offensive

posture” (p. 70). When rural mobilization assumes the form of ethnic mobilization, the

underlying pattern of ethnic distribution influences its effect. If urban-dwellers are

primarily of one ethnic stock and rural dwellers are of another—e.g., in BosniaHerzegovina during the Ottoman occupation where Muslims were the urbanite, land

owners and craft specialists and the Serbians were the peasant farmers—rural-urban

antagonisms were reinforced and deepened. In situations where populations both in the

towns and in the countryside are ethnically mixed, as in Kosovo, the possibility of rural

solidarity is weakened by the strength of competing ethnic identities.

. . . nationalism is not necessarily or intrinsically a rural phenomenon . . . . But

there is a world of difference between a national movement founded on urban

mobilization . . . and a national movement based, to a great extent, on rural

mobilization. From the standpoint of the potential for chauvinist excesses, for

the suspension of any notions of tolerance and for excesses of violence, the

latter, rural mobilization is . . . the more dangerous. . . . Attention to the rural

factor in nationalist revivals can assist in producing a more accurate and more

nuanced interpretation of the roots of nationalist tensions, processes of ethnic

mobilization, the manipulation of symbologies, and the nature of anti-nationalist

and pacifist oppositions, and assist in tracing the etiology of xenophobia and

aggressive neo-traditionalism. (Ramet, 1996, p. 84-85)

Ethnocentrism and Nationalism

The break-up of Yugoslavia into her constituent republics has been a graphic illustration of

a dark side of ethnic nationalism. Some have even suggested that animosity between

ethnic groups may soon rival the spread of nuclear weapons as the most serious threat to

peace that the world faces. Ethnic nationalism, when carried to its extremes, focuses on

notions that one’s group is the center of the universe. In this context, other groups are

then scaled or ranked with reference against the yardstick of one’s own group (Duncan

& Holman, 1994).

The following excerpts have been chosen to reveal varying degrees of ethnic awareness,

pride, and identity including the extremes of ethnocentrism and nationalism. Many of the
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-11

sentiments expressed are not very different from what each of us may have experienced,

at one time or another.

[Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991] Through an agency, I rented a room from the

AndriÉ family, on Marshal Tito Street. Mr. AndriÉ, a husky, clean-shaven man with a shy

demeanor, managed a cooperatively owned seafood restaurant in the pedestrian zone. He told

me that they went days without a single diner.

Sanja, his daughter, had glowing green eyes so large they had to be cushioned on crescent

bulges of flesh. She had wanted to go to art school, but her mother had deemed it impractical,

so she was studying economics, which she hated. It sometimes seemed that all the young

Yugoslavs I met yearned to live in lofts and paint or write poetry while they labored for law,

economics and engineering degrees. Meanwhile, laws meant nothing, economic theory was in

disarray and there was no money to build anything.

Sanja told me her mother was a Serb and her father a Croat. She hastened to add that she and

her sister were both Croats.

Intrigued, I asked here what she meant by that. (Had a potential “Yugoslav” been turned into

a Croat by a preference for a gentle father over a mother who had forced her to study

economics?)

But no. She had meant only that her sister and she had both been baptized as Catholics. To

Sanja, “Croat” and “Catholic” were synonymous.

Did she go to church?

Now and then.

So she went to the Catholic cathedral in the pedestrian zone?

No, she went to the Orthodox church near it.

Why?

She liked the building better. It was darker, more atmospheric. And her mother’s father used

to take her there when she was a little girl.

Going to an Orthodox church did not make her Orthodox?

No, as she said, she had been baptized a Catholic. For that matter, she had been baptized with

a Muslim name. Sanala.

Why?

She had no idea. She had changed it at the first opportunity to the Croat name, Sanja.

Why?

She didn’t like the sound of Sanala.

Because it was Muslim?

Because it had three syllables.

“Do you believe in God?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know.” Her expression suggested she considered it a silly question, or

an uninteresting one, or even an irrelevant one. (Hall, 1994, pp. 118-119)

***

[Zagreb, Croatia, 1991] The conversation turned to Yugoslavia’s varied work ethic, i.e., the

somewhat off-putting industriousness of the Slovenes, the middle ground occupied by the

Croats and the corrupt laziness of the Serbs, who had learned it from the even lazier Turks.

Croatia had always paid more into the federal coffers than it ever got out in terms of federal

investment, everyone agreed. Belgrade sucked up money and spent it on repressing the

Albanians in Kosovo. Kosovo was a black hole of funds, and Serbs, in their pathological

hatred of Albanians, were dragging the whole country toward Third World conditions. The

standard of living in Yugoslavia had dropped thirty percent in the past three years [1988-1991].

(Hall, 1994, p. 47)

***

[Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991] A month ago, a column of Yugoslav Army tanks

supposedly heading for military exercises in fields around the Bosnian town of Kupres were

blockaded for three days by the Croat villagers of Li”tica, who suspected they were heading for
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-12

the fighting in Croatia. At the same time, Croats in Mostar set up barricades on the road west

out of the city, presumably to prevent tanks from taking this road to outflank the blockade at

Li”tica. Mustafa had had to drive through the barricades every time he went to his village

house, and he had been disgusted and upset. The men had let him through, but had always

looked him over suspiciously. Who were these self-important nobodies, who had appeared

out of nowhere, toting their guns? What right had they? He was only going to Cim, to get

some peace and quiet and maybe prune a tree. “Five years ago,” he said, “I never thought about

who was who. Croat, Serb, Muslim . . . Why would I care about something like that? I didn’t

even know what some of my friends were. What really frightens me—and even more than that,

what amazes me—is how quickly the tribal feelings have arisen. Where were they hiding, all

those years? . . . . I think this could become another Lebanon.” (Hall, 1994, pp. 179-180)

***

To an extent, we all see what we want to see. It’s easier to see the speck in another’s

eye than the splinter in one’s own:

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1991] Svetlana: “When you do down there [Kosovo], go to the

villages and look at their houses. My God! They are fortresses! They have high walls all

around them, with no windows, just little slits for shooting out of. It is expressive of their

whole mentality. They are closed off from the world. First of all, this must change.” (Hall,

1994, p. 259)

***

[Ethnic Albanian Village in Kosovo, Serbia, 1991] Fadil, an Albanian translator . . . :

“This is the part of the town where the Serbs live. Note that they have high walls too. It

has nothing to do with the nation, it is simply a custom in this part of the Balkans.” (Hall,

1994, p. 259)

***

[Zagreb, Croatia, 1991] “A decent life,” Nino was saying. “That’s all people want. Serbs and

Croats can’t live together? Bunch of shit. We got along fine when the economy was better. I

had Serb friends. Danko spent half his life in Belgrade.” (Hall, 1994, p. 49)

***

[Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991] Benjamin and Miroslav were friends. Benjamin was

a film-maker, and Miroslav a civil engineering student at Sarajevo University . . . . Benjamin was

a Muslim and Miroslav was a Croat.

 “The people of Bosnia have learned, through enormous suffering, how to get along,”

Miroslav added pointedly. In the cities of central Bosnia, Muslims had Serb brothers-in-law,

Croat best men. In some areas, the inter-marriage rate approached twenty-five percent. (Hall,

1994, pp. 124-125)

***

[Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991] “There is a place in Sarajevo . . . where an Orthodox

church, a Catholic church, a mosque and a synagogue all stand within fifty meters of each other.

There is no trouble between them. Isn’t that amazing? That’s what Bosnia is all about.”

“Zagreb [Croatia] is like the brain of Yugoslavia,” Miroslav said. “Universities, rationality, and

so on. Belgrade [Serbia] is the heart. Passion, anger. But Sarajevo [Bosnia]! Sarajevo is the

soul.” (Hall, 1994, p. 128)

***

The excerpts included to this point represent some relatively innocuous illustrations of

ethnic awareness. The following are closer to what we may consider ‘racist’ in

character:

[Zagreb, Croatia, 1991] “. . . . Serbs are different. They aren’t real Slavs, they have Arab

blood, or something. You can tell by the shape of their hands.” She held out here own hand,
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-13

which had exceptionally long, narrow fingers. “Serbs have square fingers. Let me see your

hand. That’s not a Serb hand either. Where is your family from? Do you have Croat

background?”

“English.”

“Puh! Too bad for you.” She said it rather kindly, with genuine pity. “Look, another way you

can tell Serbs are not real Slavs is that their church isn’t really Orthodox. It’s got some

difference from the real Russian church, I can’t remember what.” (Hall, 1994, pp. 20-21)

***

[Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991] “You asked about how to tell between Serbs, Croats

and Muslims of Bosnia,” Benjamin said. “I will tell you.” He smiled broadly and looked

around, gathering attention. This was a favorite story of his. “When the Austrians occupied

Bosnia in 1878, the new governor visited a Muslim imam and asked him how to rule. The

imam said, ‘You will only be able to rule Bosnia if you understand these three words:

akmaluk, jogunluk and fitniluk.’” Benjamin pronounced the words with gusts, his nostrils

flared, a finger and thumb held out as if to hang each one in a row in the air. His Ks popped

like firecrackers.

“These are Turkish words. Akmaluk describes the Muslims.”

Everyone at the table chuckled and nodded.

“And it means?” I said.

Benjamin waggled his head. “It’s difficult to translate.”

Everyone burst out laughing.

“It means . . . Miroslav, what does it mean?”

“I’m not going to say,” Miroslav said.

“It means . . .” Benjamin tried body language. He swayed loosely in his chair. He tilted his

head one way then the other. “It means slow. Submissive. You know!”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“Waiting for the blow. Careful.”

“OK.”

“That’s akmaluk. Jugunluk describes the Serbs.”

Louder laughter.

“Jogunluk means . . .” Benjamin looked pained. “This is also difficult.”

“Stubborn,” Miroslav suggested.

Benjamin winced. “Stubborn . . . maybe. But . . . oppressive, maybe, is better. Obstinate.

Bull-headed!”

“Yes, stubborn,” Miroslav said.

“All right, stubborn, but also . . .” Benjamin lifted his shoulders and bowed his arms. He

hulked. “Jogunluk is a big, stupid man, always bulling forward, waving his arms. He gets

everything wrong, but refuses to listen and keeps insisting on his own view in a loud voice. He

drowns everyone else out. You always know what he thinks.”

“Exactly,” Miroslav said.

“Whereas, fitniluk—that’s the Croats. Miroslav?”

“No, you, please.” “All right. This is fitniluk.” Benjamin smiled sweetly, nodding. “Yes,

everything’s nice, yes, yes.” He raised his eyebrows as if hanging on someone’s every word.

“Mm, of course.” A knife was in his hand under the table. “Mm, yes, of course.” He jerked

the knife upward into that someone’s guts, as his saccharine smile curdled into a grimace of

hatred.

“That’s fitniluk.”

“It’s true!” Miroslav laughed. “It’s true!” (Hall, 1994, pp. 135-137)

***

[Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991] “The non-Muslim politicians openly use such

insulting terms for the Muslims,” Benjamin’s mother complained, as she went back and forth
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-14

bringing out the broth, and the dock leaves stuffed with meat and onions, and the fried

potatoes and roast beef and sour cream.

“The call us balija,” Benjamin said. “An old word for a Muslim peasant, a man with shit on

his boots, an idiot. This is not in private, this is in their regular speeches.”

“They also call us half-Turks,” Radina said from the corner, where she was dandling Mak.

“Or just plain Turks,” Benjamin’s mother said.

Benjamin was not religious. Neither was his family, nor any of his friends. He had never been

inside a mosque, and had little idea what went on inside one, other than that you could not

wear shoes.

So what made him feel like a Muslim?

He pondered that for a long while.

Could I distinguish Muslims from Serbs or Croats by the look of their houses? I asked.

Oh no.

By the way they dressed?

No, no. (A laugh.) Did I think they still wore fezes? Nothing quaint like that.

Finally, Benjamin said, a trifle lamely, “Women occupy an exalted place in Islam. The role of

the mother is extremely important. The bond between a mother and her children is very

strong.”

His mother beamed approvingly and took the dishes away.

“I’ve noticed neither of the women ate with us,” I said.

Benjamin laughed delightedly. “And you are wondering if that’s usual. Am I right? Miroslav,

did you hear that?” They laughed together. Then the women laughed. “Of course not!”

Benjamin crowed. “But you see, my mother has to do the cooking and Radina has to take care

of Mak! That’s why they’re not eating! It’s not a custom! ”

I sensed that Benjamin was conscious that I, as a non-Muslim, would be likely to pounce on

any signs of a “typical” Muslim tendency to devalue women. That was the west’s obsession

with Islam—that Sarajevo might have soul, but Muslim women did not. But I had raised the

subject mischievously. I knew perfectly well that it was still a relatively common practice among

all the peoples of Yugoslavia to have the women serve the men, and eat later. (Hall, 1994, pp.

134-135)

***

The covert tension between the various ethnic groups or nationalities that are illustrated in

these excerpts reminds me of a conversation I had with a young black man in my

undergraduate college days. He pointed out to me that he felt that I was racist as long as

I continued to carry with me the awareness that he was black. In his view, only when I

became ‘color blind’ could I really consider myself to be non-racist. I wasn’t then, and

am not now, certain that this is the best definition of racism, however.

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1991] In the good old days under King Aleksandar [Karadjordjevic,

1921-1934], there wasn’t all this Croatia for Croats, Slovenia for Slovenes. Everyone was a

Yugoslav . . . . Did I know that good King Aleksandar had had three sons, and that he had

given the first a Serb name, the second a Croat name and the third a Slovene name? That was

how good a Yugoslav he was. And they [a Macedonian revolutionary working with Croat

revolutionists based in Hungary] killed him. (Hall, 1994, p. 94)

***

[Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991] “I’m sick of the Serbs!” Miroslav suddenly said.

“I’m sick of all this talk about how many of them died. It’s just so that can attack us, so their

offense will seem like a defense. All right, what they say about the Ustashas is right. It was one

of the world’s most horrible regimes.” He took my arm, stopping. “But it’s not my fault!”

We walked again. “You know,” he said, Clemenceau said that the Serbs were like vultures.

They fed on the dead left by other armies. They say they won World War I, but they lost! It

was the English and French armies who turned back the Germans and Austrians. The Serbs

were hiding out on Corfu, and they only came back to fight once the Austrians were already
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-15

beaten. And they say they won World War II, but they lost! The Partisans won, and they were

as much Croat as Serb. It’s all a myth, and this Serb myth is being shoved down our throats.”

[Bosnian Croat] (Hall, 1994, p. 166)

***

[Grachanitsa, Kosovo, ‘Old Serbia,’ 1991] “Did you know,” said Mother Tatiana, “that

these young Albanian boys [in Kosovo] actually dropped their pants in front of the other

sisters?”

I nodded again.

“Serbia is being bled dry by these people. It’s a lie that they are poor and unemployed. Why,

they list their dying grandfathers as out of work. They are all smugglers and they have lots of

foreign exchange stashed away. They only dress poor and dirty because that is their habit. The

Albanians, you know, want to conquer the world by outbreeding us. You know that no hodja

[an Albanian Moslem cleric] will come to the house of a family that doesn’t have at least five

children? And that Azen Vlasi [an Albanian political leader], he is just a lecher who screws with

the local whore.” (Kaplan, 1993, p. 34)

***

Hall (1994) told of reading the year-old English-language weekly edition of Politika in

Belgrade. The newspaper was an effort by the Serbs to get their viewpoint out to a wider

audience. He noted that

. . . the propagandizing thrust of the two Politikas differed. The Serbianlanguage edition was hysterical and intolerant, directed toward Serbs to make

them hate non-Serbs. The English edition was measured and reasonable,

directed toward non-Serbs to make them love Serbs. (Hall, 1994, p. 114)

In another account, reading material was used as a means of establishing nationalistic

differences:

[Zagreb, Croatia, 1991] When I look around me, I see that the war is happening to my

dentist, who is afraid to let his children go to his summer house on the islands because he can’t

be sure they won’t be stopped, robbed or taken hostage.

‘I hate it,’ he says, ‘the Serbs have turned me into a fierce Croat nationalist, a thing I was sure

would never happen to me.’

My friend Adnreja is leaving for a village and is planning to sow potatoes, cabbages, and so on.

She is a young university professor who should be working on her doctorate this summer; but

she can’t write or read any more, all she can do is listen. Then Mira calls. The other day, when

she was travelling by train from Subotica to Belgrade, there were a dozen young Serbs on

board.

‘The lady is reading a book in the Roman alphabet?’ they sneered spotting the book in her

hands.

‘Surely the lady must be Croat. How about a nice fuck, you bloody bitch?’ Or you would

prefer this?’ one asked, sliding the edge of his palm across her neck, as if he was holding a knife.

‘I could be his mother,’ she told me, her voice cracking. (Drakulic, 1993, pp. 14-15)

***

[Zagreb, Croatia, 1991] “If it really comes to a fight between Serbs and Croats, who do you

think would win?”

She squatted, to look me in the eye, a one-way communication since I could not see hers. “It

won’t happen. Croats won’t fight Serbs . . . .”

Interestingly, this was exactly what Serbs would have said, their lips curling into a sneer. The

year before [1990, Serbia], the leading opposition figure in Serbia, Vuk Draskovic, had growled

to me, throwing back his long Chetnik-style hair and dilating his equine nostrils, “Never in

history have the Croats fought the Serbs alone! They have the souls of hyenas. This time they

wouldn’t have Uncle Hitler to help them.” (Hall, 1994, p. 21)

***
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-16

No state of any size is ethnically ‘pure.’ As a result, there are myriad possibilities for

them to break up along lines of ethnic self-determination or for movements to arise to

either form a new state or to join with fellow ‘ethnic nationalists’ who already occupy

another state.

Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union were the two great communist showcases of

how ethnic-linguistic loyalties might be superseded by working class solidarity

and ultimately transmuted into a new form of patriotism in a multi-national state.

The collapse of the old political and ideological order—and planned economy

and social security—in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union help explain intensified

and violent identity with ethnicity and language as one’s final, unshakable, or

“bottom-line” guarantee. This fall-back on ethnicity at a time of social, economic

and psychological upheaval has resurrected separatist nationalism and ancient

territorial claims in regions now occupied by ethnic national groups different

from those making the claim. Serb territorial claims in Kosovo, where the

population is ninety percent Albanian, illustrate the point. (Duncan & Holman,

1994, p. 6)

Before Yugoslavia disintegrated, over recent years there had been a trend for more and

more people to classify themselves as ‘Yugoslavs’—as citizens of Yugoslavia—rather

than identifying themselves as ‘Serb,’ ‘Croat,’ or such. As a result of the conflict in the

1990s, the process has been reversing, however. Increasing numbers of people have

been reverting to the more conservative ethnic labels. Their ethnic nationalism is just

beneath the surface. It is reinforced in literature, in their understanding of history, and in

nationalist traditions. Although these nationalist identities had been suppressed in public,

they were readily accessible in private. As the ethnic groups began to steel themselves

against others, the restrictions on freedom of association as a result of the conflict and

fighting actually reinforced pre-existing nationalist ideas and sentiments.

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1991] Dimitrije, a friend I had known for the past two years, had bought

a Chetnik cap.

“It’s not a Chetnik cap!” he protested. “It’s the old Royal Army cap.”

“But you bought it because it’s a Chetnik cap,” his wife Snezana said.

They were both Serbs. But two years ago, he would call himself a Serb, she would call herself a

Yugoslav, and when he insulted Croats she would yell at him, “That’s exactly the mentality

that’s going to destroy this country!”

Now they only argued about why she was too busy being an architect to bear him any children.

On the subject of the Croats, she shrugged angrily and said, “They are Nazis.”

“The reason we want all Serbs together in one state is that we fear for the Serbs outside Serbia,”

Dimitrije said. “There are Romanians outside Romania, Hungarians outside Hungary, and so

on. That’s OK. Because no one bothers them. But Serbs outside Serbia? They are not safe.”

Everywhere in Belgrade Serbs explained to me why they were convinced the Ustasha terror was

starting again. (Hall, 1994, p. 95)

***

[Zagreb, Croatia, 1991] I noticed as we talked how much angrier Nino was than last year.

Back then, he had still called himself a Yugoslav, and talked about his Serb friends in Belgrade.

He had argued that Croatia’s best hope for becoming “European” and “mature” lay in its

middling position between east and west, between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, its Habsburg

legacy of cosmopolitanism. But that was last year. Now he said he wished he could be

Yugoslav, but the category no longer existed. “The Serbs killed it,” he said. “To say you are a

Yugoslav now is to say you are pro-Serb. When Serbs say they want to save Yugoslavia, they

are playing dirty. ‘Yugoslavia’ sounds nice, but it is the perfect playing field for Serbs.” And

his friends in Belgrade? “I can’t talk to them. Nobody understands Croats now.”
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-17

Last week he had gone to Spain to attend a convention of the Jeunesse Europeenne

Federaliste, and when the story of Borovo Selo broke, the delegates to the International

Seminar on Regionalism send a cable to “the people of Yugoslavia” and the various presidents,

urging in a young, self-important way that “finally” a solution be found for this “absurd

situation”—namely a “federalist solution.” . . . .

Nino would have agreed with them last year, but this year he kept thinking of the Catalans.

“They don’t even have the rights that Croats did in Yugoslavia,” he said, amazed. “I kept

telling these people, ‘Look around you! Wake up! You’ve got the Basques, the Corsicans, the

Flemish . . . ‘ For the past two years we’ve seen a movement of western democracy east. Very

nice. Now we’ll start to see a wave in the opposite direction, from east to west, of nationalism.

Europe will find out that making a federation is only the beginning of its problems.” (Hall,

1994, p. 31)

***

Overt acts of aggression between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina

have ended under the fragile peace achieved under the Dayton Accords. Conflict in the

Balkans has erupted again, however, ‘next door’ in the province of Kosovo, which, under

Tito, had, along with Voijvodina in the north, been autonomous provinces within the

Republic of Serbia. Nine years after Tito’s death, Milosevic withdrew the autonomous

status from Kosovo and from Voijvodina, bringing them under the direct control of Serbia.

Although the situation in Voijvodina has remained peaceful, the same cannot be said of

Kosovo. Fueled by growing nationalism, the Serbian minority in Kosovo (who represent

only 20% of the population of the province) have engaged in repeated acts of violence

against the ‘ethnic Albanians’ (Muslims), including massacres of innocent women,

children, and the elderly. They justify their actions under the guise of nationalism. Were

it not for the sinister nature of the conflict, the following excerpts are reminiscent of the

blind men describing an elephant:

[Serbia] “The Albanians rape Serb women and young girls as a calculated form of terror.

You see, in the Muslim mind, the best way to humiliate your enemy is to rape his women,

because it brings shame on the whole family.” (Hall, 1994, p. 259)

***

[Pri”tina, Kosovo, Serbia] Isuf, an Albanian journalist: “The rapes are grossly

exaggerated. If you look at the police statistics, they show that in all of 1987 there were

only two rapes, and in 1988 there were a couple of attempts but no successful rapes.”

(Hall, 1994, 259)

***

[Belgrade, Serbia] Dimitrije, an ethnomusicologist: “The police in Kosovo used to all be

Albanians, so the rapes were never reported, or if they were, the case went to an Albanian

judge who threw the case out. That’s why we had to throw all the judges out.” (Hall,

1994, p. 259)

***

These former Yugoslavs are locked in a struggle over sovereignty, territory,

independence, and national pride. But who are they? This question is more complicated

than it seems. In the simplest sense, they are Slovenians, Macedonians, Croatians,

Montenegrins, Serbians, Kosovar Albanians, Hungarians, Gypsies, and myriad others.

Each group represents distinguishable national and linguistic characteristics;

and some groups are related to each other and some not. Nor are the groups

easily defined. Are Montenegrins a separate nationality or are they simply Serbs
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-18

who live in the land of the Black Mountains (the native name for the country is

Crna Gora, meaning Black Mountain)? Are Macedonians a distinct Slavic group

or are they rather southern Serbs, or western Bulgarians, or northern Greeks—or

are they a mixture of ethnicities defined by the territory which they inhabit? Are

Dalmatians and Slavonians ethnically identical to Croatians, or were some of

them in the past a different nationality until defined by a common religion and a

common ruler? Why are 30 percent of the population in Serbia non-Serbs, while

a third of all Serbs live outside Serbia? History alone does not yield clear

answers to these questions. Nationalism is a modern tendency. The

predecessors of these modern “nationalities” were not organized along ethnic

lines, but were instead under the feudal claims of powerful overlords or religious

affiliations that united diverse clans and tribes, and for whom ethnicity and

language were of small concern. (Mojzes, 1995, pp. 15-16)

Although the historical roots of these ethnic and national differences will be examined

later, it is helpful at this point to form a clearer understanding of the distinction between

nations and states. Duncan and Holman (1994) drew a clear definition of each of these

concepts:

A state’s basic characteristics are easily described: (1) a geographically bounded

entity with an identifiable population; (2) a recognized authority structure that

has the ability to make laws, rules, and decisions, and to enforce such laws, rules,

and decisions within its boundaries; and (3) a territorial association of people

recognized for purposes of law and diplomacy as a legally equal member of the

system of states—otherwise known as a state’s sovereignty within the

international legal system . . . . Former Yugoslavia, therefore, was a “state,” while

Croatians, Slovenes, and Serbs were national groups inside the Yugoslav state . .

. . A nation, by contrast, need not necessarily be either geographically bounded

or legally defined. A nation is best understood as a grouping of people, who

individually identify themselves as linked together in some manner. A nation is

as much a psychological association as anything else. Groupings of people

who consider themselves to be ethnically, culturally, or linguistically related may

thus be considered a nation—such as Serbs or Croats in the former state of

Yugoslavia . . . . (Duncan & Holman, 1994, p. 5)

By these definitions, one can be a member of a particular ‘nation’ regardless of where

one lives. This is like one being a ‘Jew’ but not an ‘Israeli.’ Regardless of where Serbs

reside in the former Yugoslavia, they consider it to be part of ‘Greater Serbia’—the state.

In reality, however, Duncan and Holman would consider this to be a ‘nationalist’ identity.

Nationalism does not on its face cause a state’s distintegration. Nationalism can actually

result from the disintegration. It has been common in the West to view the troubles in

Yugoslavia as emanating from the actions of various politicians. The situation is more

complex, however. The nationalism in Yugoslavia that developed in the last half of the

1980s, and the subsequent disintegration of the federation, were not unidirectional.

Instead, the disintegration of the federation was, in itself, a powerful stimulus to the

intensifying nationalisms of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The separatism from Serbdominated Yugoslavia fomented by Slovenes, Croatians and Bosnian Muslims, as well as

various Serbian breakaway movements that arose inside the newly-independent republics

of Croatia and Bosnia, were illustrations of self-determination drives that grew out of

separatist ethnic national identities (Ramet, 1996; Duncan & Holman, 1994).

Nationalism is not necessarily a negative phenomenon in contemporary world

affairs. By forging identity with “a people” as the central focus of loyalty,
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-19

nationalism can serve as a basis for collective solidarity to legitimize governing

institutions and stimulate economic growth . . . . nationalism is inherently neither

good nor bad, but a fact of life that shows a capacity for both good and evil.

Still, when one nation glorifies itself at the expense of others—as in national

chauvinism, jingoism, xenophobia, fascism and other doctrines—it becomes a

negative force in world politics. (Duncan & Holman, 1994, p. 1)

The pervasiveness of the notion of a ‘Greater Serbia’ or even a ‘Greater Bulgaria’ or a

‘Greater Albania’ is consistent with the model of nation-building elsewhere in Europe—a

model in which a political nucleus successfully incorporated various regional cultures

under their aegis. Denich (1994, p. 373) cited a quotation from a pre-World War I

Serbian history textbook to illustrate a wide reaching and expansive concept of Serbian

nationhood that received wide dissemination through the educational system in the early

part of this century:

Our fatherland is not only the kingdom of Serbia, because when one goes across

the Sava and Danube through the villages and towns of Slavonia, Srem, Backa,

and Banat, people are found who speak the Serbian language, who sing Serbian

songs, who recall the Serbian kings and emperors, and who are proud of the

Serbian heroes. The same people are found when one crosses the Drina (River)

into Bosnia, Croatia, Dalmatia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro. Such people are

found also in Old Serbia [Kosovo] and Macedonia . . . . Therefore all the

provinces that have been mentioned are the fatherland of the Serbian people.

[Jelavich, 1990:197, emphasis in original]

At the time that this passage was published several years prior to the Balkan Wars of

1912-1913, the territories named were still under either Austro-Hungarian or Ottoman

rule. In addition, the described boundaries of the ‘fatherland’ incorporated large numbers

of Catholics and Muslims, who did not ‘sing Serbian songs’ or ‘recall Serbian kings and

emperors’ (Denich, 1994).

Valiant but Reckless, ‘Macho’ and Authoritarian

Recently I spoke with one of my friends of Yugoslav ancestry. I asked how his family

members in Yugoslavia were faring. To my surprise, he informed me that none of them

had been affected by the war, but that several had been killed in a car wreck. This

appears not to be an infrequent occurrence, however; as Hall (1994) also discussed

pervasive recklessness as an everyday aspect in the former Yugoslavia:

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1991] Yugoslavia had the highest traffic-fatality rate in Europe. The

drivers—“Anarchists!”—played chicken so unthinkingly they would have been surprised to

learn that people elsewhere distinguished it from normal driving. I could understand why an

overtaking car kept accelerating toward a head-on collision, since it had to complete the pass to

get out of the way, but I could not understand why the opposing car did not brake. No

matter how many times I saw it, I did not believe it. The car honked, but did not brake, it

honked as it closed in until the passing car cut at the first and last possible second back to its

own lane. Or it honked all the way into the collision, with the invariably seatbeltless drivers—I

had never met a Yugoslav who did not despise me for wearing a seatbelt—catapulting through

both windshields, passing each other on the left as they had failed to do on the right. Caraccident deaths were like war-atrocity stories; every family had them. (Hall, 1994, pp. 83-84)

***

Although Hall implied that the source of this behavior rested with some sort of ‘macho’

mindset, Kesic (1998) refers to this practice as “Serbian Roulette” and attributed it to the
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-20

despair symptomatic of a lost generation of young Serbs “. . . who see little prospect for

change and improvement” (p. 97). It is usually played with some simple rules, primarily

by teenagers or by young ‘adults.’

When driving in Belgrade and approaching an intersection at which a streetlight

has turned red, accelerate and see whether you can make it across without

getting yourself or an innocent passerby killed. The toll so far? By the fall of

1997, 6 teenagers had lost their lives, and another dozen had been injured.

(Kesic, 1998, p. 97)

There were spontaneous mass demonstrations in Belgrade and other Serbian cities and

towns that broke out as a result of the local election fraud committed by Milosevic’s ruling

leftist coalition in November 1996. The initial enthusiasm generated by the mass

demonstrations gave way to despair and hopelessness, largely due to the indecisive and

timid leadership of the political opposition. The populace was discouraged at the inability

of the opposition to channel the energy of the popular protests into concrete goals, thereby

failing to wrest control from Milosevic at one of his weakest moments (Kesic, 1998).

Being macho is a cultural tradition associated minimally with Latin America. It has been

suggested that this tradition was introduced to New World peoples by the conquistadores

and the Catholic Church. Although primarily described as a ‘cult of virility,’ it consists of

the exaggeration of aggressiveness, of intransigence between males, and of arrogance

and sexual aggression from males to females. Males are preoccupied with maintaining

their honor and repression of any expression of weakness, either by men or women

(O’Kelly, 1980). This tradition may have taken root in these Old World peasant and

pastoralist cultures along the Mediterranean long before it was ‘transplanted’ to Latin

America, however.

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1991] Vuk [Draskovic]—everyone called him by his first name—had the

long unkempt hair and beard that to Croats meant Chetnik. He was handsome in an

exaggeratedly masculine way, his face all jutting nose and brow, his voice a commanding

contrabass. He preferred flowing white shirts open at the neck so that his abundant chest hair

was visible, and wore his coat without putting his arms in the sleeves, so that it could be swept

on and off like a cape. He had been a journalist (detractors said he had been a Communist

lackey living in a perk apartment) who had become famous writing bestsellers, grisly historical

novels about—what else?—the massacres of Serbs during World War II. (Hall, 1994, p. 103)

***

[Zagreb, Croatia, 1991] Nino said . . . . “Under the Communists the Croatian police force

was more than fifty percent Serb, even though they make up only fifteen percent of the

population. And almost all the senior officers were Serbs . . . . It’s a cultural thing. Serbs love

to order other people around.” (Hall, 1994, p. 17)

***

[Zagreb, Croatia, 1991] “. . . sure, HDZ [Croatia] did some stupid things. They are primitive

people, I know that. I agree completely. . . .” [Nino said] “But the Serbs kills us for this!

That’s all I’m saying. Do you kill people just because you don’t like this oath, because you

don’t like the new flag?”

“Serbs aren’t normal,” Nastasa said, screwing an index finger into her temple. “They were

right to be angry, but not like this. You bump into a Serb and he pulls out a gun and

shoots you.” (Hall, 1994, p. 17)

***

The expression of machismo as a strong sense of masculine pride, to the extremes of a

sense of exaggerated power or strength, is also apparent. According to Milovan Djilas,
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-21

one of Tito’s early lieutenants who ultimately was purged and repeatedly jailed,

Montenegrins make a distinction between theft and robbery. We also make a distinction

between theft and robbery. Theft is taking something when no one is around. Robbery is

taking something from one’s person. The similarity seems to end there, however. For the

Montenegrins:

Theft is minor, concealed, cowardly, and unethical; robbery is major, open,

heroically violent, and ethical. When a Montenegrin chetnik leader was

captured during World War II and sentenced to execution by a firing squad he

requested to die by having them cut his throat because he felt that this is the

only honorable way to depart from this life. (Mojzes, 1995, p. 46)

In 1941, during World War II, Axis powers and their allies surrounded the Yugoslav

government. Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany, allowing Hitler to

transport war materiel through Yugoslavia to aid the Italians who were bogged down in

Greece. Two days later, in a putsch the Serb Army generals overthrew Prince Pavle and

enthroned Petar II who was only 17. On hearing of the overthrowing of the Prince, the

Serbian populace poured into the streets in support, shouting “Bolje rat nego pakt! Bolje

grob nego rob!” (Better war than pact! Better death than slavery!), singing the Serb

national anthem and waving French and English flags. They spat on the German

minister’s car. “The whole spontaneous convulsion was a characteristic Serb gesture,

valiant but reckless, something good for a story, but perhaps only for the beginning of one”

(Hall, 1994).

The expression of machismo, in part, explains a trait that has been of extreme frustration

to Western diplomats in the current conflicts—that Serbian leaders would sign cease fires

and promptly ignore them.

Tito had accommodated this trait in his doctrine of General People’s Defense,

which he formulated after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (he feared

Yugoslavia was next), taking the Swiss model of an armed citizenry and adding a

strong army. Communist history taught that the Royal Yugoslav Army’s

capitulation to the Germans in April 1941 had been treasonous—in a way,

quisling—and the post-1968 constitution formally outlawed a repetition.

According to the constitution, no one had the right to sign the capitulation of

the armed forces. Local defense militias were therefore constitutionally

directed to ignore cease-fires. This was ratification of a mentality that would

assume huge importance in the coming months. (Hall, 1994, pp. 63-64, [emphasis

added])

This rationale has persisted and, in part, explains the actions of Serbian President

Milosevic and other leaders who may sign a treaty or agreement and then promptly violate

its provisions. They feel justified in so doing because they feel they are in the long run

preserving the sanctity of their nation while taking expedient actions for the near term.

Part of the cult of machismo is a proclivity to violence—which is certainly not a stranger

in the Balkans. Interestingly, however, in this passage, Danica appears to cross the line,

stepping outside the traditional female roles to defend her husband’s honor:

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1991] Jovan Raskovic, a leader of the Serbs in Croatia, said, “The

relationship between Serbs and Croats may be apolitical, amoral and psychopathic, but its

breaking-up would lead to bloodshed.”

Danica Draskovic, the wife of Vuk, said to another Serb leader at a lunch given by the Patriarch

of the Orthodox Church, “The only true Serb is Vuk Draskovic,” to which the man responded,
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-22

“If Vuk Draskovic is the only true Serb, then I deny my Serbianness.” Danica replied by hitting

the man on the head with a bottle. (Hall, 1994, p. 115)

***

The opposite of machismo is what is known as marianismo. It is less well known and is

played out as a cult of spiritual superiority for women.

Women are supposed to be self sacrificing, submissive, self-abnegating, and

long-suffering. They suffer whatever their men force upon them. Their children,

especially their sons, are expected to revere their mothers as the embodiment of

ideal womanhood. However, this leaves the sons free to abuse and degrade

other women. Any woman who insists on enjoying herself or being assertive

violates the cult of marianismo and is, therefore, a “bad woman.”. . . . (O’Kelly,

1980, p. 199)

Women in these cultures not only accept the cult of marianismo (as was revealed in the

excerpt when Benjamin discussed what was unique about Islam, pp. 45-46), but also

support it and help to perpetuate it among future generations through the socialization of

their children. In fact, it has been noted that women who complain of poor treatment

from their husbands still encourage and take pride in their son’s manifestations of

machismo (O’Kelly, 1980).

[Bosnia, 1940s] Vladimir Dedijer records in his Dnevnik (Diary), which was written during

World War II, that a Serb in Bosnia was so angry at another Serb whom he suspected of

having betrayed him that he sent a message to two of his own friends ordering them to seize

the man and his wife and rape her, forcing the husband to hold her down during the rape. He

concluded, “that will hurt him the most . . . and then I will come and kill him.” (Mojzes, 1995,

p. 46)

***

Berry (1989) discussed the ‘idiocy’ of the countryside in terms of its meaning as ‘private’

in contrast with the ‘political’ or the public and communal aspects of life. In Berry’s

sense, the term is used to criticize patriarchal societies and the associated conditions in

which women are expected to concern themselves with private or family matters, to be

inward-looking, and to leave politics to the men. As will be discussed in the following

chapter, peasant societies and, to a lesser degree, pastoralists, characteristically restrict

women to the domestic, or private, sphere.

‘Armed and Dangerous,’ Blood and Guts

According to Tomasic (1948), a pattern whereby force is revered and violence is glorified

has characterized a significant segment of Yugoslavian society through the centuries.

Due to a lack of safety and an emphasis on physical strength that often has led to

violence, the men frequently were heavily armed, never laying aside their weapons—a

fact that tended to increase rather than to prevent violent clashes. Their traditions “. . .

combined with the lack of emotional balance often led to bloodthirstiness, brutality and

other excesses . . . .” (p. 35).

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1991] “I guarantee you, every family out there has a gun. Yugoslavia has

always been a well-armed country. Like America!”

Something about the image of Kalashnikovs under farmers’ beds deeply appealed to

Yugoslavs. Bullets in the breadbox, chickens in the coop brooding on hand grenades. As a
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-23

Soviet diplomat once complained to Washington Post correspondent Dusko Doder, Yugoslavs

were “anarchists, anarchists; there’s no other word for them!” (Hall, 1994, pp. 63-64)

***

[Lika, Serbia, 1989] Even in 1989, when most Serbs and Croats were still paying lip service

to Brotherhood and Unity, the teenage boys from the Serb village of Lika fantasized to me

about the “provocation” they eagerly awaited, so that they could ride on their mopeds into the

neighboring Croat villages and mow people down with machine guns.

Every family from those mixed areas had stories, and this man, Ante, was no exception. The

Ustashas had killed eighteen members of his mother’s family. They had buried his

grandmother alive. They had plucked out his grandfather’s eyes, and killed him by jamming a

stick down his throat.

Ante had lowered his voice so that his sons would not hear. He shrugged, and explained in a

reasonable tone, “Croats seem to enjoy that kind of thing.” He went on. “World War II was

only the latest outrage, you know. Have you heard about the massacres of Serb civilians in

World War I during the Austrian occupation?”

“Yes.”

“The perpetrators were not Austrian soldiers, but Croats. The bloodthirstiness of the Croats

has been known throughout history. The Germans used to have a saying: ‘God save us from

war and from the Croats.’ A word in Serbian for a really bad character is a bitanga. That’s a

conflation of bittedanke. During the crusades, the Germans were returning from the Holy Land

through Croatia, and the Croats would come to their camps, begging, ‘Bitte, danke, Bitte,

danke.’” Ante scrunched his face into a servile grimace. “They would beg for knives, for pieces

of glass. For something shiny, the way Indians do. Then they would creep back at night and

cut the Germans’ throats with the knives they had been given. That’s a bitanga. (Hall, 1994, p.

81)

***

[Yugoslavia, 1940s] The Nazi records of World War II are punctuated by reports from

German witnesses declaring disgust at the massacres carried out by the Croats. One senses an

almost hysterical relief in those accounts, as the observers gratefully embrace the moral high

ground. The Germans wanted to believe that their own annihilation of the Jews was a civilized

affair. It involved research and development, quotas, storage facilities, train timetables. Such an

undertaking had never before been attempted on such a scale. It was like building a pyramid.

But the Ustashas were different. They were not motivated by high ideals. They simply hated

Serbs. They did not go for industrial efficiency, for getting the victims out of sight. They

preferred things up close and physical. They went into the next village and killed people they

knew personally. They took photographs of each other chopping off a neighbor’s head. They

made a point of bayoneting pregnant women in the abdomen, shouting some slogan about

killing “the seeds of the beasts.” They hacked off noses and ears, and made holes in chests to

pull out hearts while they were still beating. They had a brigade called “the skull-crushers,”

which did unbelievable things to people’s heads and then took photographs so that others

could believe it.

In his World War II memoirs, Kaputt, the Italian reporter Curzio Malaparte described an

interview with Pavelic:

While he spoke, I gazed at a wicker basket on the Poglavnik’s desk. The lid was raised and the

basket seemed to be filled with mussels, or shelled oysters . . .

“Are they Dalmatian oysters?” I asked the Poglavnik.

Ante Pavelic removed the lid from the basket and revealed the mussels, that slimy and jelly-like

mass, and he said smiling, with that tired good-natured smile of his. “It is a present from my

loyal Ustashis. Forty pounds of human eyes.” (Hall, 1994, pp. 23-24)

***

[Zagreb, Croatia, 1991] The mutliations were the first atrocity of this new war. I sensed

everyone had been waiting for this. People had frequently told me the year before that, if

fighting broke out, I, Europe, westerners—all civilized people—would be astounded at how

brutal it would be. Yugoslavs said things like this with a strange, grim satisfaction. Perhaps it

was the satisfaction of having your worst doubts about yourself confirmed. This was the
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-24

Balkans, Yugoslavs liked to say, shrugging. The single word explained: corruption, chaos,

cruelty, genocide.

Yet much about this atrocity was confused. The first reports had said the two policemen

wounded in the night had had their eyes gouged out and their throats cut . . . . they

concentrated on the mutilations . . . . Silvija was sure of one thing. There had been atrocities.

As News Director at the radio she had been invited to a press conference given by the Croatian

Interior Ministry and shown photographs that had not been released to the public. “I couldn’t

recognize these bloody bits and pieces as parts of people. Heads, arms . . .” She trailed off.

“You’re sure the pictures were accurate?”

 “They were photographs! And the Serbs are capable of it. A friend of mine was trapped for

ten days behind the blockade near Vukovar. She saw a policeman wounded. The Serbs pulled

off his helmet and beat his head with their rifles, destroying his face. He is alive, but brain

damaged. She saw this with her own eyes.”

I thought of the old adage that you could tell something about a nation by its vocabulary,

Inuit [Eskimo] having a dozen words for snow, Bedouin for sand, Meso-Americans for

tubers, and so on. Serbo-Croatian had a disturbingly large number of words for butchering.

One of them was kundaciti, which meant “to beat with the butt end of a rifle.” (Hall, 1994, pp.

15-16)

***

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1991] On the alleged mutilations, Svetlana [Serbian] repeated to me what

a doctor had told her: that a high-powered rifle bullet to the head could do all sorts of things,

including cause the eyes to pop out. And as for the cut throats, Svetlana had looked at the

photographs, and was skeptical. She had seen a few cut throats in her life and in her experience

the marks left were slits. The gaping gashes in the photography looked more like bullet

wounds to her. (The question that interested me, but apparently no one else, was why slitting

someone’s throat was an atrocity, while blasting it open with a bullet was not.) (Hall, 1994, p.

77)

***

Mozjes (1995) also reported that in the current war, a tank unit of Serbian soldiers gangraped a twelve-year-old Muslim girl. They tied her bloody body to the tank and drove

around for months until only the skeleton remained. The collective acts of unspeakable

horror that have occurred in the 1990s are but a rekindling of hateful acts from the past, at

times with a slight shift in emphasis from one perpetrator to another.

The Belgrade regime headed by Slobodan Milosevic clearly has demonstrated

racism, expediency, a ruthless will to power, and a disregard for the West’s

ethical standards, as evidenced by all the cease-fire violations, the bombing of

civilian targets, and other acts that have rightly been condemned by the West as

crimes against humanity. To be sure, the Croats and Bosnians have also

engaged in war crimes, yet the world’s collective consciousness has concluded

clearly that the overwhelming preponderance of the human rights abuses were

perpetrated by the Belgrade regime. (Mestrovic, 1993, p. ix)

At this point, I feel it necessary to comment on what appears to be a bias against Serbs.

In reality, the reason for a preponderance of seemingly anti-Serb excerpts in this report is

due to the fact that this is what I have found in the literature. Perhaps the books and

articles that might be more favorable to the Serbs are not making their way into the hands

of English readers—at least this reader. Atkeson (1996) and Tindemans (1996) asserted

that the preponderance of crimes committed during the recent war in Bosnia-Herzegovina

were attributable to the Serbs. The Serbs, too, have suffered, however; and during World

War II, the Serbs suffered severely. Because of it, they have strong identification with

the Jews.
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-25

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1941-1944] In Belgrade, proclamations in German and Serbian ordered

Jews to wear the star. The buildings of the military academy south of the city were turned into

a camp where hostages were kept until it was time to shoot them. August brought

exceptionally fine weather, and Svetlana strolled with other Belgraders along Terazije, the

handsome central avenue in front of the Hotel Moscow. From the elegant wrought-iron Art

Nouveau lampposts, bodies were hanging.

“You didn’t know what to do,” Svetlana said. “Cross to the other side of the street? Stare at

them? Was ignoring them worse?” Today, in her memory they were heavy but peripheral,

blind spots in the corner of the eye. She thought they had been young men, but was not sure.

Then bodies started to float down the Sava, out of Croatia. At times they came so thickly they

clogged the piers of Belgrade’s bridges, one of which would later be renamed “Bridge of

Brotherhood and Unity.” They came in two waves, the first in 1942, when the Germans were

winning everywhere and the Ustashas were confident they would be able to clear their territory

of Serbs, and the second in 1944 when the Germans were losing and the Ustashas were trying

only to clear their camps, to destroy evidence. On summer days Svetlana would go boating and

the bodies would float by her as she rowed. Then for years after the war, when she went

swimming out to one of the wooded islands in the Sava she would occasionally happen upon

skeletons by the shore, the hands tied behind with wire, the backs of the skulls bashed in.

(Hall, 1994, pp. 73-74)

***

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1991] “. . . it’s all starting again.”

“But what I’m really afraid of is that this time around the Serbs will be the same. The people I

know in Krajina are sounding as bloodthirsty as the Croats. People are getting killed every day.

My family is exhausted. They work all day, and then have to man the barricades all night.”

Ante had a simple question. “Why do the Croats want to hold on to the Krajina? It is a poor

region. And the Serbs there are ten times worse than the Serbs in Serbia. The Serbs in Serbia

were serfs for five hundred years, while the Krajina Serbs were Grenzer for the Austrians—

border guards against the Turks. Primitiveness and aggression are bred into them.”

Imagine, he said, the conditions along the Austrian Military Border for centuries. He bowed

his shoulders and assumed a craven expression, darting glances up toward the expected blow.

Imagine the poor Croat peasant in his cheap homespun, with his feudal obligations, his lack of

culture, creeping through the village streets. Now comes the Serb—Ante straightened and

slapped his chest—a free man, well-fed and armed, proud, a fighter, with his bristling

mustache and his honest laugh, his clothes richly embroidered with vibrant folk motifs. He

must have swaggered unbearably, that Serb, taking all the women, drinking and fighting, a

warrior among worms.

“No wonder the Serbs were hated,” Ante concluded.

And no wonder that the Serbs, through theyears, bred stronger and stronger, while the Croats

were naturally selected for servility and cunning. No wonder, at Borovo Selo, the Serbs had

only suffered three casualties while killing thirty-five Croats. “They’s absolute beginners,” Ante

scoffed.

“Thirty-five?” I said. “I thought it was twenty-five.”

“That’s the official version.”

“I thought the official version was twelve.”

“No one believes that.”

“Who do you think started it?”

“I don’t have to think. There are the facts. One policeman climbed the flagpole while the

other one started shooting.”

“And have more Serbs been killed than reported?”

“Probably. The Croats arrested seventeen in the Krajina, who are probably all dead. They keep

postponing the trial because they have no one to bring. A Croatian doctor said no surgeon

would ever be able to rebuild the men’s faces.”

I wondered if anyone outside the Balkans talked like that. People here had a genius for

squeezing the last drop of horror out of violence. While American military sharpshooters

talked about “servicing the target,” Serbs and Croats would explain that when you shot a man
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-26

in the head his skull exploded and brain matter showered down on his wife and children. Was

it admirably straightforward? Or did it indicate a bloodthirsty imagination? (Hall, 1994, pp.

81-82)

***

MYTHIC THEMES OF BALKAN PEOPLES

In addition to formal schooling—and at times, instead of it—oral traditions, like story

telling, function to transmit the history and lore of the people. Oral traditions are a

universal mode used by people to transmit their important historical—and even mythical—

knowledge. The importance of oral tradition in molding a people’s view of themselves

and their place in the world is fundamental.

For Westerners trying to thread their way through the complicated claims and

counterclaims of various groups in Eastern Europe, one major obstacle is a lack

of information. In some cases, the apprehension felt by one group about its

survival or / about the threat posed by another group may be based on an event

or condition that appears to a modern Western observer so historically remote as

not to be worthy of consideration. However, to the extent that the event or

condition has been kept quite alive in the consciousness of a group—in its oral

traditions and textbooks—it is a current psychological reality and cannot easily

be dismissed as merely an arcane academic concern. (Pinson, 1993, pp, xi-xii)

Mojzes (1995) has defined several mythic themes that are especially illustrative of the

thought processes of Balkan peoples:

The myth of land and blood,

The crucifixion and resurrection syndrome,

A mythological, rather than chronological, understanding of time, and

The glorification of war and violence as the best way to keep or reclaim one’s freedom.

The Myth of Land and Blood

The first myth portrays the land as the sacred home of ethnic groups. A “pure-blooded”

member of an ethnic group is seen as more patriotic and better than one who has “mixed

blood” in his or her ancestry. The assumption is one of ethnic continuity with an ancient,

powerful state. Foreign rulers are seen as evil, impeding the cultural progress of people of

one’s own blood. Foreigners are considered to be responsible for all present-day evil and

suffering. The perception is that each local ethnic group has had to defend itself against

repeated, if not continuous, attempts to rob it of its ethnic and religious identity (Mojzes,

1995).

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1991] The Croats had been right when they said many more Serbs

were now openly calling themselves Chetniks than there were Croats calling themselves

Ustashas. But although Tito’s post-war government had demonized both of its former

enemies, the Chetniks had had, on the whole, a more understandable rationale for their

actions. Whereas the Ustashas had been enthusiastic collaborators with the Nazis from

the beginning, and had begun the ethnic slaughter, the Chetniks, though anti-Croat—

especially after what they considered the Croatian betrayal of their Yugoslavia—

concentrated at the beginning on fighting the Germans. (Hall, 1994, p. 109)

***
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-27

The mythic proportions to which one’s ties to land and blood are extended can fuel

nationalistic and even racist actions.

[Belgrade, Serbia] Slavko, a news photographer: “I know a man down there [Kosovo]

who has two wives, and from those two wives he’s got twenty children. I know another

who has ten. That’s two men, thirty children. That’s how they are taking over Kosovo.

It’s a deliberate policy, directed from Albania. (Hall, 1994, p. 259)

***

[Pristina, Kosovo, and Belgrade, Serbia ] Azem, an Albanian artist: “The high birth rate

among the Albanians is a direct result of the fact that until the late 60s there was a virtual

apartheid situation in Kosovo, with Serbs living in the towns and Albanians out in the

rural areas. It’s the village people who have ten kids. The Albanians who now have been

living in towns for a couple of decades have two kids, like everybody else. Two

generations ago, the Serbs lived mostly in rural areas, and they had large families, too.

“Serbs and Albanians are like two brothers, one who’s thirteen years old, and the other

who’s ten. The thirteen-year-old is embarrassed by everything the ten-year-old does,

because it reminds him of what he used to be like. But he doesn’t know this consciously.

He just hits his younger brother.” (Hall, 1994, p. 260)

***

[Serbia] “Albanians have no concept of the rule of law. They live according to an old

tribal code. When they kill each other, they don’t go to the police, they settle it

themselves. A slit throat, a bullet in the back.” (Hall, 1994, p. 261)

***

[Pri”tina, Kosovo] Shkelzen, a former professor and current political organizer: “In 1956,

the Serbian police went from house to house, confiscating weapons and torturing people.

But Albanians today have ten times as many weapons as we had then. We Albanians are

renowned for our skill in black market weapons smuggling.” (Hall, 1994, p. 261)

***

[Serbia] A Serb conductor on a train: “I think the simplest thing is probably just to kill

them all.” (Hall, 1994, p. 261)

***

The Crucifixion and Resurrection Syndrome

[The Serbs] . . . like to see themselves as great martyrs, as well as great heroes.

In their ballads and in their school textbooks they present themselves as people

who have been unjustly persecuted by their enemies, and who have suffered to

save the world, but without being rewarded for it. In that respect they tend to

identify themselves with Christ, and talk in terms of ‘crucifixion’ and

‘resurrection’. This ability to glory in martyrdom, for instance, enabled the

Dinaric Serbs in the past to convert great national tragedies into a psychological

force that has worked in the direction of a national renaissance. (Toma”iÉ 1948,

p. 30).

The theme of the second myth focuses upon turning defeats into victories. The belief is

that if one is steadfast in spite of suffering, victory will result. Most Balkan people have

learned of the past not through the formal study of history, but through heroic epic songs

and poetry that glorify the local ethnic hero and vilify the stranger and traitor. In these

epic songs, defeats are transformed into victories. It has been suggested that the creation

and revival of patterns of behavior results in the revival of historical memories, rather than
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-28

patterns of behavior resulting from the revival of memories, as is often assumed (Mojzes,

1995; Ramet, 1996b).

Ramet (1996b) discussed the pattern of slow religious revival that began in Serbia in about

1982. At this time, the Serbian Orthodox Church issued an ‘Appeal for the Protection of

the Serbian People of Kosovo and Their Holy Shrines.’ It is not uncommon for religious

organizations to play a significant role in shaping a people’s understanding of itself and its

history. In addition, because of the Church’s more powerful influence in the villages, “. . .

the social memory of the past differs from the countryside to the city” (p. 83).

. . . events . . . tend to be remembered in the first place because of their power to

legitimize the present, and tend to be interpreted in ways that very closely

parallel (often competing) present conceptions of the world. (Fentress &

Wickham, 1992, p. 88)

To the extent that city and countryside try to legitimize different things, and to nourish

different views of the world, social memory inevitably differs from the city to the

countryside. In this manner, the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 has been perceived somewhat

differently by those who live close to where the Battle occurred—in Kosovo—compared

to the way it has been perceived by those who live in Belgrade or elsewhere in Serbia

(Ramet, 1996b). In any case, there has been a tendency to convert this debacle at the

hands of the Turks into a ‘high point’ of Serbian history.

The Mythological Rendering of Time

In the Balkans, history is not viewed as tracing a chronological progression, as it

is in the West. Instead, history jumps around and moves in circles; and where

history is perceived in such a way, myths take root. (Kaplan, 1994, p. 58)

In the Balkans, the thinking processes involved in the third myth lend to the mixture of

concepts of past and present to the extent that grievances from a time long past are

perceived as present afflictions. This mythomania destroys the sense of real time, and

people believe that present actions may not only vindicate—but also can actually eradicate

and reverse—a past defeat. Mojzes likens this to a pattern of thinking that one can “ . . .

repeatedly take a make-up test for past failures” (1995, p. 40). Just as some people may

weep uncontrollably for a legendary person who lived thousands of years ago and is

unrelated to the mourner, many people in the Balkans have the same ‘inability to tell time.’

Peasant communities usually adhere to some variant of the belief in a traditional

way of life which has existed from ‘time immemorial’. This interpretation is

largely wishful thinking for the countryside is not immune to cultural drifts,

demographic movements, or economic changes. (Ramet, 1996, p. 73)

These beliefs underlie an almost constant need to relive traumas or add new ones leading

to an inability to experience relief from past traumas and crimes. This teleological view of

history, in which one’s own nation figures as the great martyr, is often combined with

conspiracy theories. There is a continual demand for payment in blood for what has been

done since ‘time immemorial.’ Although Tito had consciously placed a taboo on the

reliving and resurrection of memories of World War II traumas, the contemporary

nationalist leaders have, in essence, released the floodgates of memory. Many citizens

have become caught up in a desire to avenge both real and imaginary wounds of the past

(Minogue, 1969; Mojzes, 1995).
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-29

The Glorification of War and Violence

Finally, because the Balkan economies have developed as perpetual war economies,

people stand ready to sacrifice all they have to win a new round of fighting. In the

Balkans, no tradition of nonviolent resistance or pacifism has developed. To the contrary,

the great heroes are those who have inflicted the greatest damage to the enemy. The

history of the region has been one of great political, economic, and social discontinuity,

causing a sense of insecurity in the population and breeding resentment and chaos. The

lack of economic stability has made it seem futile to save money or to work hard to obtain

it. Much has depended on luck and fate, undermining efforts to nurture self-reliance.

Most people feel they are the puppets of fate (Mojzes, 1995).

Svetlana’s father had fought in both Balkan Wars and in the Great War. He had

been a captain in the Serbian Army when it was defeated by the combined forces

of Austria, Germany and Bulgaria in 1915, and forced to make its famously

punishing winter retreat through the Albanian mountains to the Adriatic. The

Serbs had transformed that catastrophe, through their epic imagination, into

something awful but glorious. It had become, like their defeat by the Turks on

Kosovo Field in 1389, one of the treasures in their storehouse of national myths.

They had been defeated, but had refused to surrender. Rather than give up their

arms to the enemy, they had opted to abandon their own country, as the

Russians had done before Napoleon. (Hall, 1994, p. 71)

According to Kaplan (1994), the Serb reaction to defeat in 1389 by the Ottoman Turks,

bears an uncanny resemblance to the beliefs that have motivated Iranian Shiites. The

defeat of the Serbian leader, Knez Lazar, in 1389 made him a martyr in the eyes of his

fellow Serbs. To this day, they mourn his death in a manner similar to that of the Shiites

who mourn at the bier of Imam Husain, “. . . another shadowy figure of failure (but one

holy to Shiites), massacred on a Mesopotamian battlefield in A.D. 680 by the Sunni armies

. . . .” (Kaplan, 1994, p. 38).

POLITICAL MANIFESTATIONS OF THE BALKAN

CULTURAL PERSONALITIES

Toma”iÉ’s study in political sociology (1948) advanced the idea that political life in

eastern Europe differed from that of the rest of Europe. In addition, he attributed those

differences to special features exhibited by leading political personalities that, in turn, he

felt were shaped by cultural traits, chiefly traits of the families in which they were raised.

According to Machotka (1949) some of these differences cut across an East/West divide.

The Western type is more stabilized and peaceful and more influenced by

Christian principles. The restless, fighting, rough, and highly ambitious political

behavior of certain eastern Europeans originates in the Dinaric element of the

population. Though the Dinarics are not the major component of the population,

their strong political interest and ambition as well as their relatively poor

economic resources push them, more than other elements of the population, into

the political life. Since the strongest element, the peasants, are peaceful and not

interested in public affairs, the Dinarics easily dominate the local political life. (p.

105)

According to both Toma”iÉ (1948) and Machotka (1949), the Dinaric herdsmen lived in

the mountainous regions of eastern Europe.. Toma”iÉ contrasted the Dinaric herdsmen
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-30

with the Zadruga peasant agriculturalists. He postulated that the mountains, yielding only

a poor economic life, served as a good basis for raids and organized theft. He discussed

the rigid and, at times, violent discipline of the herdsmen and contrasted it to the presence

of patterns of greater equality within peasant society. In Dinaric society, emotional

instability and ambition created a special personality, while in Zadruga society, mutual

respect, personal and economic security, and the value placed on peace and right led to a

democratic element.

According to Machotka (1949), however,

 . . . those people were not sufficiently interested in public life. Only later,

pushed by the unjust and egotistical methods of seniorities and by the despotic

and violent behavior of Dinarics, they organized themselves recently into

agrarian parties and participated in the political life of their countries. This is true

chiefly of the agrarian parties of Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, and also of

Greece and Poland. (p. 105)

Machotka (1949) agreed with Toma”iÉ (1948) that the source of the instability and

violence characteristic of political life of eastern Europe rested with the politicians. In

particular, they discussed politicians of Dinaric origin whose despotic, power-seeking, and

unstable personalities applied all the features of life in the autocratic kuÉa, or extended

family, to larger communities and the nation.

More recently, Mojzes (1995) identified a distinctive Balkan mixture of cruelty and

warmth, destruction and outreach,

. . . a kind of maniacal descent into the depths of depravation by people who are

outlaws in every sense of the word, outlaws who are celebrated as heroes in their

own settings. The Balkans have bred a special kind of outlaw—the hadjuk and

uskok—two variant words connoting a combination of the notions of brigand

and freedom fighter. Such men became celebrated for their adventuresome

violence against the enemy, but they were not loath to turn against their own kin

and loved ones if they were crossed. Their twentieth-century equivalents are

just as short-tempered, with precisely the same mixture of sentimental love and

fierce hatred. Such people have been objects of fascination, celebrated in

spontaneous folk songs, though by the standards of civilized society they are

war criminals and mass murderers. Twentieth-century paramiltary groups, such

as the chetnik (Serbian), ustasha (Croatian and Muslim, though the latter may

use the Arabic term mujahedin), and partizans (Communist guerillas), built upon

the heritage of hajduk and uskok “freedom fighters” of a previous era in the

taking of the lives of enemies and “traitors” with a viciousness the memory of

which had survived centuries. (Mojzes, 1995, p. 48)

A predilection for violence and mutilation apparently has deep roots in the Balkans. In

1014, the Byzantine Emperor Basil II routed the army of the Bulgarian-Macedonian

Emperor Samuel, capturing about 15,000 soldiers. They were blinded in both eyes with

the exception that every hundredth soldier was allowed to retain sight in one eye so that

he could lead the others home. A few miles outside the contemporary Macedonian village

of Strumica is the small village of Ocevad, the name literally meaning “Dig-Out-Eyes.”

There is report of a contemporary peasant belief that the plaster and dye used to depict a

saint’s eyes in one of the many religious icons can cure blindness. With all the apparent

eye gouging that has been and is going on in the Balkans, perhaps the basis for this belief

is rooted in practicality (Kaplan, 1993; Mojzes, 1995).
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-31

As further example of the pervasiveness of brutality throughout the history of the Balkans,

the practices of King Stefan Nemanja can be explored. He ruled from 1168-1195 and

was one of the first significant Serbian rulers. Although he was largely responsible for

Christianizing his realm, his treatment of non-converts was noteworthy. Those who

believed in what was known as the ‘Bogomil heresy’ were silenced in his territory. He

cut out their tongues (Mojzes, 1995).

One of the heroes of epic songs, Starina Novak, and his son, Grujica, also showed cruelty

not only to their enemies but also to members of their own family. The manner in which

Grujica—with his father’s permission—killed his own mother is commemorated in song.

He cut off her right breast and both arms, then covered her with tar and set her afire. He

and his father warmed themselves by her burning body (Mojzes, 1995).

Over the centuries, Turkish as well as Slavic Muslim overlords terrorized masses of

people on the Balkan Peninsula. Those they identified as ‘wrongdoers’ were publicly

impaled on spikes, leading to a slow and agonizing death. In 1804, the leader of the first

Serbian rebellion against the Turks burned down entire Serb villages as a ruse to gain

support for his rebellion. In addition, he slit the throats of his own brother and father and

killed captured Turks in front of other people’s homes to force them to join his rebellion.

The depredations have continued from one end of the twentieth century to the other

(Mojzes, 1995).

The 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry into the Balkan Wars contains around 400

pages of documentation of unspeakable savagery perpetrated equally by Turks,

Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Macedonians, Albanians, and Montenegrins.

Pillaging (one of the favorite pastimes of both the military and civilians in those

wars), rapes, arson, mass murder of entire villages, and flogging were only the

most frequent atrocities documented by the Carnegie commission. An Austrian

officer records that, ten days after the peace treaty was signed ending the 1913

conflict, Greek soldiers burned down numerous houses in Strumica (today in

Macedonia) and raped the wives of a Turk, a Jew and a Bulgarian. The Turkish

woman died of it while her child was abducted never to be seen again. (Mojzes,

1995, p. 46)

The atrocities did not end with the Balkan Wars of the early 20th Century. As recently as

World War II, a case of impalement was recorded within Yugoslavia; and there is record

of Hungarian occupational authorities massacring approximately 3,000 civilians by digging

holes in the ice on the Danube River and pushing them under the ice while most of them

were still alive. At the World War II Croat death camp, Jasenovac, the exact number of

Serbs, Jews, Muslims, and Croats who died is still hotly debated among both Croats and

Serbs (the numbers range from 60,000 to 800,000). There is little dispute that the deaths

were not as expeditious as the annihilations carried out by the Nazis at Auschwitz,

however. At Jasenovac, the Croats did not use gas chambers (Mojzes, 1995).

[Croatia, 1990s] An ethnic Serb I met on the train told me: “The Croatian fascists did not

have gas chambers at Jesenovac. They had only knives and mallets with which to commit

mass murder against the Serbs. The slaughter was chaotic, nobody bothered to keep

count. So here we are, decades behind Poland. There, Jews and Catholics battle over

significance. Here, Croats and Serbs still argue over numbers.” (Kaplan, 1994, p. 5)

***

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1989] The last entry on the wall was dated July 8, 1944. The number

was 23,233. There had been more—the work had continued until October, when Belgrade
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-32

was liberated—but the display ran out of wall. A wooden plaque carved by survivors of

the camp claimed a total of forty thousand dead. By the time my brochure for Belgrade’s

museums was printed in 1989, the number was eighty thousand. The irony seemed

perfect: the Germans had been very careful about numbers, but the Slavs had become

emotional and messed them up. Nothing was more unknowable in the Balkans than

numbers. (Hall, 1994, p. 106)

***

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1940s] Belgrade’s Jews had spent only a brief time here before being

entrained for the death camps farther north. The Germans had used this camp primarily as

a holding pen for hostages, who had been either people they wanted to kill anyway—

Communists, liberals, student leaders, any citizens with integrity who might command a

following—or simply those unlucky enough to have been out on the street during one of

the round-ups the Germans conducted whenever the numbers in the camp were getting

dangerously low. The system was simple, and placards on the Belgrade streets patiently

explained the rules and ramifications, as though giving arithmetic lessons to children.

Fifty hostages would be shot for one dead German. Twenty-five would be shot for one

wounded German. Therefore, if for example two Germans were wounded, fifty hostages

would be shot. If they both later died, then fifty more would be shot. If only one died,

then only twenty-five more hostages would be shot.

A series of photographs showed guards marching prisoners out to a field outside the city;

lining them up in front of a ditch; doing their duty. There was no Ustasha-like

brandishing of knives, no gloating. The Germans never got carried away. They always

shot exactly the right number. (Hall, 1994, pp. 104-105)

***

Military and paramilitary units of Serbs, Croats, Muslims, and the Communist-led

partizans burned, killed, and looted each other’s villages during World War II. They

frequently carried out cruel mass murders, and to this day trenches full of hundreds of

victims are being discovered.

When the British Army returned thousands of captured Croatian ustashe and

other soldiers at the end of World War II, they were slaughtered en masse by the

partizans and were unceremoniously tossed into ditches. As a prelude to the

present warfare, mass graves of executed Serbs from World War II were

discovered in Medjugorje, Herzegovina. It is alleged that they are close to the

world-famous pilgrimage sites over which a Roman Catholic Church was erected.

Fact or fiction, the important thing is that Serbs believe it is so. (Mojzes, 1995, p.

47)

[Belgrade, Serbia, 1940s] After the war, the field outside Belgrade where the hostages

had been shot was dug up, and the thousands of bodies were reburied in cemeteries, with

names on their tombstones. Of course the bones were rarely the right ones, but you could

forget that. You had a place to lay flowers, and a chiseled name to talk to, and someone

was buried there, perhaps not your wife, but someone who had suffered like her, perhaps

spoken to her, perhaps seen her marched out. Then the museum opened, and you could

go and see what it had been like, and grieve, and hate the Germans, until you slowly got

used to hating them, and perhaps eventually even got tired of hating them so much.

There were no museums for those killed by the Ustashas. There were a few memorials, but

in the name of Brotherhood and Unity, they did not go into details. In the name of

Brotherhood and Unity, you did not hate the Croats. In the name of Brotherhood and

Unity, you did not even rebury the dead. The karst uplands of Croatia and Bosnia were

riddled with natural limestone caves and pits into which thousands of corpses had been

thrown during the war. Not just Croats killing Serbs, but everybody killing everybody
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-33

else. Everyone still knew where the pits were. Families usually knew to which particular

pit a father or brother or sister had been led to, to have his or her throat cut at the rim.

But Tito’s post-war government had not exhumed those dead. It had sealed the pits with

concrete. (Hall, 1994, pp. 107-108)

***

NATIONALISM, ATROCITIES, DENIAL, AND PSYCHIC NUMBING

. . . my hosts nod their heads over the Balkan tragedy. Of course they

understand what it is all about, but their understanding—as well as everybody

else’s—reaches only a certain point. So far as some logic of events can be

discerned and explained so good; we are still within the realm of reason. But

finally there must and does come the question why, which is the hardest to

answer because there are hundreds of answers to it, none of them good enough.

No graphics, drawings or maps can be of any genuine help, because the burden

of the past—symbols, fears, national heroes, mythologies, folksongs, gestures

and looks, everything that makes up the irrational and, buried deep in our

sobconscious, threatens to erupt any day now—simply cannot be explained. I

see the interest and concern on the faces of my friends being replaced by

weariness and then resignation. (DrakuliÉ, 1993, p. 7)

Because of the experiences of soldiers during the war in Viet Nam and the profound

effect that their experiences had, we have all become familiar with Post Traumatic Stress

Disorder (PTSD). The disorder is not new, nor are soldiers the only ones to suffer.

PTSD is a human reaction to prolonged and unremitting exposure to brutalities. Crime

victims, as well as refugees, often experience PTSD.

Many refugees who left Southeast Asia after 1975 continue to experience and

suffer from their war, escape, concentration camp, and prisoner-of-war

experiences. They suffered great losses of family members, livelihood, and

cultural traditions. Vietnamese saw family members killed, possessions

confiscated, and villages destroyed. The Laotians, Mien, and Hmong had

significant and irreversible damage done to their social structures and cultures.

Cambodians experienced the brutal rule of Pol Pot from 1975-1979 when an

estimated one million people died of disease, starvation, torture, and execution.

No individual or family was spared, directly or indirectly, the trauma of this

period. (Boehnlein, & Kinzie, 1996, p. 19)

Drakulic (1993), a Croatian journalist, tells of shutting down emotionally in the inevitable

face of a war that comes ever closer:

. . . for a long time I had refused to leave my home, even to consider such a

possibility. For months and months, ever since January, I could hear its noise

coming closer and closer, but nonetheless I still chose to ignore it. I know these

symptoms of denial by heart now: first you don’t believe it, then you don’t

understand why, then you think it is still far away, then you see war all around

you but refuse to recognize it and connect it with your own life. In the end it

grabs you by the throat, turning you into an animal that jumps at every piercing

sound, into an apathetic being trudging from one side of the room to the other,

into the street and to the office where you can do nothing but wait for something

to happen, to hit you at last. (DrakuliÉ, 1993, pp. 28-29)

That kind of resignation can steel the nerves of those who are forced to accept war as a

fact:
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-34

. . . death becomes something you have to reckon with, a harsh reality that

mangles your life even if it leaves you physically unharmed. But the kind of

death I met with on the second page of the Borba paper was by no means

common and therefore acceptable in its inevitability: . . . and we looked down the

well in the back yard. We pulled up the bucket—it was full of testicles, about

300 in all. An image as if fabricated to manufacture horror. A long line of men,

hundreds of them, someone’s hands, a lightning swift jab of a knife, then blood,

a jet of thick dark blood cooling on someone’s hands. On clothing, on the

ground. Were the men alive when it happened, I wondered, never questioning

whether the report was true . . . . At that moment, whatever the truth, I can

imagine nothing but the bucket full of testicles, slit throats, bodies with gory

holes where hearts had been, gouged eyes—death as sheer madness . . . . Only

on the train heading southeast, on that sad ‘Balkan Express’ did I understand

what it means to report bestialities as the most ordinary facts. The gruesome

pictures are giving birth to a gruesome reality; a man who, as he reads a

newspaper, forms in his mind a picture of the testicles being drawn up from the

well will be prepared to do the same tomorrow, closing the circle of death.

(DrakuliÉ, 1993, pp. 39-40)

Typical of PTSD, the denial often escalates into a profound psychic numbing:

Hardly anything seems strange or dreadful now—not dismembered bodies, not

autopsy reports from Croatian doctors claiming that the victims were forced by

Serbians to eat their own eyes before they were killed . . . .Only on the train

heading southeast, on that sad ‘Balkan Express’ did I understand what it means

to report bestialities as the most ordinary facts. The gruesome pictures are

giving birth to a gruesome reality; a man who, as he reads a newspaper, forms in

his mind a picture of the testicles being drawn up from the well will be prepared

to do the same tomorrow, closing the circle of death. (DrakuliÉ, 1993, p. 40)

Life in Yugoslavia at the end of the 20th century has, for many, taken on a sinister

resemblance to the death camps during World War II, with a similar effect:

[Treblinka, 1993] He worked by the barbed wire and heard awful screams.

His field was there?

Yes, right up close. It wasn’t forbidden to work there.

So he worked, he farmed there?

Yes. Where the camp is now was partly his field. It was off limits, but they heard everything.

It didn’t bother him to work so near those screams?

At first it was unbearable. Then you got used to it. (DrakuliÉ, 1993, p. ix, citing Shoah—the

Complete Text of the Film by Claude Lanzmann, Pantheon Books)

***

From shock to denial, and from despair to numbness, those who are surrounded by

inhuman acts of barbarism survive by pulling inside themselves, by rationalizing, and by

mechanically performing necessary activities. It is, perhaps, the only way to survive.

Toma”iÉ (1948) defined the significance of Central and Eastern Europe to an

understanding of the longstanding tensions between the East and the West:

Throughout many centuries, the area between the Baltic and the Mediterranean

has remained the center of an unending struggle between the Eastern and the

Western world, and a crossroads of conflicting cultures, religions, and political

and economic systems . . . . [making] Eastern Europe a particularly important

“laboratory” for the study of intercultural, interpersonal and power relationships.
BALKANS-APPENDIX A A-35

Eastern Europe has been also a standing challenge to social scientists to find

ways to stabilize a “problem-area” whose upheavals, convulsions and warfare

have often spread far beyond its borders, and have twice in the recent past

inflamed the whole world. (p. 9)

Some of the contrasts, conflicts, and dualities that so mark the Balkan peoples have been

presented here. The list is not exhaustive, however. There are more. In fact, it is rare to

pick up any work on the Balkans without encountering yet another set of contrasts or

more evidence of dualities. One can either deduce that those who write of the Balkans

are predisposed to resort to colorful exaggerations, or that there is a fundamental base of

conflicting tensions that permeates this region.

The importance of understanding this part of the world is no less important at the end of

the 20th Century than it was following World War II. With an awareness that Balkan

brutality is no recent phenomenon, the following chapter focuses on the relationship

between human behavior / ‘social character’ / cultural personality and the patterns of

human adaptation to the physical environment. In addition, various expressions of cultural

adaptation to diverse environments are examined to clarify the ‘law of the land.’

Facets of the Balkan cultural personality are explored in more depth in the following

chapter, within the context of the predominant herding and farming adaptations that have

been present in the Balkans. This approach is intended to facilitate efforts to decipher the

unknowable through development of an understanding of the impact not only of the ‘lay of

the land’ as discussed in Chapter 3 but also of the ‘law of the land’ that is presented and

discussed in Chapter 5. Some of the destructive uses of memory that characterize life in

the Balkans are also presented as a preparation to a more thorough examination of Balkan

prehistory and history that is contained in Chapter 6.

Return to Table of Contents
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-1

Appendix B

Human Adaptation and the Law of the Land:

Roots of the Balkan Cultural Personalities

In this appendix, some of the apparent reasons for the historic and current patterns

described in the last appendix are analyzed, especially in the context of the various

adaptive strategies that are present in the Balkans.

HUMAN ADAPTATION: THE LAW OF THE LAND

Chapter 2 began with a discussion of the ‘fierce Balkan social character’ that was

defined by Dinko Toma”iÉ (1948) and reconsidered by Stjepan Me”troviÉ (1993).

Although Me”troviÉ expanded on the work of Toma”iÉ, he did not claim to account for

the ‘predatory aspects of the Dinaric types of Slavs,’ or to explain why much of former

Yugoslavia lacks a liberal tradition that is taken for granted by many Western nations.

Toma”iÉ’s correlation of ‘social character’ with differing types of food-getting strategies

was ahead of its time, however, if not totally outside the realm of traditional sociology. It

bears further examination.

To enhance understanding of this section, prior review of Appendix A is recommended.

In it, several aspects of human social organization are examined as they occur across the

spectrum of subsistence strategies—ways of making a living from the environment,

including the techniques used and resources exploited. It is possible to identify important

changes in social and political behaviors that have occurred under differing food-getting

strategies. These include changes in the economy and technology as well as in social and

political organization, changes in patterns of leadership and dispute resolution, and changes

in the determination of sexual roles and the allocation of power. Related factors include

the division of labor, ownership and transportation of goods, residence, group size and life

style, kinship, sexual stratification, control over property, and warfare. Although basic

types of cultural behavior are universal, they differ in detail from one culture to another

within certain parameters. Although the potential for variation is enormous, there are

recognizable patterns (dealt with in greater depth in Appendix A) that will shed light on

the rest of this chapter.

The way in which humans learn to live in their environment consists of learned cultural

behavior. It provides a means of coming to terms with our environment and with each

other. As previously mentioned, learned cultural behavior is an adaptive process. It

involves the means by which humans adapt to their environment, developing ways of

doing things that are compatible with the resources they have available to them and that

are within the limitations of their physical environment. Cultural behavior also results from

interactions between human thought and the social and biological environments in which

human societies find themselves. As a result, cultural practices are shaped by the

processes people employ as they adapt to the environment. Cultural behavior both shapes

and is shaped by humans interacting with each other and their surroundings. Viewed

across cultures and around the world, people living in similar environments tend to develop

similar cultural responses or patterns (Alland, 1981).
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-2

We can understand aspects of the contemporary Balkan social and political behaviors—

what Toma”iÉ referred to as ‘social character’—by exploring the ecological base in the

Balkans and the types of cultural adaptation upon which Balkan groups rely. Being

generally free of many of the biological and environmental constraints facing other

organisms, humans exhibit considerable diversity in their adaptive strategies—the ways

that human groups have learned to exploit their particular environment to promote their

survival and or prosperity. The adaptive strategies that are used by humans to exploit

their surroundings consist basically of three aspects of culture: Technology, social

organization, and ideology.

Technology, involving the skills and knowledge by which people make things and extract

resources, is the most obvious element of an adaptive strategy. The way that people

organize themselves socially and their beliefs about their universe are also important

aspects of an adaptive strategy.

One of the key social dimensions of an adaptive strategy consists of the way that labor or

work is divided, known simply as the division of labor, which may reflect differences in

activities based on sex, gender, or combinations of both. The division of labor reflects

both the nature of a people’s adaptive strategy and the group’s environmental setting,

including such factors as the available resources. The availability of resources, in turn,

influences other social aspects of a group, such as the size of the group.

The last cultural component of an adaptive strategy is ideology—the values and beliefs

that groups of people hold. One’s views of how to go about living in the world are not

based solely on observable facts. Human interaction with the physical as well as social

environment is conditioned by the beliefs concerning the nature of the universe. These

beliefs, through myth and ritual, form a link to the natural environment.

The ecological analysis employed in this study is focused on the interaction between social

and cultural behavior and various environmental phenomena. Some of the common

cultural patterns that develop when human groups live in similar, although not necessarily

contiguous, environments are examined. These patterns are related to economy and

technology, social and political organization, leadership and dispute resolution, and power

and sex roles. The traditional food-getting or subsistence strategies that are found

worldwide are described briefly below to provide an overview of each subsistence type.

In addition, information is also included regarding changes that occur in the degree of

social control over the individual, and the relative complexity of legal and political

institutions and social integration and/or stratification, in the progression from foraging

through farming and the precursors of state-level societies. As previously mentioned, a

more detailed consideration of the varied—but predictable—interactions between human

social and cultural behavior and environmental phenomena is presented in Appendix A.

Subsistence: Different Environments, Different Adaptive

Patterns

Strategies that people employ to procure and produce fundamental needs or wants are

referred to as food-getting or subsistence activities. Food-getting strategies are

shaped both by the environment itself and by the different kinds of techniques used to

extract a living from the environment. Each of the major subsistence strategies varies
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-3

according to environmental, cultural, and technological variables. For example, the size

and quantity of available animals and whether or not they occur in herds will impact

hunting techniques. The available tools will also have an influence. Spears are less easy

to use than bows and arrows, bows and arrows are made more effective with the use of

poisons, and guns are more effective than either of the simpler technologies but can lead

to depletion of game and subsequent food shortages.

Different environments place different demands on people; and therefore, different

environmental conditions lead to different adaptive patterns. The discussion in this

chapter is focused on historic and relatively contemporary accounts, including an overview

of descriptions and illustrations of what may be considered the Balkan cultural

personalities. In particular, the technological and subsistence levels attained by various

Balkan peoples within their physical environments are examined in order to frame a

clearer understanding of the basis of contemporary as well as historical conflict in the

region. As discussed by Toma”iÉ (1948), there are differences based on subsistence and

economy that underlie some of the differences that are apparent between the various

Yugoslav republics and peoples. Specific evidence of the underlying prehistoric

development of these subsistence strategies on the Balkan Peninsula is presented in the

following chapter as well as in Appendix B.

The general subsistence strategies described below represent ways of making a living

from the environment, including the techniques people use and the resources they exploit.

Although the specific strategies vary somewhat from society to society, it is possible to

identify a limited number of broad subsistence types:

Hunting and Gathering / Foraging

Hunting and gathering, or foraging, involves reliance on the availability of edible plant and

animal species occurring naturally in the environment, with the investment of little human

activity other than harvesting. This form of subsistence is the oldest human pattern and is

represented worldwide during most of the history of the human species. Generalized

hunters and gatherers are currently found in areas that will not support any other type of

subsistence due to poor soils and/or lack of sufficient water. Specialized hunters are

found in the Arctic regions where land and sea mammals provide most of the diet;

available plant foods provide only a minor part of their diet.

Hunting and gathering groups are characteristically organized within what is referred to as

a ‘band,’ a small, loose-knit residence group that

. . . lacks clear lines of leadership and authority and comes close to being a group

of equals. There is little specialization, little division of labor, little difference in

wealth, and a great deal of similarity in beliefs, experiences, values, and general

lift style. The band is well adapted to a society in which the level of technology

and the way of obtaining food do not allow for large, dense, permanent

settlements. It can grow or shrink according to the season and the availability of

food without major rifts among its members. It creates just enough of an alliance

to allow groups to come together for special ceremonies or to obtain husbands

and wives, but it does not create strong alliances that might result in warfare with

other groups. Because there is so little material wealth in hunting and gathering

societies, the band tends to foster equality and prevent the domination of some

members by others. (Friedl, 1981, p. 179)
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-4

Horticulture, Slash-and-Burn, or Swidden Agriculture

Horticulture, slash-and-burn, or swidden agriculture, is sometimes called extensive

agriculture. It entails the cultivation of a variety of domestic plants in gardens—principally

root crops and tree crops—using simple hand tools such as digging sticks or hoes. There

is usually some effort made to replenish nutrients taken from the soil through burning off

the fields and tilling the stubble into the soil. Often a variety of crops are planted in one

plot of land to minimize depletion of nutrients. This subsistence type requires large

amounts of land because gardens are often moved frequently, and plots are allowed to lie

fallow for a period of years. This form of gardening may include some dietary reliance on

domesticated animals, with supplements to the diet from minimal hunting and gathering.

Horticulture is currently found in tropical and subtropical areas, such as Central and South

America, Southeast Asia, and Africa south of the Sahara Desert, that support a heavy

growth of trees and undergrowth that must be cleared before gardens can be developed.

There is evidence, however, that under changed climatic conditions in the past, slash-andburn agriculture was practiced in North America and Europe.

In horticultural societies we find that the proportion of the food produced

directly affects the type of sociopolitical organization. If relatively little food is

grown, and most is hunted or gathered, then the society may be band-like in its

organization. As the amount of food obtained from horticulture increases, so

does the density of the population. And as the basis of group membership

broadens from the residence group to the larger society, so does the political

affiliation—ultimately leading to a chiefdom . . . . a . . . more complex form of

social organization . . . . [that] can both support a full-time army and coordinate

its activities. (Friedl, 1981, p. 180)

Pastoralism

Pastoralism involves raising and herding domesticated animals—including goats, cattle,

sheep, camels, reindeer, or yak—in areas that are unsuitable for agriculture. There is

usually little reliance on hunting, gathering, or planting crops in conjunction with a

pastoralist subsistence strategy. This pattern often involves regular migration and varying

levels of economic exchange with neighboring agriculturalists for both food and non-food

items. Pastoralists are commonly found in mountainous areas at least part of the year

consistent with their activities as animal herders. They frequently cover large territories in

connection with herding activities and may live symbiotically with settled peasant

agriculturalists.

In pastoral societies, because of the mobility associated with seasonal migration

or nomadism, there is little chance for centralized political authority to develop.

As a result, most pastoral peoples are internally organized along the lines of

tribal societies. However, many pastoral groups are not totally self-sufficient,

but depend on wider economic networks in which they trade animal products for

food, weapons, and other important items. As a result, they are often integrated

into a more complex form of political organization while still keeping their political

autonomy as tribal units. (Friedl, 1981, p. 180)

Intensive Agriculture

Intensive agriculture entails the permanent cultivation of grain crops. It is marked by

production of a surplus of agricultural products made possible through the use of plows,

domesticated animals, fertilizers, and various forms of irrigation and water storage
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-5

techniques. Of necessity, intensive agriculture is limited to large areas with deep soils and

sufficient rainfall or other water sources to support long-term cultivation. Large plains,

prairies, or steppe lands have been the typical environments in which intensive

agriculturalists have thrived.

With the development of agriculture, people were able to combine the

domestication of plants and animals, leading to many other changes in their life

style as well. No longer did they have to move around in a wide area to find

enough food. The size of the group could grow, since the land could support

many more people through agriculture. Equally important was the fact that

agriculture allowed a family to produce more food than it could consume, and

this surplus could be used to feed other people who were freed for other

occupations than food producing. Surplus food could also be stored for future

use, or exchanged in trade networks, or used in many different ways. This was

crucial to the development of civilization: for the first time a class of people

emerged who could turn their attention to other aspects of life . . . . [than food

production].

The next step was the formation of urban centers . . . . The concentration of

people in cities was a natural outgrowth of the increase in population that

resulted from agriculture, combined with the growing number of people who no

longer had to engaged directly in food production . . . . as the size of the city

grew, it became a center for specialists in other activities, and its population

became increasingly heterogeneous . . . . (Friedl, 1981, p. 180)

With the growth of cities, increasing amounts of power is concentrated with people who

live in the cities, leading to their domination of the countryside and their control of the

economies of the peasant villages.

The final step in the transition to a state form of political organization was made

when the leaders in the cities gained the power to force the rest of the population

to cooperate to achieve the economic and political goals of the state. Political

leaders increased their control over internal production and trade, over economic

relations with neighboring societies, and over the day-to-day activities of the

members of the population, usually at the expense of the peasants who had to

produce a surplus to pay taxes and fight in a war far from home based on issues

of little importance to them personally. (Friedl, 1981, pp. 180-181)

Mechanized or Industrialized Agriculture

Mechanized or industrialized agriculture is accompanied by industrial and factory

production. It involves the use of predominantly nonliving sources of energy (e.g., oil,

electricity) in plowing, irrigating, and other agricultural work, as well as inanimate energy

for the manufacture of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and other agricultural inputs. This

subsistence mode developed out of a base of intensive agriculture, with market

relationships predominating and increasing population densities. Private property and a

‘free labor force’ characterized the economy. Marked class and sexual inequality are

often found in societies relying on mechanized or industrialized agriculture.

Taking a long-term view of the history of humans, it is evident that change has been in the

direction of developing ways of exploiting the environment that are more efficient, that

can support greater population densities, and that require more complex systems of

sociocultural integration. Industrialization involves the use of machines rather than human

or animal energy and has led to increases in productivity and efficiency (Nanda, 1980).
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-6

Of necessity, hunting and gathering groups are small and mobile. Their belongings are

few, and they do not recognize private property beyond a few simple personal

possessions. There is no concept of land ownership. These groups are marked by welldeveloped patterns of cooperation in hunting activities. In addition, there are also clearly

observable patterns of food sharing to optimize the survival of all members of the group.

In contrast, agriculture is associated with permanent settlements and well-developed

concepts of property—particularly in land—due to the value of fields and crops.

Competitiveness, rather than cooperation, is marked in cultures relying on intensive

agriculture, even extending to what has been described as ‘endemic warfare.’

Pastoral nomads who rely on a wide territory in order to successfully raise their herd

animals regularly engage in trade for items produced by neighboring agriculturalists in

order to supplement their animal products. In addition, they, too, are often warlike,

engaging in raiding forays to enlarge their herds. Horticulturalists are strongly territorial

and are also frequently quite aggressive and prone to raiding to expand their subsistence

base. Their goal, however, is not to enlarge their animal herds but to enlarge their labor

force. Their raids are directed at the capture of women from neighboring tribes in order

to have more women to tend and work in their gardens.

Indigenous human communities that depended exclusively on hunting and foraging faced

some obvious limitations. Their members had to live for at least part of the year in small

groups that were dispersed over large territories. Settlements were often changed with

the seasons. Wild food resources had to be harvested where and when they were

available. Continued availability could not be assured. Small groups foraged and hunted

over extensive territories, living in small, self-sufficient communities. For certain

purposes, larger social groupings might congregate; but the usual group consisted of single

biological families or of small bands of three or four families, comprising 15 to 20 persons.

As discussed more fully in the following chapter, the transformation of wild animals into

tame creatures supplying milk, meat, hides, skin, and bone, and the ability to cultivate

cereal crops in lieu of depending on foraged food marked a significant change in the

relationship between humans and their environments. Among the most apparent—and

significant—changes involved in this ‘domestication’ of the flora and fauna are those

related both to attitudes and behaviors concerning property and power, and to increased

complexity in the regulation of behavior within and between social groups. In particular,

when humans began cultivating crops rather than foraging for food, they began amassing

surpluses that could be used to support an economy that included people whose

occupations were not related to agriculture. At the same time, there was a fundamental

shift from the kin group as the locus of decision-making in pre-state societies to the

development of specialized political institutions in state-level societies (Alland, 1981; Friedl,

1981; Peoples & Bailey, 1988).

In human history, as new methods of exploiting the environment were developed, larger

populations could be supported. As the size of the group changed, social organization

changed as well. These changes represent increasing levels of complexity and

specialization. It is important to realize, however, that while certain changes occurred

together as an integrated package, there was no single series of stages or line of

progression from hunting and gathering band to horticultural tribe, pastoral chiefdom, or

agricultural state through which each and every group passed. In some areas of the

world where conditions were favorable, changes in subsistence strategy may have
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-7

occurred quite rapidly. In other areas, local conditions may have favored retention of a

simple lifestyle such as hunting and gathering, with little change over long periods of time

(Friedl, 1981).

By understanding the cultural imperatives that are rooted in varying subsistence

economies one can begin to comprehend the power that the land exerts. In the Balkans,

two subsistence modes—pastoralism and peasant agriculture—have predominated for the

past 5500 to 7500 years, up until the advent of urbanization and industrialization. In some

rural areas, pastoralism and peasant agriculture have persisted to the present.

Subsistence: Social Organization, and the Exercise of Power

In even the most technologically simple cultures, characterized by small numbers

and frequent face-to-face interactions, decisions must be made about economic,

social, and ritual behavior. If group hunting is to occur, if the camp must be

moved, if puberty ceremonies are to take place, people must agree to participate

cooperatively. In more complex societies the lines of authority must be clearly

drawn and political position within the total group assured. Large populations

are cumbersome. They require special political institutions in order to insure

cohesive action when necessary . . . . In state societies kinship no longer forms

the basis of major social relations. Loyalty has shifted away from ties between

related individuals to ties with the state as a territorial entity. The state functions

to maintain social order. (Alland, 1981, pp. 149-150)

The approach within the field of anthropology that involves the study and development of

an understanding of how humans behave in terms of their environment is called cultural

ecology. Cultural ecologists are not environmental determinists. They do not believe that

the only feature that defines culture is the environment. Instead, the goal is to define and

understand the interactions between culture and environment (Friedl, 1981).

The American school of cultural anthropology has derived most of its inspiration from the

natural sciences, such as geology and biology, and from history. The influence of natural

science is represented by studies done under the approach referred to as cultural

materialism in which the physical environment and human technology are emphasized.

The focus is on various cultural phenomena, such as processes related to population

pressure, intensified use of resources, and depletion of the physical environment. Those

who apply the cultural materialist method seek to analyze the ways in which ideas,

practices, and the physical world are interrelated. Cultural materialists assert that the

ways in which people exploit nature using tools and technical knowledge are the most

important aspects of their sociocultural system. Also recognized in this approach is the

fact that feedback relationships exist between societies and their environments. For

example, as people interact with nature, they change it; and that change provides

‘feedback’ that subsequently affects the people themselves and their behaviors. A major

precept of the cultural materialist construct employed in this paper is that the subsistence

mode—the tools, technology, and organization of work—is significant in determining the

nature of other aspects of a society, such as its religion, belief systems, social organization

and family structure, and child-rearing practices (refer to Tables 2 and 3) (Howard &

McKim, 1983; Peoples & Bailey, 1988).

TABLE 2. Comparison by Subsistence Mode: Food Reliability, Residence Pattern, and

Community Size with Economy, Property, and Trade.
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-8

SUBSISTENCE MODE FOOD PREDICTABILITY, RESIDENCE , AND

COMMUNITY SIZE

ECONOMY, PROPERTY, AND TRADE

HUNTING AND

GATHERING /

FORAGING

Food shortages rare

Generally nomadic or semi-nomadic

Very low population density (less than

50/100 sq. mi.)

Small communities, usually <50 people

Reciprocity, giving and taking without use of

money, ranging from gift giving, to equalized

barter, and cheating

Generally no individual differences in wealth, and

concepts of private property often alien

Minimal trade

HORTICULTURE /

SLASH–AND-BURN

AGRICULTURE

Food shortages infrequent

Somewhat sedentary communities which

may move after several years

Low to moderate population density

(150/sq. mi.)

Small to moderate communities, averaging

300-350 people

Redistribution, accumulation of goods by one

person or in one place for subsequent

redistribution to members of group, often

through barter or feasts

Individual differences in wealth generally minimal

Minimal trade

PASTORALISM Food shortages frequent

Generally nomadic or semi-nomadic

Low population density

Small community size - 2-5 families in

winter, <40 “tents” at other times of

year depending on forage

Market exchange, a means of distributing regular,

large supplies of disposable food and other

items

Individual differences in wealth generally minimal

Trade very important

Raiding for animals common, as functional

adaptation to ecology of herding

PEASANT

AGRICULTURE (NONINDUSTRIALIZED)

Food shortages frequent

Permanent communities

Highest population density (500-1,000/sq.

mi.)

Large towns and cities

High fertility rates to ensure adequate

family labor supply

Market exchange and/or money economy based

on regularly-produced food surpluses and

many craft and labor specialists

Marked individual differences in wealth, land,

animals, and money

Trade very important

INDUSTRIALIZATION Sustained urbanization and dramatic growth

of cities and towns

Demographic shift toward modern fertility

patterns and smaller families

Decline in importance of agriculture

Rapid, intensive economic growth, with capitalist

development stimulated through standardized

laws, money, highways, and protection of

merchants

Ascendance of capitalist class

Production of commodities

Economy based on individual ownership of private

property

As an illustration of the cultural materialist approach, the premise is that different preindustrial agricultural societies (that use similar modes of production) are markedly similar

in their concepts of religion and family life, and are markedly dissimilar from

industrialized nations and from simple hunting and gathering peoples. The determining

factors in history, therefore, are seen as being related to 1) the production of the means of

existence, of food, clothing, and shelter, and the tools necessary for that production; and 2)

the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. Both kinds of

production—the stage of development of labor and of the family—are heavily influenced
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-9

by the subsistence system and attendant social organization under which the people of

particular historical periods in different countries live (Harris, 1968; Howard & McKim,

1983; Peoples & Bailey, 1988).

A considerable amount of information can be obtained by knowing and understanding the

prominent subsistence mode that is practiced by a group of people, as is shown in Tables

2 and 3. In Table 2, the various subsistence modes are associated with predictable

differences in the reliability of food sources, residence patterns, and community size, as

well as the type of economy, concepts of property ownership, and trade. Whether key

food resources are predictable or are vulnerable will influences overall social and political

organization as mediated through the economy, community size, and residence patterns.

Despite advances in technology, the constraints imposed by the basic subsistence modes

influence human behaviors in some consistent and predictable ways.

There is also a strong link between subsistence type, the division of labor between the

sexes, and general patterns of the distribution of power. In Table 3, differences in the

political organization and patterns of warfare and social organization and sexual

stratification are shown. In addition to the preceding factors that are quite understandably

linked to the physical environment and the technology utilized, other less obvious factors

are also linked to environmental and technological variables. For example, when human

groups live in similar, although not necessarily contiguous, environments, some common

cultural patterns develop, related specifically to economy and technology, social and

political organization, leadership and dispute resolution, and power and sex roles. These

include population size and social organization, ways of defining to whom one is related,

inheritance of property, and even child-rearing practices and interaction patterns between

men and women (Friedl, 1975; Harris, 1971; O’Kelly, 1980; Vayda, 1969).

As shown in Tables 2 and 3, the continuum from a hunting and gathering subsistence

mode through horticulture, and pastoralism, to peasant agriculture has been marked by:

an increased likelihood of food shortages and famine,

decreased nomadic behavior and increased number and size of sedentary populations,

including the development of permanent communities,

increased community size and population density,

changed family size and birth rates,

changed concepts of private property and trade and the distribution of wealth,

economic changes, from reciprocity through redistribution and barter, market exchange,

and money economies,

changed access to economic resources and prestige, including increased inequality,

changed sexual roles and the division of labor, including changed locations in which

women perform their work and the value ascribed to it,

changed political organization, from self-sufficient autonomous bands, to informally

organized tribes based on kinship and language, to large state-level, complex political

structures,

changed leadership styles, from consensus building through centrally-organized control,
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-10

progressive increases in levels of aggression and dominance and of violence and warfare.

Subsistence technology also influences aspects of human social organization that include

determining the people whom a person claims as relatives, the people whom one lives

near, and the types of groups that develop and to which a person belongs. The expression

of some of these features is discussed in the balance of this chapter.

TABLE 3. Comparison by Subsistence Mode: Political Organization and Warfare with Social

Organization and Sexual Stratification.

SUBSISTENCE

MODE

POLITICAL ORGANIZATION AND WARFARE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND SEXUAL STRATIFICATION

HUNTING AND

GATHERING /

FORAGING

Bands, self-sufficient and autonomous groups

Informal leadership, no formal, permanent office

of “leader,” decisions made by consensus and

influence, not by power

Aggression and dominance not encouraged

Violence and warfare relatively rare

Egalitarian, unstratified—members have equal access to

economic resources AND to prestige

Kin-based groups

Family units include husband, wife, and children

Egalitarian sex roles

HORTICULTURE /

SLASH –ANDBURN

AGRICULTURE

Tribes, informally organized institutions—often

based on kinship, shared language, and belief

in a common ancestor—uniting scattered

residential communities, to provide greater

societal cohesiveness and more united

response to external threats, as needed

Feuding and warring constant among some groups,

including raiding for women; OR

Chiefdoms, with formal structure to integrate

multi-community political units, often under

one full-time leader whom all must follow

Some part-time political officials

Ranked, access to prestige and status is unequal, BUT

access to economic re-sources is equal

Kin-based and non-kin groupings such as groups of males

of same age

Family units are multi-generational and property-owing

(corporate)

Extreme sex segregation in the division of labor

Men and women lead almost separate lives

Male dominance is favored to point of fierce aggression

among males and degradation of females

PASTORALISM Tribal societies, composed of many bands united

in larger, more centralized political unit;

lacks strong central authority

Internal warfare endemic, related to economic and

political structure; OR

Chiefdoms, united under definite leader who

usually inherits his office and has power to

command people to act in certain ways,

including collecting and redistributing goods

Part- and full-time political officials

Ranked, access to prestige and status is unequal, BUT

access to economic resources is equal

Kin-based and non-kin groupings such as groups of males

of same age who engage in the same activities

Family units multi-generational and property-owning

Male dominance favored; emphasis on female virginity

and chastity

Marked sexual division of labor related to dependence on

crops and degree of nomadism

PEASANT

AGRICULTURE

(NON-INDUSTRIALIZED)

State-level, complex, centralized political

structure composed of permanent legislative,

executive, and judicial functions

Many full-time political officials and complex

bureaucracy

Marked class stratification

Warfare endemic

Women objects of capture during warfare

Stratified, unequal access to prestige AND to economic

resources due to differences in wealth, status, and

specialization

 Marked by presence of class systems which are

somewhat open, and/or castes which are rigid and

determined at birth

Associations based on non-kin factors: occupation,

residence, activities

Except among upper class elites living in urban centers,

marked sexual stratification; women isolated in

domestic sphere and seen as form of property with
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-11

strict controls on female sexuality

INDUSTRIALIZATIONDemocratization in political process

Invention of new language of political and social

thought

Development of parliamentary democracies

Marked change toward social stratification by wealth

Growing inequality in distribution of wealth

Appearance of domesticity

Expansion in primary education outside the home

Shifts from unitary to pluralistic networks in personal

associations

Low positions for women except where their labor

remains important for farming and horticultural

practices

Kinship, Residence, and the Formation of Groups

All people distinguish relatives from non-relatives. What few Westerners realize is that all

people do not make the same distinctions or recognize the same categories. For example,

we distinguish our siblings by gender (brother, sister). We also distinguish our parents’

siblings by gender (aunt, uncle). We do not carry the distinction of gender to the children

of our aunts and uncles. We refer to them simply as cousins.

There is another characteristic of our system for recognizing and classifying relatives and

determining descent: We generally recognize kin both through our mother and our father;

and although we may be closer to the relatives on one side or another, we consider

ourselves in the same ‘blood’ relationship to both side of our families. Our descent

system is referred to as ‘bilateral’ because we recognize both sides of our family as

equivalent. Most people in the world do not share this way of recognizing and classifying

relatives.

Many descent groups are ‘unilineal’—kinship is traced through one side of the family

only. For example, in a patrilineal system (with kinship traced through the father’s line), a

person recognizes his father, his father’s brothers and sisters, his father’s parents, and the

children of his father’s brothers and sisters as ‘family’ or ‘relatives.’ The people that we

would consider ‘equivalent’ who are traced through the mother’s line (such as mother,

mother’s brothers and sisters, mother's parents, and children of mother’s brothers and

sisters) are not considered as relatives. This distinction is important. It involves one’s

choice of allies in time of need, and it determines the lines through which property will

pass. It even identifies the group from which one can choose a spouse.

The ways in which people conceptually broaden their kinship links to form significant

associations beyond that of the immediate family and residence group reveal some

important factors. In the Balkans, where both pastoral herders and agricultural peasants

predominated, there are differences in the way each of these subsistence groups broadens
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-12

the kinship links to form significant associations beyond that of their own immediate

relatives and residence group.

The first situation, characteristic of agriculturists, occurs where males exclusively

inherit the patrimonial estates and form autonomous households without wider

corporate ties to other kinsmen. In contrast, the conditions in pastoral

communities enforce the maintenance of corporate ties among brothers and with

more distant collateral kinsmen. (Denich, 1974, p. 246)

Among agriculturalists, leadership and authority is usually vested in the senior male in a

family line. His sons defer to his authority. Pastoralist groups, although also reflecting

male-centered group identification, are focused around groups of brothers and their

descendants. There is usually no single male elder who is ‘in charge.’

With respect to the rules of residence, in contrast to our own experience of ‘living where

the job is,’ indigenous peoples live where the job is IF it is where the rules of residence

say one should live. For example, many societies show a preference for what is known

as ‘patrilocal residence.’ This stipulates that a newly married couple will take up

residence in the village or location of the husband’s parents. Patrilocal residence quite

simply means living in the locality of the father (in this case, the husband’s father). The

reasons are more strongly related to economic rather than to social preferences, however.

The rules serve to assure that groupings of males needed for economic activities are

formed and preserved.

Residence rules and rules of descent reinforce one another. Patrilocal residence

concentrates ‘related’ male lineage mates in a single location. The wives are selected

from outside one’s lineage and village. These practices have been found to lead directly

to political conflict between residential units. Feuds, blood vengeance, and retaliation for

infidelity are common. Matrilocal residence is less common, and it creates some different

social effects. Males who are related by blood are distributed throughout the society,

because they—and not the women—are the one’s who leave their residence of birth and

enter a new residential group at marriage. A man marries into his wife’s village,

preventing the males from forming localized kinship groups. Having residence and

descent at cross-purposes reduces or weakens the likelihood of a nucleus of political

conflict developing in the larger residential unit. Of benefit however, is the fact that the

residential units do have links to many other villages—those from which the in-marrying

husbands have come (Paige, 1974; Murphy, 1957; Van Velzen, Van Vetering, &

Otterbein, 1968).

A theory has been proposed to account for the relationship between rules of descent and

the political structure of stateless societies. The argument is that the political structure in

stateless societies is a consequence of the presence or absence of a variety of cohesive

factions that are based on lineage or family. Paige (1974) suggested that the formation of

kin-based factions is an outgrowth either of consolidating and focusing kinship ties or of

crosscutting ties of kinship, and that patterns of group allegiance have the same effects in

both simple and complex societies. Specifically, Paige argued that consolidating patterns

of interest group solidarity create factionalism and conflict, while crosscutting patterns of

allegiance lead to consensus and peace.

In contrast to the highly-differentiated institutions of social and political control that are

characteristic of true states, the definition of kinship relations and ‘political’ organization
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-13

are closely integrated in societies that are not formally organized as states. Paige (1974)

noted that at the stateless level of political development, kinship roles frequently determine

empirical patterns of group interests and solidarity as well as lines of political cleavage and

conflict. The polities, or political organizations of stateless societies, have been defined in

their relationship to kinship organization. They can be seen as belonging to one of two

groups—‘factional,’ or ‘communal’—depending on the degree to which the pursuit of

special interests is considered to be a legitimate form of political action (see Table 4).

Factional polities permit or even encourage the pursuit of special interests,

frequently representing these interests at the highest levels of the polity.

Communal polities do not regard the political expression of special interests as

legitimate and do not permit such interests representation [sic] at any level of

decision making. In factional systems, decisions can be reached through the

open struggle of contending interests, but such interests must be denied or

repressed to achieve consensus in communal systems. Factional systems

develop a rational political calculus in which coalitions form and re-form to reflect

changing patterns of political resources and interests. . . . Communal polities

achieve stability by avoiding open conflict and eliminating factionalism. (Paige,

1974, p. 302)

PASTORAL SOCIETY AND THE BRIGAND-WARRIOR-POLICE

IDEAL

Pastoralism, defined by primary reliance on the herding of livestock such as cattle, sheep,

and goats, is organized around the needs of the herds. Because the livestock are

extremely valuable property, each animal represents a significant investment of material

resources and human labor. But livestock are also easily stolen. Comparing the relative

costs of raising vs. stealing livestock, it is clear that stealing is more economical than

raising them. Areas of high population pressure can create competition over scarce

pasturage and waterholes between different camps of pastoralists, as well as between

pastoralists and neighboring agriculturalists.

Patrilineality, Internal Warfare, and Religion among

Pastoralists

Patrilineality (determining descent through the male line) is adaptive to a competitive

social and economic environment. Patrilineality is often associated with patrilocality in

which the residence of a married couple is in proximity to the husband’s family. In this

system, the wife leaves her birth family and moves in, often as a stranger, to live in the

household and lineage of the husband. Patrilineal societies also more frequently practice

village exogamy, meaning simply that a man’s marriage partner is chosen from outside

his own village. As a result, in a patrilineal system, a female is separated from her own

kin and has little opportunity to call on them for help. Isolation from her kin makes a

woman vulnerable and dependent on her husband and his kin.
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-14

TABLE 4. Derivation of Interest Group Patterns from Lineage and Family Structure.

CULTURAL

EXPRESSION

PATRILINEAL DESCENT MATRILINEAL DESCENT

RULES OF

DESCENT AND

MARRIAGE

Line of descent and political authority vested

in males (fathers and sons)

Woman’s ties to her own lineage are

weakened. Her children are members of

her husband’s lineage.

Authority in family and in village overlap,

vested in male heads of lineage—

fathers and sons/husbands

Ties through blood are reinforced, increasing

probability that male lineage mates will

act as cohesive political factions

Formation of fraternal (male-centered)

interest groups fostered

Distinct tendency for general polygyny (man

having multiple wives)

Descent traced through females, but political authority

in hands of males of the woman’s lineage (her

brothers and her mother’s brothers)

Authority over a married woman and her children is

exercised by males of her own lineage—not by

her husband or her father

Ties through blood vs. ties through marriage lead to

conflicting allegiances for males

Prevents formation of fraternal interest groups based

on lineage because males in residential unit come

from differing lineages

Little political conflict or factionalism based on

kinship in the wider society

Monogamy or sororal polygyny (man taking second

wife from family of first wife) more common

GROUP TIES Focusing, reinforcing patterns of allegiance:

Few ties of loyalty between residential units

Political opponents in different villages are

not members of the same lineage and

have few or no bonds of group loyalty

Factionalism and intense conflict fostered

Cross-cutting patterns of allegiance:

Allegiance owed to multiple groups with conflicting

special interests creating a web of relationships

Expression of single positions prevented

Men residing in the same unit include lineage mates as

well as those of outside lineages (in-marrying

husbands)

Conflict and cleavage between groups reduced

Fission of independent units inhibited

TYPE OF POLITY Increased probability that members of the

same lineage will act as cohesive

political faction

Pronounced individualism on part of adult

males

Political conflict based on self-interest

Authority exercised by single male head of

lineage, allowing core group of male

family members greater freedom to

pursue independent political goals

Communal sentiments

Independent political action by family unit inhibited

by authority of wife’s maternal kinsmen

Political tranquility

Authority divided between male members of core

lineage and in-marrying males

Marriage practices strengthen man’s tie to wife’s

group and limit his capacity for independent

political action

SOCIALIZATION

TECHNIQUES AND

OUTCOMES

Emphasis on independence, initiative, and

task orientation, with primacy of male

task orientation asserted

Feuds, blood vengeance, and retaliation for

infidelity common

Emphasis on socioemotional skills, emphasizing

primacy of traditional feminine roles

Aversion to bloodshed is valued

Violence occurs only during intoxication

RESIDENTIAL

PREFERENCE

Patrilocal:

Concentrates males related by blood in a

single location

Residence and descent rules reinforce each

other

Matrilocal:

Distributes males related by blood throughout the

society

Prevents males from forming localized kinship

groupings
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-15

Leads to fraternal interest groups and to

political conflict between them

Residence and descent rules conflict

In a patrilineal society, the women of the household come from different villages and have

little basis for developing close ties. Where conditions such as population pressure arise

that require a group to defend or to aggrandize its holdings, patrilineality and patrilocality

are adaptive responses because they concentrate the male fighting power of the group.

In addition, when conditions arise that require the accumulation of greater surpluses,

competition is usually necessary to motivate people to expend the extra effort to produce

more (O’Kelly, 1980).

Denich (1974) noted that in the Balkans, the smallest social units are households that are

formed around males who become members at birth, generation after generation—a

direct result of the Balkan region being “. . . peopled for millennia by pastoralists and plow

agriculturists who have left a continuous record of patricentric organization” (p. 244).

Pastoralists are overwhelmingly patrilineal and patrilocal, practices that have been

demonstrated to be functionally related to the ecological conditions of pastoralism and to

their defense problems. In addition, widespread among pastoralists is an emphasis on

male honor, shame, and female chastity—connections that are especially characteristic of

Mediterranean pastoralists of Europe and North Africa (O’Kelly, 1980; Schneider, 1971).

Population pressure and competition over scarce resources are acute in these

societies. Intracommunity conflicts over land, water, and animal theft are

common. Such disputes are overlain with an ideology of male honor and shame.

Maintaining one’s own or one’s family’s property is a matter of honor. Shame

comes to males who cannot defend or increase their property. Furthermore,

strong central governments had not, even in the recent past, penetrated these

areas sufficiently to maintain law and order and to remove the settlement of

disputes from the local areas . . . . the codes of honor and shame are means of

social control adapted to a competitive environment in the absence of state level

controls . . . . (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 140)

The semi-nomadic nature of pastoralism and the fact that permanent ownership, property

lines, and fences are not adapted to a migratory life can create problems in the

determination of grazing and water rights. Access to resources, or at least temporary

property rights, are often established through the credible threat of force. Maintaining an

impressive fighting force is of key importance to local groups of herders. This is achieved

partially through the practices of keeping ‘related’ males together by means of patrilineal

descent rules and patrilocal residence practices that concentrate the power of closelyrelated males who have been brought up together and share a sense of common identity

and purpose (O’Kelly, 1980; Schneider, 1971).

Pastoralism is also often associated with a pattern of internal warfare in which

geographically proximate, culturally similar peoples become involved in shifting alliances

and treachery, as well as chronic intermittent warfare over local resources. In these

cases, the livestock are extremely valuable property, with each head representing

considerable investments of material resources and of human labor. Competition for

scarce resources, including pasturage and waterholes—between different camps of

pastoralists and agricultural peoples—often leads to warfare becoming an integral part of
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-16

their economic and political structure, serving as a type of functional adaptation to the

ecology of herding (Harris, 1977a; O’Kelly, 1980).

Defining one’s membership in a kin group by tracing through the male line is functional for

maintaining a unified male core for collective work and fighting. Patrilineality is also

associated with a significant degree of internal competition and divisiveness that is usually

kept somewhat under control by the solidarity that is generated by common interests and

the ideological concepts of honor and shame. When the herds and households become

too large to be supported by available resources, the divisiveness inherent within

patrilineages can itself be adaptive. Patterns of male dominance and female subordination

seem to be generated by these processes of fission and fusion that are found among

pastoralists (O’Kelly, 1980).

. . . nomadic herders require an organizational flexibility based on kinship ties

which allows them to fuse into larger groupings to take advantage of temporarily

lush pasturelands, but more important, for defense against external enemies.

They also must break up into smaller units, sometimes down to the nuclear family

unit, in order to spread over and utilize the largest area possible. The feuding

and raiding among camps and villages partially serves the function of dispersing

the population over wide areas as defeated groups move on to avoid further

losses . . . . The problem is . . . to maintain household solidarity while

simultaneously providing a basis for the eventual destruction of the household.

Again degradation and subordination of women are used to symbolize these

processes and to deflect the competitiveness of the men onto women as the

enemy. Thus, conflicts between brothers are often said to be caused by disputes

among wives . . . . Females are used as scapegoats to diminish the impact of

the actual rivalries between the male kinsmen. (O’Kelly, 1980, pp. 143-144)

Harris (1974, 1975, 1977a, 1977b) has noted a strong correlation between population

pressure and warfare, as well as other phenomena. They include the presence of

patrilineality (tracing kinship through the male line), patrilocality (residence near the

husband’s relatives), male control of political institutions, cultural imagery depicting

women as unclean, and the assignment of women to tedious, menial work in the division

of labor. He developed a theory regarding the origins and variability of male supremacy in

societies that lack centralized political institutions. Harris’ view was that male supremacy

arose as a result of the need to limit population growth, and that reproductive pressure led

to primitive warfare. In turn, primitive warfare resulted in a ‘male supremacy complex.’

Harris’ view was

. . . that all of these sexually asymmetric institutions originated as a by-product of

warfare and the male monopoly over military weaponry. Warfare required the

origanization of communities around a resident core of fathers, brothers and their

sons. This led to control over the resources by paternal-fraternal interest groups

and the exchange of sisters and daughters between such groups (patrilineality,

patrilocality and bride-price) to the allotment of women as a reward for male

aggressiveness and hence to polygyny. The assignment of drudge work to

women and their ritual subordination and devaluation follows from the need to

reward males at the expense of females and to provide supernatural justifications

for the whole male supremacist complex. (Harris, 1977a, p. 60)

Cultural and structural practices that degrade and subordinate women are underpinned by

the religions of most herders. Both Islam, that is widely accepted among herders both in

Asia and in Africa, and Christianity that predominates among European and New World
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-17

pastoralists, support male dominance. In addition, Islam specifically requires female

subordination and seclusion.

. . . the impact of these religions’ teachings supporting patriarchy appears to

depend on the existence of wider socioeconomic forces toward sexual

stratification or sexual egalitarianism . . . . where conditions support a high degree

of male dominance and patriarchy, the religions practices supporting these

structures are more strictly adhered to, such as among the Mediterranean

herders. Where conditions do not so strongly support male supremacy, people

are more likely to practice these religions indifferently . . . . (O’Kelly, 1980, pp.

144-145)

Perhaps one of the most troubling aspects of the recent Balkan wars has been the

treatment of women and children. There have been persistent incidents of rape and

torture. As one becomes aware of the importance placed on male honor and female

purity among Balkan peoples, it is possible to comprehend the degree to which a group is

shamed when its women are defiled.

Why should women’s sexuality be such an extreme focus for the exertion of male

control? Why should the reactions against women’s sexual freedom be so

severe? There are two components to the control of women’s sexuality—one

practical, the other symbolic. On the practical side the tenuous bond between a

woman and her husband’s household would be further undermined by liaisons

with other men. However, the more significant dimension of the severity of

measures for sexual control over women stems from the symbolic importance of

sex in the competitive social environment . . . in which agnatic groups exist. The

ability of a household’s men to control its women is one of many indicators of its

strength; accordingly, evidence of lack of control over women would indicate

weakness and possibly reveal the men’s vulnerability to other external

challenges. (Denich, 1974, pp. 254-255)

According to Toma”iÉ (1946, 1948, 1949), the Balkans have existed as a frontier territory

on the crossroads of the political and social systems of the East and the West. The region

has been a virtual ‘no-man’s land’ where a number of small local powers developed and

maintained a precarious independence between the two encroaching worlds. In this

longstanding struggle of states and empires for power and for spheres of influence, the

natives on each side of the borders have often been recruited as mercenaries to engage in

warfare and police duties. They have also been used to plot rebellions and political

assassinations in order to undermine the authorities across the borders in the periods

between wars.

[The] warlike and conspiratorial character of the Balkans did not, however, result

exclusively from the power politics of the Balkan states and of the world empires.

It was also autochthonous to the Balkans inasmuch as its mountainous area has

been inhabited by belligerent herdsmen whose origin can be traced to the great

medieval invasions from the Asiatic mainland. It is this society of predatory

sheep-raisers that has for ages bred outlaws and provided guerrilla warriors,

military leaders, and political terrorists in the Balkan countries. The unsettled

international relations in this part of the world and the almost constant state of

warfare favored the ascendancy of this turbulent element of Balkan mountaineers

and the forceful imposition of its rule over the farming folk and the city dwellers

in the valleys and plains. From this clash of native cultures, coupled with the

diverging Western and Eastern influences, the proverbial friction and

restlessness of the Balkans has resulted. (Toma”iÉ, 1946, p. 132)
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-18

Toma”iÉ (1948) asserted that differences in eastern European political life in comparison

to the rest of Europe were explainable with reference to special features exhibited by the

leading eastern political personalities. His view was that these leaders reflected the

influence of various cultural traits as well as the family structures in which they were

raised. Of particular importance were the differences arising from the means of

subsistence practiced by various groups and the resulting influence on the family.

Obvious differences between agriculturalists and pastoralists include the presence of a

strong, autocratic father in agricultural societies vs. a web of allied although often

competing and feuding brothers in pastoral societies. Other differences include gender

roles and sexual stratification systems. Although they differ widely from one time and

place to another, they do not vary randomly; because there are to a large degree

conditioned by the nature of the society in general and by its economy in particular

(O’Kelly, 1980).

Pastoralist Man’s Domain and Demeanor in the Balkans

The herdsmen of the Balkan mountains include several ethnicities, speaking

different languages and dialects and adhering to three major religions. However,

the ethnographic literature indicates remarkable similarity in their ecological

adaptations and social structures, and in the ideological expressions of these

structures. The societies included . . . are of Greek (Sarakatsani), Albanian,

Vlach, and South Slavic (Montengrin, Serbian, Moslem) ethnicities. (Denich,

1974, p. 247)

In each of these cases, although the tribal structures were eventually incorporated into the

national states within whose borders they came to be situated, and although indigenous

patterns of action involving violence were inhibited by the evolving national legal systems,

forms of conflict continued—although diminished somewhat in scope. The old order was

fading, but remained present (Denich, 1974).

The work of transhumant pastoralists involved long treks between winter and summer

pastures, including periods of isolation on mountain peaks, herding and guarding animals

from raids by wolves, bears, and other shepherds. The flocks of sheep and goats were

held in common by the males of a household. Grazing rights would be held collectively by

groups of households, connected by tribe and/or clan. Due to competition for resources,

these herdsmen would band together with allies to ward off actual attacks and to

discourage potential threats to their means of subsistence (Denich, 1974).

The organizational solution to this problem has followed the pattern developed

around the world by populations in analogous circumstances: patrilineally

related groupings bonded through the dynamics of fusion against common

external enemies . . . . Segments defined by patrilineal descent provide the most

convenient basis for a permanent system of alliances among the men who watch

and guard sheep. Among Montenegrins and Albanians, patrilineality defines a

fully developed system of segmentary lineages and clans . . . . Among the Greek

Sarakatsani . . . sheep theft, though rampant in the past, is now curbed by severe

penalties imposed by the national government. Instead, grass is stolen by

sneaking the flock onto another’s territory by night. Successful theft of both

sheep and grass is a source of high satisfaction to the thief, of grievance to the

victim. The thief gains in wealth and prestige, while the victim is diminished in

both. There is no moral sanction against stealing from unrelated persons, so that
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-19

any dealings between unrelated groups are fraught with the continual possibility

that one will take advantage of the other. To avoid being victimized, each group

must keep its combative alliances in continual readiness and maintain a show of

sufficient strength to discourage intruders. (Denich, 1974, p. 248)

Similar rivalries were reported from Montenegro shortly after World War I. Although

tribal and clan divisions were beginning to fade in the villages, the mountains had been

divided from time immemorial. Everyone knew the owners of each peak, each spring,

each pasture, and each meadow. Although the tribes no longer fought over the valleys,

the shepherds continued to fight over grazing lands, often making up mocking jests and

howling derisive songs at other camp settlements (Denich, 1974).

Amidst this generalized atmosphere of tension between groups of kinsmen,

outbreaks of violence are frequent, for each man is obligated to defend his group

against both physical and symbolic attack. The latter category includes a wide

range of acts that diminish a group’s reputation or honor. Response in kind is

required for the sullied group to retain its “honor,” which is really a symbolic

screen for its power. There are many levels of attack and defense, ranging from

simple insult . . . through fistfighting to homicide. In response to this ultimate

form of violence, the blood feud developed as the institution that most clearly

reveals the lines of agnatic solidarity: the agnatic core of the household,

consisting of brothers and sons, bears responsibility for avenging the death of

any of its members by killing the murderer. (Denich, 1974, pp. 248-249)

The rules for vengeance generally place the greatest responsibility on the most intimate

agnates of the victim, to uphold the honor of the lineage and their own reputations as

fighters. The concept of ‘honor’ that is so well developed in the Balkans is also related to

the honor-shame syndrome that is widely noted in the Mediterranean area (Denich, 1974;

Schneider, 1971).

Only males participate in feuds, either as perpetrators or as objects of vengeance. In the

past, blood feuding was a major cause for Serbian and Montenegrin men to emigrate to

other regions of the former Yugoslavia. In contrast, some men would fortify themselves

in their houses, fearing to venture out due to avengers. Among Albanian inhabitants of

the former Yugoslav republics, such house asylum was widespread. Although homicide is

the ultimate challenge to a group of related men, other verbal or physical challenges were

also the cause of aggressive response. Whenever challenged, a Balkan male is expected

to show his willingness to fight, although he might actually be grateful if someone

intervenes to prevent violence. Fights provide an occasion for kinsmen to demonstrate

solidarity and for calling potential alliances into action. The ideology of male group

solidarity is internalized on the emotional level, provoking immediate response, leading to a

testy atmosphere wherever men from different kin groups are assembled in public, such

as at weddings and village festivals (Denich, 1974).

Concomitant with actual readiness for combat is a complex of more subtle

prescriptions for male behavior that are deeply internalized through socialization.

The public image of warrior courage is linked with a self-image of indomitable

virility and elaborated ideologically in terms of the value codes of “honor.” The

public bearing of men is formidable, verging on a caricature of masculine

qualities. In Yugoslavia, men of pastoralist heritage walk tall and proud,

asserting themselves conspicuously when advantageous. (Denich, 1974, p. 250)
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-20

Simic (1969) has equated this behavior with the machismo syndrome. The stance of

masculine aggressiveness, however, is apparently a defensive one that serves to ward off

potential threats to a group’s fragile hold over its subsistence resources. It is expressed

both individually and collectively, in recognition that what is at stake is the survival of

families who are banded together through the male line in mutual protection. The power

of the group depends upon its unity, and any threat to this unity must be dealt with

(Denich, 1974).

The Place and Participation of the Woman in Balkan Pastoralist

Society

The preceding discussion concerned the way in which external threats are confronted,

both physically and ideologically in Balkan society. In these societies, males are born into

a situation in which loyalty to the group coincides with their own self-interests as heirs and

property holders. The women marry into groups in which they have no equivalent basis

for loyalty, creating a situation where internal threats to the solidarity of the group can

develop.

Although the institutions of patrilineality, patrilocality, exogamy, and male

inheritance neatly delimit, according to sex, memberships of local groups and

access to rights over property and people, they conversely define exclusion from

such rights according to sex. (Denich, 1974, p. 250 [emphasis in original])

The basic dilemma of groups united around a core of related brothers is to find a way to

deal with the anomalous presence of those who are in the group but not of it—its women.

Where the survival of the group depends on unified action by its male members in the

public sphere, it also ultimately depends on smooth functioning within the domestic sphere

(Denich, 1974).

In Balkan societies, it has been traditional for daughters to not even be counted by fathers

as they listed their children, consistent with a system in which a daughter’s presence in

the household was only temporary. Upon marriage, a woman was severed from her own

birth group, including loss of any further rights in her family of origin. The bride would join

a household that consisted of:

her husband—often a virtual stranger—and his male blood relatives,

other in-married women with whom she had no blood connections, and

unmarried girls (transitory members of the group until the time of they married into similar

outside groups in which they would be strangers).

The adult core of the domestic group consists of male relatives and unrelated inmarried women. Whereas the males are born into a situation in which loyalty to

the group coincides with their own interests as heirs and property holders,

women marry into a group to which they have no equivalent basis for loyalty . . .

. Only as the mother of sons does a wife secure a place in the group, bound to it

through a blood tie. Through influence on her husband and sons, a woman can

establish an indirect power base of her own, but the particularism of her interests,

focused upon men to whom she is directly tied, is a source of opposition within

the larger circle of men. (Denich, 1974, p. 251)
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-21

Custom, as well as Orthodox religious law, would prohibit marriage between descendants

of a common great-grandparent or any closer relative. Other prohibitions further

extended the net, so that marriages would connect households that had previously been

unconnected. Marriage arrangements became a conscious design to maximize alliances

between households by ‘co-fathers-in-law.’

Whether a woman is seen as a ‘social adult’ in these societies is determined not only by

her position in a marital relationship, but also by whether she is part of a productive group

larger than or separate from her domestic establishment. Where the estate is family

based and the wife works for it but does not share in its ownership, she is in much the

same relationship to her husband and his kin as is a worker to his boss. Societies in which

there are differing status and class levels also have given rise to a separation of the

domestic and public spheres of life. Women are often denied full adult social status in

these societies because they have been limited to the domestic sphere (Michaelson &

Goldschmidt, 1971; O’Kelly, 1980; Sacks, 1974).

The domestic sphere generally includes institutions and activities that are organized

immediately around one or more mothers and their children. In contrast, the public sphere

refers to activities, institutions, and forms of association that link, rank, organize, or

subsume particular mother-child groups. The restriction of women’s lives to the domestic

sphere limits their participation in non-domestic activities. As a result, males have more

freedom to participate in and control the public sphere and to develop and maintain an

image of authority, integrity, and worth (O’Kelly, 1980; Rosaldo, 1974).

Among pastoralists, the marked sexual division of labor does not create a sharp dichotomy

between domestic and public spheres, however. Although women’s tasks are more likely

to take place in camp than are men’s tasks, they do not involve the isolation of women in

the household; and much of women’s work is done in cooperation with or at least in the

close company of other women. In addition, both men and women cooperate in collective

work patterns with other members of the same sex. The camps are typically divided into

women’s spaces and men’s spaces, but nearly all of the activities are executed in the

open, avoiding the development of private domestic spheres for women and public spheres

for men. In spite of this general pattern of equity, the male dominance of economic

production gives rise to male dominance in the wider cultural and social structure of

pastoral societies (Boulding, 1976; Martin & Voorhies, 1975; O’Kelly, 1980).

A preference for male children has been evident in regions where the indigenous social

organization has persisted. For instance, in Montenegro when a male child is born, his

father would run out of the house and shoot his gun. The village men, upon hearing that a

male child was born, would also shoot their weapons and rejoice that they had gained

another ‘weapon’ (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

In the Balkans, Montenegrin pastoralists are illustrative of highly-patricentric kinship and

residence patterns. Extended households of brothers and male cousins were:

. . . based exclusively upon relations among male kinsmen. The only enduring

social units are formed through the male descent line, and women are exchanged

among these units to procreate future generations of males, leaving no enduring

marks of their own existence in terms of the formal structure. (Denich, 1974, p.

246)
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-22

Montenegrin women from outside the kinship group were received in marriage to produce

male groups. Daughters were not even counted as children because upon their marriage,

they left the group into which they were born and became part of their husband’s group.

The concepts of honor and shame helped to maintain the solidarity of nuclear and

extended family groups. Perceived insults against one member of the group would be

taken as affronts to the entire group requiring that the insults be avenged (O’Kelly, 1980).

Among Montenegrin pastoralists, feuding among males was endemic; and males were

socialized from a young age to be quick-tempered, aggressive, courageous warriors—

attributes that appear to be adaptive in a context of high population pressure and scarce

resources. In addition, each domestic unit would act as a fortified household, taking care

of its own defense needs and settling disputes through the personal use of violence

(O’Kelly, 1980).

The presence of women actually becomes problematical for these peoples.

Women are necessary for their labor and procreative abilities, but their loyalty is

suspect because they are not members of the patrilineage and because their

interests often lie with the nuclear family rather than the extended family . . . .

Every attempt is made to subordinate women to the authority of the male

kinsmen. Females must exhibit deference to the males of the household at all

points of contact. Physical punishments are employed to enforce male authority

. . . . this deference is shown in public by the wife customarily walking several

paces behind the husband, carrying his burdens, and walking while he rides.

Within the household, men are served food first and women eat the leftovers

later with the children. Degradation ceremonies including such rituals as

washing the feet of the men are common. The wife’s name also reflects male

dominance. Among the Montenegrins, after her marriage, the wife is referred to

only by the possessive of her husband’s first name. Thus, a wife might become

simply “John’s.” (O’Kelly, 1980, pp. 142-143, emphasis in original)

Denich has reported (1974) that Serbian and Montenegrin husbands and wives were

prevented from using each other’s first names, either when referring to one another or

when addressing one another. These rules of female deference, in addition to others that

include requiring women to walk several paces behind their husbands, are ritualized

expressions of the household authority structure that continuously reiterate the jurisdiction

that the permanent male cadre of the domestic group holds over women.

Honor, Shame, and Access to Resources among Pastoralists

The ideology of male honor and shame functions to deflect many conflicts that arise

between men over land, water, and animals. The conflicts are deflected onto women

through a parallel emphasis on females as sexual property. Women become another

form of male property. In a sense, women become contested resources similar to

pastures and water, sometimes to such as degree that “. . . kidnappings, abductions,

elopements, and the capture of concubines appear to have been frequent occurrences at

least in the past” (Schneider, 1971, p. 18).

As a political phenomenon, honor can attach to any human group from the

nuclear family to the nation state. The problem of honor becomes salient when

the group is threatened with competition from equivalent groups. It is especially

salient when small, particularistic groups, such as families, clans, or gangs, are

the principal units of power, sovereign or nearly so over the territories they
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-23

control. Concern for honor also grown when contested resources are subject to

redivision along changing lines, when . . . the determination of boundary lines is

subject to continual human intervention . . . . concern with honor arises when the

definition of the group is problematic; when social boundaries are difficult to

maintain, and internal loyalties are questionable. Shame, the reciprocal of honor,

is especially important when one of the contested resources is women, and

women’s comportment defines the honor of social groups. Like all ideologies,

honor and shame complement institutional arrangements for the distribution of

power and the creation of order in society. (Schneider, 1971, p. 2)

In Mediterranean societies, virginity and chastity were required of women on pain of

death. A woman who violated these sexual codes dishonored not only herself but also her

male kinsmen. On the other hand, for a man to seduce a woman from another group

brought honor to the seducer.

Once the marriage takes place, fidelity is required from the wife. Death was

formerly the ultimate penalty for the adulterous wife—the only question being

whether it was her husband’s or her own kinsmen’s obligation to administer it . . .

. Like blood-feud killings, such acts are now regarded as homicide by the national

governments in which these peoples dwell. However, in Yugoslavia . . . murders

of women by “jealous” husbands or lovers are commonplace, and they are

punished by penal laws that impose relatively lenient sentences. In former times

a lighter penalty for adultery in Montenegro was for the husband to cut off the

wife’s nose . . . . in an Albanian village [it was reported that] “A husband leaves

a faithless wife. During Turkish time, before the war, the husband had the right

to cut off her nose, cut out her tongue, or cut off her hair.” (Denich, 1974, p. 254)

A primary concern of the males in Balkan society was to control the sexuality of their

women. The head of a family would challenge the rest of the world with the idea of his

family’s honor, even to the extreme of exhibiting a ‘hypersensitive, punctilious posture,’

designed to convince others to exercise restraint, as much to avoid the consequences of

continuing rancor as to avoid physical retaliation (Schneider, 1971).

The loss of virginity of an unmarried girl or adultery on the part of a wife brought

tremendous shame to the woman’s family. The honor of the family had to be avenged,

requiring joint efforts by all of her closely related male kinsmen. The seducer had to be

killed or at least some compensation had to be obtained to avenge the insult. Denich

(1974) interpreted this intense concern with controlling female sexuality as arising from

the need to present a fierce public face to ward off potential attacks on livestock and

pastures. Schneider (1971) suggested that there was a correlation between the intensity

of feelings about honor and shame and the severity of organizational problems in pastoral,

as well as in some agricultural, communities. Since the 19th century, demographic,

political, and economic pressures led to changes in land tenure and the emergence of

entrepreneurial classes and also, in some cases, provided renewed potency to the codes of

honor and shame.

Where entrepreneurs emerged without much protection or legal backing from

states, they advanced their own positions in society, consolidated their wealth,

and monopolized resources by flaunting their honor and protecting their women

to the hilt, and by exploiting the ideas of honor and shame as political ideologies

which governed relations of power among men. (Schneider, 1971, p. 22)
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-24

Pastoralism and Ambitious, Power-Seeking Personalities:

Insecure, Despotic, Hostile, and Arbitrary

In the Balkans, the intense struggle for self-assertion and power combines with a deep

urge to identify one’s self with the strong and the powerful. As a result,

. . . rivalries and hostilities are paralleled by attachments and subservience to

those in power—a situation that breeds both treachery and loyalty, feud and

solidarity, factionalism and ethnocentrism, a general feeling of insecurity of life

and property, and endless strife . . . . These are the conditions which made the

Balkan herdsmen excel in violence, villainy, and rebelliousness, as well as in

deeds of self-denial and patriotism. (Toma”iÉ, 1946, pp. 132-133)

A variety of circumstances, including family quarrels, clan feuds, warfare, and poverty,

have forced people to leave their mountain abodes and to settle in small crossroad market

places or in city centers. These Balkan sheepherders have become innkeepers, small

traders, professional soldiers, political leaders, and conspirators. Some have also become

industrial workers or have ‘settled down’ in their own communities or have moved into the

valleys and plains to adopt techniques and social institutions characteristic of the

agriculturalists. In so doing, the latter have become somewhat more peaceful (Toma”iÉ,

1946).

Many lay political leaders have come from families descended from mountaineers who

migrated into the urban centers as professional soldiers and traders.

Even though these people were trained at Western universities, their own

cultural heritage was still too strong to allow for many basic changes in their

practices. Extremely ambitious, power-seeking, and aggressive in their political

behavior, they were not ready to compromise on issues. (Toma”iÉ, 1946, p. 134)

Rather than establishing a unified political opposition to the soldiers and police, they split

into a variety of parties and clanlike party factions, weakening their strength. Such small

political groups fought bitterly among themselves, often being ready to ally themselves

with an ascendant military faction in order to gain power. For example, in Serbia both

liberal and conservative parties, and in Greece both Republicans and Monarchists, sought

the support of opposing military factions (Toma”iÉ, 1946)

The Malevolent, Deceitful, Disorderly World View of

Pastoralists

Among Balkan herders, sharp father-son clashes were not uncommon, nor were incidents

of patricide and infanticide. During World War II, fathers and sons often found

themselves in opposite camps; and there were a number of instances in which sons who

fought with the Partisans executed their own fathers who were made prisoners while

fighting with the Chetniks. Rivalries between fathers and sons and between brothers and

sons in the ruling families resulted in numerous civil wars (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

Both Toma”iÉ (1948) and CvijiÉ (1930) have reported that a characteristic feature of

many pastoralist districts is the large number of men who act hastily without any

deliberation. This trait is memorialized in sayings such as ‘a man freezes if he thinks too

long,’ and ‘he who hesitates makes no progress.’
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-25

. . . CvijiÉ also remarks that they have “too good an opinion of themselves,” and

Miss Durham, an English anthropologist, reports that they are great boasters . . .

. the habit of flattery and adulation is strongly entrenched, and . . . the ambition

and pride of some of these people are “quite boundless.” There are persons with

“overbearing conceit,” and extreme self-confidence which has “no limits” . . . .

many of these people are incapable of realizing that some difficulties are

insurmountable, and that compromises must often be made. They are entirely

obsessed by the desire to win a place of their own in the world, and to in full gain

what they want. They show a “ceaseless concern with their own importance and

reputation,” and are likely to exaggerate their successes and to develop from this

exaggeration unjustified personal and national claims. Accordingly, they are

likely to overestimate their own strength and size . . . . (Toma”iÉ, 1948, p. 28)

According to Toma”iÉ (1948), the Dinaric herdsmen envision themselves both as great

heroes and as great martyrs—a people unjustly persecuted by their enemies who have

suffered to save the world without due reward.

This ability to glory in martyrdom . . . enabled the Dinaric Serbs in the past to

convert great national tragedies into a psychological force that has worked in the

direction of a national renaissance . . . . Thus, after the Serbians had been

defeated by the Turks in the Battle of Kosovo, in 1389, they never ceased for a

number of centuries to emphasize their sufferings, the martyrdom to which they

were exposed as a result of the defeat, and their sacrifices to Christendom. They

developed a cult of Kossovo [sic] . . . shown by the sanctification of the heroes of

the battle, and by the numerous ballads sung up to the present time . . . .

(Toma”iÉ, 1948, p. 28), p. 30, [emphasis added])

As a result of these traits, the Serbs in particular have kept alive their spirit of

independence for more than five centuries of domination by the Turks, through numerous

wars for independence, and despite Communist rule and Soviet control. Serbs at home, as

well as those who have emigrated, continue to speak with reverence of the Battle of

Kosovo and of its heroes, in a successful effort to arouse national consciousness and to

keep national aspirations alive (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

The lack of emotional balance may explain why the Dinaric warriors are more

successful and efficient as guerrilla fighters than as regular army soldiers. As

soldiers of a regular army, they are exceedingly brave in a successful offensive,

but are likely to become panicky and cowardly, and to flee, when faced with what

appears to be a superior force. In guerrilla warfare, however, the fighters are

organized into small bands which are able to disperse quickly and escape to

safety when faced by the enemy. Then they regroup themselves in their

hideouts and again ambush the enemy or attack him from the rear. In these hitand-run tactics they can never be encircled, and they are always on the offensive

and always have a n advantage over their enemy regardless of his numerical

strength. (Toma”iÉ, 1948, p. 31)

Toma”iÉ (1948) attributed these characteristics to the success of German and Italian

armies in World War II, and the Ottoman armies, in defeating the regular Serbian armies.

In contrast, however, in order to smash their guerrilla resistance, like methods and

counter-guerrilla formations were necessary. In addition, as fighters they tend to be

spiteful, taking actions that are irrational, moving from one camp or faction to another

according to changes in mood or the changing fortunes of war.
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-26

According to Toma”iÉ (1948) and his reliance on CvijiÉ (1930), the pastoralist/warrior

views the entire universe as deceitful, thus justifying his own reliance on unethical means

to gain personally profitable ends. Cunning is regarded as the highest order of astuteness.

Successful duping of others is regarded as a sign of high intelligence and

adroitness; in some regions, this type of behavior is very common and is known

as podvala (undermining) . . . . . when a man seizes the property of others . . . the

people do not say that he has stolen, but that he “likes it for himself” (Voli sebi).

This attitude justifies the seizure of public or private property by anyone who is

shrewd enough and bold enough to take it . . . . They seem ready to swear falsely

at any time, and to think nothing of it. In Montenegro, in the past, there was no

provision in the state laws for the punishment of perjurers, and the people

explain this omission by saying that it is for God to decide whether he wants to

punish them or not. “They would invoke the help of the devil himself, let alone

God, in order to succeed in the matter for which they take the oath.” They would

be willing “even to raise ten fingers, let alone three,” when taking a false oath if

that would help them to defeat their enemies . . . . The general belief is that

everybody is false as long as he can get away with it. (Toma”iÉ, 1948, pp. 39-40,

citing B. Bogi”iÉ, 1874, Gradja u Odgovorima lz Slavenskog Juga, p. 592,

Zagreb; & V. ArdaliÉ, 1899, Bukovica, Zbornik za Narodni ðivot I ObiÖaje, Vol.

15, p. 256, Zagreb. [emphasis added])

Toma”iÉ (1948) discussed the impact that these ‘habits of double dealing’ have had upon

political and international relations, noting that such practices were employed both by

Chetniks and by Partisans with their enemies in World War II. He emphasized that the

history of Dinaric society has been marked by numerous instances of ‘back-stabbing’ and

“. . . the breaking of pledges in international deals” (p. 40). In addition, he noted a

specific pattern between Slavs and Albanians:

Montenegrin rulers . . . often resorted to treacherous means in dealings with the

neighboring Albanian tribes. It happened more than once that the Albanian

tribal chiefs were led into a trap by the Montenegrins, who had guaranteed them

personal safety and given bessa . . . . an Albanian tribal institution . . . a pledge of

peace and safety, which is then very scrupulously observed by all parties

concerned. The Montenegrins, however, did not consider themselves bound by

the bessa, and often Albanian tribal chiefs would be assassinated when they

were visiting Montenegrins under the pledge of safety. (Toma”iÉ, 1948, p. 40)

In general, Toma”iÉ (1948) stressed that treachery is permitted as long as it is successful,

especially against one’s enemies. Treachery and violence in the context of the Dinaric

warrior are aspects of the same mental process; self-aggrandizement is identified with

power, and power is identified with violence. If violence is not expedient at the moment,

“. . . the socially recognized way to fight superior strength is to outwit his

opponents by resorting to craftiness and deceit” (p. 41, [emphasis added]).

As a result of the prevalence of treachery in both interpersonal and inter-institutional

dealings, the Dinaric man exhibits a typical lack of confidence.

He suspects not only the enemy, but also the members of his own community . . .

. Consequently, an inclination to spy upon other people has developed, a trait

which can be greatly misused in an autocratic society. Hence, it is not without

significance that the leaders, and most of the agents of the notorious secret

political police of Partisan Yugoslavia . . . are of Dinaric background, and that a

large percentage of them are Montenegrins. (Toma”iÉ, 1948, p. 41)
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-27

These traditions and practices shed light upon the events of the 1990s in the former

Yugoslavia—both in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo. Toma”iÉ (1948) also reported

that Orthodox men in Herzegovina have shown a restlessness and eagerness to fight

whenever the occasion arose. Most would prefer to fight than to attend a wedding party.

The Dinarics have been described as making war ‘simply for the joy of fighting.’ The

Slavs would

. . . collect a force and say: “Where shall we go? Who knows a village that has

not been plundered and burned in which we might find booty?” “If there is good

plunder, let us plunder, and if not, let us cut off good heads.” (Toma”iÉ, 1948, p.

56)

Toma”iÉ (1948) underscored the relationship between one’s world view and ‘cultural

personality’ and one’s subsistence practices. The Dinaric herdsmen were of a different

ilk than the Zadruga peasants, and these differences seem to be very persistent.

. . . the Dinaric atrocities and Dinaric emphasis on blood . . . would not be

surviving today if they were not favored by the conditions in which a Dinaric

warrior is born and reared. His unbalanced temper makes him likely to be as

excessive in violence as he is boundless in all other expressions of self-assertion.

At the same time, the traditional view of life and of the institutions of his society

point to violence as a reasonable and feasible means of self-protection and selfaggrandizement. (Toma”iÉ, 1948, p. 38)

PEASANT SOCIETY AND THE IMAGE OF LIMITED GOOD

Agriculture involves the use of the plow and draft animals, often accompanied by

fertilization and irrigation of the soil—both of which increase the productivity of the land

and allow denser populations and more complex social organization. The subsistence

practices of settled agricultural peasants significantly increase productivity and lead to

different patterns of social organization than are present among pastoralists. The shift

from a nomadic lifestyle to a settled one also has ramifications on the status and power

for the majority of the population in relation to a tiny ruling elite and for women in relation

to men. Population pressure and scarcity of resources appear to have accompanied the

development of agriculture and its increased productivity. The level of productivity that

can be achieved through plow agriculture permits the production of surpluses on a scale

that is unimaginable in hunting and gathering societies, or in horticultural or pastoral

societies (O’Kelly, 1980).

Agriculture transforms the majority of the population into peasants who give up much of

their produce to a ruling class in the form of taxes, rent, tithes, unpaid labor, and gifts.

The essential feature of the peasant subculture is that it is a territorially based relationship

between family units and the land they cultivate with their own labor, with continuity

through time. A peasant subculture is also characterized by an association of familial

units in various political, social, and economic units referred to as villages. Although these

villages are associated with an agrarian base, it is not necessary that all members of the

village practice agriculture or that all members of the subculture live in villages. Finally,

and most significantly, peasants are members of a national state to which services must

be contributed, either in labor, in cash, or in kind and from which some form of protection

against external and internal threats is received (Halpern, 1963; O’Kelly, 1980).
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-28

Except in times of labor shortage caused by wars, famine, or plague, there is a

surplus of peasant labor and the elite can afford literally to work peasants to

death and replace them. The level of class oppression found in agrarian societies

is rarely matched in the horticultural or pastoral societies and never found among

foragers. (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 154)

Peasants are people whose styles of life show certain structural, economic, social, and

perhaps personality similarities. Peasant communities are marked by intimate local

groups, strong kinship ties, and periodic gatherings in honor of some deified aspect of the

environment. Each peasant group is also part of a larger nation that controls its economic

life, enforces a code of law from above, and at times, requires education in national

schools. To understand peasant populations, it is important to understand the degree to

which each peasant household carries on the necessary craft specialties or the degree to

which these specialties are in the hands of others who must be paid in food for their

specific services. In addition, it is important to know the degree to which the peasant

processes his produce or passes his product on for processing by specialists. The ways in

which goods and services that are needed but are not produced by the peasants are

obtained are a function of the division of labor within the larger society. Particular

mechanisms that assure the pooling of the fruits of cultivation with those of other skills are

tied closely to the scale and scope of the division of labor within the society (Foster, 1967;

Wolf, 1966).

The peasant is not engaged in agriculture alone. Cultivation may produce the

calories a man needs, but he also has to dress himself, build houses, make

containers, and manufacture the tools utilized in cultivation. Moreover,

agricultural produce and livestock products must be processed, grain turned into

bread, olives into oil, milk into butter, hides into leather. (Wolf, 1966, p. 37)

A defining characteristic of rural peasants is their relationship to the urban society. The

larger society of which peasants are a part is the urban society—the civilization of an

entire region that is carried on by the religious, political, commercial, and intellectual elite

groups. Although these elites are often large landowners, they usually make their homes

in the cities, and their primary contacts are with the members of the upper socioeconomic

groups. Peasant societies represent the rural expression of a large, class-structured,

economically complex, pre-industrial civilization in which trade, commerce, and craft

specialization are well developed, in which money is commonly used, and in which market

disposition is the goal for a part of the producer’s efforts (Foster, 1967).

. . . peasants are primarily agriculturalists, but . . . . in most peasant societies,

significant numbers of people earn their livings from nonagricultural

occupations. It is not what peasants produce that is significant, it is how and to

whom they dispose of what they produce that counts. When settled rural

peoples subject to the jural control of outsiders exchange a part of what they

produce for items they cannot themselves, make, in a market setting transcending

local transactions, then they are peasants . . . .a peripheral but essential part of

civilizations, producing the food that makes urban life possible, supporting (and

subject to) the specialized classed of political and religious rulers and the other

members of the educated elite. (Foster, 1967a, p. 6)
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-29

Family, Warfare, and Religion among Agriculturalists

In the Balkans, one of the simplest divisions of labor between major economic groups

occurred: Peasant households produced most of the agricultural and craft services for

themselves, with only minimal ties to the larger, outside culture of urban craftsmen and

bureaucrats and of herdsmen. The South Slav economic and family unit, the zadruga, as

it existed before the last half of the 19th Century, consisted of

. . . a number of nuclear families—husband and wife teams, with their respective

offspring; its total membership was on the average between 20 and 40. The

members of a zadruga were usually related, but often included adopted or

unrelated members as well. Such a unit claimed common rights to fields,

orchards, gardens, vineyards, livestock, and pasture, and flax- and hemp-working

shops. Food, medicines, shelter, clothing, and furniture were produced within

the zadruga. Only a minimal amount of produce, usually cattle and hogs, was

sold to obtain salt and iron for implements. The zadruga owned and managed its

inventory of possessions as a unit; members maintained only share rights.

Alongside of this common zadruga property, individuals also maintained their

own separately owned plots which could be farmed only after they had done

their share of the common weal. (Wolf, 1966, pp.38-39)

In these zadrugas, the men plowed, mowed, cut the wood, made furniture, and worked in

the vineyards and orchards. The women gardened, cooked, cleaned, embroidered, and

worked lace. Men assisted the women in weaving, and the women assisted the men in

hoeing and reaping. Children and unmarried young women were responsible for tending

the livestock, and the elderly performed minor tasks around the house and in the fields.

The herding and care of draft animals and other livestock was in the hands of a specialist;

other specialists managed the weaving operations (Wolf, 1966).

. . . the patrilineal zadruga of Yugoslavia was at one time a land-owning unit

operating a common agricultural enterprise wherein the males were descendants

of a common paternal ancestor and the females were in-marrying spouses. Such

a group has ready means for maintaining solidarity and for calling upon the

members’ work and loyalty. Who belongs and who does not is clearly

demarcated: “we” and “they” are unmistakable. The sense of common identity

and interest is bolstered by talk and myth and the rituals associated with birth,

death, and marriage. (Diaz, 1967, pp. 51-52)

During the 19th Century, this traditional social institution was altered due to enforcement

of taxation and the growth of a market economy. Zadrugas began to sell products for

cash in order to satisfy the growing demands of the tax collector for money. This

reinforced a tendency towards specialization in certain products with high market values.

Simultaneous with increasing specialization, members of the zadruga increasingly bought

other goods and services, including clothing and as well as a portion of the food that had

previously had been produced within the zadruga (Toma”iÉ, 1948; Wolf, 1966).

The colonization of central Serbia meant, at first, the flowering of the zadruga—of the

extended family—often with a highly developed division of labor within the extended

family itself. But by the end of the nineteenth century, a contrary process had set in; and

the pressures of the rising market economy stimulated a gradual but steady disintegration

of the zadruga system as well as other changes in rural organization. In a number of

ways, the Slavic economic and political system could be characterized as a form of village

cooperative, or an early type of communism. Each member of the village was assigned a
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-30

task, and for performing it would share equally in the total labor product with all the other

community members. This type of institution (the zadruga) is still found in various parts

of the peninsula (Gianaris, 1982; Denich, 1974; Halpern & Halpern, 1972).

In most agrarian states, the surpluses that are produced make conquest profitable. As a

result, warfare is often chronic; and the societies themselves are primarily formed through

conquest. The ruling classes are often preoccupied with warfare, and the control over the

means of violence and of warfare—including weapons, transportation, and training—is the

primary distinguishing characteristic of the elite as compared with the peasant masses

(O’Kelly, 1980).

As with people everywhere, peasants face some common problems. They need to marry,

establish families, and related to their relatives in a way that recognizes the existence of

mutual obligations and expectations.

They must get along with fellow villagers well enough to be able to call on them

for economic, social, and ritual aid in time of need. Because basic resources

usually are scarce, they must find ways of minimizing or softening competition

that would be disruptive in a social order as tightly knit as a peasant community.

Peasants must also maintain viable relations with people outside their

community. Some of these people are their social and economic peers, and live in

villages similar to their own. People from other villages may be sources of

spouses, or they may provide the aid and protection villagers need when they

travel away from home, in visiting religious shrines, or in the long-distance

trading of local commodities that characterizes some peasant societies. Because

they live in a hierarchically differentiated society, peasants also face the problem

of relating to a social, economic, juridical, and cultural entity which vastly

surpasses the limits of their local worlds . . . . Peasant social institutions are thus

Janus-faced—looking both toward the requirements imposed by the larger

political and economic order and toward the customary expectations of the

peasant community. (Diaz & Potter, 1967, p. 154)

Most peasants are poor. Their life appears to be a relatively-constant struggle for their

small share of the economic and other good that is available in their villages. “They are

economically and socially and culturally deprived peoples, and to them, as to all deprived

peoples, certain forms of non-idyllic behavior have real survival value” (Foster, 1967b, p.

297).

Most students of peasant societies report that the people tend to be suspicious, distrustful,

and envious of others. They tend to view the universe as essentially hostile, and there are

a variety of behaviors that serve as defense mechanisms against this perception that ‘the

world is out to get them.’ They include criticizing and gossiping about others in the hope

that their neighbors will be discouraged from taking undue advantage of them.

Cooperative behavior is highly structured rather than ‘from the goodness of one’s heart.’

Village welfare is rarely considered outside of one’s obligations as part of formally

defined work-exchange institutions, godparent ties, or other ceremonial activities (Foster,

1967; Wolf, 1966).

It has been reported that when good things were perceived to have happened to a Greek

villager, other villagers expressed their envy in gossip, criticism, and misrepresentations

intended to destroy the ‘lucky’ person’s reputation.
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-31

The villagers described their life altogether as an uneasy one, with each family

feeling competitive and jealous toward any other that might achieve success or

happiness. The phrases they used over and over were ‘We eat each other,’ or

‘They eat the bride,’ ‘They eat the newborn infant.’ (Blum & Blum, 1965, p. 128).

It appears that most peasants are wary of establishing obligative, or even cooperative,

relationships, and the motives behind any favor that is done for a person are analyzed with

suspicion—“ . . . the idea of disinterested help or friendship being quite incomprehensible”

(Foster, 1967b, p. 298).

One mechanism that functions to help deal with the inevitable crises of life, such as

failure, sickness, or the death of one’s loved ones and to link individual experiences to

public concerns is that of the public ceremonies that arise from common beliefs and

symbolic understandings. These ceremonies are underpinned by

. . . an ideology, which concerns the nature of the human experience . . . [that]

consists of acts and ideas, of ceremonial and beliefs . . . . Some of these are

expressive, as when men parade symbolic objects for all to see on the occasion

of a marriage, a funeral, a religious celebration, or a harvest feast . . . . they link

individual experience to public concern. Through them, the selective pressures

which impinge on a particular household acquire general significance. Individual

illness becomes an occasion for public curing; individual death the occasion of a

public funeral. (Wolf, 1966, p. 96)

An ideology, or belief system, provides coping functions as well as moral significance. It

upholds “right living,” underscoring the social ties that hold society together. It aids in the

management of tensions that arise in the course of transactions between men, and

reinforces the sentiments upon which social continuity depends. Ceremonial behaviors

often exist to support and unite people who might otherwise fall out with one another and

pursue separate and independent social identities (Wolf, 1966).

. . . in a peasant community men must often depend on each other if only for that

sense of continuity which renders life predictable, and hence meaningful. Thus,

we. . . find in peasant communities ceremonial which involves men as members of

a community, and which acts to uphold their common social order, to purge it of

disorder, to resolve its integrity. (Wolf, 1966, p. 98)

Peasant ceremonial is focused on action rather than on belief, emphasizing the regulative

value of a set of ‘do’s and don’t’s’ to produce predictable behaviors and to provide a

common, shared framework within which such behaviors are viewed. Social order, rather

than soul searching, is the objective. “Peasant religion is both utilitarian and moralistic, but

it is not ethical and questioning” (Wolf, 1966, p. 98).

Beliefs in the presence of supernatural controls over the moral relations of individuals are

common in societies where

there are unstable relationships between individuals or households, and

the number of persons or households having individualistic interests is great enough to

create many social relations in which people interact on an individualistic rather than group

basis.

Wolf (1966) observed that in peasant communities where there is a need for structural

tensions between domestic groups to be muted in the interest of forming coalitions or for

neighborly co-existence, a strong emphasis on supernatural sanctions for behavior is
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-32

common. Finally, in agrarian states, the religions reflect the wider social and economic

situations of the adherents.

The great universalistic religions—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and

Judaism—spread and became institutionalized within agrarian societies. Unlike

the religions of foragers and horticulturalists, these religions do not emphasize

local cults and local gods. Rather, the god or gods reign over all people

regardless of residence of group membership . . . . [mirroring] the empire-building

of these states and the rule of their monarchs . . . . religious institutions often

own large amounts of land, peasants, and slaves just as the governing classes

do. While reflecting and legitimating the stratification of agrarian states as a

whole, the religions also legitmate [sic] the sexual stratification system,

patriarchy, and male dominance. (O’Kelly, 1980, pp. 157-158)

Throughout the former Yugoslavia, the peasant social structures of the ‘plow

agriculturists’ have grown out of varying forms of male-centered social organization.

Traditionally in most regions, only males inherited the agricultural land. In public affairs,

men represented their households and were the chief authorities within the family. In both

public and private decision-making, males dominated. The situation for peasant women

differed considerably. It consisted of:

. . . dependence on male-controlled resources. Exclusion from inheritance meant

that each woman had to rely on a man for access to a means of subsistence. First

as a daughter, then as a wife, a woman was a necessary member of a household

labor force. In return, she was entitled to share in the produce of the land.

Marriages were arranged, and a young bride left her natal home for that of

her husband, where she was alone among his kinsmen and other in-married

wives. Through bearing the sons to carry on her husband’s family, she could

eventually gain influence in that household. Marriage was a binding commitment

for better or worse, and divorce was virtually impossible. An unsuccessful

marriage was unpleasant for both spouses, but far more tragic for the wife. While

the husband’s life still centered on his kinsmen within the same household, the

wife was alone among in-laws . . . . Once married, a woman was no longer

welcome to return to her natal household . . . . (Denich, 1977, p. 217)

Studies of agricultural communities in Bulgaria, Greece, and Yugoslavia describe social

structures that are characteristic of peasant patricentric groups. Although they often

consist of nuclear families that are centered around a husband and wife and their children

rather than the extended families previously discussed, there is clear emphasis on the male

line, including the formal authority of husbands over wives. Absent, however, are the

extreme forms of both actual and ritual prescriptions for behavior that occur among

pastoralists. In addition, although sexual restrictions over women are also important in the

agricultural communities, “. . . punishments are not draconian” (Denich, 1974, p. 257).

Toma”iÉ (1946, 1948), his predecessors, including CvijiÉ (1930), and, more recently,

Denich (1974), and Schneider (1971) have presented a rather caustic view of the Dinaric

herdsmen—described as living primarily in the mountainous regions of Montenegro,

Herzegovina, Albania, Greece, and to a lesser extent, Serbia and Macedonia. In contrast,

Toma”iÉ (1946, 1948) and others (Erlich, 1966; Halpern, 1963; Halpern & Halpern, 1972;

Denich, 1974) have offered a more benevolent portrait of the Zadruga plowmen who

were found among all Yugoslavian ethnicities including Albanians and Moslems but

excluding Slovenians. Whereas Toma”iÉ characterized the Dinaric herdsmen as ‘powerseekers,’ he described the Zadruga plowmen as ‘power indifferent.’ The herdsmen were
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-33

portrayed as unstable, violent, deceitful bandits and heroes. The plowmen, on the other

hand, were portrayed as self-sufficient, both economically and emotionally selfsustaining—features of their social organization that weakened only with the increasing

strength and importance of the urban strata in Balkan society.

Halpern and Halpern (1972) presented a classic account of life in a zadruga as it depicted

‘traditional’ Serbian society in the early 19th century:

The Serbs live mainly in zadrugas. In some houses there are four or five married

men, and one-family households are rare . . . Every household has a stare”ina

[headman] who governs and guides the household and all its property; he

directs the adults and young men as to where they will go and what they will do;

he deals with the Turks and attends village and district meetings and conducts

business; with the assent of the household he sells what is to be sold and buys

what is to bought; he keeps the money bag and worries about playing [sic] the

head-tax and other taxes and dues. When prayers are said, he starts and ends

them; when guests come to the house . . . he talks with them and takes meals with

them . . . . The stare”ina is not always the oldest male: When a father becomes

old, he turns over the headship to the most able son (or brother, or nephew),

even if he is the youngest. If it happens that a stare”ina does not guide the

household well, the household members choose another. In zadruga households

each woman spins, weaves, and prepares clothing for herself and her husband

and children; as for food preparation, each in turn does the job a week at a time . .

. . Usually the wife of the stare”ina is the woman who all summer supervises the

preparation of food for the winter (p. 16, citing V. DjuriÉ, Ed., 1967, Srpska

knijeÒevna zadruga, from Vokovi Zapisi [Vuk’s Notes], pp. 63-64).

Toma”iÉ (1948) described the Zadruga as both a social and economic unit with a core

formed around an extended kin group and organized mainly around fixed and inalienable

possessions such as farmlands. The Zadruga often included a number of adopted and

unrelated members and families. Unlike Dinaric society, in which marriage partners are

always found outside the kinship and residence group, members of the same Zadruga

often intermarry. Members of the Zadruga

. . . occupy a large common house (druÒinska hiÒa), a number of individual

dwellings (komoras), and other buildings placed close together, and cultivate in

common a number of arable fields, fruit orchards, vegetable gardens, vineyards

and patches of industrial plants. They possess forests, streams and meadows,

herds of cattle, hogs, goats, sheep, horses and flocks of poultry. As a common

household is also maintained, meals are served in the hiÒa to all Zadruga

members at the same time . . . . It depended upon trade for only a very limited

number of commodities, such as salt and the iron for tools and implements.

Food, medicaments, shelter and clothes were consumed and produced within the

Zadruga; the same was true of utensils and furniture (Toma”iÉ, 1948, pp. 149-

150)

Collective property in the Zadruga consisted of land, livestock, farm equipment, and

buildings, encompassing all that was needed for members to secure a living. The property

belonged to the community as a whole, with individual members having the rights only to

share in the produce rather than to claim any specific part of the collective possessions.

In the past, trade was not important. If goods were needed that could not be

manufactured within the Zadruga, cattle or hogs would be traded to obtain them. Food

surpluses were divided among the members. Each Zadruga member would receive an

equal portion (Toma”iÉ, 1948).
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-34

The self-sustaining economy of the peasant Zadruga was predicated on possession of

enough land on which to raise cattle and to cultivate food and industrial plants to fulfill the

needs of the extended family. The indispensability of large tracts of arable land, forests,

and pasture grounds for maintaining self-sufficiency led the Zadruga peasants to value

land very highly. They relentlessly fought subjugation, rose up against landlords, burned

estates, and killed bishops. Self-sufficiency was achieved through manpower by uniting of

families on a common piece of property, as well as by early marriage and a subsequent

high birth rate. If necessary, bridegrooms, bachelors, or even small Zadrugas were

adopted into a larger one (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

Personal property possessed by Zadruga members, the osebunjak, consisted originally of

vineyards, and later included a wheat field, hayfield, or other land, that was bought,

inherited, or brought as a dowry. An osebunjak that consisted of a vineyard also had a

cabin with a table, some chairs, wine and brandy, and necessary utensils, dishes, and

glasses. On holidays and Sundays, most of the older men would spend the afternoon and

evening resting or entertaining some kum—friends or neighbors—at their osebunjak

(Toma”iÉ, 1948).

. . . the whole system of property relations in the Zadruga community, unlike that

in the Dinaric society, aims at an equal sharing of income, safety and privacy.

Equality in such relations is the basis upon which security in the Zadruga is

maintained. This principle is of fundamental importance for the development of

self-respect and mutual respect among all members. (Toma”iÉ, 1948, p. 156)

Zadruga members were able to leave the zadruga and return later, at will. Upon return to

the Zadruga, they would enjoy the same privileges as the other members, despite

absences that may have extended into years. According to Toma”iÉ (1948), the system

eliminated economic and emotional frustration. The institution of the osebunjak

introduced only slight differentiation in the distribution of income among Zadruga

members, but without noticeable effect until after the reorganization of the Zadruga

economy to meet the needs of a competitive market.

Social control of Zadruga affairs and relations was vested in the hands of the druÒina—

the Zadruga ‘rank and file’—all members, male and female, who were fully able to work.

Although the running of Zadruga affairs was entrusted to two elected managers, a man

and a woman, known as the gospodar and gospodinja, they did not have the power that

was concentrated in the starje”ina, or father, in the Dinaric kuÉa. Although the offices

of gospodar and gospodinja carried prestige and authority, there was a nearly complete

lack of competition for the positions in contrast to Dinaric society where there was a

marked struggle for power and a tendency to hold it. Within a successful Zadruga, the

prestige was shared by every Zadruga member, and the authority of the gospodar and

gospodinja was limited and without economic gain. The gospodar and gospodinja

simply did more work and had more responsibilities than the other druÒina (Toma”iÉ,

1948).

The principles on which social control were based in Zadruga society were expressed in a

tendency to achieve stability and efficiency in the community and to prevent the

concentration of power and influence in the hands of one or of a few.

Unlike Dinaric society, the Zadruga system of social organization discourages

the accumulation of family property; also family control and political power are

very limited . . . . Zadrugas accentuate the common goal, name, the well-being of
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-35

all, and frown upon those who show any inclination to improve their personal

affairs at the expense of the common interest. Indeed, the Zadruga folk consider

that these are the ways by which the rank and file may retain the control of

community affairs, and by which the highest possible degree of safety and of

personal satisfaction can be guaranteed to each member. Toward this end,

internal relations of the Zadruga are organized; toward this goal, also, the

training of children and the development of their personalities are directed.

(Toma”iÉ, 1948, pp. 160-162

Division of Labor and Treatment and Training of Children

among Agriculturalists

Among Dinaric herdsmen and warriors, work was unequally divided at the expense of the

women. Among Zadruga cultivators, work was distributed more fairly according to sex,

age, and ability. The Zadruga people rely on their labor to produce and provide for most

of their needs, in contrast to the Dinaric herdsmen where part of the income of the kuÉa

is derived from trade or plunder. For Zadruga members to produce all or most of the

necessities of life, a well organized, cooperative system of labor was essential. An

emphasis was placed on a division of labor according to age, sex, and ability. In addition,

there was a tendency to avoid overspecialization. Certain tasks were performed

exclusively by women, and others only by men; but most of the work was done jointly by

both sexes (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

Men were responsible for plowing, mowing, woodcutting, carpentry, and special work in

the vineyards and orchards. Women were responsible for cultivating vegetables, cooking,

cleaning, embroidery and lace work, spinning, weaving, and hoeing and reaping. They

helped the men in the wheat and hay fields, vineyards, and orchards; while the men helped

the women in the preparation of plants for industrial uses as well as in hoeing, reaping, and

occasionally in weaving. The children and the unmarried girls usually were engaged in

herding, and the elderly performed minor tasks around the house or in the fields. It was

never mandatory that children and the elderly work in the Zadruga (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

A further refinement of the division of labor in the Zadruga involved those tasks needing

special attention and coordination. Work in the fields, in the woods, in the stables, and in

the house was vested in one or more men and women who were specifically in charge of

oxen, horses, weaving, and herding. The trend, however, was toward versatility. The

specific group of activities which a Zadruga member would direct, and the duration of the

particular task, would depend primarily upon one’s experience, personal inclination,

availability, expediency and other circumstances (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

Although Zadruga people have to be acquainted with many skills, there are as a

rule no people who practice a particular craft exclusively. There are always some

Zadruga members who are thoroughly trained in some special trade, but that is

not their only occupation. Each adult man and woman, according to abilities and

talent, has knowledge of all the arts, such as medicine, midwifery, music,

carpentry, weaving and embroidery. If some people excel in these techniques,

their services are at the disposal of the Zadruga when necessary. Otherwise they

work at the common tasks along with everybody else. (Toma”iÉ, 1948, p. 163)

The organization of labor in the Zadruga followed a tendency to distribute social values in

a manner than everyone would share equally in the benefits of Zadruga life. If one
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-36

possessed any unusual skill, it would be thought highly of and carry with it a certain

amount of prestige, but it would not bring in any special income. Any special talent is

considered to be at the disposal of the entire community; and the possession of skill in a

certain craft extends prestige to a degree to everyone who is a member of a Zadruga

containing one who is a renowned artist (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

Unlike the situation in Dinaric society, with its definite stratification of labor, in

Zadruga society there is a marked tendency not to put differential value on any

kind of work. All labor is equally necessary for the final Zadruga output and for

its sustenance. Therefore, there is no competition for a particular type of work,

nor is there any reluctance on the part of any Zadruga member to accept the work

at hand. No kind of toil is considered inferior to another. As a child grows up,

he is initiated by the adults into all the tasks which must be done. If he shows

some special ability, he may occasionally be mildly praised and encouraged to

develop it. But even if he does not show any particular inclination, he is

considered just as good as anybody else . . . . . In Zadruga society there is a

tendency to value labor very highly, and to value all the people equally because

they contribute equally to the sustenance of the community. People who live

without laboring are looked down upon . . . . in contrast with conditions in

Dinaric society, where the tendency is to place a low value on ordinary labor, and

to think highly of people who can afford to live by the labor of others, either by

commanding their services or by forcefully appropriating other people’s

property. (Toma”iÉ, 1948, pp. 164-165)

In Dinaric regions, some starje”inas of well-to-do kuÉas do not work in the fields; instead

they spend most of their time at home, or in the village tavern or a nearby town—a

freedom that provides them with an opportunity to engage in political activities. Because

of the high prestige they enjoy within their communities, these starje”inas are often local

political leaders. Their appearance is of being strong, well-fed, and well-dressed—all of

which are important symbols of deference within Dinaric communities. In contrast, the

gospodar of a well-to-do Zadruga is expected to work alongside the others. There is little,

if any, time left for him to engage in outside political activities. Usually another Zadruga

member will be the one who engages in political activity. If and when a Zadruga would

disintegrate and individual economies formed, it was usually some middle-class peasants

who would turn to politics, the well-to-do gospodar having neither the time nor the

willingness to undertake the responsibility of political work. This difference in classes

from which political leaders were drawn had important political and social repercussions in

the two societies (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

In Zadruga society, children were not considered a burden. They were seen as an asset,

filling the need for manpower. Everyone showed them affection, and each married

couple hoped to have several children. Traditionally, birth control was not practiced. No

matter how many children were born they were received with equal pleasure and

tenderness. It was considered that there was enough food and room for everyone, no

matter how many children were born. Children were expected to be a help and comfort

to their parents in their old age (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

Unlike the Dinaric kuÉa, where the birth of a girl is looked upon as a misfortune,

the Zadruga wants both boys and girls in the family. Either sex is equally

welcome . . . . Children are dealt with gently when they are taught how to sit, how

to walk, how to eat, and so on. They are induced to do all this by the adults’

singing, smiling, and making a general display of approval . . . . Seldom does
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-37

anyone dare to whip or inflict punishment on a child other than his own.

(Toma”iÉ, 1948, pp. 167-170)

Although a Dinaric child was faced with distinctions in rank early in life, the Zadruga

child, on the other hand, was conditioned at an early age to his or her equality with other

Zadruga members. Toma”iÉ (1948) asserted that this difference contributed to

thoughtfulness among Zadruga children, underscoring that each child must treat everyone

with consideration and equal respect, regardless of sex. In Dinaric society, considerable

emphasis was placed on individual performance and rivalry. Competition in the Zadruga

was neither encouraged nor was any commendation bestowed upon personal

achievements. A common saying was, ‘Much praise brings quick corruption.’

Accomplishments were appreciated, not eulogized. Aggressiveness was also not

encouraged, and fighting was not tolerated because it was felt that it might disturb the

relations of the Zadruga members.

Because the children are trained gently and considerately, they are free from

many frustrations and resentments and comply easily with group rules. It is not

necessary to employ force or to invoke supernatural powers to discipline them.

Fear and force do not play the important part in training Zadruga children that

they play in the Dinaric child training. The gradual and painless methods of

training, the absence of domineering parents and of domineering types among

the children themselves, the benevolent attitude of adults, and the general

atmosphere of warmth and friendliness, all serve to protect the child from

exposure to traumatic experiences . . . . the loss of carefree childhood is replaced

by increased self-respect and the gratifying experience of full social participation

in adult Zadruga life. In these circumstances, the child has an opportunity to

express himself and to develop his personality without being thwarted by the

social environment. With little compulsion, the child absorbs the knowledge,

attitudes and behavior or Zadruga society. Members. (Toma”iÉ, 1948, pp. 172-

173)

Interpersonal Relations among Zadruga Members in Balkan

Agricultural Society

De ne druÒina besna, ne ni hiÒa tesna

[Where the druÒina is not impetuous, the hiÒa is never overcrowded]

In contrast to the structure of Dinaric society with its emphasis on conflict, the Zadruga

society stressed the necessity of avoiding conflict in all interpersonal relations. Members

were aware of the fact that a successful life was dependent upon the avoidance of

conflict among the druÒina. As a result, people were ready to sacrifice for the sake of

peaceful relations. Almost anything would be justified for the sake of peace, including

being forced to act against one’s principles. “Sometimes one must light candles to the

devil also” (Toma”iÉ, 1948, p. 173). When a quarrel did start, it would be ended and

forgotten by the participants who would say to each other: ReÉ je veter (Words are like

wind).

Quite opposite to Dinaric worship of physical force is the dislike of violence

among Zadruga people: “Come closer to where people are drinking; get away

from where people are fighting,” the Zadruga folk say, and they consider a verbal

offense much less of an evil than physical force: “Let him call me a black pot as
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-38

long as he does not throw it at my head,” they say. According to their

philosophy of life, physical violence has no lasting effects, because “If good

words do not improve a person, clubbing will not help either” . . . . (Toma”iÉ,

1948, pp. 174-175)

In the culture of the Zadruga folk, the belief was that violence and all kinds of conflict

could be avoided if one maintained a sense of proportion in personal relationships. They

frowned on aggressive, over-talkative, and boastful people whom they would criticize with

the saying that, “If you stop up his mouth, his behind will speak” (Toma”iÉ, 1948, p. 175).

They believed that if the Zadruga members followed the rules of polite behavior, peace

and harmony would prevail:

“As all do, so shall I.” Unanimity in Zadruga society is achieved by means of

persuasion and compromise. Among the Dinarics, the same result is sought

through threat and violence. Everybody in the Zadruga is conscious of the fact

that his very existence depends upon cooperation and collaboration: “Wood

leans upon wood, and man against man.” Members feel much stronger when

united: “The village is stronger than the wolf” Thus the ideal man in their

society is one who does not deviate from the community pattern, who is modest

and satisfied with little, who “stretches himself only as far as the length of the

blanket will allow,” who is unprovocative and flexible, who is such that “you

could twine him around your finger,” and who would “give you his very soul.”

(Toma”iÉ, 1948, p. 175)

Within the Zadruga, young people respectfully addressed all those who were five or more

years older—including their parents. Younger brothers and sisters also spoke respectfully

to their married brothers and sisters, as did a wife to her husband. The rules of conduct

were applied within the Zadruga itself and also in relations of the Zadruga members with

members of other Zadrugas and with other people in the region. They desired harmonious

and affectionate relations with neighbors, with kum and kuma (godfather and godmother),

and with other friends. The elders were highly respected. Zadruga members seemed

always to bear in mind that the time might come when help will be needed from another

person. As a result, their sense of mutual dependence was highly developed (Toma”iÉ,

1948).

Toma”iÉ (1948) attributed a relative infrequency of interpersonal conflicts among

Zadruga peasants—in contrast to much greater frequency of conflict among Dinaric

sheepherders—to the contrasting social and psychological structures of each society. In

Zadruga society, emotional, economic, and political security prevailed in contrast to the

unbalanced and insecure relationships characteristic of Dinaric society.

The worst crimes know to Zadruga society are . . . starting a fire on peasants’

property, homicide, a physical attack upon one’s parents, burglary, theft, and

changing the borders of peasants’ lands . . . . Unlike the Dinaric system of blood

feud, the Zadruga society judges an offense on the grounds of its motivation

and of the status of the person against whom it was committed. Unintentional

injury is not punished. Intentional injury or even murder is condoned against

one whose activities or behavior may be considered dangerous to the

community. (Toma”iÉ, 1948, pp. 185, 186)

Given Toma”iÉ’s (1946, 1948) ‘rose-colored-glasses’ treatment, as it were, toward the

‘Zadruga plowmen,’ of Croatia, and his critical treatment of the Dinaric herders, it is of

little wonder that Tito banned his writings as potentially divisive if made available to the
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-39

diverse peoples of Yugoslavia. In contrast to Toma”iÉ, Balikci (1965) and Halpern and

Halpern (1972) have discussed friction and hostile relationships within zadrugas in

southern Macedonia and in central Serbia (immediately south of Belgrade), respectively.

Halpern and Halpern discussed a variety of strains that led to conflict, including members

with special craft skills being forced to remit individual earnings to the head of the

household. In addition, if a person left the village for an education, the ideal of all sharing

equally broke down; the person who had gained an education was expected to give up his

hereditary rights. Balikci found a number of cases of intra-family strife and increased

conflict, as well as differences in the patterns and frequency of strife among the peasants

in southern Macedonia in comparison to ‘ideal’ zadruga societies. He attributed these

contrasts to the presence of “. . . large scale transhumant sheepbreeding in Macedonia,

together with plough agriculture. . . .” (p. 1469).

As has been discussed, members of societies share some common ways of perceiving

their universe. This cognitive orientation is often an unspoken, implicit expression of their

understanding of the ‘rules of the game’ for being a member of their social, natural, and

supernatural universes. This orientation provides them with basic premises and

assumptions that structure and guide their behavior that they neither recognize nor

question. Foster (1967c) described a model of cognitive orientation that he suggested

could account for peasant behavior. He characterized this model as the ‘image of limited

good,’ suggesting that

. . . broad areas of peasant behavior are patterned in such fashion as to suggest

that peasants view their social, economic, and natural universes—their total

environment—as one in which all of the desired things in life such as land,

wealth, health, friendship and love, manliness and honor, respect and status,

power and influence, security and safety, exist in finite quantity and are always

in short supply, as far as the peasant is concerned. Not only do these and all

other “good things” exist in finite and limited quantities, but in addition there is

no way directly within peasant power to increase the available quantities. It is

as if the obvious fact of land shortage in a densely populated area applied to all

other desired things: not enough to go around. “Good,” like land, is seen as

inherent in nature, there to be divided and redivided, if necessary, but not to be

augmented . . . . a peasant sees his existence as determined and limited by the

natural and social resources of his village and his immediate area . . . . if “Good”

exists in limited amounts which cannot be expanded . . . it follows that an

individual or a family can improve a position only at the expense of others.

Hence an apparent relative improvement in someone’s position with respect to

any “Good” is viewed as a threat to the entire community. Someone is being

despoiled, whether he sees it or not. And since there is often uncertainty as to

who is losing . . . any significant improvement is perceived, not as a threat to an

individual or a family alone, but as a threat to all individuals and families. (pp.

304-305, emphasis in original)

Foster’s (1967c) analysis of peasant economies and description of the peasant view of his

economic world as one in which Limited Good prevails, and in which he can progress only

at the expense of another, is usually very near the truth. The economies in peasant

societies are usually not very productive. There often is only a finite amount of wealth

produced in the average village, and no amount of extra hard work will significantly

change that figure. In most of the peasant world, the land has been limited for a long, long

time. There are only a few places where young farmers in a growing community have

been able to hive off from the parent village to start on a level of equality with their
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-40

parents and grandparents. For the average peasant, there seems to be little or no

relationship between work and production techniques on the one hand, and the acquisition

of wealth on the other. Instead, the villagers view wealth in the same light as land:

Defined, with absolute limits, and no relationship to work. “One works to eat, but not to

create wealth. Wealth, like land, is something that is inherent in nature. It can be divided

up and passed around in various ways, but, within the framework of the villagers’

traditional world, it does not grow” (p. 307). In addition, in agricultural or peasant

societies, the overall status of women is one of institutionalized dependency, subordination,

and political immaturity (Martin & Voorhies, 1975).

. . . economic activities in peasant societies require only limited cooperation.

Peasant families typically can, as family units, produce most of their food, farm

without extra help, build their houses, weave cloth for their clothes, carry their

own produce to market and sell it—in short, take care of themselves with a

degree of independence impossible in an industrial society, and difficult in

hunting-fishing-gathering societies . . . . peasants are individualistic, and it

logically follows from the Image of Limited Good that each minimal social unit

(often the nuclear family and, in many situation, a single individual) sees itself in

perpetual, unrelenting struggle with its fellows for possession of or control over

what it considered to be its share of scarce values. This is a position that calls

for extreme caution and reserve, a reluctance to reveal true strength or position.

It encourages suspicion and mutual distrust, since things will not necessarily be

what they seem to be, and it also encourages a male self image as a valiant

person, one who commands respect, since he will be less attractive as a target

than a weakling . . . . the “mentality of mutual distrust” . . . is widespread in

peasant societies. (Foster, 1967c, p. 311)

Individuals or family units who make significant economic progress are believed to have

done so at the expense of others and are viewed as a threat to the stability of the

community. Mechanisms within peasant society that maintain stability include socially

acceptable, mutually agreed upon norms of behavior and sanctions (“clubs”) and rewards

(“carrots”) to assure that real behaviors approximate the norms. The preservation of the

status quo is preferred. Deviation in either direction can lead to instability: Inordinate

progress or significant loss upsets the status quo. Progress is thought to lead others to be

jealous, envious, or angry. Significant loss is also thought to lead to envy, jealousy, and

anger—by those who have experienced the loss. Either way, instability is the result. In

order to guard the community balance, self-correcting mechanisms operate on three

levels: 1) individual and family behavior; 2) informal and usually unorganized group

behavior (“clubs”); and 3) institutionalized behavior (“carrots”) (Foster 1967).

At the individual-family level, the implicit rules are that:

One should not reveal evidence of material or other improvement in relative position, or if

one does display improvement, steps should be taken to neutralize the consequences; and

One should not allow oneself to fall behind a rightful place in society.

The way that families deal with the problem of either real or suspected improvement in

their relative position with respect to others is to conceal evidence that would lead to a

conclusion that such improvement has occurred and to deny the truth of any such

suggestions. Alternatively, they might face the charge with an admission of improvement

of relative position but disavow any intention of benefiting at the detriment of the village.
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-41

In this instance, the threat is often neutralized through some ritual ‘expenditure’ to restore

the status quo (Foster, 1967).

Friendship, Manliness, and Honor among Peasant

Agriculturalists

Consistent with the worldview discussed above, in peasant society, friendship, love, and

affection are also seen as strictly limited in peasant society. True friendship is a scarce

commodity. Jealousy and feelings of deprivation experienced by one partner when the

other leaves or threatens to leave sometimes lead to violence (Foster, 1967).

. . . peasant sensitiveness to real or imagined insults to personal honor, and

violent reactions to challenges which cast doubt on a man’s masculinity, appear

to be a function of the belief that honor and manliness exist in limited quantities,

and that consequently not everyone can enjoy a full measure . . . . Masculinity

and domestic control appear to be viewed much like other desirable things: there

is only so much, and the person who has it deprives another. (Foster, 1967c, p.

309)

In other peasant societies, similar views have been described. Some Mexican men find it

difficult to believe that a husband and wife can share domestic responsibilities and

decision making, without the husband being deprived of his machismo. A widespread

belief is that a wife, however good, must be beaten from time to time, simply so she will

not lose sight of a God-given family hierarchy. The essence of machismo is valor, and a

macho man, is one who is strong and tough, one who is generally fair and not a bully, but

who never dodges a fight and always wins. Above all, a macho inspires respeto–

“respect.” In essence, one achieves machismo by depriving others of it. In Greece, the

term philotimo, a “love of honor,” equates closely with Mexican machismo. A Greek

man who is physically sound, lithe, strong, and agile has philotimo. If he can converse

well, show wit, and act in other ways that facilitate sociability and establish ascendency,

he enhances his philotimo. The way in which one male attacks another male is through

his philotimo, by shaming or ridiculing him, by showing how he lacks the necessary

attributes for a man. Consequently, avoiding ridicule becomes a major concern, a primary

defense mechanism among rural males (Blum & Blum, 1962; Foster, 1967).

Schneider (1971) suggested that a cultural unity is present in Mediterranean societies—a

unity derived from a particular set of ecological forces that have interacted to produce the

codes of honor and shame as complementary institutional arrangements for the distribution

of power and the creation of order in society. She described the region as one that was

characterized by a highly competitive relationship between agricultural and pastoral

economies, as well as one that was under pressure from urban centers but in the absence

of effective state institutions. She saw the region as “ . . . . something of a paradox: a

friendly sea surrounded by a hostile landscape” (p. 3). In early periods much of the

Mediterranean region became the locus of a pastoral or partially pastoral specialization,

due either to extreme aridity (e.g., as in the Arabian or Saharan deserts) or due to

moderate aridity combined with mountainous terrain. Unlike in Central Asia where

pastoralism has persisted, in the Mediterranean, the pastoral way of life had been

challenged for centuries preceding the Industrial Revolution by the continuous expansion

of agriculture.
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-42

Since cultivated land committed to surplus production expanded so early in the

history of the Mediterranean, agricultural communities were not supported by

the means of integration which have more recently become available to the

modern state . . . . much of the Mediterranean was hostile to administrative

control. Mountains were nearly insurmountable barriers, and the cities which

claimed the surplus food turned seaward, away from the land . . . . In much of the

Mediterranean, pastoralism and agriculture coexisted, competing for the same

resources in a way which fragmented the social organization of each type of

community and blurred the boundary between them. In the absence of the state,

pastoral communities, and agricultural communities in their midst, developed

their own means of social control—the codes of honor and shame—which were

adapted to the intense conflict that external pressures had created within them,

and between them. (Schneider, 1971, p. 3)

Peasant Behavior as a Function of the ‘Image of Limited Good’

. . . in traditional villages, people do not compete for prestige with material

symbols such as dress, housing, or food, nor do they compete for authority by

seeking leadership roles. In peasant villages one notes a strong desire to look

and act like everyone else, to be inconspicuous in position and behavior.

(Foster, 1967c, p. 312)

The peasant world view of the universe as one in which good things are limited and in

which personal gain must, of necessity, be at the expense of others suggests that social

institutions, personal behavior, values, and personality will be present that functionally

support their cognitive orientation. Behaviors that are preferred are those that are seen

by the peasant as maximizing one’s security and preserving one’s relative position in the

traditional order of things.

People who see themselves in “threatened” circumstances, which the Image of

Limited Good implies, react normally in one of two ways: maximum cooperation

and sometimes communism, burying individual differences and placing sanctions

against individualism; or extreme individualism. Peasant societies seem always

to choose the second alternative. The reasons are not clear, but two factors may

bear on the problem. Cooperation requires leadership. This may be delegated

democratically by the members of a group itself; it may be assumed by a strong

man from within the group; or it may be imposed by forces lying outside the

group. Peasant societies . . . are unable by their very nature to delegate

authority, and assumption of authority by a strong man is, at best, temporary,

and not a structural solution to a problem. The truncated political nature of

peasant societies, with real power lying outside the community, seems effectively

to discourage local assumption and exercise of power, except as an agent of

these outside forces. By the very nature of peasant society, seen as a structural

part of a larger society, local development of leadership which might make

possible cooperation is effectively prevented by the rules of the political unit of

which a particular peasant community is an element, who see such action as a

potential threat to themselves. (Foster, 1967c, pp. 310-311)

The reluctance of peasants to accept leadership roles apparently is derived from the belief

that any apparent desire to be a leader will be suspect and subject to criticism from

neighbors. It is thought that seeking, or even passively accepting, an authority position

transforms the ‘ideal man’ into something less than ideal. Therefore, the belief is that in
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-43

order to protect his reputation, a ‘good’ man will shun community responsibilities other

than those of a ritual nature.

The mechanism invoked to minimize the danger of loss of relative position

appears to center in the machismo-philotimo complex. A tough, strong man

whose fearlessness in the face of danger and whose skill in protecting himself

and his family are recognized does not invite exploitation. A “valiant” individual

can command the “respect” so much sought after in many peasant societies, and

he can strive toward security with the goal in mind (however illusory) of being

able to live . . . “without obligations” to, or dependency on, others . . . . A picture

of the ideal peasant begins to emerge: a man who works to feed and clothe his

family, who fulfills his community and ceremonial obligations, who minds his

own business, who does not seek to be outstanding, but who knows how to

protect his rights. Since a macho, a strong man, discourages exploitation, it is

clear that this personality characteristic has a basic function in peasant society.

(Foster, 1967c, p. 313)

THE RELATIONSHIP OF URBAN SOCIETY TO THE COUNTRYSIDE

Thus far, both the agricultural and the pastoral economies and their resultant

‘personalities’ have been discussed. In the Balkans in the latter part of the 19th century,

a third element—city-dwellers—had come into existence due to the technological

revolution that was occurring worldwide. Feudal society in the Balkans had previously

consisted of the seigniors (nobility), the Zadruga peasants (serfs), and the mobile, seminomadic Dinaric herdsmen. The seignior was a man of rank or authority, typically, the

feudal lord of a manor. The peasants, by definition, were engaged in sedentary farming

as a way of life and lived in small communities where relationships were primarily based

on kinship and close patterns of association and interaction (Halpern, 1963; Toma”iÉ,

1948).

The breakdown of the feudal system by the second half of the 19th Century was

accompanied by the formation of an urban class, lifting power from the nobility. The

urban ruling strata consisted of the remnants of the former nobility, together with priests,

bureaucrats, lawyers and other intelligentsia who were interested in developing

commerce, industry, communications, and schools, according to the patterns of the

Western world. The primary focus of activity, both occupational and social, for the

urbanites was in the towns. They usually had a greater degree of formal education, their

kin ties were less well developed, and their interests were more secular (Halpern, 1963;

Toma”iÉ, 1948).

As the urban influence increased and a money economy was introduced, the degree of

self-sufficiency of the peasant society decreased. With the rise of the state and a money

economy, the peasants had to specialize in goods with high market value and give up on

raising products for their own subsistence, instead buying them on the market. To get

cash for taxes, and under threat of foreclosure, the Zadrugas had to reorganize their

economy according to market needs. These factors led to the introduction of a money

economy and resulted in less security in the peasant households. As a result of the longstanding division of feudal properties among former seigniors and their serfs, many

Zadrugas were short of land. In addition, any land that was not in cultivation stayed in the

hands of the nobles and was not available to peasants for wood or pasture. The relative
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-44

lack of land and the shift from production for consumption to production organized for the

market led to conflict and the disintegration of the extended family Zadrugas among the

farmers. With the disintegration of the larger Zadrugas, the smaller families lost accesss

to the tools needed for production—tools that were once commonly held by the Zadrugas.

As a result, the small families were no longer able to retain self-sufficiency. They

couldn’t produce enough for the market and for taxes, in addition to their subsistence

needs. The standard of living among the peasantry fell ((Halpern, 1963; Toma”iÉ, 1948).

Following the gradual loss of self-sufficiency, some peasants began to specialize within

their local villages as artisans and craftsmen, including such trades as carpenters, bootmakers, blacksmiths, butchers, potters, weavers, flaskmakers, and shovel makers.

Previously almost every Zadruga member had known something about all of these crafts.

The rising importance of a money economy led some peasants to sell crafts to others in

return for money or other products. These peasant-artisans remained peasants in dress,

and worked in the fields, as well as on their trade. In Zadruga regions, tavern-keepers,

who had previously sold salt, petroleum, iron, and a few other products, became

merchants, selling many other products. Their presence was of increasing importance

because the peasants needed to purchase products that they had previously produced

internally. Unlike the farmers, the merchants gave up peasant dress, didn’t work in fields,

and tried to imitate the townspeople in manners, ideas, and dress (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

Disintegration of the Zadruga system also brought economic and social differentiation.

Not all Zadrugas broke down immediately. Change was a gradual process, lasting about

100 years. People who stayed in Zadrugas were more prosperous and had higher social

status. They maintained the old customs, traditions, beliefs, and morals. They enjoyed

greater deference. Those from impoverished families who split from their Zadrugas were

usually the ones who showed signs of deviating from the old traditions (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

In a technologically backward system of production, and with heavy taxes and fees

imposed by the state upon the Zadruga peasants, freedom from feudalism meant only

increased worries and disrupted homes. Rather than being controlled and exploited by the

nobility, they had become the prey of tax collectors, priests, and lawyers. While the feudal

masters had lived in close contact with the peasants, the new rulers came to the villages

only to collect fees and taxes or to mortgage and sell peasant property. They differed in

dress, manners, income, and general living conditions; and they looked down on the

peasants whom they considered to be stupid and dirty. Peasants saw city people as

‘rotten gentry’ (pokvarena gospoda) (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

After the state ascended and centralized authority increased, many Dinaric sheepraisers

tended to engage in trade in order to achieve wealth directly, and authority and power

indirectly. They became eager to avail themselves of formal education due to the

possibility of rising to positions in civil service. They sought office to acquire not only

power but also wealth. There were marked differences between high and low classes.

Youth who were members of the privileged class dressed better; as allowed, they had

more distinguished weapons and were expected to be arrogant. Many were boastful

about property and engaged in ‘outlawry’ and mischief. They exhibited a fearless

demeanor. Because imprisonment brought prestige, many were willing to be imprisoned

for any harm they did (Toma”iÉ, 1948).
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-45

The ascending groups in urban centers endeavored to spread not only their ideology and

culture, but also their political control to the surrounding country—to the farmers in the

valleys and the herders in the prairies and mountains. As previously mentioned, the role

of kinship among peoples living in pre-state societies is to identify those to whom one can

turn for assistance, to cement ties between people, and to reinforce social organization.

Urbanization and the rise of state-level societies weakened the role of kinship as the state

began to set parameters on social organization in a fashion that had previously been the

role of the extended family (Halpern, 1963; Toma”iÉ 1948).

When feudal society broke down, the line of demarcation that developed was one of city

people vs. village people and others of the countryside. There was no way for seigniors

to become serfs. If they became impoverished, they went to the towns and engaged in

professions. Likewise, there was no way for the peasant serfs to cross the barrier and

become seigniors, even when free, except for certain priests who became superiorranking bishops and abbots. When the herdsmen/warriors left their homes due to family

clashes, blood feuds, or hunger, they often moved into agricultural areas and became

farmers, settled in crossroad market places as traders, or immigrated to cities as

professional soldiers, businessmen, or industrial workers. By the middle of the 20th

Century, sharp occupational ‘caste’ distinctions had developed between the townspeople

and the peasants and herders (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

The Dinaric herdsmen showed a strong tendency to seek political power and to climb the

social ladder. Their sons received a higher education and became members of the

learned professions, the bureaucracy, and the intelligentsia. They showed tendencies

similar to their father’s and grandfathers,’ with many becoming outstanding army leaders

and statesmen, transferring traits of the herdsmen and warriors to both medieval and

modern states throughout Eastern Europe. Among the Dinarics, non-warriors were

considered inferior. The military, and especially the officers and gendarmes, were

regarded as the highest class by the common people (Toma”iÉ, 1948).

The state level organization in the former Yugoslavia was compatible with a number of

the basic traits of the Dinaric sheepraising tribal system, including “. . . the concentration

of power, personal rule, reliance on violence and deceit, factionalism and instability”

(Toma”iÉ, 1948, p. 104). Since medieval times, the warriors’ lack of integration with

nation, their cultural conflicts, clashing loyalties, and “. . . ungovernable tempers . . . “ (p.

104) manifested in a seemingly-unending round of intense political strife, factionalism, and

warfare that perpetually undermined stability of Eastern Europe.

Ramet (1996b) explored the relationship between the urban-rural dichotomy in relation to

Serbian nationalism in the 20th Century, focusing on the relationship between traditional

rural values and nationalist values. According to Ramet, Karl Marx characterized the

countryside as a hearth of ‘hopelessly traditional, even reactionary’ values. He

considered all progressive values to be associated with the urban proletariat and with the

urban radical intelligentsia. In his scheme, historical progress meant the displacement of

rural values and ways of life by those of the city. Ramet argued that in this sense the

mobilization of the countryside has had direct consequences for political discourse about

national values; and that in times of social crisis the ‘conservatism’ of the countryside has

the potential to assume an aggressive, offensive posture.
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-46

It has been noted in this paper that, in an evolutionary sense, peasant societies have

traditionally, by definition, been part of a larger state society with which they have been

intertwined through trade and reliance on the products of specialists residing in the cities.

There has been an inherent contradiction, however, in the ultimate dependence of the

rural culture and the way of life of the countryside on the “. . . very city it abhors”

(Ramet, 1996b, p. 71). Peasant communities have often relied on ‘local traditional

intellectuals’ to mediate between the urban centers and villages. The countryside has

tended to be selectively receptive to outside influences and to assimilate only those

elements that are congruous with their pre-existing cultural framework. In spite of the

cultural dependence of the country on the city (and only very rarely the reverse), the

nature of communal solidarity has differed. The countryside has remained far removed

from the center of power and from identification with the state, which was viewed as

external and superordinate. In addition, the countryside has been the domain of small

communities that were sensitive to ‘incursions’ from the outside. These incursions were

often seen as foreign; and the degree of perceived ‘foreignness’ varied, depending on

whether the outsider was from next village or from a different nationality and region

(Ramet, 1996b).

There has been another sense in which the country and the city have been contrasted:

The contrast between the private domain of the country—in which villagers tend to be

inward-looking, concerned with harvests, neighborhoods, local matters, and the stability of

social values—and the political or communal aspects of the city. According to Ramet

(1996b), there is a danger that “ when the countryside is mobilized . . . its leaders . . . see

the nation as the village-writ-large, and adopt the social values of the village as their model

for the nation” (p. 71). In countries with significant peasant populations, such as Serbia,

the countryside—comprised of the peasantry—has defined itself in opposition to the city

as evidenced by rural claims to be more pure than the city, with primary concern for

preserving old values that have been ‘sullied’ by the city.

Ramet (1996b) argued that the lower levels of heterogeneity in the countryside disposed

local populations to social ignorance and unconscious intolerance.

In communist Yugoslavia, the Titoist programme was archetypally of the city.

The emphasis on self-management (a model of decision-making drawn from a

specifically industrial context), like the accompanying efforts to promote

secularism, gender equality, and ethnic coexistence all undercut the ethos of the

village. They were, in fact, quite consciously viewed as directed towards the

destruction of the traditional culture of the countryside. The result of this

difference is that the countryside is the true hearth of nationalism . . . . (Ramet,

1996b, pp. 72-73)

On the other hand, Ramet (1996b) asserted that there are factors built in to the city that

encourage social tolerance. By contrast with the country, cities are ethnically and

culturally heterogeneous and tend to be more cosmopolitan—less ‘ethnic’—and more

‘civic,’ more oriented toward the political aspects of the community.

. . . whereas ethnic values predominate in the countryside, civic values

predominate in the city . . . . the countryside traditionally teaches one what it is to

be a good national, while the city teaches one what it is to be a good citizen.

(Ramet, 1996b, p. 72)
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-47

According to Ramet (1996b), rural nationalism differs from urban-based, or class-based,

nationalism. In addition, she argued that there is a fundamental difference between rural

mobilization in a societies dominated by a capital city, as in Serbia, and that occurring in

more urbanized diversified societies, as in Poland.

. . . societies dominated by a single city are typically societies with a greater

proportion of rural population than societies with a number of cities; in the latter,

political agendas may be the product of pressures emanating from several cities,

and from their rivalry . . . . in societies dominated by a single city, it is much easier

to conflate anti-urban with anti-government attitudes. (Ramet, 1996b, p. 80)

From this observation, Ramet (1996b) speculated that the greater proportion of rural

population there was in a country, the more introverted, exclusive, and less tolerant of

minority nationalities and minority religions the society would be. By highlighting the

introversion of the countryside, Ramet noted that a society with a predominantly rural

population tends to be more oriented to past history, past sufferings and injustices, and to

values rooted in the past.

Despite the myth of age-old tradition, which is usually perceived as having been

changeless until ‘recently’ (‘recently’ being forever redefined), the countryside

undergoes its own flux and evolution, in organic connection with the city.

Peasant communities usually adhere to some variant of the belief in a traditional

way of life which has existed from ‘ time immemorial’. This interpretation is

largely wishful thinking for the countryside is not immune to cultural drifts,

demographic movements, or economic changes. (Ramet, 1996b, p. 73)

Ramet (1996b) emphasized the dangers inherent in rural mobilization and in the content of

a nationalist discourse based on rural mobilization. In her opinion, the political mobilization

of the countryside is fraught with danger because of this orientation; social polarization is

intensified, and existing tendencies toward chauvinism are reinforced—a consequence of

the fact that high politics is usually the preserve of cities in most societies, especially in

large peasant societies. In addition, in most societies the more intolerant religions tend to

have their strength in the countryside, a factor that contributes to making the countryside a

repository of chauvinism in most countries, especially in contemporary Eastern European

countries. The result is that rural political cultures have generally been less developed and

less sophisticated than their urban counterparts.

Ramet (1996b) asserted that, “In theory, the potential for widespread strife is sown into

the urban-rural divide itself” (p. 81). The dominant mood in the country is one of

resentment. As long as it is directed at the city, the society is at peace. When it is

directed against landlords, the risk of rioting increases. When resentment is channeled

along ethnic lines, ethnic antagonism soon gains primacy over the rural-urban chasm. The

first condition for resentment is a belief in the fundamental comparability or equality

between the subject and the object of envy. The second condition is the presence of an

actual inequality of dimensions that rule out any practical achievement of the theoreticallyexisting equality. Rural resentment against the city is benign. It rarely leads to major

difficulties. Explosions of rural anger against landlords occurred repeatedly as a sideeffect of the breakdown of civil order.

When rural mobilization takes the form of ethnic mobilization, its effect will vary

according to ethnic distribution. Where urban-dwellers tend to be of one ethnic

stock and rural-dwellers of another (e.g., in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the

Ottoman occupation . . .), the effect will be to reinforce and deepen rural-urban
BALKANS-APPENDIX B B-48

antagonisms. But where both town and countryside are mixed, as in Kosovo, the

effect will be to break down the possibility of rural solidarity by strengthening

ethnic identities. (Ramet, 1996b, p. 82)

In Kosovo, both Serbs and Albanians lived in the countryside. The Serbs mobilized

against the Albanians, and social avoidance patterns became rigid and deep. Serbs and

Albanians took to walking on different sides of the streets in Pri”tina and even avoided

sharing the same elevator in each other’s company. This posed the possibility of the

escalation of avoidance behaviors, leading to civil strife (Ramet, 1996b).

The mosaic of ethnic groups and nations . . . inherit from the past a host of

conflicting claims, outlooks and aspirations. It is this social heritage that is

primarily responsible for the internal strife, disorders, conspiracies and

revolutions, as well as for the international tensions and warfare . . . . (Toma”iÉ,

1948, p. 10

With this in mind, however, Ramet (1996b) cautioned that there was a ‘world of

difference’ between national movements based on urban mobilization and those founded

largely on rural mobilization. “From the standpoint of the potential for chauvinist excesses,

for the suspension of any notions of tolerance and for excesses of violence, the latter,

rural mobilization, is . . . the more dangerous” (p. 85).

In addition, as has been shown, cultural similarities and differences are not random.

Patterns can be discerned with respect to many cultural practices. It is useful to reflect

on the words of the soldier who said, “We do deserts. We don’t do mountains.” He was

trained in a desert warfare culture and recognized that the imperatives of mountain

warfare differ greatly. It now seems appropriate to say with some validity that the

imperatives underlying much cultural behavior can be traced to the relationship between

‘man and land.’ “It’s the geography. It’s the ‘law of the land.’”

In the context of the limitations posed by the geography of the region on the development

of varied subsistence patterns and related patterns of social and political organization, the

next chapter, “The Makings of the Balkan Warrior Cult,” builds on the concepts of

cultural personality and social character. The development, or lack thereof, of

‘civilization’ in the Balkans is examined in the context of geography and its relationship to

subsistence factors, as are the influences of the indigenous historic populations and

invading groups on contemporary populations to the beginning of the ‘Dark Ages.’

The wars in the Balkans that have engulfed the former Yugoslavia in the last decade of

the 20th century and that have spilled over to other parts of the Balkans represent the first

European war since 1945. As noted by Johnsen (1995a), however, the relevancy of an

historical exploration, and the purpose of historical study, in generally, is not simply to

understand the past, but to inform the present and, hopefully, prepare for the future. The

next chapter looks back to the past to reveal the basis of Balkan beliefs and practices. It

contains a review of prehistoric developments on the Balkan Peninsula from early food

gatherers, hunters, and fishers; to the beginnings of the domestication of plants and

animals; and beyond, to the rise of civilization and subsequent patterns of human

population movements in, around, and through the Balkans.

Return to Table of Contents
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-1

Appendix C

Anthropology: A Way of Looking

PART 1: A WAY OF LOOKING: METHODOLOGY

The present study of Balkan countries and events from the vantage of the last decade of

the twentieth century is informed by my training as an anthropologist. One might assume,

then, that I have done fieldwork in the former Yugoslavia, which unfortunately, I have not.

Because fieldwork was not an option in this case, I have approached the study in general

terms somewhat reminiscent of the so-called studies of "national character" which were

conducted by anthropologists and other social scientists at the request of the American

government during World War II. Their goal at that time was:

. . .to consider ways in which the sciences of anthropology and psychology. .

.could be applied to the problems of morale building in wartime. . . .By 1943 there

were a large number of anthropologists in various government agencies in

Washington. . .interested in the problems of studying national character and in

developing techniques for research on cultures at a distance. (Mead, 1974, pp.

57-58)

One of the more interesting developments during this period was the idea of studying

cultures at a distance. It was an illustration of the adage, “When you get a lemon, make

lemonade!” Because no enemy is willing to be studied first hand, Mead and her

colleagues of necessity developed a new method.

[They] . . . devised methods for analyzing literature, films, newspapers, travelers'

accounts, and government propaganda . . . . When possible, recent immigrants,

refugees, and war prisoners were intensively interviewed and tested. They did

not constitute a representative sample of their countrymen, but Mead (1953)

argued that any member of a society could contribute to the study of national

character provided that his or her position in the society was specified . . . .

(Bock, 1980, p. 109)

As I approached the current study, I knew virtually nothing about the Balkans, her

peoples, her geography, and her history. I began with immersion reading, starting from

historical atlases in order to reach a temporal and contextual framework within which to

approach the data. I recall reading somewhere, that immersion reading can help one find

a way out of the forest. I am not so certain. I rather suspect that I am still lost

somewhere in a high rocky Balkan forest, for which I sincerely apologize to the reader.

As an anthropologist, I also examined Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas (1967), which

represents the first systematic effort to organize the descriptive information on the peoples

of the world--primitive, historical, and contemporary—to facilitate comparative research.

This work classifies the world's societies into more than 400 groups of closely-related

cultures presenting succinct tabulated data for many cultures regarding their economy,

technology, marriage rules, language, social and political organization, and other social and

cultural phenomena. This small atlas of only 128 pages represents a valuable database for

world cultures.

More recently, a basic reference source that provides accurate, clear, and concise

descriptions of the cultures of the world has been issued. The ten-volume Encyclopedia
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-2

of World Cultures, edited by Bennett (1992), ordered by geographical regions of the

world, is especially timely in view of the major political, economic, and social changes of

the past fifty years. A summary of each culture listed in the encyclopedia consists of

information on common and alternate names for the culture and derivations of those

names, as well the cultural orientation--location, demography, and linguistic affiliation.

Information is also presented on the history of the culture, cultural relations, settlements,

economy, kinship, marriage and family, sociopolitical organization, and religion and

expressive culture. A selected list of publications about each culture is provided, including

publications that describe both the traditional and the contemporary culture.

This brief description reveals the domains with which an anthropologist is typically

concerned. All of the social sciences are concerned with various aspects of human

behavior and interaction. Anthropology, however, which is, by definition, the study of man,

retains a unique orientation. As a discipline, anthropology differs from the other social

sciences by the manner in which it attempts to define and understand human nature.

It searches for the origin of human nature in evolutionary biology and the

development of social and behavioral differences among the world's peoples in

the historical process. Anthropology searches for the rules of human behavior

and finds these rules in our biological past as well as our social and cultural

present. Anthropology recognizes the fact that humans are members of the

animal kingdom, but that a full understanding of human behavior can only come

when we move beyond purely biological principles to principles that are unique

to our species. (Alland, 1981, p. 3)

The scope of anthropology is vast, including everything that has to do with human beings,

past and present. It is at its base the study of similarities and differences between people,

between groups, between cultures. Anthropology is distinctive due, both, to its global

coverage and its reliance on a comparative perspective.

Other people-focused disciplines tend to study only a particular segment of

human experience or a particular time or phase of our cultural or biological

development. But the findings of anthropology are never based upon the study

of a single population, race, tribe, class, nation, time, or place. Anthropologists

insist first and foremost that conclusions based upon the study of one particular

human group or civilization be checked against the evidence of other groups or

civilizations. (Harris, 1983, p. 4)

This reliance on a comparative approach that underpins the field of anthropology is

fundamental to the ability to transcend the interests of any particular tribe, race, nation, or

culture. Anthropology is also rooted in another fundamental principle: that things must be

viewed in the broadest possible context in order to understand their interconnections and

interdependence. We refer to this as the holistic perspective. Rather than examining a

flower petal by petal as a sociologist or political scientist might, the anthropologist is more

likely to stand on the top of the mountain and view the entire field (Haviland, 1989). The

importance of this perspective can best be understood by examining the concept of culture

that underpins anthropology.
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-3

PART 2: CULTURE AS AN ADAPTIVE STRATEGY

Webb and Sherman (1989) provide a remarkably thorough and elegant overview of some

of the universals that are recognized in human cultures:

Cultures solve the common problems of human beings, but they solve them in

different ways . . . . Each provides its people with a means of communication

(language). Each determines who wields power and under what circumstances

power can be used (status). Each provides for the regulation of reproduction

(family) and supplies a system of rules (government). These rules may be written

(laws) or unwritten (custom), but they are always present. Cultures supply

human beings with an explanation of their relationship to nature (magic, myth,

religion, and science). They provide their people with some conception of time

(temporality). They supply a system by which significant lessons of the culture

(history) can be given a physical representation and stored and passed on to

future generations. The representation usually comes in the form of dance, song,

poetry, architecture, handicrafts, story, design, or painting (art). What makes

cultures similar is the problems they solve, not the methods they devise to solve

them. (Webb & Sherman, 1989, pp. 49-50)

This passage addresses many of the universal components of culture: communication,

kinship, religion, art, and certain aspects of social and political organization. These

constructs, as well as others, are important concepts within which to structure the

examination of data on human groups.

A few words about “culture.” While many westerners use the term culture to equate

with ‘the arts’ and/or ‘sophistication,’ to an anthropologist the term “culture” has quite a

different meaning. In fact, there are many definitions of culture even within the field of

anthropology. Fundamental to the concept of culture, however, is that it is learned

behavior. A hallmark of the human species is its capacity for learning—unsurpassed by

any other organism. Humans depend on learning to a much greater extent than any other

creature. In addition, culture is learned predominantly through social interaction, which

introduces another feature of culture—that it is shared. Culture is also shared through

time--it is transmitted to successive generations. In essence, culture consists of shared

survival strategies of a group of people transmitted over generations.

There are certain aspects of human cultural behavior, primarily behavior that is related to

interaction with the material base of culture, which underlie and give shape to many

aspects of culture. These aspects include environmental variability, food-getting

approaches, technology, and economy. Factors such as soil type, water sources, rainfall,

temperature, and altitude affect the flora and fauna that live or can be raised in an area.

The degree to which a particular group survives in a specific environment will be affected

by their adaptation to the physical environment, which in turn depends on their level of

technology, especially as it relates to the procurement of food.

Culture represents the major human strategy for survival. It is the way in which we learn

to live in our environment. Culture provides a means of coming to terms with our

environment and with each other. Culture also results from interactions between human

thought and the social and biological environments in which human societies find

themselves. As a result, the process of human groups adapting to their environments
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-4

shapes their culture. Culture both shapes and is shaped by humans interacting with each

other and their surroundings (Alland, 1981).

The idea of culture as an adaptive process is a fundamental concept by which

anthropology can be distinguished from other human sciences. Humans adapt to their

environment through the medium of culture, developing ways of doing things that are

compatible with the resources they have available to them and that are within the

limitations of the environment in which they live. In any particular region, people living in

similar environments tend to borrow customs that seem to work well in those

environments from one another. Once a “fit” is achieved, and given a steady state in the

physical environment, a particular cultural adaptation may be remarkably stable, persisting

for hundreds or even thousands of years. Although all species modify their environment

in some way, thereby altering selection pressures, humans shape the environment more

than any other species. As a result, it is through culture that humans are able to change

their relationship with nature, thereby avoiding being “locked” into one particular niche.

Economy and Technology

An economy consists of a set of institutionalized activities that involve natural resources,

human labor, and technology. These activities are then used to acquire, produce, and

distribute material goods and specialist services in a structured, repetitive fashion. Some

of the significant differences between a food gathering economy and a food producing

economy, for example, involve the difference between procuring food only for the

subsistence of the small group versus producing a surplus that can be exchanged for other

goods.

Among food gatherers, hunters, and fishers, food is gathered for the immediate

dietary needs of the people, not because it can be sold or exchanged for some other

product. Food gatherers do not have a market economy, and what little they might

exchange with other peoples typically does not constitute a significant part of their

economy. A simple division of labor commonly occurs among people whose subsistence is

based on hunting and gathering. Frequent long hunting trips lasting for a considerable

period of time are normally carried out by the men while the women remain closer to a

base camp, do more gathering of plant foods, and care for the children and the elderly or

those who are ill or injured. When work is divided up in this manner, people must share

food n order to survive (Friedl, 1981; O’Kelly, 1980).

Food sharing itself is highly adaptive for foragers, serving as a form of insurance.

Because the rewards of foraging and hunting can be unpredictable, sharing with others

during successful times creates the expectation that others will return the favor during

leaner times. It is accepted that the recipient of food feels obliged to reciprocate some

time in the future, encouraging those who owe gifts to work harder to even the balance or

even to tip it in their own favor and gain prestige. Reciprocity encourages subsistence

level productivity without employing any coercive mechanisms to force people to work

(Friedl, 1981; O’Kelly, 1980).

A food gathering economy is often physically demanding, involving a great deal of walking

and carrying heavy loads. Hunters may run for hours without much rest. The Western

image of primitive, overworked, undernourished people living on the edge of starvation is

inaccurate, however. Hunters and gatherers have a great deal of leisure time, rarely
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-5

working even close to a forty-hour week. Two or three hours are usually sufficient for an

average work day, and famine is not a recurring problem among most foragers. On the

contrary, more advanced agriculturalists usually turn to their neighboring foragers for help

during drought and at other times of crop failure (O’Kelly, 1980).

Moving around as nomadic foragers do also requires keeping possessions to a minimum.

As a result, differences in wealth are reduced because it is impractical if not impossible

for any one person to accumulate much property. These limitations on the accumulation

of property directly affect the development of social levels based on wealth and to a large

measure preclude concepts of private property (Friedl, 1981).

Groups usually do not maintain exclusive rights to natural resources, and

frequent movement in search of food keeps any group from becoming attached

to a single territory. If one group claims exclusive rights to a water hole and it

dries up, that group may not survive if it does not have the right to use water

holes owned by other groups. The fact that hunters and gatherers live in relative

harmony with the environment, but without putting much labor or capital into its

development, seems to have led to a fairly universal pattern in which the concept

of ownership of natural resources had no place. (Friedl, 1981, pp. 142-143)

Pastoralism, defined by primary reliance on herding livestock such as cattle, sheep, and

goats, is organized around the needs of the herds. The livestock are of primary

importance. Like foragers, pastoralists are nomadic to some degree, needing to move to

secure sufficient pasturage and water for the animals. Pastoralism is also usually

combined with some cultivation of vegetable foods, but rarely is this practice sufficiently

developed to keep the animals fodder-fed in stalls or in small fields. Pastoralists also have

little surplus for exchange other than the important concentrated and exchangeable wealth

provided by their livestock. Available surpluses are usually exchanged among kin. Caring

for herds of large animals is physically demanding, although herding sheep and goats is

somewhat less strenuous than caring for cattle. The value of the herds makes them

vulnerable to theft and raiding—both of which are endemic to pastoral peoples—requiring

continuous protection of the herds from both human and animal predators (Friedl, 1981;

O’Kelly, 1980).

Like foragers . . . pastoralists rely on a high degree of reciprocity and collective

work organization in their economic production. However, pastoralists are

stricter than foragers in requiring that each person do his or her share of the work

. . . .while hunters and gatherers’ values focus on distributing and consuming

food and being generous and sociable, the pastoral economy gives rise to values

focusing on owning livestock and expanding the size of the herd . . . . Pastoralists

are involved in production and are future oriented rather than concerned with

gathering for immediate consumption. They have, therefore, a more severe work

ethic concerning doing one’s share of the collective work. They also work

longer and harder than most foragers . . . . they place a great importance on

inheritance, which is uncharacteristic of foragers. (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 134)

Ownership of livestock and disposition of their control is predominantly in male hands.

Even the owners, however, are usually not able to freely dispose of their animals. An

intricate web of kinship-based exchanges requires them to periodically give large numbers

of animals to close relatives as dowries or bride prices. They are also obliged to give

animals as compensation for the violation of rules, especially in the case of homicide.
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-6

Portions of the herd may also be held jointly with others, thus limiting their use and

disposal (O’Kelly, 1980).

. . . males who control large herds do not necessarily derive significant economic

power from these herds, since they cannot always use them in their own

interests. A large herd, however, brings prestige and influence to the man or

family who owns it. But ownership of large herds is often a cyclical or temporary

phenomenon . . . . Families are unlikely to maintain a large herd consistently . . . .

kinship obligations often require the owner of livestock to share with less

fortunate kin. These exchanges militate against the development of class

inequality among herders and the concentration of power in the hands of

individuals or families (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 136)

As land becomes scarce in the face of increasing population densities, a nomadic life

based either on hunting and gathering or on herding is impractical. Once people begin

staying in one place for protracted periods of time, the problem of keeping the land fertile

for continuous use arises. Through the knowledge of some forms of plant and/or animal

domestication, productivity can be increased, but very different patterns of social

organization develop as well (O’Kelly, 1980).

Horticulture , or a simple digging-stick and hoe agriculture, was one of the patterns that

developed out of a basic hunting and gathering way of life. In conjunction with knowledge

of the principles of plant cultivation, simple horticultural societies practice slash-and-burn

or swidden cultivation. This involves felling trees, cutting away underbrush in the forests,

and burning the dried plant materials. The ashes from this process provide the necessary

fertilizer to improve the soil. Planting relies on the use of simple wooden digging sticks

and, as a result, the soil is not turned to any great depth. The original fertility of the soil

limits the period of time the land can be used—usually only a few years at most. The

garden then is abandoned for many years, during which the forest is allowed to reclaim

the land and replenish its fertility for future use. Horticulture is often combined with

hunting, gathering, fishing, or herding to increase the overall productivity of the group

(Friedl, 1981; O’Kelly, 1980).

In horticultural society, uncleared land is usually available to anyone who wants

to clear it and cleared land is usually held communally by extended family

groups. Land is a vital resource among horticulturalists, but it usually does not

constitute individually owned private property. However, both cleared and

uncleared land can represent a scarce resource to be exchanged, stolen, or

attacked. Perhaps the most significant result of horticultural technology as

compared with foraging technology is that it allows for the production of a

surplus. Horticulturalists have exchangeable forms of wealth in the form of

productive garden land, stored food, and domesticated animals. Since they are

less mobile than hunters and gatherers, they can also accumulate more and

bulkier household goods and personal possessions. (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 108)

When horticulturalists gained knowledge of metallurgy and developed metal-tipped hoes,

their productivity was often increased considerably. The metal hoes permitted the

farmers to turn the soil to greater depths, and the productivity and length of use of

individual gardens were increased. The same technological advances also allowed for the

development of better weapons—a factor that is often part of a complex involving the

increased frequency and effectiveness of warfare. Surpluses in these more advanced
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-7

horticultural societies were very large at times, as a result of both the increased

subsistence productivity and of the spoils of war (O’Kelly, 1980).

Although past as well as contemporary horticulturalists live in a variety of environments,

there are a number of features that they share. They tend to live in semi-permanent

settlements close to their gardens, a factor that is both linked to and permits increased

investments of labor in the land they cultivate. Living in more permanent settlements

allows them to keep more material possessions. Among horticulturalists, for the first time,

land is privately owned; and this private ownership leads to social inequalities based on

differences in wealth. Because there are no institutions such as banks in which to store

one’s wealth, differences in social status often are expressed in terms of whether a

person can control the labor of others and how large a family one can support. Wealth

often becomes a quality of the family rather than of the individual (Friedl, 1981).

Horticultural societies also tend to exhibit economic and craft specialization as a result of

the more predictable food supply and the production of a surplus—conditions that permit

some members of the group to perform tasks not directly related to feeding themselves

and their families. Specialization often occurs first with the appearance of religious

leaders, but in horticultural societies there are also persons who specialize in producing art

works, tools, and weapons. These specialists often gain power and prestige as a result of

being set apart from other members of the group (Friedl, 1981).

Finally, horticulturalists are different from hunters and gatherers in that they

sometimes engaged in warfare, both to acquire more territory and simply for

plunder (or revenge for having been attacked by another group). Because slashand-burn cultivation requires a constant supply of new land, it is not surprising

that neighboring groups would fight over boundaries. And since such groups

can amass large amounts of personal possessions, it is not surprising that they

would raid other villages to steal whatever they could. Thus, the very nature of

horticulture as a way of life creates new problems for human societies at the same

time that it allows larger and more diverse groups of people to live together in

permanent settlements. (Friedl, 1981, p. 162)

Agriculture involves the use of the plow and draft animals, often in combination with

fertilization and irrigation—practices that increase the productivity of the land. In

comparison to horticultural production, agriculture is much more strenuous and demanding.

The agricultural laborer works a longer day and longer seasons than do workers in other

types of economies. Digging the fields and maintaining irrigation ditches are strenuous

work. Great muscular strength and stamina are also required for a man to guide a plow.

The substitution of draft animals frees man, but only to the extent that he is freed from the

plowing himself. He still must break the animals to take the harness and plow. Draft

animals cannot be allowed to wander as freely as the livestock do under the care of

pastoralists. If they did, there is greater danger of them ruining crops if left unattended in

the increasingly-smaller pasture lands. As a result, farm animals must be fed and

watered. Often their manure is also collected to spread on the fields as fertilizer. In those

parts of the tropical world where horticultural gardens have been common, agricultural

technology was so much more demanding that it was resisted, despite the the higher

productivity that was possible under agriculture (O’Kelly, 1980).

Rural cultivators who engage in subsistence agriculture are known as peasants, and they

differ in a number of ways from horticulturalists. Although horticulturalists rarely can
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-8

produce enough surplus to be of value outside their families, peasants are vulnerable to

exploitation, because the surpluses they produce can be used to support others. Peasants

are not as independent as horticulturalists. They are integrated into a wider economic

system (Freidl, 1981).

The introduction of agriculture allowed human societies to support larger and denser

populations than ever before. Population pressure coupled with scarcity of resources,

especially in the form of land, appear to have accompanied the development of agriculture

and its increased productivity in many parts of the world. The benefits of this increased

productivity, however, did not remain in the hands of the producers. Craftsmen such as

carpenters, blacksmiths, sculptors, basket makers, and stonecutters are among those who

were no longer required to participate directly in subsistence activities. They were

supported by selling the goods they produced to those who either needed or desired them,

thus enabling them to purchase personal items and food (Haviland, 1983; O’Kelly, 1980).

Social and Political Organization

A basic aspect of the link between economy and social organization concerns the

constraints on where people live and with whom they associate. Comparisons across

cultures and around the world demonstrate that the nature of the basic subsistence activity

and the sexual division of labor act together in demarcating strategic advantages for local

group formation, tending to favor those forms that keep together the sex responsible for

the most crucial tasks. As a result, in nearly all horticultural societies where women are

gardeners and it is advantageous to maintain groups of kinswomen as the basic work

force, there are matrilocal rules of residence—meaning that the married couple resides in

or near the bride’s mother’s household after marriage. On the other hand, both

pastoralism and agriculture assign the primary herding and plowing tasks to men. The

predominance of patrilocal residence—where the married couple resides in or near the

groom’s father’s household after marriage—among surviving pastoral and agricultural

societies attests to the ecological adaptiveness of arrangements that keep together male

kinsmen, maintaining continuity in their attachments to workmates and property (Denich,

1974).

A foraging way of life is predicated on small flexible communities, with camps ranging in

size from twenty-five to two hundred people. Membership is flexible and based on a wide

network of kinship ties. People can and do change from one camp to another with ease;

there is a continuous process of kin arriving, others departing, and of visiting relatives in

other camps for varying periods of time. Periodically, the camps break up into smaller

units to spread out over a larger foraging area, regouping at a later time when it is no

longer advantageous or necessary to remain dispersed. The size of the group generally

varies with the availability of food (Friedl, 1981; O’Kelly, 1980).

Two patterns are clearly related to hunting and gathering as a subsistence strategy: (1)

cooperation or reciprocity in obtaining food, and (2) a loose-knit social organization based

primarily on kinship, or family ties, created either by birth or by marriage.

Kinship is at the root of almost all relationships in hunting and gathering

societies. Because there is little specialization, people are not identified with their

jobs . . . . Instead, they are identified by their kinship . . . to other members of the

group. Thus, the family forms the basis of religious, economic, and political
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-9

activity, along with almost every other aspect of community life. (Friedl, 1981, p.

144)

The ways that members of hunting and gathering societies are organized are closely tied

to membership in what is called a ‘band.’ Hunting and gathering bands are small, looseknit groups based on the relatedness of the members. Informal rules of behavior are

enforced through consensus rather than by rulers or by formal legal institutions such as

courts or police. Although the band differs from our complex forms of social organization,

it is well adapted to the lifestyle of hunters and gatherers (Friedl, 1981).

As competition for land increases, larger alliances become more important. As a result, in

the shift from hunting and gathering to horticulture, different types of social organization

replaced the band. Because the band level of social organization is not an efficient form

for large groups, horticulturalists need a different form of social organization. Their

survival often requires joint efforts, and the interests of individual members must

sometimes be put aside in favor of those of the group. Among horticulturalists where

each member has a significant investment in the land, individual members are unwilling to

walk away and leave it behind in the manner that hunters and gatherers might do in a

dispute. . The term ‘tribe’ refers to the type of social organization that unites many

kinship-related bands into a larger, more centralized political unit. Where bands consist of

loose groupings of 25 to 100 or 200 people, tribes, on the other hand, are much larger

(Friedl, 1981).

Tribes consist of groups of people who are related in a number of ways:

They share the same language and usually have a common ethnic heritage. A

tribe also shares a territory, which it defines as its own, not in an individual sense

but as the property of the group as a whole. Most important, all the members of

the tribe believe they are descended from a common ancestor, and therefore that

they are related by blood, even if they cannot trace their descent that far back.

(Friedl, 1981, pp. 162-163)

Members of a tribe may not be in frequent contact with each other. They may actually

be scattered throughout the territory; and most of the time, the organization of the tribe is

not much more formal than that of a band. They differ in that the potential for

cooperation and joint action is much greater in a tribe. Members of the tribe may unite in

battle against a common enemy. They may also unite to share in a celebration, a religious

festival, or even a major work project such as clearing land for new gardens. On other

occasions, the tribal members live in their separate villages and communities. Although

the communities are somewhat independent, they are not isolated from one another.

Dispersed family members who reside in different villages remain united by kinship ties

that form the basis of interactions between different communities. Another common

feature in tribal societies is the presence of ‘age sets’ that unite people of the same age

from different villages. Often these consist of young males of the same age group who

are conscripted and initiated to serve for a period of time in a warrior society before being

allowed to marry (Friedl, 1981).

Compared with a band, in which each group is a self-contained unit tied to the

others mainly by marriages between members, in a tribe a person’s membership in

the wider society is equally important as membership in the community for

defining who he or she is, as well as his or her relations with others. While a

tribe is like a band in that it is based on a network of kinship relations, it different
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-10

in that the network is wider and group loyalty is stronger, even among more

distant relatives . . . . a tribe . . . is larger than a band, slightly more complex, and

more centralized—that is, able to bring people together in a common cause. At

the same time that tribal society is a more effective adaptation to increased

population pressure and more intensive exploitation of the environment, it lacks a

strong central authority. (Friedl, 1981, pp. 163-164)

The simpler horticultural societies tend to be highly egalitarian, and their leaders rarely

have coercive powers over others. Instead, they are more like the headmen among

foragers, who rely on cajoling, persuasion, or embarrassment to get others to do their will.

There is no class inequality or social stratification among simple horticulturalists. Access

to food, land, and other material resources is granted equally to each member; and

differences in wealth and power are rare. Unlike among members of foraging societies,

however, horticulturalists do compete for prestige, which is usually gained through

generosity. The process of gift giving is present, but it is also often accompanied by

boasting rather than by the usual modesty and self-deprecation characteristic of foragers

(O’Kelly, 1980).

Among horticulturalists,

Givers of feasts . . . openly praise the abundance and quality of the food they

offer and denigrate past feasts given by others. The ability to organize kin to

produce food for a large feast confers prestige and the status of “big man” on

the organizer. This is often a highly coveted status for men. It does not translate

into greater consumption rights or differences in economic power for the big

man. He gains prestige and influence but not coercive economic or political

power. Such a position is also not hereditary; it must be achieved by each

individual who aspires to “big man” status. (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 110)

Among advanced horticulturalists whose lifestyle has developed from a resource base that

is exceptionally abundant—often based on a diet supplemented by domesticated animals

such as pigs—hereditary class inequality, hereditary leadership positions, and even slavery

develop. Often a noble class of warriors is able to exempt itself from productive labor

and to exact tribute from the non-noble commoners and the slave classes. When power

becomes concentrated, a different pattern of social organization, known as a chiefdom, is

usually seen. Chiefdoms are usually denser and more productive than tribes. The

surpluses produced in chiefdoms often support a larger number of specialists than in a

tribe. If one is working only for himself and his family, there is little impetus to produce a

surplus. In a chiefdom, however, the power of the leader makes it possible for him or her

to force others to produce more than they need and to turn over the surplus to the leader

for distribution to others who are not engaged in the process of food production. Thus, a

leader is able to finance an army, a labor force, religious specialists, and other types of

nonagricultural specialists. Under chiefdoms, economic activities become increasingly

separated from other areas of life (Friedl, 1981; O’Kelly, 1980).

The lack of equality among members of the group is a factor that sets chiefdoms apart

from bands and tribes. In chiefdoms, there is a definite leadership office that is occupied

by an individual, and that office is usually inherited. The power is vested in the position

and not necessarily in the person who occupies it. Regardless of how well or how poorly

the person performs the duties of the office, that person is still chief. The fact that the

office is inherited may also mean that it does not always go to the person who is most

qualified. The power of the position includes the ability to command people to act in
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-11

certain ways. This authority may be backed up by force. It is also supported by myths,

customs, and social values. People believe in the chief (Friedl, 1981).

. . . the stories that they tell about the supernatural, the origins of their society,

and its great heroes tend to reinforce that power. It is this belief system that

enables the chief to coordinate the work of the society’s members and unite them

in a way that would not be possible in a tribal type of social organization. (Friedl,

1981, p. 164)

In comparison to bands or tribes, chiefdoms are more complex. Bands are linked to other

bands only through the alliances created by marriage. Tribal organization is stronger than

band-level organization because of the various groups that cut across villages, such as age

sets and hereditary groups. Chiefdoms are more centrally organized, however, than either

tribes or bands. They have a line of authority that ties all the members of the society

directly to the leader, they have a stronger bond to their territory, and the boundaries of

that territory are more clearly defined. In addition, the degree of specialization typical in

chiefdoms fosters an emphasis on new technology as well as artistic creativity. Large

public works projects, such as irrigation systems and large monuments, are among the

products often associated with chiefdoms. Above all, a chiefdom is a stratified society

with permanent hereditary classes in which all members are definitely not ‘created equal’

(Friedl, 1981).

 Inequality in social relations can be divided into two major types: rank and

stratification. Rank refers to differences in prestige but not to political power.

Many societies have “big men” who through their actions have gained prestige

among their fellows. In ranked societies, however, this prestige is rarely

translated into power, that is, control over others. In stratified societies,

individuals with higher social status exercise real power over individuals of lower

status. This power is displayed in the political, social, and economic arenas. As

a result, low-status individuals have less access to the material fruits of society.

They may be forced into actions that benefit the higher social group. Inequality

may also be more or less passively accepted as a fact of life. (Alland, 1981, p.

154)

Few pastoralists rely solely on herding for their subsistence, combining either foraging or

gardening with their herding activities. Greater reliance on crops, understandably, limits

the degree of nomadism and allows for development of larger communities and more

complex sociopolitical institutions. Those who rely on hunting and foraging in addition to

herding are usually found in more rugged, barren areas that cannot be cultivated, living in

small, highly mobile camps of fewer than 50 people. They also usually have some ties

such as trade networks to neighboring agriculturalists (Friedl, 1981; O’Kelly, 1980).

Like horticulturalists, pastoralists are usually organized as ‘tribes’ rather than as ‘bands’.

Some pastoral societies have also formed ‘chiefdoms,’ particularly when their animals

provide more than just food and clothing and have an important market value. A greater

threat from outsiders or from raiding within the group may lead to the necessity for strong

central authority vested in an individual who controls much of the wealth and military

strength of the society. Many societies that still practice pastoralism are strongly linked to

market economies and state organizations. This is especially true in the Middle East

where rural pastoral tribes grew so powerful that they became a major political force

(Friedl, 1981).
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-12

Although hunting and gathering societies are marked by egalitarian relationships, herding

societies are ranked: some individuals or families at any particular time will have more

wealth, influence, and prestige in comparison to other individuals or families; but these

differences are usually not transmitted hereditarily to one’s offspring. Although

pastoralists are usually not stratified into permanent hereditary classes or castes, they do

tend to have more highly stratified social systems than either hunter-gatherers or simple

horticulturalists. They measure their wealth, power, and prestige in terms of animals, and

it is easier for a family to own and defend a large group of animals than it is to own and

work a large amount of land (Friedl, 1981; O’Kelly, 1980).

Through the development of agriculture , including dependence on cereal crops and

reliance on animal power for cultivation, human societies could reach denser population

levels, leading to increased complexity in social organization. Subsistence based on

agriculture involves greater task specialization and results in greater inequality. Land, as

well as the animals used for cultivation, assume greater value; and people who are not

directly involved in agricultural production are freed to perform other services and to

produce other products. These take on added value, increasing the potential for

differences in wealth and status (Friedl, 1981; O’Kelly, 1980).

The level of productivity achieved through plow agriculture allows the

production of surpluses on a scale unimaginable in hunting and gathering,

horticultural, or pastoral societies. For the first time, large segments of the

population can be freed from primary subsistence production. This allows for

the rise of urban communities, complex governmental institutions, empires,

writing, and a high culture for the elite. Agriculture transforms the vast majority

of the population into peasants . . . . [who] must give up much of their produce to

the ruling class in the form of taxes, rent, tithes, unpaid labor, and gifts . . . .

Except in times of labor shortage caused by wars, famine, or plague, there is a

surplus of peasant labor and the elite can afford literally to work peasants to

death and replace them. The level of class oppression found in agrarian societies

is rarely matched in the horticultural or pastoral societies and never found among

foragers. (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 154)

The increased productivity possible with subsistence based on intensive agriculture

supports much larger and denser populations than possible with other subsistence forms.

Agrarian societies are much more complex, as well, than societies based on simpler

technologies. The rural peasantry constitutes the majority of the population and provides

the productive backbone of the society, on which a high degree of occupational

specialization thrives. Trade between different areas is an important benefit of the

increasing complexity of these societies. Transportation and communication systems also

become vital for maintaining these complex political and economic systems (O’Kelly,

1980).

Rural agriculturalists usually exist within what we call the ‘state,’ a type of social

organization that differs from the tribe and the chiefdom in several ways. States are

defined solely on the basis of territory to which it has a claim. States are not kinshiporiented in the way that bands, or even tribes, are. States are defined in terms of one’s

legal membership in a group that is not based on kinship. States also differ in terms of the

extent to which the government has the power to force its members to act in certain

ways. Consensus or common agreement—the basis for shaping behavior among hunters

and gatherers and, to a lesser degree, among horticulturalists and pastoralists—is much
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-13

less important in a state. Another special characteristic of the state is a tendency to

develop a complex bureaucracy that functions as a separate political institution to govern

the people. The development of towns and cities and the complex economic and social

institutions needed by the citizenry are hallmarks of the state level of social organization

(Friedl, 1981).

In tribal societies the members are united by a common language, a common

cultural heritage, and a shared system of beliefs. A chiefdom likewise is a

culturally unified group based on the relatedness of its members, either actual or

figurative. Even though a chiefdom might include many thousands of

individuals, all share in a single cultural tradition, and it is this common bond that

backs up the authority of the chief. But in a state organization the power of the

government is not derived from the relatedness and shared beliefs of its

members—it is derived from the state’s ability to enforce its will on its citizens.

People obey the commands of the state because they believe its power is

legitimate, not because they feel obliged to out of kinship or religious belief in

the divine nature of the ruler. (Friedl, 1981, p. 179)

The historical pattern of increased production preceded the rise of a stratified social

system in which an elite few lived in luxury off the labor of many. Urbanization brings

with it a new social order, however, with the development of marked inequality as society

becomes more stratified and people are ranked according to the kind of work they do or

the family they are born into. Social institutions become more formal and bureaucratic,

with specialized political institutions. Simple face-to-face groups of relatives, friends, and

acquaintances are no longer the significant social institutions that they are among

foragers. Great agrarian civilizations such as ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome rose out

of this process (Haviland, 1983; O’Kelly, 1980).

Leadership and Dispute Resolution

Although many popular writers have argued that human beings are innately

aggressive, hierarchical, and territorial because of the evolutionary impact of the

hunting technology on our ancestors, current hunting and gathering societies do

not confirm this view. Use of hunting technology has not rendered these

peoples aggressive, hierarchical, or territorial. Aggression and dominance are

not encouraged and are rarely displayed in these societies. Furthermore, partly

because of their geographic mobility, they are not highly territorial. The common

response to encroachments or threats by other peoples is to withdraw to an

undisputed area. Violence and warfare are relatively rare among hunters and

gatherers. (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 78)

Among hunters and gatherers, there is little inequality of any kind. The relative lack of

private property translates to a lack of social classes; no one is rich and no one is poor.

There are also no rulers or specialized institutional form of government. Leadership is

gained through the strength of one’s personality, skill, and intelligence, and conveys no

powers of coercion. The leader usually sets the best example by working the hardest and

sharing the most, and can only persuade, cajole, or shame people into obeying. Decisionmaking among food gatherers is dispersed. Even recognized leaders are unable to make

decisions alone or to enforce decisions on anyone who disagrees with the decision.

Generally, those who are involved in a particular activity are the ones who make the

decisions concerning it. When group decisions are required, those who have
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-14

demonstrated skills related to the topic being discussed are more likely to be deferred to

than those who do not excel in the task. Even respected and skilled hunters and gatherers

rarely impose opinions on others. The traits of cooperation and non-assertiveness are

highly valued traits. Foragers tend to be peaceful, non-violent people. Aggression and

dominance are usually frowned upon in these societies (O’Kelly, 1980).

Horticulturalists sometimes engage in warfare either for plunder, for revenge for having

been attacked by another group, or to acquire more territory. Because slash-and-burn

cultivation requires constant supplies of new land, neighboring groups often fight over

boundaries. The productivity of slash-and-burn cultivation also leads to concentrations of

personal possessions, providing a motivation for raiding other villages to steal whatever

one could get (Friedl, 1981).

. . . the very nature of horticulture as a way of life creates new problems for

human societies at the same time that it allows larger and more diverse groups of

people to live together in permanent settlements. (Friedl, 1981, p. 162)

The presence of conditions requiring the accumulation of surpluses often necessitates

some motivation for people to produce additional goods. When population pressure

requires the group to defend its holdings, certain responses are adaptive because they

consolidate the male fighting power of the group. Among horticulturalists, male-centered

residence and kinship reckoning accompany and are part of a complex that involves

population pressure and increased labor requirements for defense. Where conditions such

as population pressure arise that require a group to defend its holdings, mechanisms that

concentrate the male fighting power of the group is advantageous. This is usually

accomplished by social structures such as marriage and residence patterns that keep

related males together. Pastoralists, as well as many horticulturalists, practice patrilineal

descent and patrilocal residence—meaning simply that inheritance to important property

is through the male line and that a man resides in the same locality as his father. In this

way, male-centered social structures serve to provide a ready fighting force as needed to

defend the property of the group (O’Kelly, 1980).

Among pastoralists, because each head of cattle represents a tremendous investment of

human labor and material resources, they are extremely valuable property. They are

easily and relatively frequently stolen, however, because it is less costly to steal than it is

to invest in raising the animals. In areas of high population pressure, there often is

competition over scarce waterholes and pastures, as well. As a result, among pastoralists,

a pattern of internal warfare often is seen. Raiding between distant groups has been

shown to integrate disparate camps into loosely structured chiefdoms over large

territories, and the threat of raids seems to motivate different camps to enter into truces to

limit the number of potential enemies. On the other hand, the potential spoils of raiding

serves as motivation to form alliances for joint raids. Raiding seems to maintain a process

of truce-making and breaking, alliance-making and breaking, providing a continual basis of

integration for the very loosely confederated camps of herders (O’Kelly, 1980).

Agricultural societies are held together by powerful central governments or, in some

cases, by local warlords. Because control of the reins of governments can be effectively

used to enhance the power and position of individuals, agrarian societies are often marked

by continual struggles over power and over the privileges that are associated with it.

Frequently, there is tension between the ruler and the governing classes, and a balance is
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-15

often formed through a division of powers. In Ottoman Turkey, however, the ruler was

so powerful that even the members of the governing class were his personal slaves

(O’Kelly, 1980).

In agricultural societies, both political power and military might are in the hands of the

few. Military technology follows on the heels of advances in agricultural productivity and

is used to increase the power of the state and the governing classes at the expense of the

masses. Land is the basis for both economic and political power in agrarian societies, and

the political system is tightly integrated with the economic system (O’Kelly, 1980).

Warfare is chronic in most agrarian states. The societies themselves are formed

primarily through conquest. The productivity and technology of agrarian

economies makes warfare almost inevitable, and the surpluses produced make

conquest profitable. The forcible subjugation as peasants or slaves of foreign

peoples increases the exploitable labor supply and greatly expands the wealth

available to the conquering elite . . . . Control over the means of violence and

warfare such as weapons, transportation, and training is the primary

distinguishing characteristic of the elite as compared with the masses. The elite

classes gain power and status through warfare and skill in fighting. Warfare . . . .

is internal as well as external. The gains from political office are so great that

they encourage continuous struggles among members of the elite and continual

jockeying for power among the different elite classes. (O’Kelly, 1980, pp. 156-

157)

As we have seen, the hunting and gathering way of life involves small, loose-knit

residence groups without any clear lines of leadership or authority. It comes close to

being a group of equals, with little specialization, little division of labor, no differences in—

or even concepts of—wealth, and common beliefs, experiences, values, and general

lifestyle. The band level of social organization is suited to a way of life in which the

technology and means of obtaining food prevent the formation of large, dense, permanent

settlements. The groups are able to shrink or grow depending on the season and the

availability of food. Alliances are loose enough to permit groups to come together for

special ceremonies and to find spouses, but they do not create strong ties that might result

in warfare with other groups. The lack of material wealth tends to foster equality and

prevent the domination of some members by others (Friedl, 1981).

The levels of social organization known as tribes and chiefdoms are found among

horticulturalists and pastoralists. They occur within a more productive type of technology

that supports larger, denser, more or less permanent settlements. In horticultural societies,

the proportion of food produced directly affects the type of sociopolitical organization. If

most of the food is hunted or gathered and relatively little is grown, the society may be

band-like in its organization (Friedl, 1981).

As the amount of food obtained from horticulture increases, so does the density

of the population. And as the basis of group membership broadens from the

residence group to the larger society, so does the political affiliation—ultimately

leading to a chiefdom. (Friedl, 1981, p. 180)

The mobility associated with the seasonal migration of pastoral nomads fosters little

chance for centralized political authority to develop, with the result that most pastoral

peoples are organized internally as tribal societies. These societies are often not self

sufficient, however, and depend on wider economic trade networks where animal

products are exchanged for food, weapons, and other important items (Friedl, 1981).
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-16

Agriculturalists combine the domestication of plants and animals resulting on many other

changes in their lifestyle. They are able to establish permanent settlements and support

larger groups of people. An important feature of agriculture is the ability of each family to

produce more food than it could consume. These surpluses can be used to feed others

who are freed from food production to carry out other tasks. These factors were crucial

to the development of civilization. It marked the first time that “. . . a class of people

emerged who could turn their attention to other aspects of life without worrying where

their next meal was coming from” (Friedl, 1981, p. 180).

The formation of urban centers followed as a natural outgrowth of population increases

resulting from agriculture. The increasing numbers of people who no longer were

engaged directly in food production gathered in single communities to perform other crafts

and services. These cities grew and were composed of an increasingly-heterogeneous

population. Power concentrated in the hands of the people who lived in the urban

centers, and the countryside and the economies of the peasant villages fell under the

control of the urbanites. The urban-rural dichotomy continues to be a significant

explanatory device in the context of contemporary problems in the former Yugoslavia.

The final step in the transition to a state form of political organization was made

when the leaders in the cities gained the power to force the rest of the

populations to cooperate to achieve the economic and political goals of the state.

Political leaders increased their control over internal production and trade, over

economic relations with neighboring societies, and over the day-to-day activities

of the members of the population, usually at the expense of the peasants who

had to produce a surplus to pay taxes and fight in a war far from home based on

issues of little importance to them personally. (Friedl, 1981, p. 181)

Expansion of the human technological capacity has improved the ability of our species to

control its environments, to form larger and denser settlements, and to develop more

elaborate sets of political relationships. It also seems to have increased competition and

fostered increasingly hostile relationships as an outgrowth of the elaboration of concepts

of private property.

The absence of private property among most hunting and gathering peoples

removes one of the main causes of organized warfare. Warfare is usually carried

out for a purpose, such as seizing land or other valuable property. But among

most hunting and gathering groups ownership of territory was not important and

their nomadic life style limited the amount of property they could carry with them.

In addition, a hunting and gathering way of life does not allow for long periods

of fighting, because while food may be plentiful, it cannot be stored very long. A

farmer who produces grain by working eight or ten hours a day for six months

can store the grain and engage in other activities. But even though a huntergatherer may have to spend only two or three hours each day to get enough

food, that food must be obtained almost every day. (Friedl, 1981, p. 148)

It has been suggested that warfare can be broadly defined as armed combat between

territorially or politically defined groups. Using this definition, it becomes obvious why

hunting and gathering societies rarely engage in war. They have no sharp territorial

boundaries. There is no strong political organization. A nomadic lifestyle and

intermarriage between members of loosely-defined groups leads to alliances with

neighboring bands. When violence does occur, the conflict tends to be on an individual or

family level, rarely pitting two whole groups against each other.
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-17

There is ample reason to suppose that war has become a serious problem only in

the last 10,000 years, since the invention of food-production techniques, the rise

of the city, and the invention of centralized states. It has reached crisis

proportions in the last 200 years, with the invention of modern weaponry and

increased direction of violence against civilian populations. (Haviland, 1990, p.

346)

The innovations that have led to greater control over the environment have also

necessitated more elaborate sets of political relationships in order to promote cooperation

and reduce hostility (Friedl, 1981).

Power and Sexual Roles

To understand the different positions that women and men occupy in various societies, the

type of economic system present in the society is one of the most important variables.

Following is a brief comparison of gender roles and subsistence type to reveal patterns in

the data on sexual stratification systems.

The division of labor in a hunting and gathering society involves men usually hunting

and providing the meat portion of the diet and women doing most of the gathering of

vegetable foods. This makes it difficult for single adults to take care of all of their own

needs for food, shelter, and clothing. As a result, in hunting and gathering societies almost

everyone marries. Because there are no significant differences in wealth among hunters

and gatherers, marriages are usually made on the basis of the mutual attraction of the two

people involved rather than to link families to enhance their power or wealth. There may

be little or no ceremony. Often couples will just begin living together. Marriages are

freely made without elaborate exchanges of property in the form of a bride price or

dowry. Interestingly, the marriages are as easily ended as they are begun. Whenever

either spouse decides to separate, the marriage is ended. There is little or no sexual

double standard in these societies (O'Kelly, 1980).

Kinship is extremely important among foragers. Almost all of their social,

economic, and political relationships are embedded in kinship relations.

Collective work is organized, food is shared, camps are organized, and disputes

are settled through the use of kinship ties. Because of the importance of

reciprocity and the open flexibility of camp organization, it is adaptive for hunters

and gatherers to recognize as wide a range of kin as possible. Foragers,

therefore, tend to . . . recognize kinship ties on both the mother s side and the

father s side . . . . For foragers this is again a form of insurance. In time of need or

difficulty a wide kinship network means there is a large number of people one can

turn to for help. (O Kelly, 1980, pp. 78-79)

Hunters and gatherers usually have only one spouse at a time and live in nuclear family

structures consisting of the mother, the father, and the dependent children. In the hunting

and gathering context, there is little motivation to take multiple spouses. Productivity

normally is low enough to preclude the production of any excesses beyond the subsistence

needs of the family unit. The mobility of these nomadic groups also favors smaller family

sizes. Certain practices, such as breastfeeding until a child is four years old, appear to

suspend a woman's ovulation and menstruation, particularly when the woman has low

body fat. Coupled with a taboo against sexual intercourse with a breastfeeding mother

(which is difficult to enforce), these mechanisms are highly adaptive among hunters and
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-18

gatherers for controlling population growth. They also serve effectively to keep

pregnancy and child rearing from interfering with the essential role that females play in

production (O'Kelly, 1980).

In hunting and gathering societies, the relations between the sexes are highly egalitarian.

They tend to be sexually permissive to the extent that adultery is not strongly tabooed

among most hunters and gatherers. This sexual permissiveness is also usually extended to

adolescents as well as children. The egalitarian social structure of these societies is also

shown in their child rearing practices (O Kelly, 1980):

Children are reared to be cooperative, generous, peaceful and unassuming, but

independent and self-reliant adults. The noncoercive, nonauthoritarian social

structure is supported by noncoercive, nonauthoritarian adult-child relations.

Adults seem to have infinite patience in dealing with the children of the camp . . .

. Obedience is not stressed by forager parents and physical punishments are not

used in most foraging societies . . . . Self-reliance, rather than obedience to

authority, is stressed for both girls and boys . . . . children learn early to assert

themselves against the authority of their parents and other adults. (O'Kelly, 1980,

p. 97)

Among horticulturalists, the sexual division of labor involves the men felling trees and

clearing underbrush from the land, due in large measure to the strenuous nature of the

work involved. Unless the needs for defense and fighting to obtain new land are

considerable, such as under conditions where the population density is increasing and land

is scarce, women usually do the planting, weeding, and harvesting. A striking

characteristic of the division of labor in many horticultural societies involves extreme sex

segregation. Commonly women and men lead almost separate lives. The men work

continuously in collective groups, clearing new garden lands and hunting in large groups.

The women work communally in the gardens and process the food. They also gather

other products in the areas around their villages (O Kelly, 1980).

The technology of horticulture requires some collective work effort as well as collective

defense, and most horticulturalists have developed kinship systems to help them organize

for collective actions without disrupting the patterns of sex segregation. Their kinship

systems usually are reckoned unilaterally—through one side. This method systematically

excludes either the mother’s or the father’s line at each generation, producing a series of

discrete, mutually exclusive property-owning kinship groups. In those horticultural

societies where heredity is traced through the male line, men also have economic control.

Women are often subordinated in these circumstances, and it is fairly common for a man

to take several wives (O Kelly, 1980).

In horticultural societies generally, the social positions of women and men tend to result in

a great deal of tension and hostility between the sexes. The hostility may remain below

the surface in those groups that emphasize internal peace, stability, and harmony. On the

contrary, groups that are internally disruptive and feuding may display sexual hostility

openly. An emphasis on close, loving, trusting relations between men and women either in

groups or as individual couples is uncommon in horticultural societies. The antithesis of

closeness and trust between the sexes may even be represented by living houses that are

segregated by sex, where the men live together and apart from the women who live

together. In the presence of marked levels of sex segregation, conflicting sexually-based
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-19

interests, and groups emphasizing the solidarity of either or both sexes, the relations

between the sexes are usually quite hostile rather than close and loving (O Kelly, 1980).

Child rearing practices among horticulturalists reflect clear divisions in gender roles that

are often rigidly enforced, usually encouraging females to be submissive. Socialization

into the division of labor begins early, especially for girls, who are trained as a sort of

child-nurse to care for younger siblings or close relatives during periods while the mother

is occupied with other tasks. Girls as young as four or five may be expected to care for

smaller children and to learn to carry them on their backs. Boys learn the male skills of

hunting and the heavier labor associated with the gardens (O’Kelly, 1980).

In pastoral societies the economically productive tasks are characterized by male

dominance. Due to the strength required, men are the exclusive herders and caretakers

of large animals. Women may herd smaller animals and take care of the milking activities

for both large and small animals. The degree of nomadism and the sexual division of labor

of pastoral groups are correlated directly with the degree to which they also cultivate

crops. Groups who cultivate crops for less than one-quarter of their total diet are either

fully nomadic or semi-nomadic and the men perform the primary herding and cultivating

activities. If dependence on crops is moderate, the groups will be either semi-nomadic or

semi-sedentary. Although the men continue the herding activities, both men and women

will be involved in cultivation. Groups relying on cultivated crops for more than half of

their diet are normally fully sedentary, and there is more likelihood that both women and

men will share both the herding and the cultivating activities (O’Kelly, 1980).

. . . the marked sexual division of labor among herders . . . . does not create a

sharp dichotomy between domestic and public spheres. Women’s tasks are

more likely to take place in camp than men’s tasks, but they do not involve the

isolation of women in the household. Much of women’s work is done in

cooperation with or at least in the close company of other women. Both men and

women participate in collective work patterns with other members of the same

sex. Camps are typically divided into women’s spaces and men’s spaces, but

almost all activities are carried out in the open, thus avoiding the development of

private domestic spheres for women versus public spheres for men. (O’Kelly,

1980, pp. 135-136)

Within a pastoral economy, there are forces toward both sexual egalitarianism and male

dominance. Where women have some economic control, their status is generally higher.

The tendency against firmly differentiating the public and private spheres also gives

weight to equality between the sexes. If men have economic control combined with

defense needs and a male-centered kinship system, however, the weight will be shifted

toward male dominance and sexual stratification (O’Kelly, 1980).

There are other factors of primary importance in support of a system of male dominance.

They include the systems of male-centered kinship that are generated by the defense

needs and warfare practices present among herders. Because livestock are valuable as

property, each head of cattle represents a significant investment of human labor and

material resources. The mobility of livestock also makes them prey to theft, however.

Comparison of the costs of raising versus stealing livestock reveals that it is more efficient

in energy terms to steal than raise your own (O’Kelly, 1980).

Among Mediterranean and Asian pastoralists, there is often great emphasis placed on

female virginity and chastity, and a strong sexual double standard is practiced. The
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-20

cultural subordination of women in most herding societies is supported by their religions.

In most pastoral societies, women are subordinate to men. Wives are expected to obey

their husbands and show respect both in private and in public. As a result, close emotional

ties rarely develop within these marriages. Close ties are maintained between women and

their children and sometimes with their blood relatives and their co-wives if the husband

has taken more than one wife. Husbands are entitled to mete out punishment as they

deem it appropriate, and wife beating is common among pastoralists. A man who

exceeds the culturally-acceptable standards of wife beating is likely to be subjected to

ridicule, however, as one who prefers ‘to fight women rather than men’ (O’Kelly, 1980).

Given the subordinate nature of her position in marriage, the pastoral women

typically uses three main tactics in defending her own interests against the

power of men: “playing men off against each other, seeking alliances and

support from other women, and minimizing contact with her husband.” The

opposition built into marriage . . . leads men and women to view each other as

enemies. Love is considered antithetical to marriage . . . . (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 147,

citing Pehrson, 1966, p. 59)

Both Islam, that is widely accepted among herders of Asia and Africa, and Christianity,

that predominates among European and New World pastoralists, support male dominance.

Islam specifically requires female subordination and seclusion. The degree to which the

teachings of these religions support male-centered social organization seems to be

dependent upon the existence of wider socioeconomic forces that lend weight either to

sexual stratification or sexual egalitarianism (O’Kelly, 1980).

. . . where conditions support a high degree of male dominance and patriarchy,

the religious practices supporting these structures are more strictly adhered to,

such as among Mediterranean herders. Where conditions do not so strongly

support male supremacy, people are more likely to practice these religions

indifferently. (O’Kelly, 1980, pp. 144-145)

Pastoralists predominantly trace their kinship through the male line, and marriage often

involves the exchange of women between male-dominated patrilineages. Marriages are

often arranged by various families in order to solidify political and economic alliances, and

they usually involve the exchange of large numbers of livestock as bride prices and as

dowries that further serve to stabilize the marriage arrangements and interfamily alliances

(O’Kelly, 1980).

In spite of the importance of marriage among pastoralists, divorce is common although not

equally available. Men generally have more freedom to obtain divorces than do women,

especially among Moslems who permit a man to divorce his wife by merely announcing

the divorce in the presence of reliable witnesses. On the other hand, for a woman to

obtain a divorce, she must take legal action; and the grounds for divorce are quite limited,

usually involving extensive support from some influential male. As a result, the woman is

required to maintain dependence on males even if she is able to obtain a divorce from her

husband (O’Kelly, 1980).

Among pastoralists, the marriage form that is most common is polygyny, especially

among those who also practice horticultural cultivation. It is economically advantageous

for a man to have several wives in order to maximize the return on his subsistence

investments. Having several wives lend increased productivity to the domestic unit.

Among pastoralists who practice agriculture rather than horticulture to supplement their
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-21

pastoral economy, it is more common to find the one man-one woman and their children

family, known as the nuclear family (O’Kelly, 1980).

The emphasis on the use of force and violence among pastoralists is reflected in child

rearing practices as well. In a manner similar to foragers, they encourage a high degree

of independence and individualism in their children—factors that are important for

nomadic peoples. But unlike foragers, they also encourage aggressiveness, placing a

premium on settling disputes by fighting. As children grow up, skill in fighting is

considered the most necessary accomplishment and courage is seen as the highest virtue.

It is expected that children will begin working at an early age. Within the sex-segregated

division of labor, boys learn herding and fighting skills from male kinsmen and neighbors.

Girls help with household tasks and learn from female kin. Among pastoralists who

emphasize female chastity, young girls are taught to be extremely modest and to feel great

shame about their bodies. Before being allowed to marry, a boy may be required to

undergo a period as a warrior—once again reflecting the importance of warfare and

feuding among herders (O’Kelly, 1980).

The final economic pattern consists of the agrarian societies. These societies are

formed primarily through conquest, and warfare is chronic. Warfare appears to be almost

inevitable as a result of the productivity and technology and the surpluses that make

conquest profitable. The conquering elite found that the forcible subjugation of peasants

or slaves of foreign peoples increases the exploitable labor supply, thus greatly expanding

the wealth available to them. Inventions such as the wheel and the sail, in addition to the

domestication of the horse, facilitated rapid transport of soldiers, weapons, and supplies

over long distances. As a result, external warfare against foreign enemies became quite

possible; and technological improvements in weaponry also increased the efficiency and

destructiveness of warfare (O’Kelly, 1980).

Warfare is often the chief preoccupation of the ruling classes in agrarian states.

Control over the means of violence and warfare such as weapons, transportation,

and training is the primary distinguishing characteristic of the elite as compared

with the masses. The elite classes gain power and status through warfare and

skill in fighting. Warfare pervades their life-style, self-concepts, and culture . . . .

The gains from political office are so great that they encourage continual

struggles among members of the elite and continual jockeying for power among

the different elite classes. (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 157)

As among pastoralists, the religions of the agrarian states reflect the wider social and

economic situation. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism—the great

universalistic religions—spread and became institutionalized within agrarian societies.

Differing from the religions of foragers and horticulturalists, the great religions do not

emphasize local cults and gods. Instead, the god or gods are considered to reign over all

people regardless of where one lived or which group to whom one belonged—a reflection

of the empire-building of the agrarian states and their monarchs. Any important part of the

belief systems of all societies is the role played in supporting and legitimating the power of

the ruling classes. In agrarian states, the religious specialists are often members of the

governing classes and the religious institutions themselves often own large amounts of

land, peasants, and slaves just as the governing classes do. Just as the religious

institutions both reflect and legitimate the economic stratification of agrarian states as a

whole, they also legitimate the sexual stratification system, patriarchy, and male
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-22

dominance. In all of the world’s great religions, female subordination is prescribed to a

greater or lesser degree (O’Kelly, 1980).

The integrating functions assumed by the state in agrarian societies in connection with

political and economic activities lead to a decline in the importance of family and kinship

ties. Land ownership and the rights of usage become increasingly invested in the

individual rather than in the corporate kinship group, resulting in a decline in importance of

the unilineal kinship groups and clans that played an important role in horticultural and

pastoral societies. The large extended families and patrilocal residence patterns tended to

be replaced by smaller domestic units characterized by neolocal residence—residence

with neither the husband’s or the wife’s family. Polygyny also declines under maledominated agricultural production, persisting only among some of the elite. For the

majority of agrarian populations, monogamy and neolocal residence are the norm,

especially in the cities and towns—largely due to the decline in economic practicality of

having multiple wives (O’Kelly, 1980).

In agrarian societies, kinship ties remained important for the elite in such areas as politics

and in the inheritance of position and wealth. Among peasants and common classes,

family ties were important in economic matters; businesses were usually family

businesses and family units worked the agricultural land. There are practical implications

to these activities:

It is important to join two plots of farmland together through marriage or to

cement a truce by marrying one’s sons and daughters appropriately. Love and

attraction are not important considerations in making marriages. Husbands and

wives are not expected to develop close emotional bonds. (O’Kelly, 1980, pp.

158-159)

The wider political and social stratification systems can be seen in child rearing practices

as well. Discipline and obedience are emphasized; love and affection are not. Among

lower classes, children begin work at an early age. The socialization of children is also

highly sex segregated. Girls learn domestic skills regardless of their political and

economic status as members of the elite classes or of the lowest classes. Those of the

higher classes are also expected to learn feminine social graces, modesty, and

submissiveness in order to please the men. Occasionally they are also taught the skills

required for manipulating men. Lower class boys are taught economic skills, and the boys

of the elite classes learn the arts of warfare and politics. Sometimes the boys of upper

class families are taught art, literature, and high culture in general (O’Kelly, 1980).

As well as being stratified by economic and political class, agrarian societies are

characterized by marked sexual stratification. Under agrarian subsistence systems, the

highest degree of the subordination of women occurs, due apparently to the sexual division

of labor. Agricultural labor requires great muscular strength, long hours, and dangerous

work situations, often removing the worker some distance from the home. These factors

clearly are not compatible with pregnancy or child care, removing women from any role

as primary economic producer (O’Kelly, 1980).

Peasant women do not remain idle . . . . They work long hard hours within the

home processing the products of men’s labor: baking, preserving food, weaving,

and sewing. Women undertake a great deal of agricultural labor, but the tasks

are of a secondary nature. They usually do not clear the land, plow, or dig the

irrigation ditches. They also become intensive breeders of the labor supply.
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-23

Agricultural women have more children more closely spaced than horticultural

women. Peasants react to their poverty by trying to produce large numbers of

sons. The birth rate in agrarian societies is higher than in any other type of

society and the spacing between children is much shorter. (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 159)

In the short run, the large families that are characteristic of peasant families increase their

chances for survival because a large number of children, especially sons, allow them to

increase productivity through increased members of the labor force. Large peasant

families also act as a kind of life insurance, ensuring that the aging peasant father and

mother will have someone to care for them when they are not longer capable of producing

for themselves. In the long run, however, the high birth rate as a whole undermines the

position of the peasantry. By keeping the overall labor supply high, individual peasants

become expendable and easily replaceable by other hungry, eager workers (O’Kelly,

1980).

Women also constitute an important reserve labor supply which can be used in

periods of peak labor demand such as the planting and harvesting seasons . . . .

[It may be] that the chronic labor surpluses of agrarian societies are more

important in explaining women’s lowered status than is labor, but they are not

likely to be as efficient as male laborers. Since these societies usually have an

abundance of laborers, males are given first preference as workers. Women are

in that sense another group of expendables who can be kept out of the primary

production or paid a much smaller share of the crop than men. The can,

furthermore, be kept busy at auxiliary tasks and child care and still be available

when male labor is insufficient. (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 160)

The sexual division of labor characteristic of agrarian societies produces a distinctive

separation of the sexes into what has been termed a public/domestic dichotomy. With the

loss of productive roles in agriculture, women become increasingly isolated into the

domestic sphere; and men’s work and activities remain in the public sphere. Being

relegated to tasks inside the domicile results in women being isolated from ‘outside’

activities, eliminating access to avenues of political power and the control of property. In

many cases, women become completely dependent economically upon their husbands.

The end result is that in agrarian societies, the status of women may reflect the extreme

of institutionalized dependency, subordination, and political immaturity. At a minimum, the

sexes are interdependent, but it is an unequal interdependence. Males control primary

economic productivity and females are relegated to secondary tasks (O’Kelly, 1980).

Another factor that has been suggested as related to the low status of women in agrarian

societies is the militaristic nature of these societies. As raiding is linked to pastoralist,

warfare is endemic to agrarian societies. The qualities of aggressiveness and bravery are

emphasized for males.

. . . the concentration of military might in the hands of powerful warlords is likely

to lead to females becoming just another form of property to be conquered and

ruled. Such control over women is a matter of male honor among many agrarian

warlord classes. This is likely to be especially true when warfare is conducted

close to home. However, when warfare takes the men away for long periods of

time . . . women are often left in control of the family holdings. Enterprising

women are sometimes able to turn this opportunity into power, privilege, and

personal autonomy for themselves. (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 161)
BALKANS-APPENDIX C C-24

When women become isolated in the domestic sphere and are viewed as a form of

property, strict controls on female sexuality arise. Premarital virginity and—for married

women, strict chastity—are extremely important in agrarian societies. Women are

expected to do nothing that would give even the slightest suggestion of sexual activity or

interest. Severe punishment is meted out to any who would violate these taboos. Spatial

separation and isolation of women within the home are common means of enforcing

these sexual mores. Although it is difficult for poorer families to enforce these rules, the

general rule seems to be ‘the less contact with non-related males, the better.’ The

wealthy resort to separate living quarters, courtyards, high walls, and elaborate veils to

protect their women from view. Among Moslems, the practice of purdah is an extreme

example of such seclusion.

Females of the wealthier classes are expected to live their who lives without

being seen by a non-kinsman. Separate female quarters are maintained in the

home. If male guests are present, females retire to their quarters or serve them

from behind screens. Errands outside the home are performed by males or lowerclass servant women. If the woman has to leave the home, she goes

accompanied by servants and covered from head to toe in a veil with only small

slits for her eyes. When railroads were introduced into India, special windowless

cars were made available for women practicing purdah. (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 161)

Upper-class women in some agrarian societies have become influential as behind-thescenes manipulators. Although they enjoy the luxurious life-style that is possible with

great wealth, it is still common for the women to be isolated and to be subordinate to the

men of their class. They have some privileges and power over those of lower classes,

both male and female. The gap between them and the men of their class is not lessened,

however (O’Kelly, 1980).

The sexual stratification systems in agrarian societies are supported by elaborate religious,

moral, and legal justifications. The religions emphasize male dominance and female

subordination, extended in some cases to beliefs that females are inferior and unclean. In

the domestic sphere, the belief systems rationalize women’s isolation and legitimate the

patriarchal family structure. The stereotypical views emphasize the physical, intellectual,

and emotional fitness of males for public roles. “Females are viewed as inherently suited

for domestic tasks and as incapable of assuming public political and economic roles . . . .

stereotypes of females present them as needing male direction, supervision, and

protection” (O’Kelly, 1980, p. 162).

Return to Table of Contents
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-1

Appendix D

The Makings of the Balkan Warrior Cult

(12,000 Years Ago to AD 476)

“The Balkans”—the “Powder-Keg of Europe”—contain ambitious, envious,

intractable, and dissatisfied peoples; such is the image engraved on many minds.

A history of that region should prove that the quarrels and the intercessions

provoked by these disputes have all too often created clouds in the European

sky and let loose some storms. Thus events must be placed in their proper

perspective for an appreciation of their origins, an understanding of their

development, and an analysis of their interests. The turbulence and

temperaments of the Balkan peoples are by no means the results of their youth

and inexperience. Although these peoples regained their independence only

during the 19th century, their existence goes far back into history . . . . Each

nation has a long and glorious history. Under Ottoman (Turkish) domination for

four centuries, these peoples retained an awareness of their past, despite

oppression, and remained faithful to their origins. (Ristelhueber, 1971, p. vii)

In defining the social character of the Balkan peoples, Toma”iÉ (1948) identified what he

referred to as the Slavic ‘predatory herdsman.’ What emerged from his analysis was a

picture of the ‘Balkan cult of the warrior,’ that he defined as authoritarian and tending

toward insurrection and violence. Although Toma”iÉ made reference to the differences

exhibited between herdsmen, farmers, and city dwellers, Mestrovic thought that any

attempt to define the source of these differences was not possible (1993).

The level of subsistence technology (tools, technology, and organization of work)

practiced by differing groups of people has been found to exert a consistent influence on

other non-materialist aspects of their society, including religion, ideology, class and family

structure, and child rearing practices. Through these broad influences, the level of

subsistence technology is also a significant factor in the development of their ‘cultural

personality.’ For example, hunting and gathering societies ordinarily do not exhibit

aggressive, hierarchical, or territorial behaviors. In contrast, tension and hostility are

endemic among herding and horticultural societies—both between the sexes and between

groups. These attributes are often exhibited through practices of raiding—both for

women and for animals (O’Kelly, 1980).

Many pastoral—or herding—societies exhibit a pattern of ‘internal warfare’ that functions

to redistribute populations in areas of scarce resources; and contemporary horticulturalists

are noted for ritualized warfare practices that are an extension of the endemic blood

feuding practices. In contrast, agricultural societies are characterized by much larger

populations that are marked by social inequality and are held together by powerful central

governments. To produce the type of citizen that is required for these societies, strict

discipline and obedience are stressed in the rearing of children. Warfare is motivated

more from the productivity and technology of the agrarian economies and competition for

territory to support the large population. Chronic warfare or a differing form than that of

pastoralists and horticulturalists often results (O’Kelly, 1980).
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-2

Based on the empirical differences that are outgrowths of the various types of subsistence

technology that are present among human populations around the world, it becomes

important to determine the subsistence base(s) upon which prehistoric, historic, and

contemporary Balkan cultures have been built. The following material extends the search

back in time to the beginnings of the continuous inhabitation of the Balkan Peninsula.

Taking this ‘deep view’ of time permits us to see the establishment and evolution of

subsistence strategies to their ultimate potential, from hunting and gathering, later

combined with fishing, to pastoral herding and small-scale farming, and to place in context

the corresponding factors of social organization and cultural elaboration. The

environmental limits are explored in order to forge an understanding of some of the

reasons why the Balkans never reached the level of development that is exhibited by

‘full-blown’ civilizations in other parts of the world. The fact that the level of subsistence

technology in the Balkans has, through many millennia, been represented predominantly by

pastoral herders and peasant farmers can inform the present ‘cultural personality’ of

Balkan peoples, shedding light on the development of the Balkan cult of the warrior.

BALKAN PREHISTORY 12,000 TO 4000 YEARS AGO:

FROM HUNTERS TO HERDERS, FORAGERS TO FARMERS

All cultures involve the interaction of countless social and environmental

variables, and to understand a particular development we must often know

something about the system at a point long before the first appearance of the

phenomenon to be explained. If we wish to comprehend the origins of the

Industrial Revolution, for example, it is necessary to analyze political, social, and

economic factors going back to the sixteenth century, at least. Thus . . . to

understand the appearance of the first domesticated plants and animals and the

first agricultural communities, we must look at developments during the several

thousands of years preceding these events. (Wenke, 1980, p. 268)

The history of human populations is fundamentally linked with a succession of climatic

events that occurred in the geological period called the Quaternary that is subdivided into

the Pleistocene and the Holocene Epochs. The Pleistocene ended, and the Holocene

began, about 10,000 years ago. The Holocene is defined geologically and climatically,

referring to the period from the end of the last period when large continental ice sheets

and glaciers covered much of the northern latitudes. The appearance of the ancestors of

modern man coincided with the Pleistocene Epoch, when much of the world was cooler

and wetter than it is today. It was a time when worldwide temperatures fluctuated

repeatedly, deviating from present conditions by an average of as much as 32oF. cooler in

the coolest periods and as much as 4-6o F. warmer in the warmest periods.

Accompanying the temperature oscillations were changes in the distribution and amount

of rain and snowfall. During the cold, wet periods, large continental ice sheets in the

northern hemisphere expanded from the polar regions into the temperate latitudes in

Europe, North America, and Asia. Sea level also dropped as much as 150 feet or more

worldwide during the coldest periods due to much of the earth’s water being literally ‘out

of circulation’ and harnessed as glacial ice. During these periods of lowered sea levels,

many land areas were enlarged by the exposure of adjacent areas presently covered by

relatively-shallow waters. In addition, many ‘bridges’ were exposed, connecting land

between offshore islands and mainland areas as well as between continents such as

between Asia and North America (Wilkes, 1992; Wenke, 1980; Milisauskas, 1978).
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-3

The Bering ‘land bridge’ between Siberia and Alaska formed a major avenue for the

migration of both animal and human populations from the Old to the New World during

several of the most recent glacial periods. From a human perspective, however, the

primary significance of these periods of expanding and retreating glaciers is related to the

effect of the changing temperatures and humidity on the physical environments—to

climate-induced changes in the distribution patterns of various plants and animals on which

humans relied (Milisauskas, 1978).

As atmospheric and oceanic temperatures fluctuated, profound changes took

place in the distribution of plant and animal species, and cold- and warmthpreferring species alternately expanded at each other’s expense. Near the

glaciers, meltwater enlarged existing lakes, while in drier areas farther removed,

increased precipitation and lower evaporation rates allowed many lakes . . . to

increase greatly in size . . . . From an archaeological perspective, the most

interesting thing about the Pleistocene is that its climatic variations correlate

rather neatly with some of the most significant stages of . . . cultural and physical

evolution. (Wenke, 1980, pp. 71-73)

The period we call ‘prehistory’ is quite simply the period before the presence of written

records. Our evidence for the events and happenings during these times long ago is, quite

literally, fragmentary. Archaeological records of ancient groups of people give a limited

amount of information. Remains of tools and weapons can tell us something about

advances in technology. The bones of dead animals can add some valuable information

about diet. Pollen records can suggest the type of environment in which people lived.

The care with which people bury their dead, and the detail with which they portray their

environment add pieces to the mosaic. With the aid of various scientific techniques, we

are able at least part of the time to attach a ‘date’ to our finds. Finally, we can ‘flesh out’

the picture by observing living groups that practice the differing food-getting strategies we

discussed in the previous chapter. All told, it becomes possible to develop a regional

picture of the distant past that can inform our understanding of the present.

Within these geologic periods, the Pleistocene and the Holocene, human tool industries

and correlated cultural stages are referred to by the term ‘Paleolithic,’ which simply

means ‘old stone age.’ Due to the conditions of preservation, the cultural remains from

the Paleolithic societies generally consist of stone tools. If we judge from modern food

gathering and hunting societies, the stone tools are only a relatively-small portion of the

range of tool types used. Wood and bone do not preserve as well; their absence in sites,

either as tools or debris, does not necessarily say that they were not used extensively

(Milisauskas, 1978).

The Paleolithic is . . . still applicable to some groups in New Guinea, Australia,

and other places where stone tools are commonly used and metal implements are

unknown. The terms Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic are generally thought

of as corresponding to successive periods during the Pleistocene when

techniques of stone-tool manufacture were increasing in efficiency, but it is

difficult to attach exact dates to these periods because these technological

changes took place in different places at different times . . . . The term Mesolithic

(“Middle Stone Age”) is also somewhat sloppily used, but generally is taken to

mean the period between the end of the last glacial period (ca. 8000 B.C.) [about

10,000 years ago] and the beginnings of agriculture, which occurred at different

times in different places . . . . The term Neolithic (or “New Stone Age”) refers to
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-4

the period from the beginnings of agriculture to the widespread use of metal

tools—again a time span that varied from area to area. (Wenke, 1980, p. 76)

In the central Mediterranean and southeast Europe at the end of the glacial period, there

was no sharp change either in environment or in human tool industries. Elsewhere in

Europe, a clearer delineation from the Upper Paleolithic (the end of the Old Stone Age)

through the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) to the Neolithic (New Stone Age) is possible.

The transition represented a change from the Paleolithic hunting and gathering economy

and tool kit to a more generalized Mesolithic economy and tool kit. Where the Paleolithic

economy was based on migratory animals that traveled in large herds, the Mesolithic

economy involved the exploitation of solitary animals, an increasingly diverse inventory of

animals, and the addition of fishing and woodworking, as well as the use of the bow and

arrow in some regions. The Neolithic coincides with the domestication of plants and

animals, stones tools used for grinding grain, and the development of pottery (Milisauskas,

1978).

The shift from the food collection strategies of the Paleolithic hunters and gatherers to

the food production strategies of the Neolithic farmers represented a revolutionary

approach to subsistence. It enabled people to secure greater and more predictable

concentrations of food from more restricted areas of land by reliance on the domestication

of animals and plants and the practice of herding animals and/or of farming.

Domestication is the end product of a series of gradually intensifying relationships

between humans and the plants and animals in their environments. This change in

subsistence economy went hand-in-hand with the development of social systems that

would permit larger groupings of people to remain in more permanent settlements over

longer periods of time. Accompanying this change in subsistence economy was a change

in artifact components, including the first use of pottery and the widespread manufacture

and use of milling stones for grinding grain (Phillips, 1980; Wenke, 1980).

Prior to examining the evidence of settlement in the Balkans, a note is in order regarding

dates. For the ease of the reader, I have presented dates in terms of ‘years ago.’ Some

of the quoted passages, however, refer to ‘BC,’ meaning ‘before Christ.’ To convert BC

dates to ‘years ago,’ I have added 2000 years to the BC dates. Dates that are shown as

‘AD,’ meaning anno domini, ‘in the year of our Lord,’ are converted to ‘years ago; by

subtracting the date from the year 2000. Appendix B contains detailed descriptions of the

various archaeological sites upon which our understanding of Balkan prehistory has been

formed.

Food Gatherers, Hunters, and Fishers in the Balkans:

12,000 to 6500 Years Ago

The recovered archaeological evidence for much of human prehistory strongly suggests

reliance on hunting. Data for fishing and gathering are poor, primarily because those

activities are less likely to leave a permanent record. Near the end of the Upper

Paleolithic, the exploitation of water resources becomes apparent, including both fishing

and fowling. Contemporary hunters and gatherers provide a model for understanding

prehistoric groups. Common practices of cooperation, food sharing, and a division of labor

along lines of age and sex ensure the survival of the group throughout what may be

prolonged periods of isolation. For example, women and children often stay near a base
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-5

camp and gather available plant foods and materials. Men often travel at some distance

from base camp and are gone for longer periods of time, carrying some shared plant

foods, gathering as they go, and sharing preliminary products from the hunt. The major

portion of any meat is divided and shared with the remaining families left at the base camp

(Milisauskas, 1978).

Most archaeological sites reflecting human settlement do not reflect continuous

occupation because of the lifestyle of hunters and gatherers. The sites for the most part

reflect seasonal occupations when animal herds were present in the area or when food

materials were available, depending on the prehistoric distribution, location, type, and

seasonality of resources. If there is no evidence that a site has been previously disturbed

by human, animal, or geological activity, artifacts found in archaeological sites are usually

presumed to be most recent on the surface or in upper levels of a site and older the more

deeply they are deposited. As a result, it is often possible to determine an approximate

age for a deposit based simply on the facts of deposition even if there are no materials

available upon which to perform one of the known absolute dating techniques

(Milisauskas, 1978).

Most of the Upper Paleolithic sites in the Balkans reflect discontinuous occupation

because the people were nomadic hunters and gatherers. The sites were occupied

seasonally when animal herds were in the vicinity. The settlement patterns for Upper

Paleolithic hunters and gatherers varied depending on the seasonality, type, location, and

distribution of their food sources. As was the case during the Upper Paleolithic, the more

recent Mesolithic settlement pattern was based primarily on the seasonal availability of

resources. Because the animals that were hunted were largely solitary animals, it is likely

that the human groups in the Mesolithic were smaller. At favorable times of the year,

they might have been able to aggregate into larger subsistence units; but at other times,

the primary subsistence unit would be perhaps one to two families (Phillips, 1980;

Milisauskas, 1978).

A definite settlement pattern can be deduced from the location of the archaeological sites

in eastern Europe during the transition from the Mesolithic food gathering economies

(9000—6500 years ago) to the food producing economies of the Neolithic. The

Mesolithic settlements were located beside lakes and along rivers, either on the sandy

alluvial floodplains, on the banks of the rivers, or on terraces and the edges of high

plateaus overlooking the rivers. Some sites have been found in mountain areas, but

usually only in the foothills. None of the sites from this time period have been found on

the broad plains of eastern Europe or the large alluvial plains of the southern tributaries of

the Danube, however, presumably because these areas were probably covered with open

steppe-like grassland with very few trees. More than likely, game animals avoided these

areas as well. These open plains areas continued to be avoided, however, in the later time

periods when the areas were covered by light woodland with rich undergrowth that was

highly suitable for the animals that were being hunted (Milisauskas, 1978; Tringham,

1971).

The avoidance of the broad plains by food gatherers of the Mesolithic and early Neolithic

may have been due to the lack of available water sources and a tendency to favor rich

sources of food that congregate in the areas near rivers and lakes where several

environmental zones converge:
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-6

. . . the margins and not the centres of microecological zones are the most

profitable for settlements with an economy based on hunting and gathering,

whereas the reverse would seem to be the case for settlements based on

agriculture and stockbreeding. (Tringham, 1978, p. 90)

It is important to understand the ‘patchiness’ of human subsistence patterns. Hunting and

gathering groups that were well adapted to their way of life probably would not have

attempted to change in the absence of some disturbance in the environment or in the

demographic structure of the region. If this balance were to be upset by the movement of

farmers into their area, hunters and gatherers could have been pressured either to change

their subsistence strategy or to move into new areas. Whatever the case may be, a very

different settlement pattern developed with the advent of the domestication of plants and

animals; and with it came significant changes in human behavior and values (Milisauskas,

1978; Tringham, 1971).

The Neolithic ‘Revolution’

The Neolithic was the period heralding the domestication of plants and animals and the

subsequent shift to farming and herding economies as reflected in particular artifacts

associated with archaeological sites. Both the artifacts and the economy represented a

change from earlier periods, including the first use of pottery, the widespread manufacture

and use of hand mills for grinding grains, and increasing frequency of ground stone axes.

The economic changes included transitions from hunting and gathering as the main form

of subsistence to a farming economy involving the cultivation of cereal crops and/or the

herding of domesticated animals. Numerous stages characterize this transition, consisting

of a series of gradually-intensifying man-land relationships (Phillips, 1980).

The basic requirement for systems permitting greater densities of population,

larger aggregations, more permanent settlements, more complex and dynamic

technologies and more elaborate social systems with structured hierarchies and

the kind of inequalities of wealth, by and through which civilization itself

emerged, was a more effective basis of subsistence, one capable . . . of producing

greater and more assured concentrations of food from more restricted areas of

land. The best way of achieving this was through the domestication of animals

and plants and the practice of farming. In every part of the world farming of

some kind has preceded and formed so to speak the platform on which

civilizations have had to build. (Clark, 1977, p. 41)

The transformation from food gathering to food production was a process of crucial

significance to humans, hence the name ‘Neolithic Revolution,’ a concept comparable in

importance with the origin of culture itself as a uniquely human adaptation, with the

subsequent development of ‘civilization,’ and with the ‘Industrial’ and ‘Scientific

Revolutions.’ Before the Neolithic Revolution, communities remained small and mobile,

geared to the seasonality of the plants upon which they relied and the seasonal

movements of animals. There was commonly a process of fission-fusion: on an annual

basis the groups would split into small hunting bands, to regroup at another point at their

seasonal camps. Established hunter-gatherer economies—both in the past and in some

parts of the world until quite recently—were usually well adapted to their environments.

Sufficient space and a degree of environmental stability were the necessary factors to

provide a state of equilibrium.
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-7

In the distant past two principal factors could upset that equilibrium and cause

rapid changes: increase in population size and climatic change affecting the

natural habitat. The first could be controlled by social mechanisms but the only

responses to the second were either movement away from the affected region or

adaptation. The period following the end of the Ice Age was a time of

environmental readjustment for much of the world and in consequence huntergatherer communities were constantly having to move or to modify their

behaviour to meet the changing conditions. One of the areas in which highly

significant adaptation took place was the Middle East. (Cunliffe, 1988, p. 5)

The earliest evidence worldwide for man’s domestication and cultivation of plants comes

from Southwest Asia, including parts of modern Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, approximately

12,000 years ago, spreading somewhat later to the Balkan Peninsula and to other parts of

the world. Wheat, barley, lentils, peas, carrots, figs, almonds, pistachios, dates, and grapes

were first cultivated in this region. The adjacent Mediterranean areas were home to the

first cultivation of oats, cabbage, lettuce, beets, and asparagus (Cohen, & Eames, 1982).

Among the earliest recognizable changes or shifts in adaptive strategies, was the selection

of certain local animals for domestication. In archaeological sites, there is evidence of a

gradual shift in the frequency of bones from wild animals to herd animals like goats and

sheep. At some sites, the remains of large numbers of very young sheep are present,

suggesting the development of some sort of deliberate control over the composition of the

flock through seasonal culling (Cunliffe, 1988). Evidence of the first domestication of

animals in the area where Europe and Asia meet, which is known as the ‘Fertile

Crescent,’ includes:

sheep (11,000 years ago, Iraq),

goats (9500 years ago, Iran),

pigs (9000 years ago, Turkey), and

cattle (7500 years ago, Greece, Anatolia, and Turkey).

The transition from hunting and foraging to food production did not occur overnight. In

the Middle East, hunting, fishing, and gathering appear to have been combined with

harvesting the wild prototypes of cultivated cereals such as barley in the Middle East.

Herding of sheep and goats appear to have preceded domestication of pigs and cattle, and

the latter are more firmly identified with sedentary farming. By 10,000 years ago in the

Middle East, there is reasonable evidence to suggest a well-developed shift toward the

domestication of animals and plants. In addition to the animal remains, other changes

have been noted, including the appearance of stones for grinding grain, suggesting that

forms of cereal grains that grew wild in the hills were being selectively collected for food.

It was unlikely at that time that there was any conscious effort to domesticate these

grains, however.

It was only a matter of time before wild grain brought back to the home site and

accidentally spilled was seen to germinate and grow. The next step—the

deliberate sowing of grain in tended plots protected from animals—must have

followed soon. Man had now become a cultivator. (Cunliffe, 1988, p. 6)

The change from food collecting to food producing was accompanied by other significant

changes, including protection of crops from predators and storage of the grain from

autumn until spring. These changes led to a more sedentary way of life, and the shifting
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-8

seasonal camps eventually gave way to permanent villages. The increasingly sedentary

way of life also fostered changes in the ‘tool kits.’ Hunters and gatherers rarely possess

items in which to store food because it is simply too great a burden to carry foodstuffs

from one locale to another. It is easier to ‘graze as you go.’ Once the shift was made to

cultivating crops, however, storage becomes an important consideration—a fact that is

obvious in the archaeological remains due to the increasing presence of ceramic pots for

storage of grain and stone bowls in which cereal grains are ground into flour.

By 8100 years ago in western Turkey, a large settlement consisting of a mass of

rectangular-roomed houses, shrines, and ornaments depicting cattle, was based on fully

domesticated cattle and cereal grains, including a hybrid form of wheat. In all likelihood,

this region (referred to as Anatolia) is the likely source from which knowledge of food

production spread to the Balkan Peninsula and, from there, eventually to the rest of

Europe (Cunliffe, 1988).

Food Producers, Farmers, and Herders in the Balkans:

9000 to 4500 Years Ago

As has been noted, following the end of the glacial period in Europe (9000—6500 years

ago), the hunters and gatherers apparently avoided settling in the large alluvial plains of

the southern tributaries of the Danube and in the fertile basins and plateaus of Europe

north of the Danube. The ‘new’ food producers, however, occupied precisely the areas

that the hunters and gatherers avoided (Phillips, 1980).

The earliest of the known settlements of these early food producers on the southeast edge

of Europe, are in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Greece, dating to 7600—6500 years ago. The

Mesolithic food gatherers in Europe were contemporaneous with the first food producing

Early Neolithic groups. Traditionally, sites that contain stone artifacts without any

evidence of ceramics have been classified as Mesolithic. It is now considered possible,

however, that some of the ‘Mesolithic’ sites may have been those of farmers, possibly

representing either the hunting camps of agriculturalists or sites representing some other

activity where no pottery was used. These sites are located both in the uplands and the

lowlands. Their aspect to streams and rivers cannot be used to differentiate hunters and

gatherers from farmers because they both obviously used water for drinking, fishing, and

possibly for transportation. (Milisauskas, 1978; Tringham, 1971).

There is a fundamental difference between one’s relationship to land as a forager versus

as a food producer. It is important for foragers to have ready access to the ‘fruits of the

land’ wherever they may be found. A trait that marks hunters and gatherers is the lack of

any concept of ownership. As a result, hunters and gatherers do not restrict one another

from resources, including water. Those resources are available for all to use. Not only

do foragers not restrict others from resources, many hunting and gathering groups have

rather elaborate food sharing networks which serve to spread scarce resources quite

broadly. Agriculturalists, on the other hand, place a premium on land because it is the

basis of their subsistence. Notions of territoriality and of excluding others from pieces of

land become quite marked among farmers. This fact alone translates into a number of

differences in the way farmers are organized and they way they behave toward others.

Because the early food producers settled in areas not regularly used by foragers, the two

populations seem to have successfully co-existed in the same general environment by
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-9

using different strategies for obtaining their food. This pattern of co-utilization of the

environment has for the most part extended to the present in the various areas of the

former Yugoslavia (Milisauskas, 1978; Tringham, 1971).

Cave sites along the Adriatic Coast suggest that the apparent absence of a fully

developed food producing economy was due, at least in part, to the geography of the

region. The karst topography—an irregular limestone region with sinks, underground

streams, and caverns—and the lack of arable land limits populations in this area to the

present time. There is no reason to believe that it would have had a lesser effect in

prehistoric times. It simply was not a region in which large-scale agriculture could be

practiced.

Early Neolithic villages in southern Yugoslavia and adjacent parts of Greece and Bulgaria

were located near rivers or lakes, providing easy access to water and making it possible to

exploit rich alluvial soils. Alternately, these farming villages in southeastern Europe were

located on the terraces in river valleys. Only rarely were they located in the uplands.

Each settlement had its own farming territory, where they practiced some form of crop

rotation to prevent exhaustion of the soils. These permanent villages were not the only

types of settlements used by the Early Neolithic farmers in southeastern Europe,

however. Cultural material associated with farming is also found in some caves, however,

possibly indicating a seasonally shifting subsistence patterns, such as herding (Milisauskas,

1978).

Archaeologists generally associate the Early Neolithic with the first ‘tribal societies’ in

Europe. This type of social organization represents a more complex organizational pattern

than does the ‘band level’ of social organization that predominated in Paleolithic and

Mesolithic societies (refer to the “Political Organization” descriptions in Table 2 and the

discussions in the previous chapter for a brief comparison of bands and tribes). Tribes are

also distinguished from bands by greater population densities, increased opportunities for

social contact with those outside the tribe, and more types of coordinated activities

(Milisauskis, 1978; Service, 1971).

For an archaeologist, evidence of tribal organization would consist of arrays of

settlements, cemeteries, camps, and work sites, with varying time depths. Their

integration, based on similar tools and technology, house types, and other items of

materials culture, eventually could be viewed as a system of groups and communities.

Like bands, tribes do not have a centralized political or economic organization. The

communities, however, while relatively small—consisting of up to 250 people—are still

larger than those found among hunting and gathering bands. In tribes, various groups play

a role both in social relations and as landholding units. Land is usually controlled by a

large group of people who believe themselves to be related to a common ancestor, even if

individual families work their own small plots. A number of voluntary, task-related

associations serve to bring people together for various economic, social, military, and ritual

activities—all of which take on added significance with respect to the annual cycle of life

as an agriculturalist (Milisauskas, 1978).

There is some evidence that in comparison with Paleolithic and Mesolithic hunting and

gathering bands, Neolithic agriculturalists may have had:

greater population densities,
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-10

more complex sociopolitical organization,

corporate (land-owning) agricultural enterprises,

herding of domesticated animals (and the accompanying raiding for livestock), and

additional types of associations that cut across residential units, such as warrior

societies.

There is evidence of networks of exchange or trade involving hundreds of small

independent but interconnected sociopolitical units. Primitive trade occurring beyond that

between relatives functions as a mechanism for extending social relationships, friendships,

and peaceful ties among communities, tribes, or individuals. Evidence from the Early

Neolithic of exchange networks comes from various nonperishable, exotic materials (not

available locally) such as stone, flint, shells, obsidian, and ceramics. There is also

evidence to suggest that status differences existed in Early Neolithic communities,

including various artifacts made of exotic raw materials found in association with burials

that may reflect the social roles and status of the individual with whom they are buried. In

particular, it appears that the older males held the highest status and were buried with

items which were probably valued as prestige items (Milisauskas, 1978).

In the former Yugoslavia, the Middle Neolithic began around 7190 years ago and

extended to approximately 7050 years ago. No significant differences in the types of

plants and animals exploited are observed when comparing Middle Neolithic farming

societies with their Early Neolithic predecessors in most areas of Europe. Barley,

however, seems to have increased in importance, possibly due to poorer soils, those

exhausted by long exploitation, or because it is hardier than wheat. Some new techniques

for land exploitation associated with the expansion of farming societies were developed in

the Middle Neolithic. They include the first use of the simple plow with oxen as draft

animals. During the Middle Neolithic, the first extensive use of metal artifacts also

occurred, suggesting the possibility that these ‘farmers’ were actually ‘advanced’

horticultural gardeners. Many of the tools suggest wood-working activities that might be

indicative of felling trees to prepare gardens. Copper artifacts have been found from the

Mediterranean and southeastern Europe as well as from western, central and eastern

Europe. The use of copper is associated with the appearance of mines and mining

techniques, including the first large-scale mining of flint (Milisauskas, 1978; Clark, 1977).

For the first time in S.E. Europe . . . with the exception of the Bug and Dniester

valleys, there were manufactured in this period large bone and antler artefacts,

including perforated antlers with a wide cutting edge, which may have acted as

‘hoes’ for digging earth and roots; they may also have been used to crush and

chop soft vegetable matter or even meat. In addition, it is interesting to note the

perforated antlers with pointed ends which have been interpreted as ‘picks’ and

the longbones with narrow sharp transverse edges which have been interpreted

as ‘chisels’. (Tringham, 1971, p.112)

A large variety of microenvironments seem to be involved in the initial expansion of

agriculturalists from the south Balkans into temperate Europe. In the area as a whole,

there was a general increase in humidity and a decrease in annual sunshine as one moved

north. The middle Danube valley in the northeast part of Yugoslavia was a transition zone

between the drier, sunnier south and the cooler, wetter regions in the north. The economy

and material culture of the Early and Middle Neolithic cultures in this area from 7650—
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-11

5800 years ago reflect a response to these qualitative changes in the natural environment.

These included a change from the typical mud-brick houses with flat roofs typical of the

Middle East to houses constructed with wooden posts, walls of clay and straw, and gabled

roofs suited to the more densely wooded and rainy environment (Tringham, 1971).

The settlement patterns of the Middle Neolithic cultures were more complex than those

that represented Early Neolithic cultures. Sites vary in size and location; and judging by

the amount of material recovered, the settlements appear to have supported denser

populations.

Site locations, the presence of fortifications, and weapons suggests that there

was more warfare occurring in the Middle Neolithic than during the Early

Neolithic. The cause of increased warfare might have been increasing

competition among various communities over land and other resources.

(Milisauskas, 1978, p. 177)

Pottery reflects the most distinctive—or at least the most obvious—change in the material

culture during the transition from Early to Middle Neolithic cultures in southeast Europe.

In general, the Middle Neolithic settlements had three categories of pottery: a coarse

ware; a thick, finer ware decorated with incised lines; and a fine, thin ware often fired

under controlled conditions to a black or dark grey color. Somewhat less frequently, the

latter form was covered with a red slip that was polished but otherwise undecorated.

Generally, the Middle Neolithic assemblages in southeast Europe contain increased

quantities of artifacts made with durable materials such as antler, bone, and stone; but

they represent the same categories of implements as were manufactured in the Early

Neolithic settlements (Tringham, 1971).

Polished stone artifacts were manufactured in large quantities on all sites, and chipped

stone blades were also made in increasing quantities. Blades made of obsidian occur

frequently in northern Yugoslavia and southern Hungary, indicative of contact with, and

either direct or indirect exchange with, central European sources of obsidian. Contact

with the south and west is reflected by the presence of Mediterranean shells, often

perforated as bracelets, amulets, and beads. An additional technological change from the

Early to the Middle Neolithic in the Balkans involved an increase in the manufacture of

clay figurines, representing both animal and human forms. House forms changed little in

the Middle Neolithic, continuing as small rectangular one-roomed structures (Tringham,

1971).

While there was considerable cultural homogeneity among farming societies in Europe

during the Early Neolithic, the Middle Neolithic, in contrast, reflects a period of increasing

cultural diversity and complexity. At some sites such as the third Koros culture settlement

at Lepenski Vir, the architecture of the houses as well as the flint tools differed from the

earlier settlements. There is evidence of some continued hunting and fishing, however,

with domesticated species representing about three quarters of the bone recovered at the

site. Other sites in the Balkans show considerable similarity from one occupation level to

the next, with red deer and wild cattle outnumbering the domesticated cattle bones. Some

wheat grains, axes, querns and sickle blades are identified from these sites. Further to the

west, in coastal Yugoslavia, the first pottery found in cave sites is overlying non-pottery

levels; and the type of stone tools is unchanged from one level to the next. Other

evidence suggests that plant domestication was acquired later than pottery (Phillips, 1980;

Milisauskas, 1978).
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-12

The various changes that are archaeologically observable during the Middle Neolithic are

associated with increases in social and political complexity, including increasing status

differences. It is probable that the level of social and political organization was that of the

‘chiefdom,’ or ranked society, that has greater sociopolitical complexity than a tribal

society. Ranked societies are distinguished especially by the presence of centers at which

economic, social, and religious activities are coordinated. In chiefdoms, although social

and political relations remain kinship based, status differentiation becomes more

prominent, as reflected in differences in dress, wearing of ornamentation, and possession

of more material goods—especially of nonlocal or exotic materials. The size, location, or

construction method of houses can also reveal status differences. Status positions may

have been inherited (Phillips, 1980; Milisauskas, 1978).

Sites in Hungary contain burials dating to the Middle Neolithic. The presence of flint

tools, weapons, animal bones, and copper tools in association with male burials indicate

that fighting, hunting, and trading were male activities. Products made of non-local raw

materials, such as copper and obsidian, associated in burials with males suggested male

control of exchange activities. Pottery is found with female remains, as are certain

ornaments such as beads. No domesticated or wild animals are associated with female

burials, suggesting that it was the male’s task to perform the subsistence activities

involving animals (Milisauskas, 1978)

In the Middle Neolithic, the location of sites, and the presence of fortifications and

weapons suggest that there was more warfare than occurred during the Early Neolithic,

possibly due to increasing competition among various communities over land and other

resources. Evidence suggesting an increase in warfare includes an increase in the

numbers of projectile points and battle axes, although it may be that this may simply

reflect greater settlement stability (Milisauskas, 1978).

In the Balkan Neolithic, two basic patterns emerge. The first involves the gradual loss of

some of the more exotic products such as painted pottery moving from south to north on

the Peninsula. The second involves high numbers of domesticated animals on sites that

show no previous occupation by hunters and gatherers, and conversely, lower numbers on

sites previously occupied by hunters and gatherers (Phillips, 1980; Tringham, 1971).

We can observe changes in the economy, society, politics, and rituals. The

following suggested variables probably were among those involved in these

changes: (a) technological advances, (b) demographic variations, (c)

competition for resources, (d) increase in warfare, and (e) change in subsistence

strategies and exchange networks. These suggested sources of change are

interrelated, and there is no single causal factor responsible for the greater

socioeconomic complexity in Europe during the Middle Neolithic. (Milisauskas,

1978, p. 123)

By the beginning of the Late Neolithic, most of Europe was occupied by farmers.

Hunters and gatherers remained, for the most part, in peripheral areas that were not

suited to agriculture. Using archaeological material, it is difficult in some cases to

separate the Late Neolithic from the Middle Neolithic. The differentiation is mainly based

on variation in pottery styles as well as in burial practices and settlement systems. The

Late Neolithic began at different times in various regions in Europe and spanned the last

millennium of the Neolithic. In southeast Europe, the Late Neolithic, represented in

Yugoslavia by the Vinca-Plocnik culture, spanned the period from about 6450 to 5650
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-13

years ago. In Bulgaria, Romania, Moldavia, and Ukraine, the Gumelnitsa culture spanned

the period from about 6450 to 5350 years ago. Further north, in central and eastern

Europe, Late Neolithic cultural horizons span the time period from about 5000 to 3800

years ago (Milisauskas, 1978).

. . . in the Late Neolithic stylistic differences among regions and among individual

communities can be seen more frequently. The occupation of specific territories

by specific social groups may have become important at this time, and different

artifact styles may have been created to identify each group and its territory. To

some archaeologists, the onset of the Late Neolithic coincided with large-scale

movements of ethnic groups in Europe . . . [including] hypothesized migrations

of pastoral groups into central, western, and northern Europe. Many scholars . . .

have maintained that the Late Neolithic saw not only the influx of pastoralists

from the steppe regions of the southern Ukraine but also the appearance of the

Indo-European speaking peoples in various parts of Europe. (Milisauskas, 1978,

p. 183)

In the Late Neolithic, nomadic communities of merchants, warriors, or prospectors for

metals have been suggested as responsible for a widespread cultural manifestation to the

west of the Balkan Peninsula in the Mediterranean, western, and central areas of Europe.

As a result, some have suggested that non-pastoral nomadic groups like the Gypsies, who

practiced some economic or technological specialization, may have existed in Europe

during the Late Neolithic from about 5600 to about 4500 years ago. It has often been

suggested that the transition to the Late Neolithic was marked by the appearance of

pastoral peoples, based on an assumption that nomadic pastoralism and sedentary

agriculture are two mutually-exclusive subsistence strategies. Although we know that

pastoralism involves livestock rearing and spatial mobility to a certain extent, it is possible

that Late Neolithic peoples may have inhabited villages part of the year and cultivated

crops as well as practicing pastoralism. These roles may have represented a type of

occupational specialization (Milisauskas, 1978).

In eastern and southeastern Europe, data on Late Neolithic structures include one site in

Romania of a settlement of scattered houses constructed of wooden-post frameworks,

with walls plastered with clay. Most of the houses had one square hearth. Inside the

house, there were artifacts such as clay loom weights, clay spindle whorls, querns, flint,

and bone tools. The village was destroyed by fire. Social and political organization

appears to differ little from that represented in the Middle Neolithic, with the exception of

the question of the degree of nomadic pastoralism present (Milisauskas, 1978).

Large populations at the end of the Neolithic are suggested for some parts of Europe. In

southeast Europe, the size of settlements and the presence of several hundred tombs in a

single cemetery support this interpretation. In other parts of Europe, large ramparts and

ditch constructions and stone-built structures such as Stonehenge in Britain would have

required a considerable amount of man hours for their completion. Throughout Europe

generally, there are massive enclosures and defenses of stone-built or rock-cut tombs, or

stone-built dwellings or ritual structures, all suggesting locally high densities of population.

There is also some evidence for inegalitarian societies. In some areas of southeastern

Europe in the Late Neolithic, several hundred tombs have been found in a single

cemetery, giving the definite impression of larger communities. The occurrence of

massive enclosures and defense works throughout Europe generally suggest locally high

densities of population. By the end of the Neolithic in southeast Europe, a number of
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-14

factors suggest large populations, including both the size of settlements and the presence

of a number of tombs in a single cemetery (Phillips, 1980; Milisauskas, 1978).

Together with the evidence for larger populations, there is some evidence in the

Late Neolithic for inegalitarian societies. The actual construction of massive

earth or stone monuments might be an indication of an inegalitarian society. On

a more individual scale . . . variety in gravegoods is often regarded as an

indication of variety in the social standing of individuals . . . . It seems likely that

the larger populations of the Late Neolithic permitted more specialization, that

their density forced more complexity of social structure, and these complexities

fuelled the demand for high-value goods to indicate their status. (Milisauskas,

1978, pp. 186-187)

After the initial advance of the earliest agriculturalists into southeast Europe, there seems

to have been very little influence from outside central and southeast Europe on the

subsequent development of their culture. In general, the cultural patterns that were

characterized by similarities in means of subsistence, settlement and house types, and

material culture continued from the Early and Middle into the Late Neolithic. Cultures, or

‘subcultures’ identified in the Late Neolithic reflected regional variations in the pottery

styles that were present in the earlier Neolithic and that became more apparent and

crystallized in the later Neolithic. Apart from pottery, the cultural changes of the Late

Neolithic cultures were of degree rather than kind (Tringham, 1971).

In many areas during this period, especially in southeast Europe, there was an

increase in the population (reflected in an increase in the size, number and

density of settlements). In addition, there was an increase in the range of

specialised artefacts [sic] which were manufactured in a great variety of materials,

including metal. It is probable that these developments reflect a greater stability

and permanence of settlements and the exploitation of a larger variety of

resources for food and raw materials. It is assumed . . . that there was an

improvement in the techniques associated with the cultivation of grain and

rearing of domesticated animals. There were . . . developments in the techniques

associated with the manufacture of pottery, in particular in its firing. It is

possible that this latter process led to the exploitation of copper resources.

Larger and more solid houses were constructed, and frequently these formed

substantial villages with evidence of deliberate planning and delimitation by

various means. The area included within the sphere of the south-east European

agricultural settlements, or at least within their influence, expanded in an easterly

direction to include the drier loess plains north of the Black Sea along the

Dneiper, southern Bug and lower Dniester rivers. (Tringham, 1978, pp. 146, 148)

In the West Balkans during the Late Neolithic, there is evidence of a significant increase

in hunting activities and either an increase in fishing activities or a change in methods.

Domestic animals still predominated, however, with cattle remaining the most important

domesticated species. Sheep, goats, and pigs were also kept. The Late Neolithic

settlements of the Vardar basin in Macedonia appear to have been connected culturally to

the settlements further south in Greek Macedonia and Thessaly (Tringham, 1971).

Accompanying the developments in pottery-making during the Neolithic was an advance

in the use of copper. In southeastern Europe, native copper and copper ore-bearing rocks

have a limited distribution, occurring in Romania, the Danube Gorges area, and the Balkan

Mountains of Bulgaria. The earliest copper artifacts in eastern Europe found in sites on

the Lower Danube in Romania are small beads of native copper that were most likely
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-15

cold-hammered or annealed from native copper. Similar artifacts occur with increasing

frequency in nearly contemporaneous sites in the former Yugoslavia near the Danube

Gorges. The archaeological evidence points to southeast Europe, rather than the Aegean,

as the area where large-scale melting and casting of copper objects was first developed.

The application and fixing of graphite-paint used in the manufacture and decoration of

pottery requires very exacting skills and firing conditions to reach the required

temperatures—temperatures that were also needed for metallurgy. These techniques

were present for pottery making at sites in the Lower Danube Basin before they were

ever applied to metallurgy. It appears that the first products of metallurgy played a

significant role in the status distinctions that were present in the Balkans because cast

copper objects were rare, occurring almost exclusively in graves, except for those sites in

which copper was being smelt (Tringham,1971).

The First Civilization in Southeast Europe (c. 5000 Years Ago)

The first civilisations arose in the fertile alluvial basins of the major rivers which

water the otherwise arid plains of southern Asia, draining from the mountain

fringes where agriculture first began . . . . These more complex societies were the

natural outcome of the increasing organisation needed to make use of these

problematic, but potentially highly fertile, lowland environments. To realise this

potential, two things were necessary: a continuous flow of raw materials from

neighbouring uplands to supply the stoneless, metalless and largely treeless

plains, and a system of irrigation capable of spreading the copious floodwaters

of the rivers over the thirsty lands nearby. As farming communities spread from

the hilly flanks to the open plains and alluvial valleys, similar hierarchicallyorganised societies sprang up independently, but for similar reasons—in the

basins of the Tigris-Euphrates, the Nile, the Huang-Ho and the Indus. These

societies had many features in common: the development of cities, writing, large

public buildings, and the political apparatus of the state. They all stemmed from

the need to organise local production and long-distance trade, and resulted from

the emergence of regional centres where local produce was gathered and

exchanged, trading expeditions organised, and irrigation systems planned . . . .

The centralised control required by these functions made necessary a specialised

legal system and a standing army: they created a permanent bureaucracy, and

the first division of society into classes. (Barraclough, 1978, p. 52)

At a minimum, ‘civilizations’ are associated a complex of practices that include food

production through the domestication of plants and animals, accompanied by a greater

concentration of human populations in urban centers.

One of the most significant aspects of the origins of agriculture is that the

correspondence between agriculture and the towns, cities, and other cultural

elaborations we call civilization is absolute. All civilizations have been based on

the cultivation of one or more of just six plant species: wheat, barley, millet, rice,

maize, and potatoes (Wenke, 1980, p. 266)

While food-producing communities were beginning to spread over northern and western

Europe, the emergence of the first European civilization was well underway in the

Aegean, due in large part to the intensification of trade in raw materials. In addition to

basic commodities, gold, silver, copper, tin and gemstones were in demand; and a complex

of reciprocal exchange developed between various Mediterranean regions including the
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-16

Aegean Islands at the extreme southern extremity of the Balkan Peninsula, and Egypt,

and the North African coast across the Mediterranean (Cunliffe, 1988).

Another significant feature that has been associated with the shift to ‘civilization’ was the

formation of states, involving the increasing centralization of control over populations

through non-kin based governmental bureaucracies than by kin-based associations.

Civilization implies not only the development of urban concentrations of populations but

also the formation of states. The high population density characteristic with the

independent rise of civilizations in parts of both the Old and New Worlds approximately

5000 years ago was part of a complex of traits. This complex included a complex division

of labor supporting full-time nonagricultural specialists, social stratification, full-time

government officials, extensive trade, a full-time army, a national religion frequently tied to

the ideology of state power, and a high development of the arts as well as science (Alland,

1981)

The most impressive fact, historically speaking, about the east Balkan peasants,

apart from their early practice of metallurgy was their stagnation, something

thrown into sharper relief with every backward extension of the date at which

they began to work copper. By contrast the decisive advance towards the first

civilization in Europe was made in Crete and peninsular Greece, territories

comparatively deficient in copper resources and relatively late in adopting

metallurgy. (Clark, 1977, p. 153)

A Trail of Continuity in the Balkans from Prehistory to the

Beginning of the ‘Dark Ages’ (10,000 Years Ago to AD 476)

As was discussed in more detail in Appendix B, there is continuous prehistoric settlement

of the Balkans revealed by archaeological evidence of:

Paleolithic hunters and gatherers who exploited the mountains valleys, and interior plains

of today’s Yugoslavia from about 200,000 to 10,500 years ago;

Mesolithic peoples (10,500 to 8000 years ago) whose toolkit was expanded, giving

evidence of fishing and woodworking; and

Neolithic farmers and herders (8000 to 4800 years ago) who had domesticated both plants

and animals.

Beginning about 6000 years ago, some of Yugoslavia’s inhabitants were planting cereal

grains, raising livestock, fishing, hunting, weaving simple textiles, building houses of wood

or mud, and making coarse pottery and implements. By about 5000 years ago, some of

these ancient Balkan people were working with pure copper. The Bronze Age in the

Balkans (about 4800—2700 years ago), when copper and tin were combined in a more

complex technology that made tools more durable, led to population growth, to an increase

in the number of settlements, and to craftsmen who were casting ornaments, tools, and

weapons. After about 3400 years ago, locally mined gold and silver were being worked

by metalsmiths, horses and chariots were common, and trade routes stretched from the

Aegean to northern Europe (Curtis, 1992).

Civilization is marked by many beginnings: The first appearance of elaborate recordkeeping and writing systems, the centralization of leadership into political rather than

familial institutions, the concentration of wealth and power, and increasing technological
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-17

and economic specialization. Of interest is the observation by one historian that the birth

of civilization was also marked by the first appearance of the fermentation of agricultural

products into beer and wine—a correlation which some might call ‘spurious.’ Although

the indigenous Balkan people had knowledge of domestication of plants and animals at an

early time, they did not develop ‘civilizations’ similar to those in Greece or in the Fertile

Crescent of the eastern Mediterranean, Syria, and Iraq (Barraclough, 1978).

Due to geographic constraints including mountains, poor soils, and narrow valleys, the

ability of the Balkan people to develop some of the more complex aspects of ‘civilization’

was limited. As a result, history shows that the people of the Balkans were relegated to

life as farmers and herders and were repeatedly subject to the control of outsiders.

Despite being exposed to the advanced civilizations of Greece, Rome, and beyond, the

Balkan residents remained largely at the level of herding and farming, exploited at times

for their mineral resources, enhanced at other times by the development of communication

and transportation networks. Their physical environment precluded development of the

area as a highly productive civilization, however (Barraclough, 1978; Gianaris, 1982).

What developed was an essentially unchanged—and relatively unchanging—Balkan

cultural identity, an identity formed through groups of related males. On the one hand

were those who herded animals, regularly feuded, were quick-tempered and aggressive,

and were courageous warriors. On the other hand were farmers who were distrustful,

suspicious, and envious of others, often preoccupied by warfare, having originated

primarily through conquest, and who generally viewed the universe as hostile, developing a

variety of defense mechanisms against the perception that ‘the world was out to get

them.’ Through time, many of these traits were intensified as roaming nomads whose

actions were largely predatory overran the native Balkan peoples (Barraclough, 1978;

Gianaris, 1982).

RECONSTRUCTING PREHISTORY

FROM LINGUISTIC RELATIONSHIPS

The native inhabitants of the Balkans have, through time, had contact with a variety of

peoples with whom they had little or nothing in common. Of the varied characteristics by

which human populations can be differentiated from one another, language is the element

that is most conservative, i.e., the least likely to change. Therefore, examination of the

present and past distribution of groups of people from a linguistic perspective can reveal

much about the ancient movements of people.

The only real criterion for classifying certain languages together as a family is the

common origin of their most ancient vocabulary as well as of the word elements

used to express grammatical relations. A common source language is revealed

by a comparison of words from the supposedly related languages expressing

notions common to all human cultures (and therefore not as a rule likely to have

been borrowed from a group speaking another language) and also by a

comparison of the inflectional forms (for tense, voice, case, or whatever) . . . .

wherever one parent language has existed the daughter languages must to some

degree reflect some of its grammatical characteristics. (Diakonoff, 1995, p. 722)

Table 5 summarizes the diverse languages represented in Europe and Southwest Asia by

superfamily and family, including a description of their original homelands and antiquity as
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-18

postulated for each superfamily. It is included as an abbreviated description of the

sources of those who have peopled the Balkan Peninsula through the millennia prior to the

arrival of the Ottoman Turks.

Hamito-Semitic Languages

The Hamito-Semitic languages represent a family of genetically related languages

developed from a common parent language that presumably existed about 10,000 to 8000

years ago in the region of the present-day Sahara Desert in Africa. This is the main

language family of northern Africa and southwestern Asia, including such languages as

Arabic, and Hebrew. The languages belonging to the Hamito-Semitic family are

commonly subdivided into five branches—Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Cushitic, and Chadic,

representing what were dialects of the original parent language (Diakonoff, 1995; HamitoSemitic Languages, 1995).

TABLE 5. Original Homeland of Languages and Language Families Represented in Europe and

Southwest Asia.

SUPERFAMILY AND HOMELAND FAMILY REPRESENTATIVES IN EUROPE AND

SOUTHWEST ASIA

HAMITO-SEMITIC: Languages descended from an

ancestral language spoken 8,000 to 10,000 years

ago in the area of the present-day Sahara Desert Semitic

*Akkadian, *Babylonian, *Old Canaanite,

*Moabite, *Phoenician, Hebrew, Modern

Hebrew, Aramaic, Classical Arabic, and

Modern Arabic dialects

URALIC: Languages descended from a language

spoken 7,000 to 10,000 years ago in the general

area of the northern Ural Mountains

Finno-Ugric Finnish, Estonian, Lapp, and Hungarian or

Magyar

ALTAIC: Languages spoken in a general area

between Tibet and China and extending into

Siberia

Turkic Turkish, and Azerbaijani

Mongolic Mongol

Hellenic Greek and possibly *Ancient Macedonian

Indo-Iranian Romany (Gypsy), Persian (Farsi)

Germanic

*Gothic, *Old Norse, Icelandic, Norwegian,

Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Flemish,

Afrikaans, German, Bavarian, Austrian,

Swiss, Yiddish, Frisian, and English

INDO-EUROPEAN: Languages descended from a

single language spoken more than 5,000 years ago

in the steppe regions north of the Black Sea, that

split into a number of dialects by about the 3rd

millennium B.C.

Balto-Slavic

Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Czech, Slovak,

Russian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian, *Old

Church Slavonic, Slovene, Serbo-Croatian,

Macedonian, and Bulgarian

Thraco-Illyrian *Thracian, *Illyrian, and Albanian

Italic [Ancient] /

[Modern]

Romanic

*Latin, Romanian, Dalmatian, Sardinian,

Sicilian, Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish,

and Portuguese

Celtic *Gaulish, Irish, Scotch Gaelic, Manx,

Welsh, *Cornish, and Breton
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-19

*Languages no longer spoken

The Semitic languages are subdivided into four groups: Northern Peripheral, Northern

Central, Southern Central, and Southern Peripheral. The first group to separate from the

ancestral Semitic language was Akkadian, of the Northern Peripheral group,

approximately 5300 years ago. The second was the Southern Peripheral group

approximately 4300 years ago. The Northern Central and the Southern Central groups

continued to have contacts until their division, dated at about 4000 to 3500 years ago.

♦ The Northern Peripheral group included Akkadian, with dialects that were

spoken in Mesopotamia, southwestern Asia between the Tigris and

Euphrates Rivers in present-day Iraq, from about 5300 years ago to the

beginning of the Christian Era;

♦ The Northern Central Semitic group includes the languages that were spoken

in Palestine, Phoenicia, Syria, and Mesopotamia from 5000 to 4000 years

ago; Phoenecian-Punic, spoken from 4000 years ago to AD 1000; and

Hebrew, originally spoken in Palestine from 3300 years ago to AD 200, in

1948 becoming one of the official languages of Israel;

♦ The Southern Central Semitic group of Arabic originally spoken in Arabia and

now found from the Indian to the Atlantic Ocean, attested to from 2500

years ago to the present time;

♦ The Southern Peripheral group contains south Arabic dialects, spoken from

3000 years ago to AD 1000, represented by Ethiopic in northern Ethiopia

(Diakonoff, 1995; Hamito-Semitic Languages, 1995).

Akkadian, the oldest of the Semitic languages, was the vehicle of a great ancient written

literature written in a cuneiform writing system of Sumerian origin. Records of other

ancient Semitic languages exist in various forms, using a variety of writing systems dating

back to 4000 years ago in Phoenecia, with other distinct forms in Palestine and the Sinai

Peninsula. All Semitic alphabets, including Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic, are descended

from the Phoencian alphabet. In addition, all the European alphabets are descendants of

the Phoenician; and all the Asiatic alphabets are descendants of the Aramaic variant of

Phoenician. Two of the later Semitic languages—Hebrew and Arabic—have been the

languages of great religions, Judaism and Islam. The Jews who were expelled from

Palestine by the Hellenistic kings and Romans between 300 BC and AD 200 preserved

Classical Hebrew as a literary language. Classical Arabic has also been preserved as a

literary language since the Arabic conquest of North Africa and the Near and Middle

East in AD 600 to 800 (Diakonoff, 1995).

The other branches of Hamito-Semitic include:

The Egyptian branch that includes only one language with local dialects—Egyptian.

Beginning sometime before 5000 years ago, it can be differentiated into five stages, each

of which lasted at least 500 years;

The Berber (Berbero-Libyan) branch, represented by a number of dialects distributed

over North Africa from Egypt to Senegal;

The Cushitic branch, divided into five groups, spoken mainly in the Sudan and also in

Eritrea (northern group); east of Addis Ababa in Ethiopa (eastern group); dispersed over
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-20

Ethiopia (central group; in Tanzania south of the Equator (southern group); and along the

western border of Ethiopia and in northern Kenya (western group);

The Chadic branch, represented by Hausa, spoken in northern Nigeria and in Niger, parts

of Ghana, Cameroon, Togo, Dahomey, Chad, and the Central African Republic (HamitoSemitic Languages, 1995).

Uralic Languages

The Uralic language family of more than 20 languages descended from a Proto-Uralic

language that existed from 10,000 to 7000 years ago. The original homeland of the Uralic

peoples is thought to have been in the vicinity of the central Ural Mountains—the divide

between Europe and Asia—in present-day Russia. Extensive analysis of words for plants

and animals in these languages and of the geographic distribution of the present-day

Uralic peoples has led to this classification. The Uralic languages are currently spread

over a large area from western Siberia in the east to Hungary and Finland in the west.

They are divided into two primary groups—Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic—a division that

reflects the earliest split from Proto-Uralic. Following dissolution of Proto-Uralic, the

precursors of the Samoyeds gradually moved northward and eastward into Siberia, and

the Finno-Ugrians moved to the south and west, to an area close to the junction between

the Kama and Volga Rivers in eastern Russia (Harms, 1995a).

A location on the central Volga River for Proto-Finno-Ugric is strongly supported by an

abundance of shared terminology dealing with beekeeping, a significant part of the culture

of this region. This location is also supported by the geographical distribution of the

daughter languages (Harms, 1995; Uralic Languages, 1995).

Except for Hungarian, which moved westward across the steppe, the Finno-Ugric

languages form two chains distributed along major waterways, with the junction

of the Kama and the Volga at their centre. One chain extends northward along

the Kama, across the tip of the Urals into the Ob watershed, then south along the

Ob and its tributaries. The second stretches northeast along the Volga to the

Gulf of Finland. The extinct Merya, Murom, and Meshcher languages were once

links in this chain. (Harms, 1995, p. 689)

As the name implies, Finno-Ugric is subdivided into Finnic and Ugric:

The Ugric group consists of:

♦ Two languages of western Siberia—Khant (Ostyaak) and Mansi (Vogul).

The Khant and Mansi speakers are dispersed around the Ob River and its

tributaries in west-central Russia; and

♦ Hungarian, brought by Magyar tribes who arrived at their present location in

the Carpathian Basin more than a thousand years ago (Harms, 1995; Uralic

Languages, 1995).

Within the Finnic group, there are several subgroups:

♦ Balto-Finnic, including speakers of Finnish who occupied their present

location about 2000 years ago; Estonian, most of whom continue to live in

Estonia; and Karelian, Veps, Ingrian, Votic, and Livonian, in Russia.

♦ Lapp, spoken by people scattered from Sweden to Russia;
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-21

♦ Two closely-related Permic languages: Mordvin; and Mari (Cheremis).

North Samoyedic has three languages spoken in northern Siberia; and South Samoyedic

has only one language still being spoken, in western Siberia. Six other languages are

extinct (Harms, 1995; Uralic Languages, 1995).

Over the millenia, both Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic have given rise to divergent subgroups

of languages that retain certain traits from their common source. The degree of similarity

between two of the least closely related members of the Finno-Ugric group—Hungarian

and Finnish—is comparable to that between English and Russian from the Indo-European

family of languages (Harms, 1995).

Altaic Languages

Altaic people probably first inhabited the steppe area bordering on the Altai and Ch’inghai Mountains between Tibet and China, extending northward from the steppe into the

taiga region of Siberia. The Tungus people lived in the northern and northeastern parts of

this area, the Mongols, in the central and southeastern parts. The Turkic peoples

inhabited the northwestern and western parts, and the southern and southwestern region

was occupied by Hunnic groups, who are presumed to have spoken an ancient Turkic

language which is now extinct. The Altaic peoples were nomadic, and the people who

spoke languages classified under two of the three Altaic language families—Turkic and

Mongolian—apparently traveled much greater distances than the Manchu-Tungus. From

this original habitat, the Altaic peoples moved to their present territories. In historic times,

the Altaic language area has been bordered by Uralic, Indo-Iranian, Sino-Tibetan, and

Korean languages (Hazai, 1995).

The Altaic languages are grouped into three families—Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu

Tungus—that show similarities in vocabulary, grammatical structure, and certain sound

features. Altaic languages are native to populations inhabiting areas that cover a huge

expanse of the Asian continent, including large sections of Russia, Mongolia, China,

Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, as well as parts of Europe.

Turkic is spoken by the majority of Altaic peoples and is represented by Turkish, spoken

in Turkey as well as in parts of the Balkan countries and Cyprus; and Uzbek, Uighur,

Azerbaijani, Tatar, Turkmen, and Kazakh.

Mongol is the language spoken by the majority of Mongolian speakers, including the

contemporary languages of Mongol, Buryat, and Kalmyk.

Manchu-Tungus languages and dialects, of which Manchu—a nearly extinct language—

was the most important, include other southern languages spoken in parts of China and

Russia, and Tungus (northern) languages also spoken primarily in Russia and China.

As a result of the historically very active role of the Altaic peoples, their

languages are found spread over a large geographic area. Altaic peoples

overpowered their present territories in Asia and Europe in succeeding waves.

At one time or another they have played a dominant role in the history of China,

Iran, Byzantium, the Arab caliphate, and India, and their migrations had effects

on the history of eastern Europe as well . . . . In the steppe migrations, which

were natural consequences of a nomadic way of life and which dramatically

changed the ethnic and linguistic map of central Eurasia, the Turkic and
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-22

Mongolian peoples played the leading role. The Manchu-Tungus peoples’

separate migration toward the northeastern Asian taiga and tundra might have

taken place in an early period. The south- and southwest-bound migrations of

the southern Manchu-Tungus peoples were restricted to the East Asian region.

(Hazai, 1995, pp. 693, 696)

Over immense spans of space and time, the vocabulary of the Altaic languages has

shown a high degree of receptivity, reflecting once-frequent contacts between Turkic and

Mongolian languages and between Turko-Mongolian and Manchu-Tungus. The oldest

loanwords of the vocabulary are connected with the Semitic, Indo-European, and Uralic

languages. The spread of the Islamic religion paved the way for Arabic and Persian

loanwords to enter the Turkic languages. Relations among the Ottoman Empire, Turkey,

and the Western European civilizations led to the borrowing of a considerable number of

French, Italian, German, and English words. Somewhat later, Russian provided a major

contribution to the vocabulary of the Turkic languages of the former Soviet Union. The

Balkan, Anatolian, Caucasian, and certain Uralic languages had only minor influence on

the Turkic languages. Arabic and Persian influence proved very strong following the

adoption of Islamic religion and culture. In the course of linguistic contacts, the Altaic

languages naturally also exerted a considerable influence on other languages, including

Persian, Russian, Finno-Ugric, and the Balkan languages (Hazai, 1995).

Indo-European Languages

The Indo-European languages are the descendants of a single unrecorded

language, believed to have been spoken over 5,000 years ago in the steppe

regions north of the Black Sea and to have split into a number of dialects by

about the 3rd millennium BC. These dialects, carried by migrating tribes to

Europe and Asia, developed in time into separate languages . . . . (Indo-European

Languages, 1995, p. 295)

All Indo-European languages are considered to have ‘descended’ from this ancestral

language first spoken on the steppes surrounding the north shores of the Black and

Caspian Seas, north of the Caucasus Mountains. Although linguists have not found a

reliable and precise way to determine from linguistic evidence alone the date at which any

set of related languages must have begun diverging, it is possible to estimate the degree of

difference between the languages in question, considering vocabulary, grammar, and

sound systems. If one takes into account all that is known about two languages, an

estimate of the difference can be compared with the estimated degrees of difference

within a family of languages, such as the Romance family—whose actual time of

divergence is approximately known.

Using this sort of “dead reckoning,” it can be said that the earliest attested IndoEuropean languages—Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, and Greek—are different enough

that the parent language must have been split into several distinct languages

well before 2000 BC, but similar enough that the first split into separate

languages is not likely to have been much earlier than 3000 BC, and may have

been somewhat later. (Indo-European Languages, 1980, p. 436)

These linguistic data have been correlated with archaeological and paleontological data to

determine the presence of a relatively small, homogeneous population group within
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-23

Eurasia before 5000 years ago. It was important to find such a group that about this time

had undergone considerable expansion and fragmentation, resulting in some of its

fragments being ancestral to components of the cultures of the speakers of the various

recorded Indo-European languages.

. . . the archaeological evidence seems to find such a group in the Kurgan culture

of the south Russian steppe, east of the Dnepr (Dneiper) River, north of the

Caucasus, and west of the Urals . . . . this culture began spreading west c. 4000-

3500 BC [6000-5500 years ago] . . . and began to occupy a really wide area

stretching from eastern central Europe to northern Iran c. 3500-3000 BC [5500-

5000 years ago] . . . . Allowing a few centuries for the speech of widely separated

bands to diverge to the point of becoming distinct languages, this agrees

tolerably well with the date suggested by the linguistic evidence for breakup of

the parent language . . . . Remote relationship of Indo-European to the Uralic

languages is very likely. Geographically, the earliest constructible locations of

the two families are contiguous; lexically, there are strong resemblances in a

number of basic words or words parts . . . . The resemblances, however, are too

few to permit the reconstruction of a common “Indo-Uralic” parent language; the

two families must have separated several thousand years before the break-up of

Indo-European. (Indo-European Languages, 1980, p. 436)

It is now thought that if Indo-European is related to other language families, such as

Hamito-Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) or Caucasian, there must have been a divergence much

earlier than the time suggested for any divergence from Uralic because the similarities are

much fewer. There is no evidence of a fusion of components from two or more distinct

language families leading to the origin of Indo-European (Indo-European Languages,

1980).

By 5000 years ago, the speakers of the Indo-European superfamily of languages were

spreading throughout the steppes of southwest Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and into

eastern and northern Europe. At around this time, a single ancestral language is

considered to have split into a number of dialects. These dialects, carried by migrating

tribes, developed in time into separate languages, a number of which have left written

records of their various stages. The speech of these early peoples was becoming further

differentiated into subgroups of language families—each of which ultimately led to the

development of the Indo-European language families that are known today (Cowgill, 1995;

Indo-European Languages, 1995).

Like all languages, Indo-European languages have always been subject to influence from

neighboring languages, both those with whom they are related and those with whom no

relationship is posited. In prehistoric times, most speakers of Indo-European—as with

other language families—came into contact with territories presumably, if not certainly,

occupied by speakers of non-Indo-European languages. The effect of this contact is

difficult, if not impossible, to measure; but it is reasonable to suppose that the native

languages had some effect on the speech of the newcomers (Indo-European Languages,

1980).

During the period that Proto-Indo-European was diverging into the dialects that comprised

the first generation of daughter languages, there were different innovations that spread

over different territories—a pattern that is general for changes that date from the time a

parent language breaks up into distinct languages. Each of the resulting daughter

languages likely shared some innovations with at least some of its neighbors. Only rarely,
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-24

however, did different innovations shared by two or more branches of Indo-European

ever exactly cover the same territory. Once the dialects of Proto-Indo-European had

become differentiated enough to be distinct languages, probably by 4000 years ago (at

least in most cases), each daughter language largely went its own way. Agreement

between linguistic developments since then are due either to borrowing across language

boundaries or to parallel but independent workings out of the same base material (IndoEuropean Languages, 1980).

By about 3000 years ago, languages of the Indo-European family were spoken in most of

Europe and much of southwest and south Asia. Those Indo-European languages that

were and are primarily spoken outside of Europe and only in Asia include:

Tocharian, now extinct, a language spoken in northern Chinese Turkistan approximately

2500 years ago. It was not closely related to other neighboring Indo-European languages

(Tocharian Language, 1980); and

Armenian, a single language forming a separate branch of the western group of IndoEuropean languages that was recorded as early as 2500 years ago and spoken to the

present in the Armenian Republic and parts of Turkey. Armenian was introduced to the

Transcaucasus region between the Black and Caspian Seas by invaders who came from

the northern Balkans about 3000 years ago. These invaders occupied a region on the

shores of Lake Van in Anatolia (eastern Turkey) that previously had been the site of an

ancient Urartean kingdom, possibly in conjunction with the downfall of the Hittite empire

in Anatolia. By about 2500 years ago, the Armenian language apparently replaced the

languages of the native population (Armenian Languages, 1980).

The remaining branches of the Indo-European language superfamily are grouped as

follows:

ANATOLIAN

The earliest evidence of human occupation in Anatolia is at present confined

geographically to a comparatively small area inland from Antalya on the

Mediterranean coast, [including] rock engravings of animals on the walls of

caves . . . . (Ancient Anatolia, 1980, p. 813)

The first indications of the beginning of the transition from food gathering to food

producing in Anatolia are dated to approximately 11,000 years ago. By 9000 years ago,

farming and stockbreeding were well established, lasting until about 7500 years ago

(Ancient Anatolia, 1980).

It is customarily assumed that the Indo-Europeans entered Anatolia [modern

Turkey] around or shortly after 2000 BC [c. 4000 years ago], although there are

no specific archaeological data that might enable scholars to specify the period

of entry or the route the invaders followed. On the basis of the agricultural

terminology used in Hittite, it has been suggested that the entry into Anatolia

was not a warlike invasion of predominantly male groups . . . . The differences in

terminology used in other Indo-European subgroups indicate that the

“Anatolians” seceded from the parent group at an early date, before the common

agricultural nomenclature came into being. (Houwink ten Cate, 1995, p. 589)
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-25

Although the Anatolian language family is now extinct, the major representative of the

family was Hittite (formerly referred to as Kaneshite) that was spoken about 4300 years

ago by a people who may originally have been from the Balkans. An alternate suggestion

is that they emerged from the east by way of the Caucasus. The first indication that the

Hittites were present in central Anatolia was the occurrence of Indo-European personal

names on pre-Indo-European texts. The non-Indo-European languages that were present

in Anatolia included those spoken by the Akkadians (Hamito-Semitic Babylonians) and the

Hattic peoples. The evidence leads to the impression of a peaceful penetration of the

region by Indo-European peoples, leading ultimately to a monopoly of political power over

the indigenous populations. From their first appearance, the Hittites seem to have mingled

freely, their language ultimately replacing that of the indigenous peoples (Ancient Anatolia,

1980).

In addition to Hittite, other members of the Anatolian language family were Luvian and

Palaean, languages spoken beginning about 4250 years ago by other groups also possibly

from the Balkans who had migrated to Anatolia. By 4000 years ago, some Anatolians

were in the region of Bulgaria, Romania, and the areas around the Vardar, Morava, and

Danube Rivers. Others, including the Lycians, were in southwestern Asia Minor

extending to the ridge of the Taurus Mountains from 4200 to 2300 years ago. Although

some Hittites were in Syria from 3650 to 3250 years ago and in Cyprus from 3400 to 3200

years ago, the languages were centered primarily in what is presently Asian Turkey

(Anatolia) and northern Syria from about 4000 years ago to AD 1. The Lydians were

along the western slope of the Maeander River in Asia Minor from 3200 to 2700 years

ago. Because the Anatolian languages share a considerable number of features that

presuppose a long common past, it is likely that the Indo-European forebears of the later

speakers of Hittite, Palaic, Luwian, and Lydian entered Anatolia together, following a

common route (Anatolian Language, 1980; Sokal, 1996).

It appears that the Anatolians seceded from the parent group at an early date, prior to the

development of a common agricultural nomenclature. Nevertheless, the Hittite language

shared the Indo-European notion of the afterlife, which they pictured as a pastureland

with cattle grazing in wait for the dead king to join them. In the Caucasus region and in

eastern and northeastern Anatolia, other Indo-Europeans—Armenian-speaking invaders

and a Persian ruling caste—penetrated probably about 2700 years ago. Until late Roman

and perhaps even Byzantine times, some Anatolian dialects remained in use in certain

isolated parts of the interior (Anatolian Language, 1980).

During the period after 3190 years ago, Phrygians invaded Anatolia. They were clearly

Indo-European but bore no relationship to the Anatolian subgroup, more closely

resembling Thracian, Illyrian, or possibly Greek. By 2500 years ago, the southern and

northern shores of Anatolia had attracted Greek speaking peoples. In addition, over the

centuries, Armenian-speaking invaders and a Persian ruling class—also IndoEuropeans—penetrated parts of Anatolia (Anatolian Languages, 1980; Sokal, 1996).

The most important invaders of Anatolia in the “Dark Age” (after 1190 BC [3190

years ago]) were the Phrygians . . . . Greek, in the second half of the 1st millenium

BC [c. 2500 years ago], and, later, Latin, from the 2nd century onward, entered

central Anatolia as languages of a ruling caste. Much earlier—beginning in

Mycenaean times—the west coast had attracted Greek settlers. In the first half
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-26

of the 1st millennium, the southern and northern shores also attracted Greekspeaking peoples. (Houwink ten Cate, 1995, pp. 589-590)

HELLENIC OR GREEK

The Hellenic language family appeared and was identifiable by at least 4800 years ago

as spoken by the ancient Proto-Myceneans. The Hellenic family of languages was

clearly differentiated into individual languages within a fairly short period of time. By

4200 years ago, peoples identified as Ionians were living around the Ionian Gulf and its

hinterlands. Within 300 years, peoples known as Achaeans were living in Macedonia by

3900 years ago. Within 50 years, the Aeolians were living in central and southern

Albania, and the Northwest Greeks were in central Albania and central Epirus. ProtoHellenes were also in Epirus, and in western Thessaly and Pieria—a region in

northeastern Greece, north of Thessaly in Macedonia. Dorian-Macedonians and

Macedonians also occupied Pieria and Thessaly. By 3800 years ago, Agaeans occupied

the Greek mainland. In Mycenaean times, however, the carriers of “West Greek” had

not yet reached Greece, as their population did not irrupt into mainland Greece from the

Peloponnese until the end of the 2

nd millenium (3000 years ago). At this time in

continental Greece (north and south of the Isthmus of Corinth) and on certain Aegean

islands (notably Crete), only varieties of Greek other than West Greek were spoken

(Lejeune, 1995; Sokal, 1996).

In the course of the 2nd millennium BC [4000 – 3000 years ago], groups of Greekspeaking Indo-Europeans established themselves by stages on the Greek

peninsula, on most of the islands of the Aegean, and on the west coast of

Anatolia; with few exceptions that is still the area occupied by the Greek

language today. In the second quarter of the 1st millennium BC [2975 - 2950 years

ago] a vast “colonial” movement took place, resulting in establishments founded

by various Greek cities all around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea,

especially in southern Italy and Sicily. This extension of the linguistic area of

Greek lasted only a few centuries; in the Roman period, Latin, more or less

rapidly, took the place of Greek in most of these ancient colonies. “Colonial”

Greek survived longest at Byzantium, as the official language of the Eastern

empire. (Greek Language, 1980, p. 392)

The history of the Greek language can be followed from about 3400 years ago to the

present. Its written documents cover a longer period of time (34 centuries) than those of

any other Indo-European language. As a language with documents going back into the

past, Greek is second only to the Anatolian Hittite language. At the beginning of the

historical documentation of Greek in the 2nd millennium BC, Greek exhibited a completely

distinct character from its parent Indo-European language. The languages with which it

has the most features in common were the ancient Phrygian and Macedonian (Illyrian

languages)—each of which is little known (Greek Language, 1980; Lejeune, 1995).

Only from the 4th century BC [2399 - 2300 years ago] in the Hellenistic period, did

Greek approach great unity throughout the area it covered . . . . In the preceding

ten centuries there were numerous Greek dialects, which differed in phonetic and

morphological details, but which were mutually intelligible . . . . (Greek Language,

1980, p. 392
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-27

Two events upset the dialectal distribution within the Greek world. First, invasions by the

Dorians brought speakers of West Greek into northern Greece, into the Peloponnese, and

to the Aegean, during which time some pre-Dorian Greek populations were expelled from

their homes and emigrated eastward to the west coast of Anatolia and to Cyprus. Others

who remained where they were became more or less Dorian in speech. Second, and

different in nature, was the colonization movement that began approximately 2800 years

ago, with each group of emigrants taking the speech of their mother city with them, and

planting it in the new location on the shores of southern Italy (Houwink ten Cate, 1995;

Lejeune, 1995).

GERMANIC

By 4200 years ago, within six hundred years of the identifiable divergence of the Hellenic

language family and one hundred years of the divergence of the Anatolian language

family, two additional language families began to emerge: The Germanic and the BaltoSlavic language families. An early Nordic Culture, identified with a Germanic language,

was located in Germany, north of the Elbe River near Hamburg and into Denmark

beginning about 4200 years ago. It persisted until about 3500 years ago. By 3000 to 2700

years ago, the northern Germanics were located in northeastern Estonia, as well as off the

west coast of Estonia in the Baltic Sea, and in Latvia near the Gulf of Riga. From 2800 to

2500 years ago, a Nordic culture is also identified in Westphalia in southern Germany and

in northern parts of Saxony and Thuringia. During this time period, the Nordic culture also

extended west to the northern Netherlands, east to the lower Vistula River in Poland, and

to southwestern and western Finland and the eastern Baltic. A Germanic-speaking

people also were in Belgium and the southeastern Netherlands from 2700 to 2000 years

ago (Sokal, 1996).

Archaeological evidence suggests that a relatively uniform Germanic people at c.

750 BC [c. 2750 years ago] were located in southern Scandinavia and along the

North Sea and Baltic coasts from The Netherlands to the Vistula. Five hundred

years later (c. 250 BC) [c. 2250 years ago] they had spread south, and five general

groups are distinguishable: North Germanic in southern Scandinavia, excluding

Jutland; North Sea Germanic, along the North Sea and in Jutland; Rhine-Weser

Germanic, along the middle Rhine and Weser; Elbe Germanic, along the middle

Elbe; and East Germanic, between the middle Oder and the Vistula. By c. AD 250

[c. 1750 years ago] the division was much the same, though the Elbe group had

spread southward to the Danube, and the East Germanic group moved southeast

into the Carpathians and beyond. (Germanic Languages, 1980, p. 18)

By 2500 years ago, Germanic speaking peoples were spread through parts of Germany,

Poland, and Jutland. Within 150 years and remaining until about 2100 years ago,

Germanic speakers also were distributed in northwestern Bohemia and northeastern

Czechoslovakia. Beginning about 2230 years ago, the Bastarnae, a Germanic-speaking

people, began to move to the east, settling around the mouth of the Dnepr River and in the

Pontic steppes north of the Black Sea in present-day Ukraine. The Bastarnae also

established settlements in Bulgaria, Romania, and northern and central Moldova along the

western shores of the Black Sea—a presence that lasted for at least 500 years (Germanic

Languages, 1980).
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-28

Latin texts from about 2000 years ago provide the earliest historical evidence for

Germanic. Beginning about AD 200 (1800 years ago), Scandinavian inscriptions carved in

an ancient 24-letter Runic alphabet were created. Today, the Germanic language family

is comprised of the extinct languages of Gothic and Old Norse, as well as the extant

languages of Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Dutch Flemish, Afrikaans, German

Bavarian, Austrian, Swiss, Yiddish, Frisian, and English (Germanic Languages, 1980;

Sokal, 1996).

The Germanic languages are related in the sense that they can be shown to be

different historical developments of a single earlier parent language. Although

for some language families there are written records of the parent language (e. g.,

for the Romance languages, which are variant developments of Latin), in the case

of Germanic no written records of the parent language exist. (Germanic

Languages, 1980, p. 16)

BALTO-SLAVIC

The Balto-Slavic family also began its initial emergence as a discrete language family

approximately 4200 years ago. The Proto-Balts were located along the shores of the

Baltic Sea to southwestern Finland and inland from Belorus to greater Russia. They

occupied the middle and upper Dnepr, and the upper Volga and Oka Rivers. They also

extended east along the Volga and its tributaries, including the lower Oka, Sura, Vjatka

and Kama Rivers. The Fatjanovo culture has been identified in central Russia, also dating

to about 4200 years ago. The Balto-Slavic family is comprised of the Baltic languages of

Lithuanian, and Latvian; and the Slavic languages that emerged more than 2000 years

later, that include Polish, Czech, Slovak, Russian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian, Slovene, SerboCroatian, (modern) Macedonian, and Bulgarian. An extinct remnant of an old language

from the Balto-Slavic Family is referred to as Old Church Slavonic (Sokal, 1996).

The Baltic branch of languages is more closely related to Slavic, Germanic, and IndoIranian (in that order) than to the other branches of the Indo-European family. ProtoBaltic developed from dialects spoken in the northern area of Proto-Indo-European—

dialects that also included the Slavic and Germanic protolanguages and possibly

Tocharian, an extinct language. Peoples who moved northward to a large area of the

eastern coast of the Baltic Sea and the upper reaches of the Dnieper River spoke ProtoBaltic by approximately 3750 years ago. The close contact of the Balts and the Slavs

with Germanic tribes probably broke off around 3000 or more years ago when the Balts

moved from the south and settled a large area of the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea and

the upper reaches of the Dneiper. This movement, however, did not cause the Balts to

lose contact with the Slavs; and as a result, Baltic and Slavic languages share more

linguistic features than do any of the other Indo-European languages (Baltic Languages,

1980; Sokal, 1996).

It is possible to conclude that there was close contact between the Baltic and

Slavic protolanguages at the time when they began to develop as independent

groups (i.e., from about the 2nd millennium BC) and that the Proto-Slavic area

might have been a part of peripheral Proto-Baltic, although a specific part. That

is, Proto-Slavic at that time was in direct contact with both the corresponding

dialects of the peripheral Proto-Baltic area (e.g., with Proto-Prussian) and the

corresponding dialects of the central Proto-Baltic Area. (Baltic Languages, 1980,

p. 661)
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-29

At the time that the two protolanguages began to split, the Proto-Slavic area south of the

Pripyat River was much smaller than the Proto-Baltic area. Just as with Proto-Baltic,

Proto-Slavic began to emerge as a separate linguistic entity as early as 4000 years ago

and was to remain quite unified for a long time to come (Baltic Languages, 1980;

Waxman, 1992).

Some scholars believe that, after the common Indo-European area had been

divided into different dialect zones (approximately after the 3rd millennium BC

[approximately 4000 years ago], a protodialect developed in the Baltic and Slavic

areas that had many features peculiar to only these two branches of IndoEuropean. At the same time this protodialect was connected with certain western

Indo-European protodialects called Old European that are identified as the

source of a number of river names . . . . The dialects of the Slavic protolanguage

spoken near the Carpathian Mountains in the upper Vistula area may have been

part of the intermediate zone situated between the western Indo-European

dialects (Germanic, Celtic, Italic . . . ) and the eastern Indo-European ones; in

addition to Baltic and Slavic in the north, this intermediate zone included the

Indo-European languages of the Balkans (Illyrian, Thracian, Phrygian). The

domain of the Proto-Balto-Slavic dialect may have been situated to the east of

the Germanic and other Old European dialects, to the north of Ancient Balkanic

(including Illyrian), and to the west of Tocharian. The exact geographical

borders of the Balto-Slavic domain appear impossible to determine, but they may

well have been located in eastern Europe around present-day Lithuania and to

the east and south of it. The later diffusion of Slavic languages southward into

the Carpathian region may represent the spread of one of the dialects of this Old

Baltic domain. (Slavic Languages, 1995, p. 676)

Besides developing into an independent linguistic unit about 3000 or more years ago,

Proto-Baltic began gradually to split into discrete dialects. Among other things, the size of

the Proto-Baltic area considerably reduced contact between its dialects, thus influencing

the development of Proto-Baltic. Proto-Baltic was strongly split into dialects by 2500

years ago, represented by languages including the extinct Old Prussian, and modern

Latvian and Lithuanian. From this time on, the Baltic language area became considerably

smaller than it once had been, especially by AD 500 when the greater part of the

territory—the eastern part—began to be occupied by Slavs migrating from the south who

gradually assimilated the Balts (Baltic Languages, 1980; Waxman, 1992).

Prehistorically, the original habitat of the Slavs was Asia, from which they

migrated in the 3rd or 2nd millennium BC to populate parts of eastern Europe.

Subsequently, these European lands of the Slavs were crossed or settled by

many peoples forced by economic conditions to migrate. In the middle of the 1st

millennium BC [c. 2500 years ago], Celtic tribes settled along the upper Oder, and

Germanic tribes settled on the lower Vistula and lower Oder, usually without

displacing the Slavs there. (Slav, 1995, p. 873)

After this ancient Asian homeland of Proto-Slavic, the Slavic branch became centered in

what is now southern Poland and the Carpathian Mountains in the area of the upper

Vistula River in Poland. By approximately 3700 years ago, the people who inhabited the

vast territories between the Dnieper and the Vistula Rivers in Ukraine and Poland spoke

Proto-Slavic. It was their language up until their spread in all directions in the 5th century

AD to cover the greater part of eastern Europe and northern Asia. Each of the branches

of Slavic subsequently developed from a dialect of this ancestral parent language of the
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-30

group, which in turn had developed from an earlier language that was the antecedent of

both the Proto-Slavic and the Proto-Baltic languages (Slavic Languages, 1980).

THRACO-ILLYRIAN

Several of the Indo-European language families were comprised of languages that are

extinct today, as in the Thraco-Illyrian family that emerged by at least 3950 years ago.

The Proto-Thracians were located in the eastern Balkans and in the Carpathian

Mountains, mostly in Romania and Moldova. A related group, the Proto-Illyrians, were

located on the Balkan Peninsula between Epirus and the Cetina River, inland along the

Neretva River and its watershed, and on the plains of western and southern Bosnia. At

its peak about 2950 years ago, Illyrian frontiers extended from the Danube River to the

Adriatic Sea, and the language was spoken in pre-Roman times along the eastern coast of

the Adriatic and in southeastern Italy. Thracian and Illyrian were represented in the

Balkans until about AD 1100. Dacian was also a language in this family that was spoken

from about 3200 years ago to AD 600 mostly in Romania. Following a protracted war

with Philip V of Macedonia, the Romans conquered the entire Balkan Peninsula and his

Illyrian allies. Dacian speakers were ultimately romanized as the Daco-Romans (Sokal,

1996).

By 3080 years ago, another group, the Phrygians, emerged in Macedonia, in Thrace east

of the Vardar River, and on both coasts of the Sea of Marmara, where they remained for

nearly 500 years. Some have suggested that the Thracian language was related to the

ancient Phrygian language spoken in Asia Minor between the collapse of the Hittites

approximately 3000 years ago and the rise of the Lydians about 2650 years ago. Others

have suggested a relationship between Phrygian and either Greek or Armenian. It has

even been postulated that the Phrygians were of Thracian origin, settling in northwestern

Anatolia about 2950 years ago. (Illyria, 1980; Sokal, 1996; Thracian Language, 1995).

Although each of these languages is now extinct, Albanian, related to both Illyrian and

Dacian, is the only remaining language representative of Thraco-Illyrian family. Albanian,

spoken in the republic of Albania and in parts of Kosovo and Macedonia, is represented

by the Gheg and Tosk dialects. It is known from the 15th century AD (Cowgill, 1995;

Sokal, 1996).

INDO-IRANIAN

The original location of the Indo-Iranian group was probably to the north of

modern Afghanistan . . . [in] Turkistan—where Iranian languages are still spoken.

From there, some Iranians migrated to the south and west, the Indo-Aryans to

the south and east . . . . the earliest settlement of Indo-Aryans was in the

northwest of the Indian subcontinent. Migration did not take place at once;

there was . . . a series of migrations. (Indo-Iranian Languages, 1980, p. 439)

The Indo-Iranian language family constitutes the easternmost major branch of the IndoEuropean family of languages; and records of Indo-Iranian languages have existed for

nearly as long as those of Mycenaean Greek and Anatolian Hittite. The two branches of

Indo-Iranian—Indo-Aryan and Iranian—emerged from a homeland in central Asia. They

are separated by the Indus River in Pakistan, an area in which an ancient civilization

dating to as early as 5000 years ago was located. This language family appeared in
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-31

southeastern Europe by about 3950 years ago by way of southwest Asia (Indo-Iranian

Languages, 1980).

The Indo-Aryan, or Indic, languages, including a poorly known dialect spoken in or near

northern Iraq nearly 4000 years ago, and it is generally accepted that the date of entry of

the Indo-Aryans into the Asian subcontinent was nearly 4000 years ago. The Indo-Aryan

languages have been spoken in northern and central India and Pakistan for more than

3000 years. Although it has proven difficult to determine the precise homeland of ProtoIndo-Aryan, it appears that the Indo-Aryans on the Indian subcontinent first occupied an

area within a few hundred miles of the base of the Himalayas comprising most of presentday East and West Punjab, Haryana, and the Upper Doab of Uttar Pradesh (Indo-Iranian

Languages, 1980).

Many languages and dialects spoken on the Indian subcontinent currently represent the

Indo-Aryan subfamily. A linguistic survey of India lists 225 main languages and dialects.

Officially, 15 national languages are recognized in India: Assamese, Bengali, Gujariti,

Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriuya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil,

Telegu, and Urdu. Indo-Aryan languages are presently spoken in India, Pakistan, Sri

Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and other areas of the Himalayan region. In addition,

Romany—the language of the Gypsies who left India in the 14th or 15th century and live a

mostly migratory way of life in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Europe, and

North America—is also an Indo-Aryan language (Indo-Iranian Languages, 1980).

Beginning nearly 3000 years ago, the Iranian subfamily of languages began to be spoken

in the region of present-day Iran and Afghanistan and on the steppes to the north in

Russia, from Chinese Turkistan to Hungary. The best known ancient Iranian languages

included Avestan and Old Persian, dating from about 2525 through 2465 years ago, and

their successors. Modern Iranian languages are represented by Persian (Farsi) in Iran,

Pashto in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Tadzhik in Tadzhikistan and Central Asia, and

Ossetian (derived from Scythian/Sarmatian) spoken in the heart of the Caucasus

Mountains. Two other Iranian languages are spoken over wide areas: Kurdish, spoken in

Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and the Caucasian republics; and Baluchi, spoken in parts of

eastern Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and southern parts of the former Soviet Central Asia

(Indo-Iranian Languages, 1980).

ITALIC / ROMANIC

The Italic/Romanic language family includes Latin (dating from about 2500 years ago),

and the Faliscan, Osco-Umbrian, and Venetic languages (all now extinct), spoken on the

Apennine Peninsula (modern Italy) and including the eastern part of the Po River valley in

northern Italy. The modern representatives of Latin—the Romance languages—consist

of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, Sardinian, Sicilian, and

Dalmatian (extinct) (Italic Languages, 1980; Romance Languages, 1980).

The Italic languages must have been brought from the original area of the IndoEuropean languages, probably in eastern parts of central Europe, when their

speakers crossed the Alps. This is attested to by a stratum of very old

placenames of non-Indo-European origin . . . that covers not only the Apennine

Peninsula but also Greece and Anatolia. This stratum is ascribed to a

“Mediterranean” language believed to have dominated large parts of the ancient

world before the arrival of the Indo-European peoples. Nothing is known about
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-32

the data, the path, and the circumstances of the above-mentioned immigration,

and none of the many attempts to combine archaeological evidence with

linguistic prehistory has led to convincing results. (Italic Languages, 1980, p.

1075)

The Romance languages were derived from Latin within historical times. In those areas

where Romance languages are still spoken, Latin in some form was the normal language

of most strata. Whether these Romance languages reflect the usage of cultured urban

communities or perpetuate rough peasant dialects of Latin or of slave creoles is uncertain

(Romance Languages, 1980).

There are those who maintain that the Latin used in each area differentiated as

soon as local populations adopted the conqueror’s language for any purpose.

According to this belief, dialects of Latin result from “interference” from

indigenous languages (substrata), even though clear evidence for dialectal

diversification cannot be found in extant texts. It is obvious that Latin usage

must have differed over a wide area, but it can be questioned whether the

differences were merely phonetic and lexical variations—regional accents and

usage—not affecting mutual intelligibility or whether they were profound

enough to form the basis of further differentiation when administrative unity was

lost. The latter hypothesis would suggest a long period of bilingualism (up to

about 500 years), as experience shows that linguistic interference between

languages in contact rarely outlives the bilingual stage. (Romance Languages,

1980, pp. 1034-1035)

Although there is no precise answer to the question as to when Latin ended and Romance

languages began, in some sense, today’s Romance languages stand as regional variants of

one uniform set of speech patterns that closely resemble the so-called ‘Vulgar Latin’ of

existing historical texts. On the other hand, even though they may understand a good deal

of their neighbor’s discourse, today’s speakers of the various Romance languages are

conscious that they speak a ‘different language’ (Romance Languages, 1980).

Some scholars suggest that the realization [of the existence of linguistic

differences] must have dated from about the 5th century, when barbarians were

streaming into the Roman Empire and, supposedly, hindering communication.

Others prefer to rely on positive textual evidence, indicative of efforts to make up

a written form of Romance distinct from Latin. Such evidence begins to appear

only in the 9th century, first in northern France and then in Spain and Italy . . . .

From the 7th century onward, consciousness of linguistic change was strong

enough to prompt scribes to gloss little-known words in earlier Latin texts with

more familiar terms . . . . Later in the 9th century . . . deliberate attempts were made

to write vernacular Romance, though the resources of the Latin alphabet were

not wholly adequate to the task. (Romance Languages, 1980, p. 1036)

CELTIC

The Celtic language family was spoken about 2250 to 2050 years ago over a wide area

of Europe from the Balkans to Spain—with one group (the Galatians) even in Asia Minor.

On both chronological and geographic bases, the Celtic languages fall into two divisions—

Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic. At various times beginning as early as 2500 years

ago and for a period of about a thousand years, speakers of Continental Celtic occupied

an area that extended from Gaul and Iberia (present-day France and Spain) in the west, to

Galatia (in Asia Minor in present-day Turkey) in the east. Evidence for the Continental
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-33

Celtic language referred to as Gaulish largely consists of names of persons, tribes, and

places recorded by both Greek and Latin writers. Inscriptions in Continental Celtic have

been found in Gaul and northern Italy. About 2350 years ago, the Celts were at their

peak both numerically and geographically in Europe (Celtic Languages, 1980).

The languages of the British Isles, and Breton, the language spoken in Brittany (northwest

France), represent the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic family spoken in and near the

British Isles as recorded beginning from about 300 AD onwards. The Insular Celtic

languages are divided into two groups: Irish and British. Irish (Goidelic or Gaelic) was

the only language spoken in Ireland in the 5th century AD, the beginning of recorded

history on the island. Scotch Gaelic and Manx (spoken on the Isle of Man but now nearly

replaced by English) are languages derived from Irish that are also are included in the

Irish group. They arose from Irish colonizations dating to this period. Although there

were also Irish colonies in Wales, there is no trace of their language other than a few

inscriptions (Celtic Languages, 1980).

In Scotland, British (at times referred to as Brythonic from a Welsh word meaning

“Briton”) replaced Pictish, an ancient non-Indo-European language. Irish invasions of

Scotland and the Isle of Man, and English invasions of what is now southern England and

Scotland resulted in a longstanding linguistic partition in Scotland between English (or

“Scots”) and Irish (or “Erse” or “Gaelic”). In what is now Wales, British survived as the

dominant language until about a hundred years ago, where it is now known as Welsh.

The Insular Celtic branch also includes the extinct language of Cornish—a pocket of

British speech that survived until the end of the 18th century. Emigrants from Cornwall

were responsible for bringing Celtic back to the European mainland in the 5th and 6th

centuries AD by establishing the colony in northwestern France that is still called Brittany

(Celtic Languages, 1980).

The original home of the Celts cannot be located precisely, but, on the whole, the

evidence points to the eastern part of central Europe. There is . . . evidence for

their contacts with other Indo-European peoples. One group of Celts, at least,

found themselves neighbours of the Germanic peoples and were often confused

with them by classical writers. It can be inferred that the Celts had attained a

higher standard of social organization than the Germanic peoples . . . . To the

Greeks and Romans, on the other hand, the Celts were inferior in culture . . . .

(Celtic Languages, 1980)

Continental Celtic died out very quickly in eastern Europe. At its farthest outpost in Asia

Minor, in Galatia, the Celtic origins of the people to whom St. Paul wrote his letter to the

Galatians were apparent; but their culture was already Greek. By AD 420, another

author commented that the Galatians still spoke a language that was almost the same as

that of the people of Trier in western Germany. It is possible that a few speakers of

Celtic still existed in both places (Celtic Languages, 1980).

Generally, the history of Continental Celtic ends with the emergence of Insular Celtic.

Like Continental Celtic, the earliest evidence for Insular Celtic is found in names recorded

by Greek and Latin authors. Beginning by about AD 300, inscriptions of personal names

have been found in Ireland; and from about AD 400, British and Irish names in Latin

inscriptions as well as in Old Irish alphabets were recorded in Wales. These records

establish that up to very nearly the time that written documents are available, the British

and Irish languages remained similar in structure to Gaulish. Although no literature
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-34

remains on the continent, the literature of the Insular Celts gives valuable information

about their religion and myths, indicating that they shared certain similarities of language

and culture with the people of India, indicating an ancient common heritage (Celtic

Languages, 1980).

INDIGENOUS BALKAN PEOPLES AND OUTSIDE INFLUENCES:

THE PRIMACY OF INDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES

Against the prehistoric economic base in the Balkans of indigenous hunting, herding,

foraging, and farming peoples, there were also increasing influences from peoples outside

the Balkans. Beginning more than 5,000 years ago, the mountainous region from the

Pelopennesus and western Turkey to the Indus River in the east was a zone of trade and

secondary urbanization. The steppe regions north of the Black and Caspian Seas were

home to nomadic groups who penetrated southeastern Europe as far as the lower

Danube. These groups, adapted to the steppe and semi-desert, were reliant on the horse,

the ass, and the camel, and on a life as nomadic pastoralists.

On the Eurasian steppeland north of the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the belt of

the Taurus and Zagros Mountains, it was the horse which provided the key, as

farmers and fishermen, formerly confined to the watercourses through the

steppes, now had the means to exploit their scattered pastures. Wheeled

vehicles, first invented on the fringes of the Caucasus where woodland and

steppe meet, soon spread among these groups. This successful economy

penetrated both westwards, into the zone of already established farming groups,

and widely to the east, among the vast open corridors of steppeland leading to

central Asia, and down, east of the Caspian Sea, to the edge of the Indian subcontinent. (Barraclough, 1978, p. 60)

Despite being exposed to the advanced civilizations of Greece, Rome, and beyond, the

Balkan residents remained largely at the level of herding and farming, exploited at times

for their mineral resources, enhanced at other times by the development of communication

and transportation networks. Their physical environment precluded development of the

area as a highly productive civilization, however. What emerged was an essentially

unchanged—and relatively unchanging—Balkan cultural identity—an identity formed

through groups of related males. On the one hand were those who herded animals, who

regularly feuded, who were quick-tempered and aggressive, and who were courageous

warriors. On the other hand were farmers who were distrustful, suspicious, and envious

of others; who were often preoccupied by warfare, having originated primarily through

conquest; and who generally viewed the universe as hostile, developing a variety of

defense mechanisms against the perception that ‘the world was out to get them.’

Through time, many of these traits were intensified as the native Balkan peoples were

overrun by roaming nomads whose actions were largely predatory (Barraclough, 1978).

Thraco-Illyrian Peoples: Illyrians, Thracians, Dacians, and

Vlachs Indigenous to the Balkan Peninsula

As with the rest of Europe, the Balkan peninsula first emerged from complete

historic darkness into a misty period for which our surviving evidence is chiefly

archaeological and anthropological. The peoples whom we discern at first, when
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-35

the curtain begins to go up on history, at the end of the Bronze Age and the

beginning of the Iron Age, perhaps about 1000 B.C., are two: the Illyrians living

in the western half of the area, and the Thracians in the eastern. (Wolff, 1974, p.

25)

Illyria was an ancient country on the east side of the Adriatic Sea on the Balkan

Peninsula, bounded in the north by the Sava and Drava Rivers, tributaries of the Danube.

On the south lay Epirus in northwestern Greece, and to the southeast was Macedonia.

Illyria extended from the Istrian Peninsula—located between Slovenia and Croatia—along

the coastal regions of present-day Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Albania

to Epirus. The area to the east on the Balkan Peninsula was known as Thracia. It was

bounded by the Danube River in the north, the Black Sea in the east, the Aegean Sea in

the south, and the Struma River in the west. The plateau of Transylvania—a historic

region in what is today central Romania—constituted the center and heart of Dacia, a

region bounded in the east and south by the Carpathian Mountain chain (Jones, 1992a,

1992c; Landes, 1992).

The Illyrians and Thracians were the first historically identifiable peoples (c. 3000 years

ago) who inhabited the interior of the Balkan Peninsula. These non-Greek people did not

share much in the experience of the commercial and seafaring Greeks, however, and

remained mostly farmers and herders. These indigenous Balkan people, being unable to

compete or complement the level of Greek development, were ‘used’ for their resources

and their manpower. The penetration of Greek civilization to the interior plateau of the

Balkan Peninsula was limited, however, mainly because of mountainous and rough terrain.

Greek colonies were limited to the coasts of Dalmatia and the Black Sea, and to the banks

of the Danube, the latter including Vachia, 10 miles from Belgrade, and Histria and

Callatis on the Lower Danube. In the colonies of Dalmatia, metallurgical and other craft

works were established; and manufactured goods were exchanged for raw materials

produced in the interior by the Illyrian tribes. Similar colonies along the eastern section of

the peninsula, where the Thracians lived, were successful in trade and shipping (Gianaris,

1982; Illyria, 1995; Jones, 1992a, 1992c; Landes, 1992; Wolff, 1974).

The northwestern part of the Balkan Peninsula was inhabited continuously from

2,900 years ago onward by the Illyrians, who have been described as hardy

warriors who raided Macedonia and who engaged in piratical expeditions along

the Adriatic coasts. [The Illyrians] were partially conquered by the Macedonians

in the fourth century B.C [c. 2350 years ago]. Two hundred years later the

Illyrian pirates, under Queen Teuta, and later under Demetrius of Pharos, came

into conflict with Rome and were badly beaten, just before the start of the

Second Punic War. Ultimately the Romans conquered all of Illyria and made it a

Roman province in the first century B.C. During the Roman imperial period, the

main portion of Illyria was known as Dalmatia, and from this area came a number

of Roman emperors . . . . The chief city was Scodra, which came to be called

ShkodNr, in Albania. (Jones, 1992a, p. 518)

The Illyrians were probably the oldest historically identifiable inhabitants who maintained a

continuous presence on the Balkan Peninsula. Prior to the Roman conquest, they settled

mainly on the western coast of the peninsula, opposite the heel of Italy, where the

Albanians (who are considered their descendants) live today. They were also situated

north of Lake Ohrid and west of the Vardar River in present-day Macedonia. The lighthaired and gray-eyed Thracians were settled in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula.

To their north were the related Dacians. The Thracians were of Indo-European stock
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-36

and language—as were the Illyrians. According to ancient Greek and Roman historians,

they too were superior fighters, described as fierce and warlike tribes who were

prevented from overrunning the lands of the northeastern Mediterranean only by their

constant political fragmentation (Curtis, 1992; Illyria, 1995; Jones, 1992a, 1992c; Minshall,

1992b; Thrace, 1995; Wolff, 1974).

The Illyrians were associated with the eastern Adriatic littoral as far south as Durazzo

(west of Tirana, Albania) and inland as far as the Morava River in present-day Serbia.

As early as 2200 years ago, the Illyrians were united into a state of their own centered at

Lake Scutari, that included parts of northern Albania and of Montenegro and

Herzegovina. After several wars, the Romans conquered the Illyrians; and by 2168 years

ago, Illyrian land become a Roman province. One Illyrian tribe—the Dalmatians—held out

against Rome, remaining rebellious after their surrender 2046 years ago. The Illyrians

resisted both Greek penetration and Roman conquest. When finally absorbed into the

Roman Empire, however, they proved, with the passage of centuries, to be extraordinarily

valuable to the state. For many centuries, Illyria supplied the best troops for the Roman

armies (Illyria, 1995; Thrace, 1995).

The historical boundaries of Thrace have varied. The ancient Greeks considered Thrace

as the part of the Balkans between the Danube River in the north and the Aegean Sea in

the south, bounded on the east by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara and on the west

by the mountains east of the Vardar River. The Greeks founded several colonies on the

Thracian coasts, the most notable being Byzantium. Following Roman conquest of the

Balkans, the Roman province of Thrace was somewhat smaller. It had the same eastern

maritime limits, and was bounded on the north by the Danube, but the Roman province

extended west only to the Nestos River—the contemporary demarcation between Greek

Macedonia and Greek Thrace (Illyria, 1995; Thrace, 1995).

As early as 2900 years ago, there was also some sort of successful political organization

in Thrace, in the southern and eastern portions of the Balkan Peninsula. By at least 2700

years ago, during the Iron Age, trade flourished between the developing city-states of

Italy and Greece and the Illyrian-speaking tribes, the Thracians, and the Dacians.

Together they occupied the area lived north of Lake Ohrid and west of the Vardar River

in present-day Macedonia and the area of modern Serbia (Curtis, 1992).

Most Thracians became subject to Persia about 2510 years ago. They were unified

briefly into an empire that split in three ways and was assimilated by Philip II of Macedon

2360 years ago. The Thracians provided Philip’s son, Alexander the Great, with valuable

light-armed troops during his conquests. Although the Greeks had established trading posts

along the eastern Adriatic coast beginning about 2500 years ago and had founded colonies

in that region by about 2350 years ago, Greek influence was ephemeral. Rivalries

between the Thracian tribes made it possible for the Macedonians to their west to assert

their power in Thrace, and the native tribes of the region remained herdsmen and

warriors. By about 2400 years ago, there was a Thracian kingdom in the valley of the

Maritsa River which flowed south and east from present-day Bulgaria in the western

Rhodope Mountains to the Aegean Sea. By approximately 2050 years ago, Thrace was

also a client kingdom of Rome; and within 100 years Thrace had become a province of

the Roman Empire (Dacia, 1995; Illyria, 1995; Jones, 1992a, 1992c; Landes, 1992;

Thrace, 1995; Wolff, 1974).
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-37

Dacia encompassed the region in and around the Carpathian Mountains and Transylvania

in present northcentral and western Romania. Prior to the Roman occupation of the

region, the Dacians had occupied lands south of the Danube; and the Roman province of

Dacia eventually expanded to include territories north and east of the Danube. The

Dacians were agriculturalists and miners of silver, iron, and gold. As early as 2400 years

ago, Dacians appeared in Greek slave markets; and they subsequently engaged in trade

with the Greeks, importing wine. Although they spoke an Indo-European language that

was a dialiect of Thracian, they were also culturally influenced by the neighboring

Scythians and by invading Celts.

Between 2112 and 2050 years ago, the Dacians engaged Roman troops. During the reign

of the Roman emperor Augustus from 2027 years ago to AD 14, the Dacians raided the

Roman province of Moesia but were beaten back. The Dacian Wars of AD 85-89 led to

their recognition of Roman overlordship. By AD 106, a large part of the Dacian

population was either exterminated or driven northward, and the Romans siezed a

considerable amount of Dacian wealth. The Romans benefited militarily as well as

materially from their occupation of Dacia. After the Romans evacuated Dacia in AD

271, the area was subjected to a series of barbarian invasions, during which some of the

Romanized Dacians remained in the area. They took refuge in the Carpathian Mountains,

remaining there for several centuries as shepherds and primitive farmers until more

peaceful times when they returned to the plains (Dacia, 1995; Vlach, 1995).

The Vlachs emerged into history, primarily in the region south of the Danube, claiming to

be descendants of the ancient Romans who occupied Dacia between AD 100 – 300.

One theory suggests that the Vlachs or Walachians and present-day Romanians are

descendants of the Thracians and Dacians who were native to the Roman province in

Dacia, and who intermarried with the Roman colonists and assimilated their language and

culture. Other theories suggest that the Vlachs of medieval Serbia, Macedonia, Greek

Thessaly and Epirus, and Bulgaria were the medieval and modern descendants of the

Romanized Balkan provincials (Stoianovich, 1992b).

The Albanians of today are considered to be the descendants of the ancient

Illyrians, who were probably the original inhabitants of the western coastland . . .

. Despite a considerable admixture of Slav blood, the modern Albanian presents

certain physical characteristics which identify him with an earlier ethnic

substratum. The Albanian language is non-Slavonic and is only now being

developed into a vehicle of literary expression. (Gewehr, 1967, pp. 4-5)

Hellenic Peoples: Ancient Greeks and Macedonians along the

Mediterranean and in the Southern Balkans

Although the first Greek civilization was flourishing on Crete from about 5400 to 3000

years ago, its links were with the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations which

developed around the Nile River in Egypt, and the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers in Iraq.

Ancient Greece developed into a powerful maritime nation, and by 3350 years ago had

overrun Crete. Around 3150 years ago, the long Trojan expedition in Asia Minor which

was recounted by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey had begun (Gianaris, 1982).

Approximately 4000 years ago, Illyrians in the west and Thracians in the east inhabited

Macedonia. By 3000 years ago, the mountainous area of Orestis and the valley of the
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-38

Ali<kmon River were settled by a people who were called the ‘Macedonians.’ Within a

few centuries, these semi-nomadic peoples had conquered most of the region between

Lake Ohrid in the west, and—within present-day Greece—the Strim\n River to the east,

and Mount Olympus to the south; and the area was re-named Macedonia (Stoianovich,

1992b).

Lower or southern Macedonia was ruled directly by Macedonian chiefs who

subjugated or expelled the earlier Thracian inhabitants, while upper Macedonia

was inhabited by semiautonomous tribes related perhaps to both the Illyrians

and Macedonians. Colonies of Greeks from the south were established in the

KhalkidhikR (Chalcidice) Peninsula. (Stoianovich, 1992b, p. 157)

Scholars have disagreed over the linguistic and ethnic origins of the ancient Macedonians.

Part of the confusion is that it is not known whether the ancient Macedonian language

was an independent language or a Greek dialect into which a non-Hellenic vocabulary and

other traits had been introduced. It is possible that Macedonian was the language of the

ruling class and that some subjects of the Macedonian chiefs spoke other languages. By

about 2500 years ago, the Macedonian rulers abandoned the ancient Macedonian

language and began using Attic Greek for public administration. In the view of many

Greeks in the city-states to the south, the Macedonians were regarded as barbarians (nonGreeks). Although Macedonia was not ethnically homogenous, it formed part of a large

cultural unit that included Thessaly, Thrace, and western and central Anatolia in presentday Turkey (Stoianovich, 1992b).

From the Homeric Age (around 3200 years ago) to the Classical Age (beginning in the 5th

century BC, 2450 years ago), the society of the early Greeks was primarily agricultural

and pastoral, engaged in herding livestock. By then, the city-state (polis) had been

created as an independent political and economic unit. Athens was the main center of

civilization. The expansion of city-states brought about the development of trade and

commerce in the coastal areas of the Balkan Peninsula and the eastern Mediterranean.

Banking services, shipbuilding, and agriculture flourished and markets expanded. Trade

and commerce not only were carried out in the coastal areas of the Aegean, Adriatic, and

Black Seas but also were expanded to Phoenicia, Egypt, Sicily, and other Mediterranean

lands (Gianaris, 1982).

As early as about 2600 years ago, an ancient Hellenic people from the western portions of

modern Turkey—the Ionians—moved east and established a number of colonies, including

Byzantium, later renamed Constantinople. During the Golden Age, Greek culture reached

its height not only in terms of economic prosperity but also in terms of theories and

philosophies that remain part of basic Western scientific concepts. The area thrived in

trade, shipping, industry, and the arts. Arcades were used for exhibitions and exchanges

of commodities from all the commercial centers of the Balkan Peninsula and the eastern

Mediterranean. Merchants sailed eastward to the Indian Ocean and westward to

Gibraltar to explore new markets and sources of supply. Although a powerful maritime

nation had developed along the coastal areas, the people in the interior portions of the

Balkan Peninsula remained on the periphery of this development. Greek influence on the

people of the northern and interior parts of the peninsula proved ephemeral, and those

native tribes continued as herdsmen and warriors (Curtis, 1992; Gianaris, 1982).

By 2500 years ago, Darius had extended the Persian Empire from the Indus River to

include the eastern shores of the Balkan Peninsula. Approximately 2430 years ago, King
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-39

Xerxes of Persia unsuccessfully attempted to subjugate Macedonia and Greece. The

rival Macedonian kings or chiefs subsequently fought each other in a protracted struggle

for rule over the area between the Strim\n and the Ali<kmon Rivers. One of the kings,

Philip II who ruled from 2359 to 2336 years ago, ultimately emerged victorious

(Stoianovich, 1992b).

He warred against the Illyrians, occupied the non-Macedonian Greek colonies of

the KhalkidihikR, annexed the area between the Strim\n and the NJstos,

conquered Thrace, and then invaded southern Greece. In 338 [2338 years ago]

he called a congress of Greek city-states and organized a Hellenic League

(League of Corinth). Philip, proclaimed captain-general of the league, was later

authorized to lead an invasion against the Persians. (Stoianovich, 1992b, 157)

Of necessity, the Greek city-states that had once fought each other formed alliances and

leagues in order to defend their land and civilization from Persian invaders. Phillip II, king

of Macedonia (2395-2336 years ago), and his son, Alexander the Great (2356-2323 years

ago), subdued and unified the Greek city-states to finally dispel the Persian danger. Philip

II was assassinated, and his son, Alexander the Great, came to power, ruling from 2336 to

2323 years ago, and bringing the tribes south of the Danube under his authority.

Alexander destroyed Thebes when it rebelled against his rule. The Macedonians then

marched north to the Danube and south to the rest of Greece; and, under the command of

Alexander, they marched east through Asia Minor and the Middle East, to Persia and

northwestern India. Alexander conquered the Persian Empire of Darius III; and after

eleven years of warfare, extended his empire to the Indus River. In an effort to reconcile

the Greek and Persian worlds, he arranged for the marriage of 10,000 Macedonians and

Greeks to Asiatic women. On his death in Babylon, Alexander’s generals divided the

Macedonian Empire. Although his Empire was decimated, it had immense cultural

consequences; and the Hellenistic Age that followed was a product of the fusion of

Greek, Egyptian, and Persian culture (Stoianovich, 1992b).

After the death of Alexander, a Greco-Macedonian state, incorporating the Balkans as

well as other eastern Mediterranean regions, survived until the area fell under the control

of Roman conquerors. Throughout this Hellenistic period (2395-2106 years ago), the

Macedonians adopted Greek culture which was extended to the interior of the Balkan

Peninsula. Greek culture also spread along the eastern Mediterranean coast and into

Asia. (Gianaris, 1982; Vidal-Naquet, 1992).

Beginning about 2225 years ago, Celtic invaders entered Macedonia and Thrace from the

North. They crossed the Dardanelles and passed into Asia Minor without any apparent

notable influence on Macedonia, however. Several decades later, the Romans began their

conquest of the Macedonian kingdom, which they annexed to their empire in 2146 years

ago. By the time of the Roman conquest, the Macedonian and Thraco-Illyrian elements

had been large Hellenized—a process that was followed by a process of Romanization

that lasted through the eight centuries of Roman rule.

Iranian Peoples: Scythians, Cimmerians, and Sarmatians from

Asia

From prehistoric times migration and settlement patterns in the territories of

present-day Ukraine varied fundamentally along the lines of three geographic
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-40

zones. The Black Sea coast was for centuries in the sphere of the contemporary

Mediterranean maritime powers. The open steppe, funneling from the east

across southern Ukraine and toward the mouth of the Danube, formed a natural

gateway to Europe for successive waves of nomadic horsemen from Central

Asia. And the mixed forest-steppe and forest belt of north-central and western

Ukraine supported a sedentary agricultural population, linked by waterways to

northern and central Europe. The marchlands of these zones were frequent areas

of both military conflict and cultural transmission. (Hajda, 1995, p. 980)

By 2550 years ago, Iran had become a dominant power in Asia and the Near East. The

Persian prince Cyrus had merged the Empire of the Medes from northwestern Iran

(corresponding to the modern regions of Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, and parts of western Iran)

with the Empire of the Persians from southern Iran. His empire was subsequently

enlarged by a variety of successful military missions, including incorporation of the IonianGreek settlements of Asia Minor. Cyrus’ son, Darius I, succeeded him; and by 2521

years ago, Darius had repressed uprisings and conquered the Indus Valley in the east and

Thrace and Macedonia in the west. Darius I played a significant role in organizing the

Persian Empire, placing garrisons in each of its outlying regions. Military installations were

established in Egypt and Babylonia due to their wealth and in Ionia and Bactria because of

their location on the western and eastern frontiers of the Empire. He also appointed

governors and Persian officers who were entirely under his command and who were

bound to him by either blood or honor (Barraclough, 1978; Vidal-Naquet, 1992).

Within an immense network of communications over land, river, and sea, each of the

regions persisted under its own legal system, however. Consistent with earlier times of

nomadism, the court of Darius had three residences—at either Persepolis or Susa in

winter and at Hamadan in summer. Clay tablets recording the wages paid to workers,

peasants, and artisans at Persepolis reveal a centralized, hierarchical economy reflecting

the level of civilization in the Persian Empire. The strength of the Persian Empire was

tested, however; and Darius’ military enterprises proved to be less successful than his

administrative reforms. By 2513 years ago, the Scythians, another Iranian group from

north of the Black Sea, had repulsed him. Within 15 years, the Persian Wars were

sparked by a revolt in Ionia. The Persians under the direction of Darius, and

subsequently, of Xerxes, invaded Greece during the period from 2492 to 2479 years ago.

Attempts to punish Athens and Eretria for their support of the Ionians led to Darius’

defeat at Marathon 2490 years ago, and he died four years later. The Persian Wars

ended about 2400 years ago when the Athenian, Callias, established a demilitarized zone

along the coast of Asia Minor (Barraclough, 1978; Vidal-Naquet, 1992).

Less than a century later, another Persian prince, Artaxerxes, confronted Philip II of

Macedonia. Within four years, Philip’s son, Alexander the Great, landed in Asia Minor.

Although Alexander conquered the Mediterranean façade of the Persian Empire within

two years of leaving Troy and crossed the Indus 2326 years ago, he was stopped by his

troops and subsequently died at Babylon 2322 years ago. During the period from 2338 to

2168 years ago, the Greeks proved unable to effectively administer the world empire that

had formerly been held by the Persians. By 2185 years ago, the territory once conquered

and administered as part of the Persian Empire was, was poised for conquest by the

Romans (Vidal-Naquet, 1992).

In addition to the Persians, there were other Iranian peoples whose impact was felt on the

Balkan Peninsula, including some who are less well known than those already discussed.
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-41

Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians—all of Iranian stock—successively occupied the

steppe hinterland north of the Black Sea in present-day Ukraine, from the Caspian Sea

and the Caucasus Mountains to the lower Danube. They maintained both commercial and

cultural contacts with the Greek colonies (Hajda, 1995; Sokal, 1996).

Beginning nearly 4000 years ago, the Cimmerians had spread over an area north of the

Caucasus Mountains and the Sea of Azov to the lower Danube River on the Balkan

Peninsula. They were identified in the central Balkans from as early as 3000 years ago.

Within 100 years, they were in eastern Romania and eastern Bulgaria. The presence of

Cimmerians in Asia Minor from about 2800 to 2700 years ago may represent an eastern

branch, due to evidence of a group of Cimmerians attacking the Bosporus from the west

via the Balkans by 2700 years ago. The origin of the Cimmerians is obscure.

Linguistically they are regarded as Iranian, or at least to have had an Iranian ruling class,

although some have suggested connections with the Thracian languages. One theory has

identified the Cimmerians with what is known to archaeologists as the “Catacomb”

culture that was found between the Volga and Dniester Rivers between 3800 and 3650

years ago (Cimmerians, 1980; Hajda, 1995; Sokal, 1996).

The Cimmerians continued to occupy the region south of the Caucasus Mountains, the

southern Ukraine, north as far as Kiev, and eastern Romania and Bulgaria until 2600

years ago. During this period, they also moved from the Pontic steppes north of the Black

Sea to the Danube Basin between the Transylvanian Alps and the Tisza and the Mures

Rivers in Romania and Hungary. Remains dating to the period from about 2800 to 2600

years ago found in the southwestern Ukraine and in central Europe may be traces of a

western branch of the Cimmerians, identified by some as “Thraco-Cimmerian.” The

Cimmerians apparently maintained a presence on the Balkan Peninsula, being in

Macedonia and central Epirus as well as in Thrace, where they were ultimately

assimilated by the Thracians about 2500 years ago. The Cimmerians were apparently

ousted from southern Russia by a culture referred to as the “Srubna” culture (known only

archaeologically) from beyond the Volga River about 2350 years ago (Cimmerians, 1980;

Hajda, 1995; Sokal, 1996).

Nearly 3000 years ago, the Iranian Scythians and kindred tribes seem to have been

concentrated east of the Urals in the Altai region of central Asia. After the Chinese ruler

Hshan Wang began a practice of raiding China’s western boundaries, the Scythian

nomads became restless. The Chinese were forced to retreat from the frontier, however;

and a subsequent struggle for grazing land, rendered more acute by a severe drought,

ensued. It touched off a widescale nomadic migration that ultimately dislodged the

Scythians, who were among the earliest people to master the art of riding and were

accomplished horsemen (Hajda, 1995; Sokal, 1996).

Every Scythian owned at least one gelding to serve as a riding horse, but the

wealthy possessed a great many mounts; most Scythians also owned oxen or

rough ponies, which served as beasts of burden . . . . The Scythians devoted

much time and attention to their horses and ornamented all their trappings.

Bridles were provided with metal cheekpieces in the shape of animals, and the

leather straps were adorned with embossed, cutout, or appliquJ designs, which

also often represented animals. Saddles consisted of two felt cushions mounted

on wooden frames bound with yellow or red and sometimes embellished with

gold plaques; the felt saddle cloths were adorned, as were the seats of the

saddles, with appliquJ designs. Metal stirrups were not known to the Scythians,
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-42

but there is reason to believe that they rested their feet in felt or leather supports.

Women travelled with their children in covered wagons with solid wheels and a

central shaft along which mules or oxen could be yoked in pairs . . . . The

Scythians were keen huntsmen and fishermen; they were skilled at curing hides;

they excelled at working metals; and the settlers were good agriculturalists.

Though they had neither an alphabet nor, until later times, a coinage, they carried

on a lively trade not only with the inhabitants of Central Asia but also with the

Greeks of the Pontic cities, often exchanging surplus goods and furs for Greek

luxuries such as fine ceramic wares. (Scythians, 1980, pp. 439-440)

As the Scythians began moving west from their homeland in the Altai region east of the

Ural Mountains about 3000 years ago, they may have driven the Cimmerians out of

southern Russia, over the Caucasus, and into Anatolia. By that time around 2900 years

ago, the Cimmerians were occupying the central Balkans. The Scythians’ westward

movement from central Asia to southern Russia about 2800 years ago brought them to a

location between the Don and Ural Rivers. Within 100 years, the Scythians had spread

west to parts of modern Azerbaijan, to southern Russia and Ukraine, the Black Sea

coasts, and parts of Asia Minor. Their spread continued, taking them to Syria, Palestine,

and Egypt by 2650 years ago. Within another 50 years, the Scythians had reached

Transylvania, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia. Before 2500 years ago, the Scythians

had penetrated the Balkan Peninsula briefly coming from Dobrugea along the western

coasts of the Black Sea and Transylvania into Thrace and along the lower Danube River

in modern-day Bulgaria (Hajda, 1995; Scythians, 1980; Sokal, 1996).

This advance of the Scythians brought them into fierce conflict with a second group of

Cimmerians, who had for centuries occupied the Caucasus and the plains lying north of

the Black Sea. These Cimmerians were not horsemen, however, and still fought on foot.

As a result, the Scythian cavalry quickly gained the upper hand. The Scythians pursued

this group of Cimmerians, who retreated east across the Volga River where the Scythians

destroyed and supplanted them. Another Scythian force pushed the remaining Cimmerian

army south across Armenia, where they met and joined another contingent of Scythians.

The Cimmerians made a steady retreat ending at the borders of Assyria (Scythians, 1980;

Sokal, 1996).

Some of the later movements of the Scythians have been attributed to the expansion of

yet another Iranian group, the Sarmatians, who occupied a region in southern European

Russia.

The Sarmatians were a people who, during the 4th century BC—4th century AD

[2399 – 1600 years ago], occupied much of southern European Russia and

penetrated into the eastern Balkans beyond . . . . As with the Scythians and the

Cimmerians before them, the most vital element in their political group came from

central Asia. Its members were of Iranian stock and language; their tone closely

resembled that of the Scythians . . . . Like the Scythians they were nomadic,

excelling in horsemanship and displaying the same skill in warfare. They also

had a keen political sense and administrative ability and followed their conquest

of the western Eurasian plain by obtaining full political control over what is now

southern European Russia . . . . their name quickly came to represent a large

group of kindred and allied tribes that remained thenceforth attached to the

smaller Sarmatian core . . . . the way of life developed by the Sarmatians . . .

[closely followed] the Scythians, largely as a result of a common Central Asian

origin and heritage. Nevertheless, several fundamental differences serve to
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-43

distinguish the two peoples . . . . Scythian women were relegated to a life of

semiseclusion; Sarmatian women, at least in the earlier periods, however, were

expected to fight in time of war, and could not marry until they had killed an

enemy in battle. After marriage, however, women were obliged to abandon

warfare and to devote themselves entirely to their homes and families. Greek

tales about Amazons may have been based on exploits of early Sarmatian

women, many of whom were buried with their weapons. (Sarmatians, 1980, pp.

249-250)

By the time the Sarmatians had penetrated southeastern Europe, they were accomplished

horsemen, following a nomadic way of life, devoted to hunting and to pastoral

occupations. Although scanty, there is evidence that some Sarmatians practiced an

elementary form of animal husbandry. The existence of Sarmatians in southern Russia

had effectively ended by AD 370 under pressure from waves of migrating Huns. Those

Sarmatians who survived were either assimilated by the Huns or by Slavs who resided

along the lower Dnieper. The Sarmatians disappeared from history by the 6th century

(Sarmatians, 1980; Sokal, 1996).

Unlike the Scythians, the Sarmatians did not excel at archery; they relied on long

lances or spears and long, sharply pointed swords. The Sarmatians were

excellent craftsmen. Perhaps artistically less inventive than the Scythians, they

were nevertheless equally proficient metalworkers, better potters, and no less

adept at curing hides . . . able to maintain the important trade in furs, grain . . .

honey, fish, and metal that the Scythians had established with the Greek cities on

the northern shores of the Black Sea . . . . . Until disrupted by the Huns,

Sarmatian culture presented a uniform and all-embraching character . . . .

(Sarmatians, 1980, p. 250)

The Alani and Roxolani were secondary Sarmatian tribes who spread from the steppes

between the Don and Dniepr Rivers ago to the Balkan Peninsula about 2150 years ago.

Some of the Roxolani reached Thrace by about 2000 years ago, spreading throughout the

reaches of the lower Danube River, Moesia (modern Bulgaria), Dacia and the region

encompassing present-day Romania where they remained for nearly 600 years to AD

568. Some of the Alani moved to Dacia on the Balkan Peninsula by AD 225 from the

lower Volga River between the Caucasus and the Sea of Azov and from the Pontic

steppes north of the Black Sea. Within less than 30 years, the Alani had reached Thracia

in the Balkans. They occupied the Hungarian plain for a period of about 30 years, until

they allied themselves with the Huns in AD 406 and began their movements to the west

that finally took them to the Iberian Peninsula and north Africa by AD 429 (Sarmatians,

1980; Sokal, 1996).

The presence of Iranian peoples on the Baltic Peninsula for more than 3000 years is not

commonly discussed. As a result, it is difficult to assess the impact of these peoples. In

addition to their nomadic practices, however, they have been described as keen huntsmen

and fishermen, skilled at curing hides and in metal working. Those who settled have been

described as good agriculturalists. The Iranians were clearly skilled in horsemanship and

warfare. They also had a keen political sense and administrative ability, and they carried

on a lively trade not only with the inhabitants of Central Asia but also with the Greeks of

the Pontic cities, exchanging surplus goods and furs for Greek luxuries such as fine

ceramic wares. The Iranians will also be shown as having exerted an important influence

in connection with the Slavic migrations to the Balkans after the fall of Rome in the 5th

century AD.
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-44

Celtic Peoples: Celts and Gauls from Western and Northern

Europe

The Celts were the first prehistoric people to rise from anonymity in the European

territories north of the Alps. Until the middle of the first millennium BC nothing

was known of them by the civilized Mediterranean world . . . . At the time when

these Celts had become the predominant people in the barbarian world they were

settled throughout a great part of Europe, extending from Ireland and Britain to

the Balkans, and even as far as Anatolia. They were a numerous people of

considerable political and military significance . . . . by the 4th century BC Greek

writers ranked the Celts, together with the Scythians and the Persians, among the

most numerous “Barbarian” peoples of the then known world. (Ancient Celts,

1980, pp. 1071-1072)

Although the name ‘Celt’ does not appear in texts until about 2400 years ago, the

archaeological data reveal a definable culture that evolved steadily from the end of the

Bronze Age about 2800 years ago up to the Roman conquest about 2050 years ago.

Celtic settlements have been found throughout temperate Europe in part of present-day

France, southern Germany, and adjacent territory reaching as far as southern and central

Bohemia. The Celts were farmers, occupying the richest plains in northern Europe as far

north as Scotland, southern Scandinavia and west of the Vistula in eastern Europe. They

developed the swing plow and were capable of farming heavy soils as well as correcting

and fertilizing poor soils. They were involved in exporting surplus products, including

cereals and salt that they sent to southern Europe (Ancient Celts, 1980; Celt, 1973; VidalNaquet, 1992).

During the period from 2700 to 2500 years ago, the Celts expanded through France to the

Iberian Peninsula, to the British Isles, and on a more limited basis, to the east into central

Europe. By 2440 years ago, the Celts were preparing armed raids from the upper

Danube and Rhine Rivers into the remaining parts of Europe. Invading Celts forced the

Illyrians south from the northern Adriatic coast, beginning about 2450 years ago. Celtic

bands also entered Italy, reaching the Adriatic coast, plundering Rome, and penetrating

southern Italy by about 2390 years ago. Although the Celts were later driven back to the

Alpine foothills by the Romans, a second stream of expansion reached central Europe, the

Carpathians, and the Balkans (Ancient Celts, 1980).

A Celtic race, the Gauls, inhabited the region comprising modern-day France and parts of

Belgium, western Germany, and northern Italy. By approximately 2550 years ago, the

Celts were engaged in trading tin, amber, and copper with the Greek colonies and Italy.

As Celtic mercenaries had contact with indigenous populations, they introduced new

techniques such as compasses, the potter’s wheel, and the rotary millstone. Skill in

working iron about 2400 years ago enabled these farmers to improve agricultural

production, clearing new land and arming the surplus population that was making inroads

into Italy and over the entire northern Mediterranean, where they had migrated (Celt,

1973; Gaul, 1995; Gaul, 1973; Vidal-Naquet, 1992).

Sources have suggested that the Celts reached the Carpathians about 2350 years ago,

later moving into present-day Bulgaria, Romania, Thrace, and Macedonia. By about 2350

years ago, the Gauls had migrated south from the Rhine River valley to the Mediterranean

coast and had established themselves across northern Italy from Milan to the Adriatic

coast. Over several subsequent centuries, a mixed Celtic-Illyrian culture arose in much of
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-45

what is modern Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia. They produced wheel-turned pottery,

jewelry, and iron tools. A wave of Celtic invaders that were spreading over Europe from

southern Germany and Austria challenged the Macedonian rulers in Thrace around 2200

years ago. The Celts established a short-lived state in the area of present-day central

Bulgaria. When it fell, a new Thracian kingdom was created and was subsequently

altered when the Romans conquered Macedonia in 2148 years ago. Following this, Rome

asserted its authority over Thrace (Ancient Celts, 1980; Celt, 1995; Curtis, 1992; Gaul,

1995; Gaul, 1973; Wolff, 1974).

By about 2000 years ago, the Celtic world was caught in the press of two dangerous

forces: The Roman Empire was in the process of extending its frontiers to the Rhine and

the Danube, while the Germanic tribes were beginning to thrust southward. Prior to this

time, a strong Celtic settlement had existed in Pannonia where they had apparently taken

refuge after being driven out of Bohemia. Under pressure, however, the Celts withdrew

across modern Switzerland into Gaul; and by the end of the century, the Celts on the

continent had lost their commanding position and were confined to the frontier between

the Roman and Germanic worlds (Ancient Celts, 1980).

Italic Peoples: The Roman Empire in the Balkans

The city of Rome was founded 2753 years ago. The Roman Republic, an ancient state

centered on the city of Rome, was founded 2509 years ago following the overthrow of the

last of Rome’s seven kings. The prevalent modern view is that the monarchy at Rome

was terminated through military defeat and foreign intervention. The Roman Empire held

the Balkan Peninsula for over 500 years, beginning more than 2000 years ago. Following

a period of expansion that began about 2360 years ago, possibly propelled by population

growth, a marauding Gallic tribe sacked Rome in 2390 years ago. The invaders departed

after receiving a ransom in gold, and Rome’s power was ultimately restored. Rome’s

defeat of Carthage in North Africa was part of a contest for control of the

Mediterranean. The Romans ultimately defeated Syria, Macedonia and its environs, and

finally southern Greece, and Egypt—all parts of the decaying Hellenistic Empire. As a

result, the whole Balkan Peninsula was brought under a single rule for the first time.

Rome assigned much of Thrace to the kingdom of Pergamum 2197 years ago, while

annexing the coastal area west of the Maritsa River to the province of Macedonia.

During the Roman-Macedonian wars, Roman armies often crossed Illyria; and 2168 years

ago, Rome conquered the Illyrians, destroying the Macedonia of Philip and Alexander

(Curtis, 1992; Gianaris, 1982; Roman Republic and Empire, 1995).

Although Rome forced the Illyrians to pay tribute, the Illyrian lands flourished under the

Romans. The rest of the Balkans, however, and especially Greece, suffered a steady

economic decline. The construction of a well-organized network of paved highways,

particularly one stretching from the Adriatic coast to Salonika on the Aegean, provided the

basis for the development of trade to the interior at this time. This brought into existence

local industries, such as weaving, marble quarrying, mining, lumbering, and the production

of wine and table delicacies. Military camps in Belgrade, Ni”, Sofia, Plovdiv, and Edirne

expanded into trade centers (Curtis, 1992; Gianaris, 1982).

By about 2000 years ago, Rome became more directly involved in the whole region.

Quarrels among local Thracian rulers who were client kings of Rome 1904 years ago
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-46

prompted Emperor Claudius I to annex the entire Thracian kingdom, making it into a

Roman province. The newly acquired lands and diverse populations proved a challenge to

govern effectively. The Romans organized the conquered peoples into provinces under

the control of appointed governors who had absolute power over all non-Roman citizens.

Troops were stationed in each province, ready to exercise appropriate force if necessary

(Thrace, 1995).

For many years, the Dinaric Alps sheltered resistance forces, but Roman

dominance increased. In 35 B.C. the emperor Octavian conquered the coastal

region and seized inland Celtic and Illyrian strongholds; in A.D. 9, Tiberius

consolidated Roman control of the western Balkan Peninsula; and by A.D. 14,

Rome had subjugated the Celts in what is now Serbia. The Romans brought

order to the region, and their inventive genius produced lasting monuments. But

Rome’s most significant legacy to the region was the separation of the empire’s

Byzantine and Roman spheres (the Eastern and Western Roman Empires,

respectively), which created a cultural chasm that would divide East from West,

Eastern Orthodox from Roman Catholic, and Serb from Croat and Slovene.

(Curtis, 1992, p. 5)

The influence of the Romans along the Dalmatian coast and in coastal towns was

increased by the settlement of many military veterans. Illyrian pirates and raiders from

the mountains initially brought considerable instability to Roman Dalmatia. As the coast

became romanized, the Dalmatian towns became very similar to those in Italy. These

towns retained their Italian identity and were given various privileges and a degree of

autonomy that persisted throughout the Middle Ages (Fine, 1983).

Latin, the language of the Romans, was also one of many Indo-European languages

spread throughout the Balkans, especially among the Illyrians. At the same time, the

Romans, particularly the upper classes, were also being significantly influenced by Greek

culture and civilization ,to the extent that many historians and social scientists call this era

the Greco-Roman Period. The Romans acknowledged a cultural debt to the Greeks:

The Roman world-state, while enriched by many cultural strains, was

predominantly a synthesis of Greek and Latin cultures. The Romans learned the

Greek language, copied Greek architecture, employed Greek sculptors, and

identified their Gods with Greek deities. Although Greek ways of life introduced

sophisticated habits which were often corrupting to the Roman virtues of selfreliance, personal integrity, family cohesion, and discipline, Greek influences

made the Romans on the whole less harsh and insensitive. Largely because of

their admiration for Greek culture and their belief in maintaining a diversity of

cultures within a political unity, the Romans succeeded in establishing a worldstate instead of a narrow national empire. (Wallbank, Taylor, Bailkey, & Mancall,

1970, p. 143)

The gradual intrusion of Roman Christianity changed, and sometimes destroyed, the

ancient Greek culture. The western Balkan territories were divided into separate

provinces; and new roads were built to link fortresses, mines, and trading towns. The

Romans introduced the cultivation of grapes in Dalmatia, and instituted slavery, and dug

new mines. In the Danube basin, agriculture thrived. Throughout the country, towns

grew into urban areas with forums, temples, water systems, coliseums, and public baths

(Curtis, 1992; Gianaris, 1982).
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-47

In the north, the Romans used the Danube as their frontier. In AD 106 (1894 years ago),

Emperor Trajan crossed the river and conquered Dacia in present-day Romania.

Although little is known about the first inhabitants of Romania, it is generally accepted that

at that time it was inhabited by Dacians—relatives of the Thracians—who engaged

mainly in agriculture, cattle raising, mining (gold and silver), and domestic and foreign

trade (Dacia, 1995; Gianaris, 1982; Roman Republic and Empire, 1995; Thrace, 1995).

The Roman administration, using highways built during the occupation AD 106 – 275,

imported people from Italy to work the rich lands of Dacia and the mines of Transylvania.

Security of life and property under the Roman system stimulated the permanent

establishment of peddlers, soldiers, and workers from Italy and other Mediterranean areas

in the Balkans, especially in Romania. When the Romans withdrew, under pressure from

the Goths, they left behind the name of the state of Romania as well as the fundamentals

for the Romanian language (Dacia, 1995; Gianaris, 1982; Roman Republic and Empire,

1995; Thrace, 1995).9

In the southern regions of the Balkan Peninsula, Roman merchants used the Aegean

islands for shipping and trading activities. During that period, the island of Delos became

an important junction for the transport and exchange of commodities and slaves from east

to west. On the Adriatic Coast, slaves from the Balkan countries were sold. More than a

million slaves from Macedonia, Thrace, and the rest of Greece were sold to Italy and

Sicily at a relatively high price because of the variety in their skills (Dacia, 1995; Gianaris,

1982; Roman Republic and Empire, 1995; Thrace, 1995).

As the Romans continued to spread their own knowledge throughout the world-state, they

also disseminated Greek knowledge; and a synthesis of cultures took place among the

diverse peoples of the central and eastern Mediterranean. By assimilating and spreading

Hellenic elements and preserving Hellenistic culture in the eastern provinces, the Romans

helped to perpetuate the Greek legacy of economic expansion, growing cosmopolitanism,

and striking intellectual and artistic achievement. The unification of the eastern and

western segments of the Empire had far-reaching economic consequences, including the

suppression of piracy and brigandage and the establishment of relatively good

communications. Agriculture remained the basic economic activity in the Roman Empire

although the city was the dominant influence in Roman life. Absentee owners prospered

due to their possession of large estates on which large numbers of free tenants tilled the

soil, gradually replacing slave labor. Rome lacked a degree of unity, however, failing to

develop a means for ordinary citizens to participate directly in political affairs (Wallbank,

Taylor, Bailkey, & Mancall, 1970).

Emperor Augustus is credited with bringing the whole Balkan Peninsula within the

Mediterranean civilization. The Roman Emperor Constantine, however, broke with

Western tradition. He enthroned himself in the Greek trading post of Byzantium (later

Constantinople) where merchants from the Aegean and Black Seas met with those from

Asia and the Balkan interior and developed the city into an important economic and

cultural center. Although wealth was concentrated among limited numbers of people and

 

9

Present-day Romanians take pride in the fact that they are the offspring of the ancient Dacians

and Romans. Recently, they even changed the spelling of their country’s name from Rumania to

Romania.
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-48

the breach between the classes widened, commerce and cottage industries flourished in

Balkan cities during the Roman period. The Illyrian lands provided valuable raw materials

used by the growing commercial cities. Illyrian peasants provided soldiers for the Roman

legions. The administration of justice, the roads, the comforts of the towns (with their

theaters and baths), and the granting of Roman citizenship to all freemen of the empire in

AD 212, facilitated business travel and enhanced the economic and cultural development

of the area (Byzantine Empire, 1995; Gianaris, 1982).

During most of the Roman Empire, Rome was the dominant power in the entire

Mediterranean basin, in most of western Europe, and in large areas of northern Africa.

The Romans possessed a powerful army and were gifted in the applied arts of law,

government, city planning, and statecraft. They also acknowledged and adopted

contributions from other ancient peoples, most notably the Greeks. As a result, much of

Greek culture was preserved. The Roman Empire was distinguished for its outstanding

army as well as for its accomplishments in intellectual endeavors, including Roman law.

Rome’s system of roads was without match in the ancient world, designed as they were

for comparatively fast transportation. The roads formed a 50,000-mile transportation

network that extended from Britain to the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers in present-day Iraq and

to Spain and northern Africa. They were primarily for military use; but they were also

adapted to a wide variety of functions, including commerce, agriculture, mail delivery,

pedestrian traffic, and military movements. Roman city planners achieved unprecedented

standards of hygiene with their plumbing, sewage disposal, dams, and aqueducts. Finally,

Latin became the medium for a significant body of original works attributable to Western

civilization (Mojzes, 1995; Roman Republic and Empire, 1995; Roman Road System,

1995).

Germanic Peoples: Goths, Ostrogoths, and Visigoths

from the Pontic Steppes

Archaeological evidence suggests the presence of a relatively-uniform Germanic people

by about 2700 years ago, located in southern Scandinavia and along the North Sea and

Baltic coasts from The Netherlands to the Vistula River in what is present-day Poland.

By 2250 years ago, the Germanic people had spread south, and five general groups

become distinguishable: (1) North Germanic speakers in southern Scandinavia, (2) North

Sea Germanic speakers located along the North Sea and in Jutland, (3) speakers of

Rhineland-Weser along the middle Rhine and Weser Rivers, (4) speakers of Elbe

Germanic along the middle Elbe, and (5) East Germanic speakers between the middle

Oder and the Vistula. By about 1750 years ago (AD 250), the division was similar

although the Elbe group had spread southward to the Danube and the people from the

area between the middle Oder and the Vistula had moved southeast into the Carpathians

and beyond. By about AD 400, the great Germanic tribal migrations had begun (Herzog,

1995).

The Goths were an Indo-European speaking Germanic people with two branches—the

Ostrogoths of the East, and the Visigoths of the West. For centuries, the Goths harassed

the Roman Empire. According to their own legends, they originated in southern

Scandinavia about 2500 years ago and crossed in three ships to the southern shore of the

Baltic Sea, where they settled after defeating the Vandals and other Germanic peoples in
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-49

that area. Beginning about AD 175 (1825 years ago), they migrated southward from the

Vistula region in present-day Poland, to arrive at the Black Sea (Goth, 1995; Goths, 1973).

It may have been pressure from the Goths that drove other Germanic peoples to exert

heavy pressure on the Danubian frontier of the Roman Empire during the reign of Marcus

Aurelius. After AD 214, Gothic raids on the Roman provinces in Asia Minor and on the

Balkan Peninsula were numerous. During the period from AD 270 to 275, the Goths

forced the Romans to evacuate the province of Dacia. Those Goths who lived between

the Danube and the Dniestr Rivers became known as the Visigoths, while those who

remained in what is now Ukraine were known as the Ostrogoths (Cowgill, 1995; Goth,

1995; Goths, 1973).

In the 3rd century AD, the Ostrogoths developed an empire north of the Black Sea in the

Pontic steppes. Invading southward from the Baltic Sea, the Ostrogoths built a large

empire that stretched from the River Don to the Dniester River in present-day Ukraine,

and from the Black Sea to the Pripet Marshes in southern Belarus. They were

subsequently attacked by the Huns out of Asia and subjugated about AD 370. The

Ostrogoths were probably literate in the 3rd century, and their trade with the Romans was

highly developed. Once subjugated by the Huns, however, the activities of the Ostrogoths

for nearly a century are little known. The Ostrogoths then reappeared in Pannonia on the

middle Danube River as federates of the Romans. After most of the Ostrogoths had

moved to Central Europe, a pocket of Ostrogoths remained in the Crimea near the Sea of

Azov where they preserved their identity through the Middle Ages (Goths, 1973;

Ostrogoth, 1995).

In the 4

th century AD, the Visigoths separated from the Ostrogoths raiding Roman

territories repeatedly and establishing kingdoms in Gaul and Spain. The Visigoths become

settled agriculturalists in Dacia (now Romania) where they were attacked by the Huns in

AD 376 and driven southward across the Danube River into the Roman Empire.

Although they were allowed to enter the empire, the fees levied by the Romans drove

them to revolt. With the assistance of the Ostrogoths, they plundered the Balkan

provinces. In AD 378, the Visigoths defeated the army of the Roman emperor on the

plains near Adrianople, killing the emperor himself. In search of a place to settle, they

wandered for several years, finally settling in Moesia, where they were given land and the

duty of defending the frontier as Roman federates. During this period, the Visigoths were

converted to Arian Christianity. They left Moesia in AD 395, moving southward into

Greece and, finally, into Italy. By AD 415, they had extended their territory into southern

Gaul and Spain where they ruled until they were finally destroyed by the Muslims in AD

711 (Goths, 1973; Visigoth, 1995).

Near the end of the 4th century AD during the great Germanic tribal migrations, the North

Germanic speakers migrated into Jutland, approximately to the modern Danish-German

language border. A part of the North Sea group crossed the North Sea and conquered

much of England. The Elbe group spread south into part of Switzerland and into Austria

and northern Italy. Finally, and of particular interest here is that the East Germanic group

left the Oder-Vistula area to begin their many wanderings, ultimately bringing them to the

north shore of the Black Sea and to the Balkans (Goths, 1973; Ostrogoth, 1995).

After the collapse of the Huns in AD 455, the Ostrogoths began to move again, first to

Moesia, and then to Italy in AD 475-488. With the Visigoths, they established a Gothic
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-50

kingdom in Italy in the late 5th century. Justinian, the Byzantine emperor declared war on

the Ostrogoths in AD 535 in an effort to wrest Italy from their grasp. After 20 years of

war, the Ostrogoths had no further national existence (Goths, 1973; Ostrogoth, 1995).

The Veneti: Proto-Slavs?

Approximately 2000 years ago, a group of people has been identified archaeologically.

They are known as the Veneti, but their linguistic affiliation is unknown. The dispersal of

the Veneti included an area bounded by the Vistula River and the Carpathian Mountains

in the west, the Gulf of Finland and Russia to the Ural Mountains in the north, the Pontic

Steppes north of the Black Sea, and the region west of the delta of the Danube River in

present-day Romania. It has been suggested that these people were the descendants of

yet an earlier archaeological culture—the Urnfield Culture—that was broadly dispersed

3300 to 2700 years ago. This Culture has been identified in Albania, Croatia, northern

Bosnia, and Slovenia; as far west as Catalonia, Aragon, and central Spain; and in the

Rhone River basin, and southern and eastern France (“kerbinc, 2000; Sokal, 1996).

According to “kerbinc (2000a, 2000b), the mainstream opinion is that the identity of the

proto-language of central Europe is “unknown.” He cited the work of “avli, Bor, and

TomaÒiÖ (1996), however, and concluded that:

When the ancient Slavs, the bearers of the Urnfield culture, migrated from what is

now Poland and eastern Germany, they spread their slavic [sic] language as well

as their culture and religion. They reached present-day Austria and Slovenia

around 1200 B.C. [3200 years ago], and 200 years later they are documented in

northern Italy. They were generally called Winidi, Venedi, Veneti, Wenden or

Windische, depending on the area and time. (“kerbinc, 2000a, paragraph 4)

Sokal (1996) identified the Veneti dating from approximately 3000 – 1900 years ago as

being of Illyrian or Celtic origin. “kerbinc (2000b), however, noted that ‘official

Venetologists’ have maintained that the Veneti were an Italic people, although there have

been some “. . . cautious indications that the Veneti . . . could have been of Slavic origin”

(paragraph 5). “kerbinc also cited “avli, Bor, and TomaÒiÖ (1996) as presenting

evidence that similarities between the Sanskrit and Slovene languages must have

originated around 4000 years ago when the indigenous (Slavic?) language of Central

Europe merged with the language of newly-arrived Indo-Europeans.

The individual segments of the study [“avli, Bor, and TomaÒiÖ (1996)] may seem

puzzling or even preposterous at first sight, but one soon discovers that the

totality of the so-called Venetic theory is well grounded and is the only plausible

explanation for the problems plaguing the research into the indigenous language

and the subsequent development of Indo-European languages. It also resolves

the question of the ethnic identity of the bearers of the Urnfield culture and their

descendants. (“kerbinc, 2000b, paragraph 14)

According to Sokal (1996), Ptolemy mentioned a group referred to as Venedi dating to the

period from 2000 – 1800 years ago in the region east of the Vistula River up to the

Carpathians and adjoining the settlements of the Peuci and the Finns. He noted that some

authors believe that these people were Slavs. Time and further research may provide

more certain clues to the identity, location, and time period of the peoples ultimately

defined as Proto-Slavs.
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-51

THE COLLAPSE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

The Romans were efficient administrators and organizers. They managed to bring

together the diverse Balkan and other Mediterranean peoples and to keep them under

their control for centuries, following the pattern developed by the Greeks. Repeatedly, the

indigenous Balkan people, unable to compete or complement the level of Greek

development, were ‘used’ for their resources and manpower. The Roman army recruited

natives of the conquered regions, and through time, five sons of Illyrian peasants rose

through the ranks to become emperor, including some as famous as Diocletian. Although

the Illyrian, Celtic, and Thracian languages eventually died out, the centuries of Roman

domination failed to create cultural uniformity in the Balkans (Curtis, 1992).

By the 3rd century AD, a number of tribes, mainly of German and Slavic origin, started to

move toward the south using the Danube River as their main route. They gradually began

to weaken the Roman military and administrative structure on the Balkan Peninsula.

[It] was a period of chaos. The northern part of the Balkans, because its

mountain ranges ran north-south, had no natural military defense and was easily

accessible to invasion. In the third century intensive Goth raids were launched

by land from across the Danube. At the same time Goth pirates began raiding

Roman towns along the Black Sea coast. Frequently the Roman generals sent

out to defend Roman territory against them revolted and claimed the throne.

Throughout the third century there were civil wars; the throne changed hands on

the average of every three or four years. There were also numerous revolts

which did not succeed, and provinces broke away, loyal to this or that pretender.

Thus, much of the Balkans was devastated by wars and raids and for much of the

time was not really under the control of the ruler in Rome. (Fine, 1983)

Over-expansion of the Roman Empire and pressures from invaders in the north—mainly

Goths—weakened its administration, paralyzed the processes of production and exchange,

and led to rivalries among emperors and armies. The Roman Empire was effectively split

into Western and Eastern realms with the death of Theodosius in AD 395, and the

Western portion suffered from repeated invasions and the flight of peasants into the cities.

Because of destructive raids carried out by the Goths, the western section of the Roman

Empire collapsed and Rome came under the control of a Gothic leader, Alaric I, in AD

410. The fall of Rome was completed in AD 476 when the Ostrogoth chieftain Odoacer

deposed the last Roman emperor of the West, Romulus Augustulus (Gianaris, 1982;

Roman Republic and Empire, 1995).

During all this internal chaos the Goth raids continued, lasting from the third to

the fifth century. Yet, though these raids were frequent, they tended to be

concentrated along major routes . . . and roads leading off the main routes to

other centers. Probably they rarely went further from these routes than was

necessary to forage for food. Furthermore, along these main routes were

concentrated major cities (sources of the most booty) and the major

concentrations of population (urbanites or nearby villagers supplying urban

needs) for slaves. These areas were plundered time and again. But it probably is

not accurate to picture the whole Balkan region (or even large parts of it) as

being desolate; such a picture would be valid only for the region along the main

routes. Much of the population probably reacted as people did later, at the time

of the Turkish conquest, withdrawing into the hills and mountains further from

the routes to avoid the invaders. (Fine, 1983, pp. 13-14)
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-52

On and near main transportation routes, the Gothic raids apparently resulted in the

depopulation of villages and poorly fortified towns, as well as in reduced commerce and a

decreased standard of living. Much of the interior of the Balkan Peninsula, however,

probably remained untouched. In causing localized devastation, depopulation of certain

areas, and population movements, the Gothic raids weakened the area for subsequent

invasions by the Avars and Slavs. The eastern part of the Roman Empire—Byzantium—

was always richer and stronger, however, due to the wealth and stability guaranteed by

the export of spices and other products. Despite raids by Goths, Slavs, and Mongolians,

the Byzantine Empire held its ground for a thousand years (Fine, 1983; Gianaris, 1982;

Roman Republic and Empire, 1995).

The hold of the Roman Empire on the Balkan Peninsula weakened near the end of the 5th

century AD under extreme pressure from invading nomadic hordes out of the north and

out of central and eastern Asia. The Empire in the West ultimately collapsed in 476 AD,

creating a power vacuum that was conducive to the settlement of another wave of

migratory tribes from the east. This period, marking the beginnings of European, as

opposed to Mediterranean, history has been characterized as the beginning of the

European ‘Dark Ages’ (Mojzes, 1995).

From the beginnings of continuous human habitation in the Balkans at least 12,000 years

ago, the ‘lay of the land’ has to an extent defined and constrained the level of subsistence

technology that developed and/or persisted. Beginning about 8,000 years ago, the

evidence reveals groups of nomadic pastoralists herding their animals in the mountains,

interspersed, especially in the northern reaches of the peninsula, among groups of

sedentary agriculturalists who had developed a successful adaptation to the fertile plains.

Relying on data from living pastoralists and agriculturalists, these Balkan peoples have

been ‘brought to life,’ revealing the typical cultural personalities of peoples who practice

herding as a life way in comparison to those who are peasant farmers. Herders are

frequently quick-tempered and aggressive, and are known especially to be courageous

warriors. On the other hand, agriculturalists tend to be envious of others, viewing the

universe as hostile and ‘out to get them.’ They tend to be preoccupied with warfare,

having often secured their property through conquest.

The land the Balkan states occupy today has been divided for centuries. The ‘native’

Balkan peoples were exploited by wave after wave of roaming, non-Indo-European

speaking predatory nomads, who swept through the Balkans from Asia for more than a

thousand years, thus solidifying many of the traits already represented in the region.

Recorded history tells of sojourns on and through the region during the first millennium

AD by ancient peoples from western and northern Europe, from eastern Europe, and

from Central Asia and beyond.

The thousand years ending in the fifth century A.D. might be considered the

formative period of the great world civilizations. This millennium spanned the

evolution of the Graeco-Roman culture and the Judaic-Christian tradition, from

which much of present-day western culture is derived; and in India and China it

witnessed the development of religious movements, philosophical systems, and

intellectual and artistic achievements which continue to play a vital role in the

contemporary cultures of these Asian lands. At this time each of the great areas

of civilization—Graeco-Roman, Indian, and Chinese—was developing its own

way of life, yet they were also connected by tenuous, sprawling routes of mutual

commercial and cultural exchange . . . . Although the contact between East and
BALKANS-APPENDIX D D-53

West was eventually severed, it continued long enough to establish a durable

tradition in both the Orient and the Occident that beyond the mountains and

deserts to the east or to the west lay other great civilizations. (Wallbank, Taylor,

Bailkey, & Mancall, 1970, p. 185)

The following chapter, “Indigenous Peoples, Invaders, and Immigrants in the Balkans

during the ‘Dark Ages’ (AD 476 to 1000)” discusses these numerous ‘outside’ influences

that ultimately contributed to the creation of distinct groups in the Balkans. It contains a

review of the peopling of the Balkans following the fall of Rome in the 5th century AD.

The major events that characterized the ‘Dark Ages’ are reviewed, including the repeated

invasions by peoples out of Asia. The discussion centers on those groups that ‘gave

flavor’ to the natives on the Balkan Peninsula, recognizing, however, that some did not

directly contribute to the ultimate emergence of separate Balkan identities and the

development of Balkan states.

The Persians and the Medes were the foremost peoples among the ‘barbarians’

(the non-Greek-speakers). In forty years, they rose from being mere Oriental

provincials to become masters of the world. The conquests of Cyrus, Cambyses

and Darius I brought together the Indus region [bordering India], the Scythians

beyond Sogdiana [the eastern portion of the present-day Uzbek Republic], Egypt

and Ionia [southern Turkey bordering on the Aegean] into a vast single body

whose heart beat in Persia. Though there were revolts within the Empire and

though it suffered some defeats, particularly at the hands of the Greeks, a state of

peace was established (albeit one defended by a vast deployment of arms).

(Vidal-Naquet, 1992, p. 44)

A revolt occurred in Egypt 2403 years ago, followed by its secession from the Persian

Empire. The governors in Asia Minor revolted 2362 years ago. By 2341 years ago, King

Artaxerxes III of Persia reconquered Egypt in an effort to restore royal power within the

Empire.

Return to Table of Contents
BALKANS-APPENDIX E E-1

Appendix E

European and Balkan Prehistory

PART 1: CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS IN EUROPE AND THE BALKANS

(PREHISTORIC PERIOD) 10

32,000 BP Rapid transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic with great diversity in

cultural traditions. Artistic traditions thrive for 20,000 years,

demonstrated in remains by a complex symbolic relationships between

human beings, their physical environment, and other animals; these

traditions last until about 13,000 years ago.

10,300 BP Mesolithic period begins with the retreat of glaciers; low-lying areas are

flooded and become natural environments for new flora and fauna.

c. 8500 BP Evidence of agriculture in southeastern Europe. Cultivation of cereals

and domestication of sheep and goats appears to have diffused from

Anatolia.

c. 8300 BP Villages appear in the central and western parts of the Mediterranean.

c. 8000 BP Anatolian peoples have moved across the Aegean Sea into Thessaly and

onto Crete.

7-8000 BP One route of colonization of Europe was followed along the

Mediterranean littoral from Anatolia.

6-7000 BP Colonization of Europe also proceeded north-westwardly through the

Vardar-Danube Rhine river corridors to the plains of northern Europe.

Rising sea levels separate Britain from rest of Europe.

6500 BP People in the Balkans are making gold and copper objects. In eastern

and central Europe, individual burial sites hold rich materials, including the

large Varna Cemetery in Bulgaria that holds copper and gold artifacts. In

the lower Danube (Bulgaria), people are using cattle as plow animals.

c. 5200 BP Appearance of the wheel in Europe.

c. 4000 BP Migration of Indo-European populations—including the Celts, Illyrians,

Thracians, Germans, Balts, Italic speakers, Slavs, and Veneti—from

central Asia, eventually reaching Europe.

4000 BP State formation on Crete (Minoan Culture).

3900 BP Evidence of hieroglyphic writing in Minoan culture.

3500 BP Mycenaean period commences in Greece.

 

10 Bennett, 1992; Barraclough, 1978.
BALKANS-APPENDIX E E-2

c. 3000 BP Bronze-using agriculturalists located throughout Europe. East-central

region is one area that was particularly well developed in terms of

industries and artistic traditions.

2850 BP First evidence of a settlement at the later site of Rome.

2750 BP First evidence of Greek alphabet. Greek colonization begins to spread

throughout Mediterranean. Ironworking develops in Britain.

c. 2600 BP Greeks found a trading colony at contemporary site of Marseilles. Rome

is established as an urban center. First evidence of Latin alphabet. Celts

are located north and west of the Alps, trading with western

Mediterranean Greek colonies. Rome established as an urban center.

First evidence of Latin alphabet.

2450 BP Athens city-state at height of its cultural influence.

2146 BP Destruction of Greek city-states by Rome. Greek culture continues to

flourish.

PART 2: BALKAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND PREHISTORY

The vitality of the peoples inhabiting Europe between c. 32,000 and 8,000 B.C. is

reflected in several ways in the archaeological record. The rate of change

proceeded at an unprecedented pace, technology was more diverse and

specialized . . . . attention . . . focused first on caves and rock-shelters as sources

of information about this stage in European history, since these were particularly

abundant and rich . . . . The expansion of intensive research . . . and the

development of excavation techniques that made it possible to gain significant

information from open sites . . . have since put . . . prehistory in a new

perspective. (Clarke, 1977, pp. 95-96)

The Lower and Middle Paleolithic

Worldwide, hunting and gathering represents the earliest and most long-lived human

subsistence strategy. It is also a strategy that has a long history in the Balkans, as is

evident from the following brief review of early archaeological sites in the Balkans.

In Montenegro:

• Crvena Stijena at Petrovici near Niksic is a cave site in the Balkans that

contains at one level, more than 23,000 stone tools attesting to human

residence and activity more than 100,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene,

that has been assigned to the Lower Paleolithic or Lower Old Stone Age

(Wilkes, 1992; Wenke, 1980), as well as more recent stone tools associated

with red deer, wild cattle, and goats (Wilkes, 1992);

• Lipci near Risan and Morinj on the Gulf of Kotor is a site where carvings of

deer and some rectangular shapes have been found on a rock face (Wilkes,

1992);

In Croatia: Krapina near Zagreb is a Pleistocene site above a tributary of the Drava

river where more than eight meters have been excavated; the lower six meters were
BALKANS-APPENDIX E E-3

sealed beneath a stalagmite of dissolved limestone and included a large quantity of human

bones in association with stone tools dated to at least 40,000 years ago, belonging to either

the Lower or Middle Paleolithic (Wilkes, 1992);

In northern Bosnia: Several sites, including Kamen, Doboj, Grabovca brdo, Lusicici,

Usova, and Visoko brdo, are generally linked with the hunting of mammoth, which

disappeared from Europe toward the end of the Pleistocene Epoch between 13,000 and

11,000 years ago (Wilkes, 1992; Milisauskas, 1978).

The Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic in the Balkans

(12,000 to 6,500 Years Ago)

Evidence of hunting and gathering groups occurs in numerous cave sites and rock shelter,

as well as at open-air sites scattered in the limestone mountains in the former Yugoslavia

and elsewhere in the Balkans. As the glacial period ended, the characteristic pattern of

hunting large herd animals was replaced by the exploitation of solitary animals such as roe

deer, wild pig, and elk, which were typically non-migratory forest animals. These solitary

mammals could not be exploited in the same manner as herds of mammoth or reindeer,

however, triggering changes in size settlement pattern of human groups, as well as in the

numbers, ages, and sex of animals taken. Through time, the subsistence patterns became

more varied with the addition of fish and fowl in some areas (Phillips, 1980; Milisauskas,

1978).

The evidence of multiple sites containing stone tools, both with and without deposits of

animal bones, support the conclusion that Balkan hunters and gatherers had a successful

history, both during the Pleistocene and after it ended approximately 10,000 years ago.

Other evidence of late postglacial food gatherers, consisting of faunal remains of red deer,

wild pig, roe deer, and aurochs (wild cattle) comes from caves in the limestone mountains

of southwestern Yugoslavia and the Adriatic coast (Wilkes, 1992; Wenke, 1980;

Tringham, 1971).

The Danube Gorges (Iron Gates): Lepenski Vir

An archaeological site, called Lepinski Vir, has been found on the banks of the Danube in

the gorge known as the Iron Gates, bordering eastern Serbia and western Romania. The

Iron Gates gorge has proven to be a significant archaeological region, spanning a

considerable time period. Excavations at Lepenski Vir and Icocana—a cave site in

Romania across the Danube from Lepenski Vir—have revealed that:

. . . between about 12,000 and 10,000 B.P. there was a rather diversified animal

economy, with the ibex and chamois becoming more important; around 8000 B.C.

[9,950 BP], however, the economy seems to have been firmly based on the

exploitation of red deer and pig . . . .and three other exploitative activities. These

are fishing, the gathering of land snails, etc., and the gathering of furred animals,

plus chamois, cattle and birds. (Phillips, 1980, p. 131)

At the bottom of the Danube Gorges, on the banks of the river itself, a series of open sites

of settlements of food gatherers have been excavated dating from 7,500—6,600 years

ago. Lepenski Vir lies on the narrow sloping southern bank of the Danube, between the

river and the steep limestone sides of the gorge. It is the best documented and most

thoroughly excavated of at least seven sites in the vicinity. They have produced evidence
BALKANS-APPENDIX E E-4

for homogeneous settlements, house types, burial rites, economies, and artifacts of stone,

bone, and antler (Milisauskas, 1978; Tringham, 1971).

At Lepenski Vir, eight living levels progressing through time from the most recent on top

to the oldest at the bottom have been distinguished. The earliest consist of three distinct

cultural levels, two of which lack any significant ceramic or pottery remains, suggesting

that domestication of plants had not yet occurred at this site. They also show evidence of

a hunting and fishing economy. Above these layers (and more recent in time) is a cultural

layer with a tool assemblage typical of an early food producing economy. Stone clubs,

some with designs scratched on them, as well as stones with grooves for attaching ropes,

have been found at the site. They may be part of a technology that included clubbing fish

and using nets for fishing. The bones of domesticated dog occur at the site, suggesting

their use in hunting (Milisauskas, 1978; Tringham, 1971).

The settlement of Lepenski Vir is situated near a very large and deep whirlpool

which is in close proximity to the river bank. It is assumed that the whirlpool . . .

helped to churn up the small organisms on which the fish of the Danube fed. It is

therefore further assumed that the whirlpool would have been an attractive place

for the many species of fish which inhabited the Danube, and no doubt the area

just below the whirlpool would have provided very lucrative fishing. From the

bone material found. . .it is clear that fishing, especially for the larger carp

species, was a very important source of food. No fish-hooks have been found

among the bone implements of the mesolithic layers, although they do occur in

the neolithic layer (III). (Tringham, 1971, p. 55)

At the time that the sites at Lepenski Vir were inhabited, the slopes and bottom of the

gorge were covered in mixed pine-juniper-birch forest. The climate was wet and

relatively cool. The animals that were hunted in these forests, with the aid of

domesticated dogs, included red deer, aurochs, wild pig, and roe deer (Milisauskas, 1978;

Tringham, 1971).

The beliefs of a society can be reflected in the art forms they create. Among the most

important finds at Lepenski Vir have been boulders from the Danube that have been

sculpted to form massive naturalistic heads. Paleolithic art from other parts of Europe

usually consists of small, portable art objects, sculpted objects, and cave wall decoration

which at times was traced in the mud on the cave walls, engraved or pecked with a hard

stone or antler, or painted in outline. On the walls of a number of rock shelters on the

Iberian Peninsula in the western part of Europe, paintings depicting hunting and foodcollecting and warfare partially cover the older lineal geometric art. This suggests that the

naturalistic art such as the sculpted heads at Lepenski Vir are more recent (beginning at

perhaps 7,000 BP). This naturalistic art has also been linked to new economic activities,

especially the beginning of the shift toward food production. Human coprolites from two

of the sites, Icoana and Vlasac, contain pollen from a cereal grain, posing an interesting

suggestion of pre-Neolithic cultivation. The age of this art is important, especially because

of the compositions, including the warfare scenes. There are other Neolithic contexts in

which aggression and possible territorial defense can be suggested, but to date, there are

no similar findings for the preceding hunting and gathering economies (Phillips, 1980;

Tringham, 1971).

Human burials have also been found at Lepenski Vir, as well as at Padina and Vlasac

also in Yugoslavia, and at six sites on the left bank in Romania. A total of approximately
BALKANS-APPENDIX E E-5

350 bodies have been found at these sites, including 57 bodies from Vlasic level I (dated

7,950—7,650 BP), 12 skeletons from Vlasic II, and 9 from Vlasic III (extending in time

from 7,650 to 7,350 BP) (Phillips, 1980).

Taking the Yugoslavian and Romanian sites of the Iron Gates as a whole,

Nemeskeri calculates that one generation could vary between sixty-six and 115

people in all, distributed in eight or ten subpopulations of the two banks of the

Danube. The population increased very slowly, by 0.005 per cent, as the number

of births and deaths seems to have remained more or less steady. (Phillips, 1978,

pp. 144-145)

The average life expectancy for the people in the Vlasic I settlement would have been

about 26 years, those from Vlasic II, about 29 years. Once people lived past the juvenile

years, women seemed to live to an age between 30 and 39, while men lived to an

approximate age between 50 and 59. There are 10 bodies estimated to have lived beyond

60 years of age. There are signs that some people had suffered illnesses severe enough

to deform their skeleton, but had, nevertheless, lived to what was considered a ‘good age,’

in all likelihood due to social structures emphasizing the importance of care of the ill and

aged (Phillips, 1980).

Inland Yugoslav Mountains

Other evidence of late postglacial food gatherers comes from caves in the limestone

mountains of southwestern Yugoslavia. These include sites with evidence of repeated

occupation, including late Paleolithic hunting remains, succeeded by Mesolithic

assemblages, and finally with levels containing early Neolithic ceramic items that may be

contemporary with the earliest introduction of agriculture to the plains of southeastern

Europe. Reminiscent of Lepenski Vir, these sites also include faunal remains of red deer,

wild pig, roe deer, and aurochs, all of which suggest that these limestone mountains were

more thickly forested than they are today. At Crvena Stijena in Montenegro, the bones of

wild goat occur in the habitation level immediately below that containing the earliest

pottery, suggesting reliance on species that were subsequently domesticated (Tringham,

1971).

Adriatic Coast

Along the Adriatic coast, there are additional cave settlements with evidence of habitation

by hunters and gatherers dating to the later postglacial period. The hunting of larger

forest animals, specifically red deer, but also roe deer, wild pig, ibex, and wolf formed the

basis of subsistence. Somewhat later at these sites, there is a marked increase in marine

mollusks although currently the cave is several miles from the sea. As at the sites

previously discussed, evidence of settlement at these sites ranges from late Paleolithic

through later Mesolithic levels and continuing until the layers in which pottery from the

Neolithic period occurs (Tringham, 1971).

The Neolithic in the Balkans

(8,000 to 4,500 Years Ago)

At the outset, it is important to explain the overlap in dates between those shown for the

Upper Paleolithic (12,000 to 6,500 BP) in the Balkans and those for the Neolithic (8,000 to

4,500 BP):
BALKANS-APPENDIX E E-6

The Neolithic in Europe is defined as the time segment starting with the first

appearance of agricultural communities and lasting until the appearance of

bronze metallurgy . . . . The use of the term Neolithic does not imply that uniform

sociopolitical developments took place among the various societies in Europe.

In some areas, hunters and gatherers persisted throughout the period, while

other regions witnessed the development of the earliest societies with ‘hereditary

inequality’ in so-called ranked societies or chiefdoms . . . . The beginning and

end of these time periods vary in different parts of Europe . . . . by the time

earliest farming, which characterizes Early Neolithic societies, was established in

central Europe, the Middle Neolithic had already begun in southeastern Europe .

. . . These different periods are not separated from one another by any sharp

boundaries or breaks, for the changes occurring in various aspects of culture are

generally gradual. (Milisauskas, 1978, p. 41)

On the basis of evidence regarding the initial stages in the cultivation of plants and the

domestication of animals in this region, the earliest agriculturalists spread into temperate

Europe from the Middle East, moving to the west and north by way of the Balkan

Peninsula in southeast Europe. In the Balkans, the first crops cultivated were cereal

grains, and the first domesticated animals to be kept were sheep and goats—both

subsistence activities having spread from Anatolia in the eastern part of what is now

modern Turkey. The earliest European agricultural settlements are in Bulgaria,

Yugoslavia, and Greece dating to 8,250—7,750 years ago, predating the development of

agriculture in western Europe and Great Britain by more than 2,000 years (Barraclough,

1978; Milisauskas, 1978; Tringham, 1971).

. . . whether this was an expansion of actual human groups or a diffusion of the

techniques and equipment relating to agriculture and stockbreeding is still open

to question. The hypothesis that the majority of the early food-producing . . .

settlements of south-east and central Europe represent an intrusive population is

based partly on the lack of any European . . . elements . . . in their assemblages,

and the lack of evidence of continuity or contact with the preceding and

contemporary food-gathering . . . population. (Tringham, 1971, pp. 68, 70).

Even when these early food-producers did spread from the Middle East into Europe, it is

unlikely that their expansion was associated with a conscious organized movement.

Instead, in all likelihood, it was more a continuous process associated with the regular

movements of semi-shifting agriculturalists and stockbreeders taking advantage of an

increase in the extent and density of vegetation on the fertile soils on the northern borders

of the land they occupied. The interpretation of early food-producing cultures in eastern

Europe as ‘intruders’ relies primarily the structure of the ancient economy, which is based

largely on domestication of sheep and goats and the cultivation of wheat and barley

(Milisauskas, 1978; Tringham, 1978).

Although the wild ancestors of wheat occur on the southern edge of the Balkan

peninsula in S. Bulgaria, Greece and S. Yugoslavia . . . it is very unlikely that

emmer wheat . . . was locally domesticated. Similarly, although there is evidence

of wild goats on some . . . sites in south-east Europe, there are no animals in a

semi-domesticated form. The sheep, goats, pigs and cattle on the early . . . sites

of central and south-east Europe were already completely domesticated . . . . It

seems very likely, therefore, that the actual domesticated animals and plants were

brought into south-east and central Europe from the Middle East. (Tringham,

1971, p. 71)
BALKANS-APPENDIX E E-7

After the initial expansion of the earliest agriculturalists into southeast Europe, little

influence from outside central and southeast Europe is evident in the subsequent evolution

of their culture. It seems likely that the Late Neolithic cultures of the region, including

innovations in equipment and the development of metallurgy, were the result of internal

evolution despite a certain amount of contact with areas further south. The broad culture

areas visible in the Early Neolithic were distinguished by similarities in their means of

subsistence, settlement, house types, and material culture (tools, etc.) that continued into

the Late Neolithic. Differences in the form and decoration of pottery and the emergence

of local pottery styles which were evident in the Early Neolithic became more apparent

and crystallized in the Late Neolithic, leading to the identification of a number of small

cultures. These frequently reflect regional variation in the pottery, with the rest of the

material culture remaining fairly uniform. Apart from the pottery, visible cultural changes

in the Late Neolithic cultures were of degree rather than kind (Tringham, 1971).

Lower Danube Basin

Of the earliest food producers in eastern Europe, various regional names are applied to

the archaeological remains of these farmers in different areas of the lower Danube region

in southeast Europe. These are referred to as the Karanovo I-Kremikovci-StarcevoKoros-Cris culture group, and these Early Neolithic cultures persisted from approximately

8,000 until about 7,100 years ago (Milisauskas, 1978; Tringham, 1971).

The Karanovo I culture is from south Bulgaria;

Kremikovci culture has been found in western Bulgaria and Macedonia;

Starcevo culture is from Serbia and Bosnia;

Koros is from southeast Hungary;

Cris is from Romania; and

A transition form, Starcevo-Cris, is found in Vojvodina and southwest Romania.

Generally, these cultural names correspond to variations in settlement type and location

and the basis of the economy. The material culture that these cultures share in common

with each other includes pottery, figurines, houses, and burials. In all of these groups, the

economy was based generally on agriculture and stockbreeding. Significant differences

occur between the housing traditions of the Middle East and those of these cultures of the

lower Danube Basin, perhaps due to differences in rainfall and the presence of denser

woodlands in the Balkans (Tringham, 1971).

The Karanovo I sites in Bulgaria had a distinctive settlement pattern, occurring as

habitation levels at the base of large stratified mounds referred to as ‘tells’ which are

normally found in the Middle East. They are the only instances of genuine ‘tell’

settlements that date to the early Neolithic outside Greece and the Middle East. These

steep-sided mounds, sometimes as high as 40 feet, were apparently formed by the

accumulation of debris from continuous occupation of the same site over many

generations, possibly lasting as much as several millennia and involving several successive

cultures (Tringham, 1971).

The Early Neolithic ‘tell’ settlements associated with the Kremikovci culture occur only

occasionally in west Bulgaria, Yugoslav Macedonia, and, apparently, in Greek Macedonia.

The settlements are shallower mounds with habitation debris more widely distributed,
BALKANS-APPENDIX E E-8

possibly reflecting displacement of the settlement after each break in habitation. The sites

also appear to be less continuously occupied. Many sites consist of only one thick

habitation level, while some consist of two to five discrete levels that are frequently

separated by a thin layer of mud or gravel that contains no artifacts, representing periods

of temporary abandonment of the site. The early Neolithic culture layer at Vrsnik in

Yugoslav Macedonia, however, is 9-21 feet thick. In the Early Neolithic levels in

Macedonia, there was an almost complete absence of wild animals bones and an

overwhelming predominance of the exploitation of domesticated animals, particularly

sheep and goats. Cattle and pigs were used to a much lesser extent, and domesticated

dogs occurred only in very small numbers. These same sites contain evidence for

domesticated wheat, barley, and lentils (Clark, 1977; Tringham, 1971).

The settlements are located on the spring-line and on the banks or lower terraces

of rivers. From their thick habitation layers, and with the help of the evidence for

north Greece, it seems probable that the economy of the settlements was based

on the products of domesticated animals and cultivated grain. The settlements

of the earliest agriculturalists in central and east Yugoslavia are generally

situated on the upper terraces of river valleys or on the edges of plateaus.

(Tringham, 1971, p. 91)

The Starcevo culture in Serbia and Bosnia reflects those settlements occurring on the

upper terraces of the river valleys and on the edges of the plateaus. They rarely form

mounds and never ‘tells,’ however, suggesting less continuous occupation of sites than

occurred further south, and with longer and more frequent periods of abandonment of the

sites. Early cultural layers are generally about 3 feet thick and rarely consist of more than

one habitation level (Tringham, 1971).

Further to the north, sites representing the Starcevo-Koros and Koros cultures in Serbia,

Bosnia, and southeast Hungary are found on the banks or low terraces of rivers or on

mounds of alluvial sand that rise above the waterlogged or marshy flood plain. As in

some of the central Yugoslav sites, the cultural layer rarely consists of more than one

habitation level. They are unusual in that they follow a settlement pattern more typical of

the earlier Mesolithic hunters and gatherers. At these sites, domesticated sheep and goats

are consistently more important than cattle and pigs although the wet conditions are less

favorable than one normally finds for sheep and goats. Of interest is the fact that these

sheep and goats were considerably smaller in comparison to those found further to the

south, due either to the unfavorable conditions or to the necessity of breeding from limited

stock. Either by necessity or by cultural choice, wildlife supplemented the resources

available from domesticated animals. At waterlogged sites, these consisted of water

mammals such as turtle, fish, freshwater shellfish, and water birds, as well as forest

mammals such as roe deer and aurochs (Tringham, 1971).

The artifacts found in these Early Neolithic settlements include tools and implements of

bone, clay, and stone and reflect the increasing complexity in the human ‘tool kit.’ There

are items such as ‘spatulas’ and awls made of bone, and baked pottery of three different

grades including some painted pottery. Other items made of pottery include clay lamps,

clay spindle-whorls, and weights indicative of the practice of spinning either plant fibers or

the wool or hair of sheep and goats combined with the use of looms. Clay stamp seals for

impressing signs into clay plugs that were used to seal pottery vessels and other

containers are considered signs of ownership. A number of clay figurines have also been

recovered from sites in east and northeast Yugoslavia, from Bulgaria, and from southeast
BALKANS-APPENDIX E E-9

Hungary. The stone tool inventory included such tools as polished stone axes and adzes

used for woodworking as well as chipped stone implements (Milisauskas, 1978;

Tringham, 1971).

Studies of the sources of raw materials, of the pattern of working of the material

near the source, and of its final distribution, are important not only in the

economic, but also in the social subsystem . . . . Although each Neolithic

settlement is assumed to have been self-sufficient in subsistence terms, the

scientifically documented spread of stone and other materials clearly shows that

exchanges of useful materials occurred, based on the social relationships

between different populations. (Phillips, 1980, p. 153)

In Yugoslavia, western Bulgaria, and southwestern Romania, the Middle Neolithic

assemblages included the Vinca culture, referred to as the Vinca Tordos culture, with

evidence of a local evolution from the Early Neolithic cultures, especially in Macedonia.

The chronology of the Vinca culture is based on excavation of a large stratified site on the

banks of the Danube. The lowest levels of the site contain an assemblage of the Starcevo

culture. This Early Neolithic settlement was overlain by a layer containing a transitional

assemblage, referred to as Vinca Tordos A, containing relatively more burnished black

pottery and less painted pottery than in the preceding layers. This transitional Middle

Neolithic layer has been dated at 6,190 BP. Generally, the area occupied by the VincaTordos culture is the same as that of the preceding Starcevo culture. The Vinca-Tordos

culture is found in the same environments and often on the same sites as the Early

Neolithic settlements in the area (Tringham, 1971).

Macedonia

As the domestication process spread northwards from the Aegean region into the

Balkans, local environmental differences were important. Macedonia and Bulgaria were

between two climatic extremes—the Mediterranean and temperate climatic zones. Early

Neolithic villages in southern Yugoslavia and adjacent parts of Greece and Bulgaria were

located near rivers or lakes, providing easy access to water and making it possible to

exploit rich alluvial soils. Anza I in Yugoslavian Macedonia about 8,000 years ago was

situated on a low terrace of a small river. In all likelihood, a single family occupied each

house. There is little evidence for communal activities in relation to food preparation. A

variety of economic and social activities occurred and are manifested archaeologically by

concentrations of particular artifacts appropriate to certain activities. There is indication

of woodworking, hunting and fighting, harvesting of cereals, working of hides or skins,

fishing, sewing clothing, and use of pottery for a variety of food-related activities. There

is also evidence that the people made and wore ornaments made of stone, bone, and shell.

Evidence of musical instruments in the form of bone flutes found an Anza I indicate that

they residents may have used them to herd animals (Milisauskas, 1978).

In the watershed of the Vardar River in Yugoslav Macedonia at the site of Anzabegovo,

the earliest levels date to 7,150 BP and reflect occupation by people of the Starcevo

culture. The site is located in a shallow basin, Ovce Polje, near a tributary of the Vardar

River. Settlement at the site took place at a time when the climate was wetter than at

present and supported both deciduous and coniferous trees. There are a number of

cultural links with the Aegean, including the same house types and the presence of

imported spondylus shells from which ornaments were made. The majority of the stone

used was from local sources, however. The subsistence economy relied on a wide range
BALKANS-APPENDIX E E-10

of cultivates, such as emmer wheat, as well as hulled six-row barley, peas and lentils.

Pottery typical of that found at the Vinca type site occurs at Anzabegovo on top of

Starcevo materials. Most of the domesticated animals represented in the midden were

sheep and goats, but cattle and pigs were also quite common. (Cunliffe, 1988; Phillips,

1980).

Anzabegovo is one of the few sites with . . . good economic evidence in the area .

. . . the coarse alluviums covering the Ovce Polje basin would have been used for

over-wintering of sheep, while the cereals and lentils could have been grown on

a narrow strip alongside the river . . . . Anzabegovo and Vrsnik in the same area

may have been slightly more pastoral in economic bias than the more southerly

sites in Macedonia proper. On the other hand they may have been slightly more

cereal-oriented than the sites to the north in the Morava valley. (Phillips, 1980, p.

161)

These interpretations are based largely on the suitability of the local soils for the kind of

agriculture practiced. On the whole, it seems likely that during the earliest period of

cereal and pastoral economy in southern Yugoslavia, settlers chose a variety of different

habitats and practiced varying subsistence strategies (Phillips, 1980; Tringham, 1971).

Around 6,000 years ago, the climate was at its optimum, and a series of agricultural

settlements exploiting mainly sheep were established on the plains. The presence of

larger villages in association with deeper deposits and the occupation of new sites

suggests an expansion of the population. River terraces, high riverbanks and naturally

protected areas constituted the primary settlement locations (Phillips, 1980).

The Danube Gorge and Lepenski Vir Revisited

The material culture, economy, and population of the Mesolithic settlement at Lepenski

Vir Layers I and II (7,360—6,560 BP) show that the site was still occupied by hunters

and gatherers at a time when the area south of the Danube Gorge was already settled by

food producers. There is no indication that there was any contact between the two

populations, however. The few cases where the remains of a food gathering culture are

found stratified beneath the living level of food producers at the same site reinforce the

evidence of a contemporaneous but mutually exclusive distribution of food gatherers

(along the river) and food producers (on the plains) (Tringham, 1971).

The upper layer and more recent material at Lepenski Vir, Level III, shows a completely

different economic as well as technological base, suggesting a food-producing economy

rather than a food-gathering one. The method of house construction and burial rites, as

well as the function and form of the stone, bone, and antler tools differ markedly from

those in the preceding (older) occupation layer. Other stratified sites in northern

Yugoslavia and southeastern Hungary that have identical tool assemblages have been

dated at about 6,750—6,350 BP. The lapse of time between the assemblages left by the

food gatherers and the tools left by the food producers seems to have been no longer than

200 to 300 years. (Phillips, 1980; Tringham, 1971).

The pottery and many other features at Lepenski Vir are identical to those described for

the lower Danube. The bone material from these sites, however, shows that the basis of

the economy differed from the Starcevo-Koros settlements. Wild animal bones often

occur in greater quantities than those of domesticated animals. Large forest mammals

were the most important quarry, as they had been for the Mesolithic hunters. Bird and
BALKANS-APPENDIX E E-11

fish bones also occur in great quantities. In the Neolithic assemblages at Lepenski Vir,

there is evidence of bone fish-hooks of a type that either do not occur in the Mesolithic of

eastern Europe or occur only rarely in other early Neolithic assemblages. Among the

domesticated animals—again in contrast to Starcevo-Koros and south Balkan

settlements—cattle were more important than sheep and goats. There is no direct

evidence for grain cultivation on any of the settlements in this area. The layers of

occupation debris in the Iron Gates area tend to be thicker than elsewhere among the

Danube valley, reflecting a greater degree of permanency of settlement due to

exploitation of the rich resources of the area (Tringham, 1971).

Western Yugoslavia and the Adriatic Coast

Settlements of early agriculturalists with an assemblage containing painted

pottery of the Starcevo culture and evidence of sheep and goat breeding do not

occur west of the Drina river [the border between Bosnia-Herzigovina and Serbia]

in west Yugoslavia. West of this river, in the mountains, the narrow coastal plain

and the islands, assemblages have been excavated (in open sites such as Smilcic

and cave-sites such as Jamina Sredi and Crvene Stijena) which consist of a

chipped stone, bone and antler industry very similar to that of the preceding

mesolithic but with evidence possibly of a partly food-producing economy and

of the manufacture of pottery . . . . quite unlike any found in the early neolithic

settlements on the inland plains of east Yugoslavia. (Tringham, 1971, p. 102)

Many cave sites in Yugoslavia have stratified habitation levels with pottery occurring

above the archaeological remains of Mesolithic hunters and gatherers. In addition, there

are numerous open and cave sites with habitation levels bearing what appear to be both

Early and Middle Neolithic assemblages. The most extensively excavated and

documented of the open sites is Smilcic, situated on the narrow sandstone plain of the

Adriatic coast near Zadar in Croatia. It is about 4 miles from the sea and it located near a

spring. The site contains fragments of baked clay and large numbers of artifacts made of

bone, antler, and chipped stone. No polished stone implements characteristic of a fullydeveloped food producing economy have been found. Sheep or goats, and cattle and red

deer have also been identified, but whether they were domesticated is uncertain. Marine

shellfish are abundant at the site and were used both as tool for decorating the pottery and

probably for food as well. Thus, although there are some elements of a food-producing

economy, it seems more likely that this site represents a food-gathering economy, perhaps

with some items of the material culture of food producers either borrowed or diffused to

them by neighboring food producers (Tringham, 1971).

This site appears to be transitional between the earlier Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic

in the area. Similar assemblages have been discovered in inland caves such as Crvena

Stijena and Zelena Pecina, where there is no evidence of either agriculture or

stockbreeding in contemporaneous levels. Stratigraphic evidence from the cave sites of

Crvena Stijena and Jamina Sredi on the northern Adriatic Coast and Gudnja in the south,

including the stone and bone industries, represents a local evolution from the Late

Paleolithic to the early pottery-bearing levels. The significance of the pottery at these

sites is unclear. It may have been a local response of the food gatherers as a result of

contact with pottery-producing agriculturalists on their eastern border, or it may have

resulted from diffusion from the south or west. Cave sites with similar assemblages have

been excavated on the other side of the Adriatic in south Italy and dated to a period from

6,550—6,150 BP (Tringham, 1971).
BALKANS-APPENDIX E E-12

The tool assemblages through time at these sites are uniform, except for the presence of

pottery in the more recent layers and evidence of limited food production. This pattern

suggests continued occupation of the site by food-gatherers who may have adopted some

of the characteristics of their food-producing neighbors and rejected others. Copper items

possibly dating to the Early Neolithic occur in the form of hammered copper artifacts as

early as the Starcevo culture at the Obre I site on a terrace of the Bosna river in western

Bosnia (Phillips, 1980; Tringham, 1971).

Return to Table of Contents
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-1

Appendix F

A Chronology of Historic Events in Europe and the Balkans

PART 1: EUROPE AND THE BALKANS

(THE COMMON ERA – 100 AD TO 1918)11

100 AD Roman legions at their height, consisting of 300,000 soldiers.

101 First expedition of Roman Emperor Trajan against the Dacians (the

region of Romania and Bessarabia).

117 The Roman Empire expanded to its maximum geographic influence.

271 Evacuation of Dacia by Roman legions.

285 Roman Empire divided into eastern and western sectors. Eastern Roman

Empire also known as Byzantine Empire.

330 Founding of Constantinople.

476 Roman Empire in the west collapsed.

529 Closing of the University of Athens.

Early Medieval Period

6th Century

540 Migration of Slavs into the Balkans begins.

7th Century

679 Asparuk, forerunner of Bulgarians, crossed the Danube.

Migration of Croats and Serbs into parts of northern Yugoslavia.

Slovenes briefly had independent state that fell to German rule.

8th Century

First wave of Muslim expansion into Europe, engulfing Spain, Portugal,

southern Italy, and parts of France, ending in 1492 with the defeat and

extinction of the last Muslim state on west European soil.

9th Century

813 Krum (Bulgarian) besieged Constantinople.

c. 863 Development of the Cyrillic alphabet.

864 Boris of Bulgaria was converted to Christianity.

879 Slavs converted to Christianity.

 

11 Bennett, 1992; Donia & Fine, 1994; Jelavich & Jelavich, 1977; Lewis, 1995; Ristelheuber, 1971;

VFW, 1999.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-2

893-927 First Bulgarian Empire under the reign of Simeon.

10th Century

921 Simeon the Great of Bulgaria proclaimed tsar.

962 Relationship between the church and European monarchies strengthened

by Otto I being crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (H.R.E.).

H.R.E later became Germany.

977-1014 Reign of Samuel of Bulgaria.

983 Eastward expansion of the German Empire under way.

A form of Christianity that had been denounced by Roman and Orthodox

Churches, known as Bogomilism, was practiced in the area now known

as Bosnia from the 10th through the 15th Centuries.

Croatian independent kingdom established.

11th Century

1000 Venice, Genoa, and Naples (Italy) developed into strong maritime powers

and successfully battle the Muslims on the seas. They became

economically prosperous through trade.

1003 Arrival of the Hungarians in Transylvania (Romania).

977-1014 Reign of Samuel of Bulgaria.

1018 Byzantium conquersed Bulgaria. End of the 1st Bulgarian Empire.

1040 Slav leader Stephen Voislav fought the Greeks.

1066 William I the Conqueror led the Norman Conquest, invaded England, and

claimed the English throne.

1071 Defeat of the Byzantines by the Turks at Manzikert.

1075 Power struggles between emperors and the pope provoked by papal

reforms that prohibited the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire from

appointing church bishops. Conflicts lasted until 1122.

1172 First Serbian state created when Byzantine rule, under Eastern Orthodox

church, was overthrown in parts of Balkans.

Medieval Period

12th Century

1096-1291 The Crusades, during which time the English and French kings

unsuccessfully attempted to recapture the Holy Land.

1102 Croatian dynasty died out and state was defeated by Magyars of

Hungary; Croatian nobility signed Pacta Conventa with Hungary,

recognizing the king of Hungary as the ruler of the Triune Kingdom of

Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-3

1122 The Diet of Worms determined that the Catholic church had authority

over the Holy Roman Empire.

1171-1196 Reign of Stephen Nemanya, founder of the Serbian dynasty. Serbia had

status as Kingdom.

1186 Revolt of the Asen brothers at Tirnovo, Bulgaria. John Asen tsar of the

Bulgarians.

1196-1228 Reign of Stephen the Great in Serbia.

13th Century

1096-1291 The Crusades, during which time the English and French kings

unsuccessfully attempted to recapture the Holy Land.

1198-1216 Papal power at its zenith. Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV was

excommunicated in 1210.

1200 Mongols invaded and began centuries-long domination of Russian

kingdom.

1200s Austrian dynasty was established by Hapsburg King Rudolf I. Dynasty

ruled for 700 years.

1204 Seizure of Constantinople by the Crusaders.

1205 Victory of Kaloyan of Bulgaria over the Crusaders.

1212 Muslims in control of Granada, Spain.

1215 English King John signed the Magna Carta.

1218-1241 The Second Bulgarian Empire under John Asen II.

1196-1228 Reign of Stephen the Great in Serbia.

1235-1241 Hungarian “Crusade” against “heresy” in Bosnia; failed due to Tatar

invasion of Hungary in 1241.

1236-1241 Mongol invasion of Europe (Polish, Hungarian, Serbian, and Bulgarian

territories).

1244 Invasion of Romania by the Tartars.

1252 Hungarians persuaded Pope to place Bosnia’s Catholic Church under

jurisdiction of Hungarian archbishop. In following years, Bosnia rejected

this assignment and seceded from international Catholicism, creating its

own independent Church, the Bosnian Church (Bogomil).

1257 End of the 2nd Bulgarian Empire.

1261 Fall of the Latin Empire of the East. Restoration of Greek Empire in

Constantinople.

Albania experienced periods of independence or semi-independence as

principality, extended into 14th Century.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-4

14th Century

1300 Climate deteriorated, causing problems in agriculture in parts of Europe.

c. 1318 Stjepan Kotromanic became Ban of Bosnia; ruled until 1353.

c. 1322 Kotromanic annexed Catholic lands to Bosnia’s west (Bosnian Krajina

and Savrsje).

1322 Bosnia annexesd Hum (roughly what is now Herzegovina).

1330 Defeat of the Bulgarians by the Serbs as Kustendil.

1331-1355 Height of Serbian greatness and power, under reign of Stevan Dusan,

Dushan the Great.

1347 Kotromanic became Catholic.

1348 The Plague (Black Death) started to spread throughout Europe,

eventually killing a quarter of Europe’s population).

c. 1350 The Renaissance began to develop in Italy and spread eventually

throughout Europe.

1356 The Holy Roman Empire was reorganized under the Golden Bull of 1356.

The Emperor maintained control of only his personal territory.

1367 Death of Stephe Urosh V. End of the Nemanya dynasty in Serbia.

1371 Election of Lazar in Serbia.

Battle of Marica fought in Bulgaria. Turkish victory opened way for

Ottoman conquest of Balkans. Large Serbian army entirely wiped out by

surprise night attack. Serbians lose control of territory in Macedonia.

1380 Russians victorious over the Mongols.

1381 Serbs thwarted Turkish invasions of Balkans.

The Turks reached Sofia, Bulgaria.

1386 Serbs again thwarted Turkish invasions of Balkans.

1389 Battle of Kosovo Polje (June 28) waged on “Field of Blackbirds.” Army

of 15-20,000 European Christians (Eastern Orthodox) defeated by 27-

30,000 Turks. Serbian dreams of a “Greater Serbia” date to the 14th

Century when Serbia was an empire and—aided by Bosnians, Croatians,

Bulgarians, and Albanians—fought the Battle of Kosovo against the

Turks. Despite their decisive defeat at Kosovo, Serbs have continued to

view the battle as a proud and fierce resistance to domination. The

holiest day in Serbian mythology commemorates the defeat on June 28,

1389 that led to Ottoman domination over the Serbs as a vassal state for

more than 500 years.

1392 The Turks at Tirnovo, Bulgaria.

1396 End of Bulgarian independence.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-5

Ottoman Occupation

15th Century

1428 Byzantium re-conquered the Peloponnesus.

1438-1439 Albert II crowned the first Hapsburg emperor.

1448 Second Battle of Kosovo (October 17-19). Mostly Hungarian army of

30-72,000 men defeated by 100,000 Turks on nearly the same spot as the

1389 battle. Half the Hungarians died, as did one third of the Turks.

Serbians refused to aid Hungarians, effectively sealing their own fate.

1451 Ottomans conquered region around Sarajevo.

1453 Fall of the Byzantine Empire as the Ottoman Turks took control of

Constantinople and conquered Greece, beginning 350 years of Ottoman

rule.

1454 Southern and Central Serbia seized by Ottoman Empire.

1455 Battle of Novo Brdo (April-May). 40-day siege of city. Prisren

surrendered on June 21. Kosovo in entirety was brought under Ottoman

rule.

1459 To get Western aid against Turkish threat, King Stefan Tomas gave in to

pressure from the Pope and ordered Bosnian Churchmen to accept

Catholicism or leave Bosnia. Most converted; some accepted asylum

from Herceg Stefan. This represented Bosnia's only case of religious

persecution in the Middle Ages. Fall of Semendria, last Serbian fortress.

Turkey re-conquered Serbia after it had experienced a few years of

nominal independence.

1460 The Peloponnesus conquered by the Turks.

1462-1505 Reign of Ivan III (the Great) in Russia.

1463 Ottoman conquest of Bosnia. The Ottomans offered Bogomils military

protection, secure titles to their lands, and religious freedom if they would

adopt the Muslim faith and not attack Ottoman forces. This resulted in a

sort of free Slavic state within the Ottoman Empire, with special

autonomy and immunities—angering both Serbs and Russians.

1478 Turks conquered Albania; rule continued until 1912. Ottoman Turks ruled

the lands of the Greeks, the Albanians, the Romanians, and the south

Slavs. Their advance forces reached the outskirts of Venice. Spanish

Inquisition commenced.

1480 Ottoman Turks captured Otranto, gaining a foothold in Italy.

1481 Last Hungarian fort in Herzegovina fell to Ottomans.

1492 Catholic monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile entered

Granada, the last stronghold of Muslim power in Spain, achieving final

Christian victory in eight-century-long struggle between Christianity and

Islam for mastery of the Iberian Peninsula. Spain expelled Arabs.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-6

16th Century

1500 Turkish conquest of Albania complete; Roman Catholicism largely

eradicated.

1509 Constantinople destroyed by earthquake. Trade in slaves from Africa

began.

1516 King Charles I is crowned first king of a united Spain. Later, becoming

Charles V, he reigned over both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire.

1517 Martin Luther, German theologian, began Protestant Reformation.

Coffee arrived in Europe.

1520 Anabaptist movement began in Germany and Switzerland; they were

persecuted by Lutherans and Catholics.

1525 Potato introduced from South America.

1526 Hapsburgs took control of Bohemia.

1526-1529 Ottoman Turks pushed westward and invaded Holy Roman Empire,

defeating Hungarians and reaching as far as the walls of Vienna, where

they were finally stopped and turned back.

1527 Plague broke out in England.

1533-1584 The reign of the first Russian czar, Ivan IV (the Terrible).

1534 King Henry VIII broke from Roman Catholic Church and established

Church of England.

1545-1563 Council of Trent; beginning of Catholic counter-reformation.

1558-1603 Protestantism restored in England. Development of Puritan movement.

1588 In effort to eradicate Protestantism, Spanish Armada attacked English

navy and was destroyed.

1593-1606 Wars between Ottomans and Hapsburgs in Hungary.

1598 Edict of Nantes marked demise of European religious wars and loss of

religious freedom for Protestants.

17th Century

1600s-1700s Paris was Europe’s cultural center and the center from which the

Enlightenment emerged.

1613 Beginning of Romanov line in Russia, which lasted until 1917.

1618-1648 Thirty Years’ War; Holy Roman Empire was destroyed. France became

leading military and political power in Europe. Peace of Westphalia

divided Germany into Protestant and Roman Catholic sectors and gave

Belgium and Netherlands their independence.

1669 The Turks pushed the Venetians from Crete.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-7

1676-1878 Russo-Turkish Wars. By the end of this long period of warfare, the

Ottoman Empire had weakened considerably and Russian borders were

substantially expanded.

1680s Ottomans driven out of Hungary by Hapsburgs.

1689-90 Austrian army drove Turks from Kosovo, during Ottoman-Hapsburg

War, but then quickly withdrew. Ottoman-Tartar army invaded, killing

and plundering on large scale, leading to massive Serb migration.

“The Great Migration” (Velika Seoba). 100,000 Serbs fled Kosovo for

Bosnia and other sanctuaries.

1699 The Austrian Hapsburgs re-conquered Hungary, freeing it from the

Ottomans.

18th Century

1700s Age of Enlightenment with emphasis on rationalism initiated by the

French.

1718 Austrian Hapsburgs occupied parts of Romania and Serbia, including

Belgrade.

1737 (August) Austrian reconnaissance force penetrated as far as Pristina, Kosovo’s

capital, but retreated in face of advancing Turks. 3,000 allied Albanian

Catholic clansmen later killed or captured in Ottoman ambush while

fleeing through Serbia. “Second Migration” of Christians began.

1737-1739 Ottomans recaptured Serbian territory.

1787 Some Serbs joined the Russians to fight Turkey.

1789 Storming of Bastille in Paris and publication of The Declaration of the

Rights of Man and Citizen, that specified freedom of the press, religion,

and speech and the right of representation.

1792 Beginning of French Revolution.

19th Century

1803-1815 Napoleonic Wars. Austria became dominant power of the German

states.

1804 Revolt of the Janissaries at Belgrade. Serbian peasants rose against local

garrison, developing into demand for autonomy under the Ottoman

Empire. Serbs fought fiercely for three years before the Turkish armies

crushed their revolt.

1804-1813 Serbs rose up against Turks, gaining independence for six years. Once

again were subjugated.

1806 Kara George and his Serbian partisans fought the Turks at Michar.

1815 Insurrection in Serbia led by Milosh Obrenovich. Turkey recognized

Serbia as an autochthonous state. Napoleon exiled after defeat at

Waterloo. New Treaty of Paris resulted in loss of territory for France.

Congress of Vienna reestablished Spanish and Austrian control of Italy.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-8

Papal States restored. Kingdom of Netherlands established. Norway

gained independence from Sweden. After Napoleonic Wars, Austria

became dominant power of the German states.

1815-1817 Serbs revolted against Turks successfully, gaining degree of autonomy.

1820 Turkish expedition against Ali Pasha at Janina (Ioannina) in Greece.

1821-1827 Greek rebellion against the Ottomans led to Greek independence.

1822 Assembly at Epidauros, Greece proclaimed independence.

1825 Conferences at St. Petersburg, Russia.

1826 Ibrahim Pasha landed Egyptians in the Peloponnesus (Greece).

Ultimatum of Nicholas I of Greece to Turkey. Protocol issued by

Emgland and Russia at St. Petersburg.

1827 Missolonghi and Athens regained by the Turks. Treaty of London in

favor of the Greeks.

1828 Nicholas I of Greece declared war on Turkey.

1829 Treaty of Adrianople.

1830 Protocol recognizing Greek independence. Hereditary succession in

Obrenovich family in Serbia recognized.

Under Turkish suzerainty and Russian protection, Serbia survived as

autonomous principality.

1831 Prince Otto of Bavaria became king of Greece.

(July 16) Battle of Lipljan (3rd Battle of Kosovo) fought on the southern

end of the Kosovo Polje Plateau. Army of 20,000 Bosnians routed the

Ottomans.

1835 First Bulgarian school opened at Gabrovo.

1839 Abdication of Milosh Obrenovich. Short reign of Milan in Serbia. First

printing press using Bulgarian letters.

1842 Return of Alexander Karageorgevich in Serbia.

1845 Large revolt in western Kosovo crushed by Ottomans.

1848 Some Serbs joined the struggle against the Hungarians.

1851 Peasant unrest at Vidin, Bulgaria, encouraged by Russia.

1852 Secularization of power in Montenegro.

1853-1856 Crimean War. France and Great Britain and other countries kept Russia

from invading Ottoman Empire.

1854 Blockade of Piraeus in Greece by England and France during the

Crimean War.

1856 Treaty of Paris. Serbian autonomy guaranteed by the Powers.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-9

1858 Victory of the Montenegrins over the Turks at Grahovo. Abdication of

Alexander Karageorgevich in Serbia.

1859 Return of Milosh Obrenovich to Serbia, his death, succession of his son

Michael.

1862 Conflict in Belgrade. The Turkish fortress bombarded the city.

Abdication of King Otto of Greece.

1863 Army of Omer Pasha crusheed the Montenegrin revolt. George of

Denmark becomes king of Greece.

1864 England ceded the Ionian Islands to Greece. New constitution in Greece.

1866 Revolt in Crete.

1867 Turkish garrisons evacuated Serbia. Austro-Hungarian monarchy

established.

1872 Creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate as head of the independent

Bulgarian Orthodox church.

1875 Insurrection in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Armed intervention of the Serbs on

the side of the insurgents.

1876 Serbo-Turkish War. Ferocious battle at Aleksinac. Turks defeated

Serbs who suffered at least 13,000 casualties in the war. War prompted

massive migration on both sides. The Serbs, beaten by the Turks, sought

an armistice. Violent repression by the Turks of the Bulgarian

insurrection.

1877 The Serbs re-entered the war and took Nish and Pirot. The Treaty of

Berlin recognized the independence of Serbia and Montenegro. Russia

declared war on Turkey. Capitulation of Osman Pasha at Plevna in

Bulgaria.

1877-1878 Russo-Ottoman War. Serbia became independent from Turkey. Serbian

army invaded Kosovo. Moslem Albanian guerrillas drove many Serbs

from Kosovo; Serbs displaced 30,000 Albanians. First major SerbAlbanian conflict.

1879 Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins, and Bosnians had been ruled by the

Ottoman Turks for nearly 500 years under repressive autocratic control,

during which time Islam became strong in Bosnia and Kosovo (in

southern Serbia). The Christian majority in these regions were Eastern

Orthodox rather than Roman Catholic; they used the Cyrillic alphabet,

and were the least developed economically. Serbs retained bitter

memories of Muslim domination, and many viewed the Bosnian Muslims

as Slavs who “sold out” to Ottoman rule.

Austro-Hungarian Occupation

1877 Russian troops, Romanian units, and Bulgarian guerrilla reinforcements

defeated a Turkish force in Bulgaria. Russia's ambassador to Turkey
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-10

dictated to the Turks the Treaty of San Stefano (the first fuse of the

“Balkan Powder Keg”). Treaty of San Stefano created a big Bulgaria,

the Principality of Bulgaria, encompassing Bulgaria as well as all of

geographical Macedonia, parts of Albania to the west, and a huge chunk

of Greece that surrounded the city of Salonika, providing an outlet for

Bulgaria on the Aegean. The Treaty of San Stefano created a new and

preeminently powerful pro-Russian state in the Balkans that Great Britain

(Disraeli), Germany (Bismarck), and Austria-Hungary could not accept.

1878 The Congress of Berlin (drafted six months after the Treaty of San

Stefano) Bulgaria, overrode the earlier and more far-sighted treaty by

dismembering Bulgaria before it ever came into existence. Most of the

northern half of Bulgaria gained its freedom, but the southern half of

Bulgaria became a Turkish province. Macedonia was abandoned to

direct Turkish rule, as if the Treaty of San Stefano had never existed.

For the loss of Macedonia, Russia was compensated with new lands in

Bessarabia and in northeastern Anatolia—taken from the Romanians and

Turks, respectively. The Treaty of Berlin granted Serbia—Russia’s

Slavic allies—complete independence from Ottoman Empire. The

Serbian population of Bosnia also wanted independence; but to

compensate the Hapsburgs of Austria-Hungary for their troubles, Bosnia

was transferred from Ottoman rule to Hapsburg rule—the immediate

cause of World War I. Great Britain received the island of Cyprus from

the Turks.

1878 Bulgarian Constitution adopted at Tirnovo.

1881 (March-May). Albanian League of Prisren (12,000 troops) faced a

20,000 man Ottoman army. Local rebellion was crushed, signaling last

large-scale organized resistance in province.

Rectification of the frontier in Thessaly to the benefit of Greece.

Alexander of Battenberg elected prince of Bulgaria.

1882 Serbia became a kingdom.

1885 Eastern Rumelia (Romania) proclaimed union with Bulgaria. The

Bulgarians were victorious over the Serbs at Slivnitza.

1885-1886 Serb-Bulgarian War. Serbia was defeated, but was saved by Austrian

diplomatic intervention.

1886 Peace of Bucharest between Bulgarians and Serbs. Abdication of Prince

Alexander of Bulgaria.

1887 Election of Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg as prince of Bulgaria.

1888 Abdication of King Milan of Serbia.

1893 Coup d’etat of King Alexander of Serbia. Creation of the I.M.R.O.

(Internal Macedonia Revolutionary Organization).

1894 Bulgarian Prince Ferdinand separatedd himself from Stambulov of

Russia.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-11

1894 Reconciliation of Bulgaria with Russia. Stambulov murdered.

1895 Sultan decided on reforms in Macedonia.

1896 Austro-Russian agreement on the Balkans. Greco-Turkish war. Statute

of autonomy accorded to Crete.

1880s-1900s Local, small revolts.

20th Century

1901 Albanian bands pillaged several cities and massacred Serbs.

1903 Serbian King Alexander I and Queen Draga assassinated. Aggravation

of agitation in Macedonia. Bombs thrown in Salonika, Greece. Murder

of Alexander Obrenovich and Queen Draga of Serbia. Accession of

King Peter I Karageorgevich. Austro-Russian agreement regarding

Macedonia.

Albanians crushed various Orthodox Chriwstian uprisings with great

brutality.

1904 First Congress of South Slavs at Rijeka (Fiume), Croatia.

1907 Peasant revolted in Romania.

Balkan Wars

1908 Beginning of Young Turk insurrection at Solonika. Austria annexed

Bosnia-Herzegovina. Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria proclaims Bulgaria

independent and assumed title of ‘Tsar of the Bulgarians.’ Crete

proclaimed union with Greece.

1909 Sultan Abdul Hamid attempted a counter-revolution and was deposed.

Accession of Mohammed V.

1910 Nicholas I becomes king of newly-proclaimed kingdom of Montenegro.

Insurrection in Albania. Ottoman army of 20,000 Kurdish irregulars

suppressed Albanian tax revolt.

1910 Italy declaresd war on Turkey.

1911 Young Turks Reign of Terror. Ottomans drove 150,000 people from

Kosovo. 100,000 were Serbs—nearly one-third of the Serbian population

in the province.

1912 Serbo-Bulgarian alliance. Greco-Bulgarian mutual treaty of assistance.

Mobilization of Balkan armies. Montenegro declared war on Turkey.

Turkey declared war on Bulgaria and Serbia. Treaty of Lausanne ending

Italo-Turkish War. Bulgarian victory at Kir-Kilisse. Serbian victory at

Kumanovo. Bulgarians stopped before the lines as Chatalja. Entry of

Greeks into Salonikia.

1912-1913 (October 8-May 30). First Balkan War. Albanians allied with Turks

fought Balkan armies: Serbia fielded 286,000 soldiers. Battle of

Monastir—20,000 Turks KIA/POW. Turks expelled from Balkans,
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-12

except in Thrace. Serbian Third Army 76,000 strong “liberated” Kosovo

from 16,000 Ottomans, committing atrocities against Albanians, with

25,000 reportedly massacred. Serbia retained Kosovo, which was home

to 800,000 Albanians, under the London Conference.

1913 (June 30-August 10). Second Balkan War. Serbia acquired most of

Slavic Macedonia from Bulgaria. One observer reported to have said

there was an ulcer in the heart of the Balkans, poisoning the European

system. Albanian leader pledged to ‘manure’ the plains of Kosovo with

bones of Serbs.

Total military deaths in both Balkan wars: 143,000 (including 30,000

Serbs).

Coup d’etat in Constantinople. Capitulation of Janina (Ioannina).

Capitualtion of Adrianople. Capitulation of Scutari (Shkoder), Albania.

Preliminaries of peace at London. Surprise attack by Bulgarian army

against Serbs and Greeks. Romanian army crosses the Danube.

Bulgaria seeks an armistice. Treaty of Bucharest confirmed the

withdrawal of Turkey from Balkan territories after more than 500 years

of rule. Under the Treaty of London, Britain, France, and Russia took

land claimed by Albania and inhabited by an Albanian-majority population

away from newly-independent Albania and gave it to Serbia. AustriaHungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1914 Serbia extended its territories to the southern borders of present-day

Macedonia.

June 28, 1914 Heir to the throne of Austria Archduke Franz-Ferdinand of AustriaHungary visited Sarajevo on the 525th anniversary of the Battle of

Kosovo. He and his wife were assassinated by Gavrilo Princep—a

disaffected Serbian nationalist—leading to the outbreak of World War I.

Austria held Serbia responsible.

World War I

1914 World War I was catalyzed by rivalry in the Balkans between two

powers that were already suffering internal instability because of national

dissentions.

(July 28) Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.

(Aug. 1) Germany declared war on Russia.

(August 3) Germany declared war on France and entered Belgium.

(August 4) Great Britain declared war on Germany and later on Austria.

(August 12) Austria invaded Serbia.

Austria declared war on Russia; Serbia and Montenegro declared

war on Germany; France declared war on Austria; Russia declared war

on Turkey; and France and Britain declared war on Turkey. Serbian

victory over Austrians at Rudnik.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-13

1914-1918 World War I. Serbs held of Ausstrians for more than year, repelling

three invasions in six months and inflicting 302,000 casualties on the

Austrians while suffering 170,000. Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian

troops occupied Kosovo.

1914 Naval attack on the Dardanelles failed. Allies debarked at Gallipoli.

Treaty of London with Italy. First debarkation of Allied troops at

Salonika. Bulgaria joined Central Powers.

1915 (October) In epic retreat through Kosovo and the Albanian Alps, 120,000

Serbian soldiers died. Death rate among civilian refugees was

‘catastrophic.’ Albanians carried out reprisals. Serb, Italian and French

armies retook Kosovo after several fierce battles. In the US, Serbians

were hailed as heroes for their wartime sacrifices—20% of Serbian

population perished; 650,000 civilians plus military losses of 45,000 KIA,

80,000 non-battle deaths, and 131,148 WIA.

1916 End of retreat of Allied forces at Dardanelles. Romania declared war on

Austria. Entry of German troops into Bucharest, Romania.

1917 United States declared war against Germany.

1917-1922 Outbreak of October Revolution in Russia and Russian Civil War. Czar

Nicholas abdicated and Bolsheviks took control. Hostilities between

Communists and the counterrevolutionaries continued through 1922.

1917-1924 Lenin became head of the Soviet Communist party, moved the capital

from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and commenced collectivization and

nationalization policies.

1918 Treaty of Versailles established new nation-state of Czechoslovakia.

Proclamation of union between Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes as the

Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia).

Bessarabia proclaimed independence from Russia. Treaty of Bucharest

imposed on Romania. Armistice with Bulgaria signed. Montenegro

voted for union with Serbia.

Nov.11, 1918 Armistice signed between the Allies and Germany. With half of its

population dead at the close of the war, Hungary yielded three-quarters

of its prewar land in war reparations to Czechoslovakia, Romania, and

Yugoslavia.

PART 2: ROYAL YUGOSLAV PERIOD (1918—1945) 12

pre-1918 Slovenia and Croatia in the north—the most prosperous region—were

part of the Hapsburg Empire, influenced by centuries of close contact

with Austria, Hungary, and Italy. They adopted Roman Catholicism, used

a Latin alphabet, and were oriented toward Western and Central Europe.

 

12Bennett, 1994; Donia, & Fine, 1994; Ristelhueber, 1971; VFW, 1999.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-14

The Interwar Period

1918-1921 Serb-Albanian civil war. Cetas (Serbian armed bands) vs. Kacaks

(Albanian bands). Characterized by massacres and guerrilla warfare.

122,371 Albanians were reportedly killed and 22,000 imprisoned. Many

Serb colonists were also killed.

1918 The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was created as a

multinational state at the Paris Peace Conference. It consisted of

elements of the empires of Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey

following WW I. Prior to 1918, the tensions among Muslims, Serbs, and

Croats in Bosnia were low-key. In 1918, with the approval of Britain and

France, Serbia annexed Bosnia and imposed a centralized regime.

Comintern created by Lenin.

1920 Treaty of Trianon, under which Britain and France sacrificed the

preferences of local populations to their own hunger for vengeance after

World War I, affected ethnic Hungarians in Vojvodina I. Treaty of

alliance between Yugoslavia and Czechoslovoka. Death of King

Alexander of Greece. Elections in Greece. Plebiscite in favor of

restoration of King Constantine of Greece.

1921 Russo-Turkish treaty of friendship. Treaty between Romania and

Czechoslovokia. Treaty of alliance between Yugoslavia and Romania.

In Germany, Hitler organized the Nazi party; in Italy, Mussolini founded

the Fascist party.

1923 Convention on exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey.

Proclamation of Turkish Republic.

1924 After Lenin’s death, Stalin became leader of USSR. Proclamation of the

Republic of Greece. Convention on the exchange of populations between

Greece and Bulgaria.

1926 Trotsky ousted, strengthening Stalin’s power. Treaty between Italy and

Albania.

1927 Revolutionary activity in Bulgaria. Treaty of friendship between France

and Yugoslavia.

1928 Acts of violence in the Belgrade Parliament.

1929 King Alexander of Serbia suspended the constitution. The Kingdom of

Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes changed its name to Yugoslavia,

meaning the land of the South Slavs (Croats, Bosnian Muslims,

Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs, and Slovenes). It comprised a

patchwork of seven separately-identifying ethnic groups whose ethnicity

had crystallized into national consciousness during the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries: Serbs, Croats, Albanians, Slavic Muslims,

Slovenians, Montenegrins, and Macedonians—as well as over a dozen

other distinguishable ethnic national groups including Hungarians, Roma

(Gypsies) and Turks, etc.. The histories of Yugoslavia's nationalities were

distinct despite a common South Slav origin. In effect, Yugoslavia
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-15

became a sovereign state containing many separately-identifying national

groups, each of which brought its own legacy of the past—including

perceived adversaries and defining characteristics of nationhood. The

Serbs were the largest national group in Yugoslavia (about 36% of the

new state’s population); Croats were the second largest (about 20%).

1931 New Yugoslav constitution.

1933 Beginning of Nazi concentration camps.

1934 Creation of the Balkan Entente. Bulgarian constitution suspended by

King Boris. Germany invaded Rhineland.

1935 Restoration of monarchy in Greece and return of King George II.

1937 Treaty of “eternal friendship” between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.

Yugoslavia and Italy signed treaty.

1938 King Boris restored Bulgarian constitution. Balkan Entente accorded

freedom of armaments to Bulgaria. German-Yugoslav commercial

agreement.

1939 Germany invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland; occupied Sudentenland.

Munich Pact nullified. Italy occupied Albania. Autonomy granted to

Croatia.

1930s Croatian nationalism dating from the 19th Century was a force

leading to xenophobia aimed to suppress if not exterminate all

who had a different national consciousness. Serbs were considered

an inferior and evil race, but if they would give up their own national

consciousness, they could ‘become Croats.’ This version of extreme

Croatian nationalism was the predecessor to the Ustasha independence

movement during the 1930s and into WW II. The Ustashe were

notorious for a passionate and aggressive hostility against the whole

Serbian nation. Great Depression especially severe in Germany, France,

and Great Britain.

1918-1941 Bosnian Muslim national identity was spawned much later than

other Balkan countries during the period between WW I and WW

II. Between the world wars, 100,000 Albanians were driven out of

Kosovo.

World War II

1939-1945 World War II. Germany began war with invasion of Poland in 1939.

USSR—initially an ally of Germany—was invaded by Germans and then

joined the Allies.

1939 France fell; Italy became an ally of Germany and invaded Albania.

1940 German troops entered Romania. Italy issued ultimatum to Greece.

Romania signed Tripartite Pact.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-16

1941 Bulgaria signed Tripartite Pact. Yugoslavia signed Tripartite Pact.

Bombardment of Belgrade by Germans. Germans invaded Soviet Union.

Germans entered Athens. Germans invaded Soviet Union.

1942 United States declared war on Romania and Bulgaria.

1943 Italy’s campaigns in North Africa failed. Italy invaded by the Allies.

Britain sent liaison officers to Tito.

1944 Romania ended hostilities against Russians. USSR entered Romania and

declared war on Bulgaria. Return of Greek government to Athens.

Entry of Russian troops into Belgrade.

1944-1949 Greek Civil War; Britain and U.S. helped the resistance against

Communists.

1941-1945 World War II. German, Italian, and Bulgarian armies occupied Kosovo

within one week in April 1941. They encouraged Albanian reprisals

against Serbs—thousands were killed and 10,000 Slav families were

forced to migrate. 21st SS Skanderberg Division (6,500 Albanian

volunteers) indiscriminately killed Christian (Orthodox) Slavs. Deaths in

the province totaled over 20,000—12,000 Albanians and 10,000 Serbs and

Montenegrins. More than 100,000 Slavs were expelled from

Kosovo by Albanians.

German army in Yugoslavia peaked at 700,000. Germans killed 45,000

Yugoslav guerrillas in the first year of occupation.

Pro-Nazi Croatian Ustasha massacred tens of thousands of Serbs. Total

of 1,014,000 Yugoslavians (487,000 Serbs) died in World War II.

Military: 305,000 KIA and 425,000 WIA.

1940-1945 The Croatian Ustasha borrowed heavily from European fascist

movements and during WW II formed the Independent State of Croatia

(NDH), allied itself with the Germans and killed from 200,000 to 750,000

Serbs. The Serbs retaliated against Croatia, forming irregular bands

called Chetniks. The Partizans, with whom Tito fought, were

communist. Ultimately, as many as 1,000,000 Yugoslavs died at the

hands of their own countrymen.

1945 Yalta Conference. Turkey declared war on Germany and Japan. USSR

denounced pact of non-aggression with Turkey. World War II ended in

Europe with Allied occupation of Germany. Hitler committed suicide, and

the Partisans killed Mussolini. As the head of the Partisan movement

during the war, Josip Broz Tito took political leadership of the newlyformed Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. He was of mixed

Croat and Slovene ancestry. Yugoslavs entered Trieste.

Elections in Yugoslavia gave 90% of the votes to National Front.

Proclamation of the Republic of Yugoslavia. Elections in Bulgaria gave

87% of the votes to the Patriotic Front. Elections in Albania gave 93% of

the vote to the Democratic Front.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-17

1946 Proclamation of the Republic of Bulgaria. Return of King George II to

Athens. Tension between Yugoslavia and the US as a result of an attack

upon American planes. The United Nations decided to send a

commission of inquiry to the Balkans.

1945-1946 Albanian-Partisan Struggle. 30,000 Partisan (Communist) troops

occupied Kosovo. Albanians resisted, losing up to 28,400 men in battle or

by execution. Resistance persisted in remote parts of Kosovo until the

1950s.

1947 Britain decided to terminate assistance to Greece and Turkey. Complaint

by Greece to the United Nations regarding aid to the partisans given by

Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania. Political and commercial agreement

between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria signed.

PART 3: SOCIALIST YUGOSLAV PERIOD (1948—1991)13

1948 After expelling Soviet military advisers, Tito was expelled from the

Comintern, breaking formal ties between the USSR and

Yugoslavia. Creation of Soviet satellites in eastern and central Europe.

The United Nation in Paris condemned the aid given to the Greek rebels

by Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania. USSR blockaded Berlin. US airlift

to West Berlin.

1949 The USSR accused Yugoslavia of mistreating Soviet citizens.

Commercial agreement signed between Yugoslavia and Italy. Serious

tension between Moscow and Belgrade. Yugoslavia, rather than

Czechoslovakia, elected to the United Nations Security Council. The

USSR and her satellites denounced their treaties of friendship with

Yugoslavia. Hungarian troops fired on the Yugoslav frontier. West

Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) established from British,

French, and U.S. occupation zones. East Germany (German Democratic

Republic) created by the USSR from its occupation zone.

1950 Bulgaria broke diplomatic relations with the US. Albania withdrew from

the World Health Organization. First free elections in Turkey. All

Yugoslav personel withdrawn from Albania. Bulgaria demanded

Yugoslavia’s cession of Tsaribrod and Bosiligrad in Macedonia. Soviet

officials arrived in Albania and assumed control over government and

economy. Yugoslavia granted concessions to Serbian Orthodox Church.

Greece and Turkey accepted invitations to join NATO (effective in

1952). Turkey and Bulgaria engaged in border clashes. United States

sent food to Yugoslavia to avert famine. Albania terminated diplomatic

relations with Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia terminated diplomatic relations

with Albania. Yugoslavia restored diplomatic relations with Greece.

Greece restored diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia.

 

13 Bennett, 1992; Ristelhueber, 1971; Spector, 1971; VFW, 1999.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-18

1950s (mid) Yugoslavian Udba—secret police—terrorized Kosovo’s Albanians.

1951 Soviet-Albanian treaty concluded. United States sent military assistance

to Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia sponsored the formation of a free Albanian

federation. Yugoslavia walked out of meeting of the Danube

Commission in Bucharest. United States ended tariff concessions on

Bulgarian imports. Yugoslavia announced introduction of decentralization

of her economy. United Nations abolished the Special Commission on

the Balkans.

1952 Greece admitted to NATO. Turkey admitted to NATO. Albania

summoned Albanian residents of Yugoslavia to revolt. Albania held

election. The USSR established a submarine base at Albanian port of

Saseno. Yugoslavia introduced decentralization of the government

apparatus.

1952-1967 Communist Yugoslav dictator Tito pushed 175,000 Muslims from

Yugoslavia to Turkey.

1953 Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia signed treaty of friendship and

collaboration. Tito visited England. Stalin died. Yugoslavia announced

decree on gradual liquidation of collective farms. Romania and

Yugoslavia agreed on joint administration of the Iron Gates. Conference

of Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey on common problems. The USSR

requested resumption of diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia. Bulgaria

re-established diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia. New electoral

reform in Yugoslavia. New criminal code introduced in Yugoslavia.

NATO established a base at Izmir (Smyrna) in Turkey.

1954 Bulgaria reached agreement with Greece and re-established diplomatic

relations. Balkan military pact of Yugoslavia, Turkey, and Greece,

approved by NATO. Yugoslavia signed trade agreement with Soviet

Russia. Italy and Yugoslavia accept compromise settlement of Trieste

territory.

1955 Warsaw Conference of eight East European states; Eastern Security

Pact signed. Khrushchev and Bulganin paid state visit to Yugoslavia.

Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania admitted to the United Nations.

1956 Dissolution of the Comminform. Tito visited the USSR. Romania and

Yugoslavia agreed upon close cooperation. Soviets invaded Hungary.

1957 The USSR launched the first earth satellite, Sputnik I. Tito asked the

US to terminate her military assistance. European Economic Community

established through Treaty of Rome.

1958 Strike of miners in Yugoslavia. National elections in Yugoslavia; Tito reelected president. Yugoslav Communist Party Congress; Tito re-elected

first secretary. Greece severed NATO relations with Turkey over

Cyprus dispute.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-19

1959 Tito visited Greece. Bulgaria resumed diplomatic relations with the US.

Khrushchev announced that the USSR would install missiles in Bulgaria

and Albania if Greece permitted American missiles in her country.

1960 Balkan alliance of Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia abandoned because

of Cyprus dispute. The USSR protested use of Turkish airfields by

American planes. Albania and Communist China assumed open

friendship policy; first manifestation of approaching Sino-Soviet rift.

Romania signed long-range trade accord with Yugoslavia.

1961 Greece became an associate member of the European Common Market.

The German Democratic Republic erected a wall between East and

West Berlin. Conference of non-aligned nations in Belgrade. 22nd

congress of the Soviet Communist Party held in Moscow; attacks on

Communist China and Albania. Bulgaria broke diplomatic relations with

Albania. The USSR and Albania severed diplomatic relations.

1961-1981 Up to 100,000 Slavs emigrated from Kosovo to other parts of Yugoslavia.

1962 American assistance to Greece terminated. US Vice President Lyndon

Johnson visited Greece. Johnson visited Turkey. Leonid Brezhnev,

Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, visited Yugoslavia.

Tito visited Moscow and addressed the Supreme Soviet.

1963 Turkey announced that NATO missile bases would be abandoned.

Albania refused to sign limited test-ban treaty. Yugoslavia adopted a

new constitution electing Tito president for life. Massive earthquakes

struck Skopje, Macedonia, destroying 80% of all homes and killing 1,011

persons. Khrushchev began a lengthy visit to Yugoslavia. President Tito

began an extended visit to the United States. Romania and Yugoslavia

signed agreement to construct dam at Iron Gates gorge on the Danube

River. Violence broke out on Cyprus between Greek and Turkish

residents. Chinese Premier Chou En-lai visited Albania.

1964 Albania ordered all Soviet citizens to leave and confiscated Soviet

property. A high Romania delegation visited Beijing in an effort to heal

the Sino-Soviet rift. Greek residents of Istanbul expelled during growing

Greco-Turkish crisis over Cyprus. Romania rejected Moscow’s

economic guidance. Romania initiated her desatellization process;

Russian names removed from the streets. Bulgaria and Yugoslavia

signed economic agreements. Bulgaria and Greece agreed to terminate

post-war tensions. Violence erupted on Cyprus. Greek Premier

Papandreou freed most communists who had been imprisoned since the

civil war (1944-1949). Turkey and USSR agreed to construct a dam in

the Caucasus. Turkey became an associate member of the European

Common Market. The 8th congress of the Yugoslav Communist Party;

Tito called for the independence of all communist parties.

1965 Albania refused to attend Warsaw Pact meeting. Bulgaria signed cultural

agreement with the USSR. Albania refused to attend Moscow

conference of communists from 19 countries. Communist China premier
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-20

Chou En-lai visited Albania. Completion of first direct railroad route

between Athens and Sofia (Bulgaria). Tito visited East Germany,

Czechoslovakia, Soviet Russia, Bulgaria, and Hungary. The 9th congress

of the Romanian Communist Party attended by Brezhnev; Romania

asserted her independence in the communist bloc. Yugoslavia announced

a general economic reform. Romania adopted new constitution. National

elections in Turkey. Church-State crisis in Greece.

1966 Romania and West Germany established diplomatic relations. National

elections in Bulgaria. Trade agreement between France and Bulgaria

signed. Albania refused to attend 23rd congress of Soviet Communist

Party. Communist China’s premier Chou En-lai visited Romania and

Albania. Yugoslavia and the Vatican restored relations. Severe

earthquakes in Turkey. Yugoslavia signed trade agreement with the

USSR. Greece and Romania signed trade agreement. Leonid Brezhnev

visited Yugoslavia. Reorganization of Yugoslav Communist Party; Tito

given title of president of the League of Communists. Church crisis

settled in Greece. Soviet premier Kosygin visited Turkey.

1967 Military junta seized power in Greece. Pope Paul VI visited Turkey.

Tito visited Arab capitals in attempt to mediate Arab-Israeli crisis.

Romanian foreign minister Manescu elected president of the UN General

Assembly. Greek Orthodox Patriarch visited the Vatican. The USSR

celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

1949 forward Serbians dominated the officer corps in the Yugoslav military, the

civil service, and the secret police. Belgrade was Yugoslavia's

power center. Bosnian Muslim identity became increasingly

pronounced under Tito’s rule , owing to his ambitious educational

program and development of a Muslim intelligentsia able to articulate the

needs of a distinct Muslim community inside Yugoslavia.

1971 Most Bosnian Muslims are Slavs—Croats and Serbs who were Bogomil

Christians and converted to Islam during the five centuries of Ottoman

rule. The Slav Muslims constitute a nation nominally identified by its

religion, not by language or ethnicity; it received recognition as an official

Yugoslav nation in the Constitution of 1974. It had received formal

recognition on the 1971 census forms.

1974 Kosovo was granted autonomy.

May 4, 1980 Death of Josip Broz Tito. Economic and political instability in

Yugoslavia.

1981 Martial law established by USSR in Poland.

1983 Trial and conviction of Alija Izetbegovic and twelve other Bosnian

Muslims in Sarajevo on charges of advocating an Islamistan for Bosnia.

1984 Trial of Vojislav Seselj in Sarajevo on charges of advocating Greater

Serbian ideals and undermining the constitutional order.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-21

1985 Gorbachev became leader of USSR and established policies of glasnost

and perestroika.

1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed. Due to Gorbachev’s

agreements to reduce the military forces of the USSR in Europe, Serious

arms reduction talks between the US and the USSR became possible.

Slobodan Milosevic rose to power as strongman of Serbia, rallying

Serbian nationalists who resented the strength of Albanians in

Kosovo.

1989 Multiparty system established in Hungary. The Solidarity party was

victorious in elections in Poland and the first non-Communist government

was established. In Czechoslovakia, a predominantly non-Communist

government took power, with Vaclav Havel as president and Alexander

Dubcek as chair of the parliament. Thousands of East Germans escaped

through Hungary to West Germany. East German President Erich

Honecker and East German Communist Government resigned. Berlin

Wall fell. Communist government in Romania was overthrown and

Ceausescu and his wife were tried and executed. In the Kosovo

Province of the Serbian Republic of Yugoslavia, clashes between

ethnic Albanians and police led to direct Serbian control of the

province’s police and courts. Violent demonstrations ensued.

Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe signed by Bush and

Gorbachev and NATO and Warsaw Pact leaders.

1989 Kosovo’s autonomy revoked under direction of Milosevic.

1990 Borders in Albania opened. Free elections held in Romania. First free

elections held in Czechoslovakia. Reunification of Germany. Walesa

(Solidarity leader) overwhelmingly elected president of Poland. General

strike in Bulgaria, leading to resignation of Socialist (previously

Communist) premier. A political independent elected premier by

parliament.

Slovenes walked out of Party Congress due to rejection of their proposals

for confederation, leading to dissolution of League of Communists.

Multiparty elections held in all Yugoslav republics. Elections in Bosnia

resulted in victory for nationalist political parties and candidates: Alija

Izetbegovic (Moslem), Radovan Karadzic (Serbian), and Stjepan Kljuic

(Croatian).

1991 Following crackdown by Soviet troops in the Baltics that led to

demonstrations and violence, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia voted to

secede from the USSR. Their independence was later recognized by the

United Nations. Communist government of Albania resigned. Slovenia

and Croatia declared independence. War ensued between Yugoslav

military in Slovenia and later in Croatia. Civil war in Croatia continued

through the year. Soviet troops vacated Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Warsaw Pact abolished. Thousands of Albanians fled, trying to find

refuge in Italy. Some were turned back.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-22

1995 300,000 Serbs driven from the Krajina region of Croatia by the Croatian

army, allegedly with U.S. approval.

1996 (November) Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerged. According to

London Times, ethnic Albanian KLA formed by diehard Communists

with connections to the heroin trade and supported by Iran. U.S. State

Department characterized KLA as terrorist organization. (By April 1999,

some in U.S. Congress called for arming the KLA).

1998 (February) Large-scale military action was launched against KLA by

Serbia (Europe’s last country led by Communist regime). 2,000 dead by

year’s end.

(July-August) KLA seized control of 40% of Kosovo before being

routed by Serbian offensive.

1999 (March 24) NATO launched air strikes against Serbia. One U.S. plane

is downed. U.S. provided 80% of air power.

(March 31) 3 GIs captured (released on May 1) on the Macedonian

border. U.S. patrols on the border were ceased.

(April/May) U.S. ground troops arrived in Macedonia and Albania as

part of Task Force Hawk. Two U.S. crewmen died in accidental

helicopter crash on May 4.

PART 4: THE COLLAPSE OF YUGOSLAVIA (WARS OF YUGOSLAV

SUCCESSION – 1986 - 1993)14

1986

March SERBIA: A controversial nationalist memorandum was issued by the

Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences claiming that Serbia had been

deliberately weakened by the Tito regime and demanding complete

equality for the Serbian state. The memorandum blamed the 1974

constitution for creating a “loose confederation” that required the

consensus of all republics. The memorandum listed Serbian grievances

against the state and against non-Serb leaders (including Tito) and ended

by asserting the need for Serbs to create their own state. The

memorandum served to fuel Serbian nationalism. Dobrica Cosic (later

Yugoslav federal president) was a central architect of the document.

May SERBIA: Milosevic ascended to the leadership of the League of

Communists of Serbia. Knowing that Communist and Yugoslav causes

could no longer mobilize the masses, Milosevic began to resuscitate

Serbian nationalism to strengthen and extend his power.

 

14 Bugajski, 1994; Donia & Fine, 1994.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-23

1987

SERBIA: Slobodan Milosevic rose to power as strongman of Serbia,

rallying Serbian nationalists who resented Albanian strength in Kosovo.

1988

January SLOVENIA: Sharp public debates occurred in Slovenia over changes to

the Serbian constitution that were perceived to threaten Yugoslavia’s

federal structure and the national autonomy of the constituent republics.

May SLOVENIA: Rumors abounded that the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA)

was planning a coup to displace Slovenia’s republican leadership. A

Yugoslav army sergeant-major provided evidence of the plot to

journalists. Government denied rumors and arrested the officer and the

journalists.

July SLOVENIA: The trial of the men began amid a storm of popular protest.

The conduct of the trial angered many Slovenes, and episode turned into

campaign for democratization of society.

October SERBIA: Vojvodina’s provincial authorities were replaced in a purge

orchestrated by Communist leaders to eliminate pro-autonomy forces.

The province became increasingly governed from Belgrade.

November SERBIA: Milosevic proposed constitutional amendments that would

effectively revoke the autonomous status of Vojvodina and Kosovo.

Albanians participated in peaceful demonstrations calling for Kosovo’s

secession from Serbia. Serbian authorities responded by banning all

public meetings in the province.

1989

January MONTENEGRO: The entire Communist and Yugoslav Party and

government leadership in Montenegro was replaced following large-scale

demonstrations organized by Milosevic loyalists in the capital Titograd.

This “anti-bureaucratic revolution” brought to power a younger cadre of

Communists who remained dependent on Belgrade. The new

administration pledged to introduce political pluralism and market reform

while continuing to control all essential levels of government. Initially,

Communist leaders claimed they sought political pluralism within a “nonparty system,” but as pressures for change mounted throughout

Yugoslavia, the Party began to advocate a full multi-party system

calculating that its preponderant position and control of the media would

assure it of an election victory.

February SLOVENIA: Various Slovenian political organizations and associations

organized rallies in support of striking Albanian workers in Autonomous

Province of Kosovo. Serbia condemned the rallies as evidence of open

support for Albanian separatists.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-24

March SLOVENIA: Serbia imposed an economic blockade on Slovenia in

retaliation for their support for the Kosovo Albanians.

SERBIA: The Serbian National Assembly passed constitutional

amendments giving Serbia more direct control over Kosovo and

Vojvodina. One hundred and fourteen Albanian deputies in the Kosovo

Provincial Assembly issued a “constitutional declaration” announcing

Kosovo as an independent and equal entity in the framework of the

Yugoslav federation. Serbian authorities condemned the move as

illegitimate and formally dissolved the Kosovo Assembly.

May SLOVENIA: Large rallies took place in Ljubljana, Slovenia; more than

10,000 people assembled to protest the second arrest of a Slovenian

dissident, Janes Jansa. The May Declaration which favored the full

sovereignty of the Slovenian nation was first read at rally.

June SLOVENIA: The Fundamental Document of Slovenia was published as

an official Slovenian government reply to the May Declaration. It also

envisioned Slovenian sovereignty but within the framework of a Yugoslav

state.

September SLOVENIA: The League of Communists of Slovenia convened with

other political organizations in Celje, the informal beginning of the election

campaign. The Slovenian Assembly passed constitutional amendments

that formed the basis for Slovenia’s sovereignty and widened the political

arena.

November SLOVENIA: Rumors circulated that Serb leaders from Kosovo Polje

were planning to organize a million-strong march on Ljubljana. Slovenian

authorities prohibited the rally, and Serbian leaders instituted a full-scale

economic embargo on Slovenia.

1990

January YUGOSLAVIA: Slovenian delegates stormed out of the fourteenth

emergency session of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in

Belgrade after all their proposals on decentralizing the Yugoslav

federation were blocked or rejected. League of Communists dissolved.

MONTENEGRO: The Democratic Forum, of which the Liberal Alliance of

Montenegro and the Democratic Party were members, was established to provide a

political arena in which to establish a multi-party system.

February MACEDONIA: The Movement for Pan-Macedonian Action was created by

Macedonian intellectuals in Skopje. Its leader, Gane Todorovski, outlined the party’s

nationalist agenda at its founding assembly.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: The Assembly of Bosnia-Herzegovina

passed a law allowing for the free formation of political parties.

March SLOVENIA: The Slovenian Assembly adopted supplements to the

Slovene constitution eliminating the word “socialist” from the document

and providing for the republic’s economic independence.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-25

April SLOVENIA: Slovenia’s first multi-party elections held. The DEMOS

coalition won a comfortable victory. Respectable results also achieved

by the Party of Democratic Renewal (former Communists) and the

Liberal Democrats. The office of President went to the former head of

the Slovenian League of Communists, Milan Kucan.

MACEDONIA: The Party of Democratic Prosperity was set up on 17

communes with a significant population of Albanians in western

Macedonia and claimed to include Macedonians, Roma, and other

nationalities as members.

CROATIA: Croatia holds its first multi-party elections. CDU promoted

an openly nationalistic platform and won a clear majority in the

legislature. Its leader Franjo Tudjman became President. Tudjman made

inflammatory statements concerning Croatia's borders and the status of

Muslims and Serbs in Croatia.

May YUGOSLAVIA: The Yugoslav Federal Assembly elected Borislav Jovic,

a Serb, as Yugoslav president. The presidency was a rotating post

heading a collective eight-member presidential council, designed to

prevent power struggles among the republics after Tito’s death. The

eight members of the collective presidency were installed in 1989, and the

leadership was to rotate every year. Late in the month, the collective

presidency proclaimed Yugoslavia to be in political crisis; Jovic. stated

that the government would take “urgent measures” to protect the integrity

of the state.

June SERBIA: The Serbian legislature passed a law to extend “special

measures” and control over the Kosovo and Vojvodina administrations.

The Serb-dominated Assembly of Knin opstina in Croatia decided to

establish a “community of opstine” in northern Dalmatia and Lika.

MACEDONIA: The Macedonian Assembly adopted a declaration

concerning relations with neighboring countries and expressed

reservations about the position of the Macedonian ethnic minority in these

states. The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization--

Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (IMRO-DPMNU) held

its founding congress.

CROATIA: The Serb-dominated Assembly of Knin opstina decided to

establish a “community of opstine” in northern Dalmatia and Lika. A

Serbian National Council was formed (in Croatia), adopting a Declaration

of the Sovereignty and Autonomy of the Serbian Nation and scheduled a

plebiscite on autonomy.

July 1990 MONTENEGRO: The Montenegrin Assembly issued a statement

expressing anxiety over the accelerating disintegration of Yugoslavia and

criticized Slovenian and Croatian moves toward independence following

free elections in both republics.

SERBIA: The League of Communists of Serbia and the Socialist

Alliance merged to create the Serbian Socialist Party with Sobodan
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-26

Milosevic as the leader. The SSP adopted an openly nationalist platform.

The Kosovo Assembly issued a proclamation declaring Kosovo an

independent republic within the Yugoslav federation. Three days later,

Belgrade suspended the Kosovo Provincial Assembly.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: The Bosnian Assembly sought to assert

greater autonomy for the republic, but without making any definitive

moves toward secession from Yugoslavia, by declaring BosniaHerzegovina a “democratic and sovereign state with full and equal rights

for all its citizens.”

August MACEDONIA: The Macedonian government rejected an ethnic

Albanian Rights Petition from several Albanian political groups and civic

leaders demanding equal status in the constitution and other special

provisions.

CROATIA: The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia

overturned Serbian moves toward the autonomy of Krajina as

unconstitutional. A Serbian Council of National Resistance was formed

in Krajina [Croatia]. The districts of Drnis, Knin, and Sibernik adopted the

Cyrillic alphabet as the official script of administrative institutions.

September YUGOSLAVIA: Slovenia proposed a model of confederation for

Yugoslavia that was rejected by Serb and Montenegrin leaders. There

was no consensus in the federal presidency for altering or loosening the

federal structure.

SERBIA: The dissolved Kosovo Assembly met secretly in the town of

Kacanik and adopted a new constitution, declaring Kosovo a sovereign

republic within Yugoslavia. A clandestine government and legislature

were elected.

CROATIA: The Serbian National Council [in Croatia] declared its

intention to create a fully autonomous Serbian region to include all

territories in which Serbs constituted a majority. Rumors began to

circulate that the Croatian Democratic Union was attempting to smuggle

in arms from Hungary and Germany.

October SLOVENIA: The Slovenian Assembly initiated the process of nullifying

federal laws on the republic’s territory.

MONTENEGRO: The Montenegrin Assembly passed a law legalizing

the first multi-party elections in the republic.

CROATIA: The Yugoslav People’s Army (under Serbia's sponsorship)

begins to covertly arm and support rebel Serbs in the Knin area of

Croatia.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Serb leaders establish a Serbian National

Council in Banja Luka, Bosnia-Herzegovina, allegedly to protect the Serb

nation's interests from Muslim extremism.

November MACEDONIA: The Front of Macedonian Unity was formed by

nationalist groupings primarily in order to gain a maximum number of
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-27

seats in the National Assembly elections, to serve Macedonian national

interests, and to counter the alleged political ambitions of Albanian

parties. The first multi-party elections were held against a backdrop of

ethnic tension, resurgent nationalism, and economic deterioration

throughout Yugoslavia. The Macedonian electorate also cast ballots for

local-level officials.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Multi-party republican elections were held in

Bosnia-Herzegovina for the 240-seat bicameral legislature. The elections

were dominated by three main political parties, each representing one of

the main ethnic groups. Guided by strict election laws, the ethnic makeup of the Assembly and the collective presidency closely mirrored the

republic's demographic proportions. Alija Izetbegovic, head of the

Muslim PDA, was chosen as President on a rotational basis. A Croatian

from the CDU, Juro Pelivan, was chosen as Prime Minister, and a Serb

from the SDP, Momcilo Kajisnik, was selected as Speaker of the

Assembly. The PDA, CDU, and SDP agreed to form a coalition

government as there was no clear majority in the Assembly.

December SLOVENIA: Slovenia held a plebiscite on independence from

Yugoslavia; 93.2% of electorate turned out to vote, and 88% of all votes

were cast in favor of statehood.

SERBIA: Serbia's first multi-party elections were held. The SSP, with its

increasingly-nationalist agenda and its firm control over the state

bureaucracy, the security forces, and the mass media, won a governing

majority. Milosevic was elected president of Serbia, capturing 65.34% of

the vote.

MONTENEGRO: Montenegro’s first multi-party elections were held and

easily won by the League of Communists, later renamed the Democratic

Party of Socialists. The LCM gained 83 out of 125 seats to the

Montenegrin Assembly. The Alliance of Reform Forces finished second

with 17 seats, the Peoples Party obtained 12 seats, while the minority bloc

and independents reached a total of 13 seats.

MACEDONIA: Following run-off elections, a new Macedonian

parliament was constituted with no party obtaining a clear majority of

seats. IMRO-DPMNU captured 38 seats; the former Communist LCMPDT, 31; the Albanian PDP-NDP coalition, 23 seats. The remaining

mandates went to several smaller parties.

CROATIA: Croatia adopted its new constitution, declaring all nationalities

to be equal, guaranteeing the freedom to express one’s nationality, and

providing for cultural autonomy. Serb leaders charged that it did not

assure the “collective rights” of the Serbian minority and condemned the

constitution as an example of Croatian chauvinism. The Serbian

Autonomous Region of Krajina was established within the territory of

Croatia and the area was joined by the communities of Benkovac, Vojnic,

Obrovac, Gracac, Dvor, and Kostajnica. The new administrative entity

claimed the right to execute its own laws and ordinances and those of the
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-28

Yugoslav federation. It also asserted the right to collect taxes in the

region.

1991

January YUGOSLAVIA: An armed confrontation between Croatia and Serbia

was narrowly averted after the Yugoslav defense minister stated that no

republic would be allowed to create paramilitary units outside the federal

military structure. Zagreb accepted the demobilization of its reserve

militia force but continued to maintain its main National Guard

contingents. Serbs accused the Croatian government of using the

National Guard to impose a state of siege in Serb-dominated areas of

Croatia.

MACEDONIA: Kiro Gligorov, a former president of the Yugoslav

Federal Assembly, was elected president of Macedonia. IMRODemocratic Party, a more radical offshoot of the IMRO-DPMNU, was

organized in the town or Ohrid.

February SLOVENIA: About the time Slovenia decided to break away from

Yugoslavia, it represented only 8% of the population, yet produced 20%

of Yugoslavia’s national product and 25% of its exports. It also paid

about 4.5 times more in federal taxes to subsidize the “backward”

underdeveloped southern republics than it received in federal finance

programs.

CROATIA: The Serb-Croat conflict in Croatia escalated when the

Serbian National Council in Knin declared the independence of Krajina

from Croatia. Zagreb declared the move as illegal and refused to

recognize the territory as sovereign.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: PDA and CDU agreed to assert the full

sovereignty of the Bosnian republic and to give Bosnian laws precedence

over all Yugoslav laws. The SDP rejected the proposal, furthering ethnic

and political division over the issue of Bosnian independence. Serb

leaders claimed that independence and secession from Yugoslavia would

threaten the status of Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, forcing them into

“minority status.” Tensions increased when President Tudjman implied

that parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina belonged to Croatia. He did not deny

that a plan had been created to divide up Bosnia between Serbia and

Croatia.

March SERBIA: The Kosovo Provincial Assembly was officially abolished by

Belgrade.

MONTENEGRO: Montenegro's PEN Club vice-president, Jhevrem

Brkovic, issued an open letter in which he apologized to Bosnians for the

behavior of Montenegrin soldiers in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was

subsequently charged with “inciting ethnic and religious hatred” and was

scheduled to be arrested and tried. To escape prosecution he reportedly

sought refuge in Croatia.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-29

MACEDONIA: A new Macedonian government was installed and styled

as a “government of experts” headed by Prime Minister Nikola Kljusev.

Only two of the ministers had any political party affiliation.

April 1991 SLOVENIA: The DEMOS coalition in Slovenia began to unravel; several

distinct parties emerge dfrom the alliance--most were moderate political

forces.

SERBIA: Milosevic sent police reinforcement to the Sandzak [border

between Serbia and Montenegro, and territory between Kosovo and

Bosnia-Herzegovina] on the pretext that there was a possibility of

widespread rioting sparked by Muslim unrest.

MONTENEGRO: The People's Party issued warnings that Croats,

Muslims, and Albanians were arming themselves throughout the republic,

purportedly in preparation for seceding from Montenegro. The move was

dismissed as a provocation engineered by pro-Serb forces intent on

securing Montenegrin allegiance to Belgrade.

MACEDONIA: The IMRO-DPMNU Congress in Prilep passed several

programmatic resolutions calling for swift moves toward Macedonian

independence.

CROATIA: The Krajina Executive Council in Croatia adopted a

declaration on secession from Croatia and federation with Serbia. The

Serbs in Krajina reportedly endorsed this declaration in a public

referendum a few weeks later. Serb leaders in other parts of Croatia

sought to join the Krajina entity. The federal Yugoslav government,

Croatian leaders, and even some Serb community leaders did not approve

the decision and proclaimed it unconstitutional.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Serb leaders proposed dividing Bosnia into

economic regions with each ethnic group controlling its own economic

and political interests. Croatian and Muslim leaders rejected the proposal,

claiming that it would facilitate Serbian separatism and annexation of

Bosnian territory. A Serb Community of Krajina was declared in

western Bosnia, composed of 14 municipalities in which Serbs formed a

majority; the area was later renamed an Autonomous Region.

May SERBIA: The Party for Democratic Action formed the Muslim National

Council of the Sandzak as a quasi-governmental body. Serbian

authorities refused to recognize this initiative.

CROATIA: Croatia held a referendum on independence in which 93.24%

of the 83.56% of the electorate casting ballots voted for Croatian

sovereignty and independence. The Krajina Serbs comprehensively

boycotted the plebiscite.

June YUGOSLAVIA: Ibrahim Rugova of the Democratic League of Kosovo

announced that Kosovo would not remain in a truncated Yugoslavia. He

asserted, however, that only peaceful means would be used to achieve

independence.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-30

SLOVENIA: Slovenia declared its independence after months of fruitless

negotiations on confederalizing Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav army

responded with a military intervention, trying to intimidate the government

into submission, to break armed resistance, and to capture strategic points

in the republic, including its borders. Army commanders appeared to

miscalculate: The crackdown provoked stiff resistance and rallied all

Slovenian political forces behind the drive for secession. Casualties were

minimal, army did not engage in full-scale assault, and Belgrade withdrew

its forces. Ten days later, both sides agreed to a cease-fire.

CROATIA: Croatia declared its independence and imminent secession

from Yugoslavia. Yugoslav troops launched offensives across the

republic and attempted to thwart progress toward independence. Serb

guerrillas in Krajina attempted to connect areas already partially under

Serb control. In the ensuing months, Serb forces captured about a

quarter of Croatian territory along the border with Bosnia and Vojvodina.

July 1991 CROATIA: Croatian authorities courted international recognition by

addressing minority rights in the republic. Zagreb agreed to consider the

possibility of granting Serbs some form of limited political autonomy,

whereby municipal authorities in Serb areas would maintain power over

the local police, education, and culture in certain designated areas.

September MACEDONIA: A referendum on Macedonian independence was held:

68.32% of registered voters came out in support of Macedonian

sovereignty and independence. The majority of Albanian population

boycotted the ballot. The National Assembly adopted a declaration on

sovereignty and independence, despite the concerns of Albanian leaders

over manifestations of ethnic discrimination and the content of the new

constitution.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Serb leaders announced creation of the Serb

Autonomous Regions of Eastern and Old Herzegovina, comprised of

eight Serbian municipalities in southeastern Bosnia. Three more

autonomous regions were subsequently established. Armed “volunteer

units” were formed by local Serb police forces and SDP radicals to

“protect Serbian autonomy.” Muslim and Croatian leaders condemned

the moves as illegal and provocative.

MONTENEGRO: Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic stated that the

Montenegrin leadership was working on a declaration of sovereignty but

within a limited federal framework while maintaining close links with

Serbia. Thousands of Montenegrin residents were called up into the

Yugoslav army; armed clashes were reported between Croatian and

Montenegrin units in the coastal border regions. The Montenegrin

government accused Zagreb of trying to extend Croatian borders along

the Adriatic at Montenegro's expense; Zagreb in turn charged Belgrade

with orchestrating the conflicts in order to secure the strategic Prevlaka

peninsula and to expel Croat residents.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-31

October SLOVENIA: Following 3-month moratorium on independence sponsored

by EC mediators and new negotiations which failed to elicit positive

results, Ljubljana reasserted the country's [Slovenia’s] independence and

statehood. The remaining Yugoslav troops vacated the country.

SERBIA: Sandzak Muslims held a referendum, organized by the Muslim

National Council, on political and cultural autonomy. Of the 70.2% of

eligible voters participating in the referendum, 98.9% cast ballots for

autonomy. Serbian authorities declared the referendum “illegal,

unnecessary, and senseless.”

MONTENEGRO: The National Assembly began work on preparing a

declaration on Montenegrin sovereignty. Bulatovic explained that the

affirmation of sovereignty did not equal a declaration of independence but

simply a confirmation of Montenegro’s internationally recognized position

within the Yugoslav state. Nevertheless, the move appeared to cause

perturbations in Belgrade, particularly after Bulatovic called for the

withdrawal of Montenegrin recruits from Croatian battle fronts.

CROATIA: The Croatian parliament reasserted the republic’s

sovereignty and independence and officially negated all federal laws and

Yugoslav jurisdiction in the republic. Zagreb announced its intention to

offer broad autonomy to the Serbs. Serb representatives in the occupied

territories of Slavonija, Barankja, and western Srem sought to become a

federal state within Yugoslavia.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: The PDA and the CDU sponsored a

memorandum on sovereignty and neutrality for Bosnia-Herzegovina,

which was adopted by the Bosnian Assembly. SDP members walked out

of parliament in protest and refused to recognize the declaration, claiming

that it was illegal because it violated a December 1990 agreement among

the three parties on consensus in decision making.

November MACEDONIA: The Macedonian parliament adopted a new constitution

despite the abstention of Albanian deputies who remained critical of

several important provisions.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: The SDP held a retaliatory referendum

asking Bosnian Serbs if they would prefer to remain in an integral

Yugoslav state; this possibility was overwhelmingly affirmed by Bosnian

Serb voters. Muslim and Croat leaders asserted that the referendum was

one in a series of acts, supported by the Milosevic regime, paving the way

toward a political crisis and armed warfare. A Croatian Community of

Herzeg-Bosnia was established from 30 Croatian municipalities in

western Herzegovina and central Bosnia, and a Croatian Community of

the Bosnian Sava Valley was created from eight Croatian municipalities

in northern Bosnia. Croatian leaders claimed the establishment of these

areas was primarily a protective measure in the face of Serbian moves

toward secession. They maintained that the new autonomous entities

would recognize the government in Sarajevo only if Bosnia maintained its

sovereignty from the Yugoslav federation.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-32

December YUGOSLAVIA: The EC announced its willingness to recognize the

independence of any Yugoslav republic that fulfilled specific political and

territorial criteria.

SLOVENIA: The new Slovenian constitution was ratified by parliament.

MACEDONIA: The Macedonian authorities reiterated the republic’s

independence and requested full international recognition.

1992

January YUGOSLAVIA: Slovenia and Croatia were recognized as independent

sovereign nations by the international community.

SLOVENIA: Following issuance of specific criteria for international

acceptance of all the Yugoslav republics, the EC officially recognized

Slovenia as an independent state. .

SERBIA: Muslim leaders in Sandzak announced the creation of a “special

status” for the region; the move was condemned by Belgrade.

MACEDONIA: The government in Skopje adopted a draft law paving

the way for the establishment of a Macedonian national army to number

between 25,000 and 30,000 troops. Yugoslav forces began to withdraw

from the republic after an agreement with Skopje in which they would

keep all YPA weaponry deployed on Macedonian soil. Albanian leaders

organized a referendum on “political and territorial autonomy” despite

government opposition. Reportedly, over 90% of Albanians voted, out of

which 95% cast their ballots in favor of Albanian autonomy in western

Macedonia. Bulgaria became the first country to recognize Macedonian

statehood.

CROATIA: Croatia was officially recognized by the international

community. A UN-sponsored cease-fire took effect. An agreement,

known as the Vance Plan, was reached between Zagreb, Belgrade,

Yugoslav military commanders, and local Serb authorities in Krajina to

implant a UN peace-keeping force in the disputed territories. Krajina

president Milan Babic opposed UN involvement, fearing that the UN

would disarm Serb forces and facilitate the region’s return to Croatian

control. Babic was replaced by Milosevic loyalist Goran Hadzic who

supported the cease fire plan. The UN Security Council adopted a

resolution establishing the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) to act as

a buffer between Serb and Croat forces throughout the Krajina region;

14,000 troops were deployed to four sectors of the conflict zone.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Four Croatian municipalities were joined to

create a third Croatian Community of Central Bosnia. The self-declared

Serb Assembly in Bosnia claimed that it was entitled to control 60% of

the republic’s territory; it undertook additional steps to create separate

Serb security forces and governmental institutions within the republic's

“autonomous areas.” Despite meeting most of the EC requirements,
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-33

Bosnia-Herzegovina did not receive recognition because the government

had not elicited the opinion of its citizens. The Bosnian presidency made

preparations for a referendum, slated for February and March 1992.

Serb deputies stormed out of the Assembly in protest.

February MONTENEGRO: About 10,000 people rallied in the town of Cetinje

demanding Montenegrin independence. In response to the National

Assembly's announcement about the March referendum on remaining in

a federation with Serbia, another independence rally was held, this time in

the capital Titograd, and drew about 10,000 supporters; 5,000 people

attended a similar rally in Cetinje. The opposition condemned the wording

of the referendum, which left little opportunity for citizens to opt for full

sovereignty, as well as the short time frame in preparing the ballot that

disabled any meaningful public discussion.

MACEDONIA: Turkey recognized Macedonia’s independence; other

states adopted a more cautious position largely because of Greek

intransigence over the country's name.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: The Serb Assembly adopted a constitution

of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

March MONTENEGRO: In a republic-wide referendum, 96% of participants

voted in favor of Montenegro remaining in Yugoslavia; the Albanian

community and the pro-independence forces boycotted the vote.

Residents of Titograd voted 66% in favor of changing the city’s name

back to its original one, Podgorica.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: The SDP and the Serbian Assembly,

presided over by Radovan Karadzic, declared the process illegal and

encouraged all Serbian Bosnians to boycott the referendum. In all, 63.4%

of eligible voters in Bosnia-Herzegovina participated in a referendum

concerning the status of the republic, and 99.7% of those participating

responded affirmatively to the question, “Do you support a sovereign and

independent Bosnia-Herzegovina?” Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its

independence from the former Yugoslavia. Muslims made up 44% of the

population, Serbs 31%, and Croats 16%. Recognition of Muslim

nationality led Bosnian Croat and Serb leaders to feel threatened by a

new nationalist force

April 1992 YUGOSLAVIA: Following the secession of Slovenia, Croatia,

Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the republics of Montenegro and

Serbia (including the provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina) declared the

formation of a new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, over objections of

opposition forces in both republics. A new constitution was quickly

adopted. The status of Vojvodina and Kosovo remained unchanged

within the new state.

MACEDONIA: The Albanian Democratic Union was legalized. In the

Macedonian town of Struga, local leaders of ethnic Albanian parties

declared an Albanian autonomous republic of Ilirida at a rally attended by
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-34

members of several minorities, including Turks and Muslims. The move

was criticized by PDP leaders and condemned by Skopje as illegitimate.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Bosnia-Herzegovina was recognized

internationally as an independent state. The day after recognition, Serb

leaders withdrew from the republican Assembly and all other

governmental institutions, formally proclaiming the existence of the

Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and underscoring the legitimacy

of separate administrative institutions.

May YUGOSLAVIA: Federal elections to the two-member Yugoslav federal

government were held to provide a veneer of legitimacy for the new

state; the Socialists and their Radical allies won an overwhelming majority

of seats. Opposition parties boycotted the ballot, claiming that the

elections were illegal and unconstitutional, that the election law was a

sham document, and that the campaign period was too short for proper

multi-party competition.

SERBIA: Four democratic opposition parties established the Democratic

Movement of Serbia (DEPOS) in an attempt to coordinate their campaign

against Milosevic. Albanians in Kosovo held their own general elections

to their clandestine government. Ibrahim Rugova was elected president

and 130 other activists were elected delegates to the legislature of the

independent republic of Kosovo. The newly-appointed government

declared Kosovo an independent state and appealed for international

recognition.

MONTENEGRO: Nationalist Serb paramilitaries linked with the Radical

Party were accused of bombing several Muslim-owned businesses in the

town of Pljevlja in the Montenegrin Sandzak.

CROATIA: The Croatian parliament ratified its Constitutional Law of

Human Rights and Freedoms and the Rights of National and Ethnic

Communities or Minorities. The legislation institutionalized within

Croatian law the special position of minorities, with special emphasis

placed on Croatian Serbs.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Bosnia Serb leaders launched outright war

in order to facilitate the division of the republic. The Bosnian government

was glaringly unprepared for armed conflict; only after war broke out did

it formally establish the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina

June 1992 MONTENEGRO: President Bulatovic called a special session of

parliament to reconsider Montenegro’s relation with Serbia and suggested

another referendum to decide whether to remain in Yugoslavia. He

stated that “new, politically uncompromised figures should be found to

represent the Yugoslav republic.”

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Brutal “ethnic cleansing” policies perpetrated

primarily by Serbian militias in Bosnia-Herzegovina increased

apprehensions among minorities in Serbia, especially in Vojvodina,

Kosovo, and the Sandzak. A state of war was officially declared by the
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-35

Bosnian government in Sarajevo. Serbian forces sought to connect and

expand the territories they controlled in western and eastern Bosnia.

They conducted a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” to eradicate the nonSerb population in these areas. Based on overwhelming evidence, the

Serb regime in Belgrade was accused or orchestrating the campaign.

The United Nations mounted a humanitarian relief operation in Bosnia by

dispatching approximately 7,000 troops to the republic.

July YUGOSLAVIA: Milan Panic, a naturalized American citizen, was

elected prime minister of the rump Yugoslavia. Panic asserted the need

to hold national elections and to bring peace to the former Yugoslavia.

MACEDONIA: The Kljusev government in Macedonia lost a vote of noconfidence largely due to criticism of its inability to secure international

recognition. IMRO-DPMNU was unable to form a new government.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Mate Boban, newly selected president of

the CDU, declared the establishment of Herzeg-Bosnia, an autonomous

Croatian quasi-state, complete with separate administrative structures and

its own capital in Mostar. The CDU's visible reversal in supporting an

integral Bosnia fuelled suspicions that Boban and Karadzic were forging

a secret deal to divide Bosnia under the sponsorship of Zagreb and

Belgrade. Croatian president Tudjman attempted to discredit the rumor

by offering support for an independent Bosnia and made overtures

toward a possible Croatian-Bosnian military alliance

August MONTENEGRO: Self-proclaimed Chetnik and Serbian Radical Party

member Major Cedo Dacevic was detained by Montenegrin police in

Pljevlja in connection with radical Serb attacks on thirty Muslim-owned

shops the previous May. In protest, several hundred armed Serb

residents erected barricades on all roads leading to the town.

Montenegrin authorities dismissed a number of Pljevlja's policemen,

including the chief of police and the chief of criminal investigation, for

tolerating the inflow of arms to Serb irregulars. Buloatovic and Yugoslav

president Dobrica Cosic visited Pljevlja to assure local residents,

especially Muslims, that republican authorities would guarantee their

safety. Bulatovic openly admitted that paramilitary groups were

operating in Montenegro but demanded that local Muslim leaders desist

from any demands for autonomy in the region. Pljevlja citizens took

control of the post office, radio transmitter, gas station, and the security

center building. Montenegrin Interior Ministry and federal Army troops

arrived in Pljevlja to restore order and to disarm local paramilitary groups.

After negotiations with the Montenegrin government, Dacevic agreed to

turn weapons over to the Montenegrin authorities. The Albanian

Democratic Alliance of Montenegro planned a referendum on autonomy,

although it was not stipulated whether the minority was seeking political,

territorial, or cultural autonomy. The move was condemned by virtually

all Montenegrin parties as it could assist Radical attempts to sow discord

between Montenegro and its minorities.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-36

CROATIA: Croatia held its second multi-party elections. There were

questions about the CDU’s control over the mass media, election

procedures, and voter registries. The CDU maintained its dominant

position in parliament. Local Serb authorities did not allow citizens in

Serb-held areas to participate in the balloting. The Tudjman government

continued to be accused of maintaining authoritarian controls over most

aspects of public life.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: The Serb Assembly met in Banja Luka,

Bosnia-Herzegovina and renamed its own quasi state as the Serb

Republic.

September MACEDONIA: Branko Crvenkovski finally assembled a new

administration, consisting of a broad coalition between the SKU, the ARF,

and the PDP and several smaller parties. IMRO-DPMNU excluded

itself from the new government and continued to call for new elections.

October CROATIA: In an effort to improve relations with minorities within the

Croatian republic, the Croatian parliament passed the Amnesty Act; it

guaranteed the safety of all those who may have been involved in the

1991 war, provided that they did not engage in war crimes.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: In the United Nations, the Vance-Owen

plan was presented as the most credible solution to achieve peace in

Bosnia-Herzegovina. The plan advocated the creation of an extremely

decentralized state, with most powers granted to nine ethnically

dominated provinces. The nine provinces, three for each ethnic group,

would control all political and economic questions except foreign affairs,

international trade, taxation, and national defense; these would remain in

the hands of a weak central government based in Sarajevo. The

agreement was immediately accepted only by the Croats, who stood to

gain territory according to the provincial divisions envisaged in the plan.

November YUGOSLAVIA: Montenegrin delegates in the Federal Assembly helped

to block the attempts of Serb Radicals to oust Yugoslav prime minister

Milan Panic during two votes of no-confidence in his leadership. DPS

deputies indicated support for his efforts to reach a peace agreement in

Bosnia-Herzegovina and implicitly backed his criticism of the Milosevic

leadership.

MACEDONIA: The Party for Complete Emancipation of Roma held its

third plenary meeting in Skopje in order to discuss such issues as the

provision of education in the Gypsy language. Thousands of Albanians

demonstrated in the capital after a confrontation between Macedonian

police and Albanian traders. The rallies turned into a riot: Three

Albanians and one Macedonian were killed. Skopje implied that Serbian

agents could be behind the incident; Albanians condemned alleged police

brutality.

December YUGOSLAVIA: Federal, republican, and local elections were held in the

rump Yugoslavia.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-37

SLOVENIA: Second multi-party elections held in Slovenia; Liberal

Democratic Party won and formed a coalition government. Milan Kucan

re-elected as President of Slovenia, and Liberal Democratic Party leader

Janez Drnovsek became Prime Minister, forming a coalition government

in agreement with Christian Democrats, the United List, and the Social

Democrats.

SERBIA: Serbia held local, republican, and federal elections. Milosevic

won the presidency against challenger Milan Panic, while the Socialists

gained a plurality of seats in both republic and federal legislatures. The

Radical Party, led by extremist Seselj and backed by the Socialists, came

in second, ahead of the democratic opposition coalition, DEPOS.

MONTENEGRO: President Bulatovic was re-elected president of

Montenegro after a second round run-off with the Serb Radical candidate

Branko Kostic. In the Montenegrin National Assembly, the DPS gained

45 out of 85 seats; the People's Party, 14; the Liberal Alliance, 13; the

Radicals, 5; and the Social Democrats, 4. The Montenegrin Liberals

boycotted the federal elections; in the Chamber of Citizens, the DPS

elected 17 out of the 138 deputies, the Montenegrin Socialists, 5; the

People’s Party, 4; and the Radicals, from both Serbia and Montenegro, a

total of 34. For the Chamber of Republics, the DPS elected 15 deputies;

the People’s Party, 3; and the Radicals, 2 to the 20-member Montenegrin

section. The success of the Radicals in both republics enabled them to

have a majority vote with the Serbian Socialists in the Federal Assembly.

1993

January MACEDONIA: Five hundred Serb nationalists gathered in Kuceviste

north of Skopje to protest the dispersal of a Serbian rally by Macedonian

police on New Year’s Eve in the same village. Macedonian television

conducted an interview with Bhorivoje Ristic, who outlined the goals of

the Democratic Party of Serbs in Macedonia and the Association of

Serbs and Montenegrins. The first All-Macedonian Congress was held in

Sopotsko, Greece, with the participation of all the movements’ local

committees. The congress adopted a declaration citing the discriminatory

policies pursued by Athens with respect to the Macedonian minority in

northern Greece.

CROATIA: Croatian forces liberated the Maslenica bridge, a key link to

the Dalmatian coast. The authorities hoped to reopen important traffic

routes despite Serb shelling.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: In an attempt to gain broader acceptance

for the Vance-Owen plan, the power of the proposed central government

was diluted even further. Some observers charged that the plan could

work only if Bosnia-Herzegovina was transformed into a UN

protectorate.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-38

February SERBIA: Serbia's National Assembly elected a new government headed

by Socialist Prime Minister Nikola Sainovic.

MACEDONIA: IMRO-DPMNU, MPMA, and other nationalist

organizations staged demonstrations in Skopje to protest the inflow of

Muslim refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina. The rallies turned violent

when police used tear gas against several hundred rock-throwing

protesters.

March 1993 BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Muslim leaders in Sarajevo, realizing that

their military position was weakening, signed the Vance-Owen plan.

Sarajevo believed that acceptance of the plan would facilitate increasing

international pressure on the Serbs and would lead to some kind of UN

military intervention. Serb leaders continued to negotiate, stalling the

passage of the Vance-Owen plan, while simultaneously increasing their

military offensives against Muslim-held towns.

April MONTENEGRO: Milo Djukanovic, who was re-elected as the

Montenegrin prime minister, formed a multi-party government with the

DPS, Liberals, Social Democrats, and People's Party representatives,

thereby isolating the Radicals.

MACEDONIA: The UN recognized the Republic of Macedonia under

the provisional designation of the Former Yugoslav Republic of

Macedonia (FYROM), pending a final compromise regarding the

republic's name. Greece continued to block a permanent settlement. The

Skopje government narrowly survived a no-confidence vote sponsored by

nationalist legislators dissatisfied with its acceptance of the UN-mediated

temporary designation.

April-May BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: The Serbian Assembly organized a

referendum among Bosnian Serb voters on the Vance-Owen plan. The

proposals were overwhelmingly rejected by the Serbian population,

further delaying prospects for peace or a political settlement. The United

States and its European allies failed to agree on an appropriate Western

response to Serb defiance. They could not reach consensus on bombing

Serbian targets or lifting the arms embargo against the outgunned Bosnian

forces. The republic descended into chaos as military forces on all three

sides launched offensives to capture territory and drive out rival ethnic

groups. The Vance-Owen plan became irrelevant. Over three million

Bosnian residents became dependent on the UNHCR relief mission.

May MACEDONIA: Serb president Milosevic visited Macedonia and met

with President Gligorov to discourage Skopje from allowing U.S. troop

deployments in the republic. Reportedly, he also demanded “selfdetermination” for Serbs in northern Macedonia and a transit corridor to

Greece as preconditions for Belgrade’s recognition of Macedonian

independence. Gligorov was not intimidated and preparations were made

for stationing approximately 300 U.S. troops to supplement the UN

contingent already present in the country.
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-39

May-June YUGOSLAVIA: The Yugoslav president, Dobrica Cosic, was removed

from office in a vote of no-confidence engineered by Milosevic and

Seselj. The leader of the DEPOS coalition, Vuk Draskovic, and his wife

were arrested at a protest rally in Belgrade; they were badly beaten and

imprisoned. The authorities indicated that they would ban Draskovic’s

party, the Serbian Renewal Movement.

June MONTENEGRO: A large demonstration of several thousand people,

organized by the Liberals and other pro-independence forces, demanded

Montenegrin independence and opposed the rise of fascism in Yugoslavia

following the ouster of Yugoslav president Cosic by the Federal

Assembly. Liberal leader Slavko Perovic warned that pro-Milosevic

“mercenaries” threatened to spread Serbian “tyranny” to Montenegro.

The leader of the newly-formed Movement Against Fascism, Milika

Pavlovic, stated that “the only way out for Montenegro is to separate

from Serbia.” A statement was issued condemning the expulsion of

President Cosic and the violent police actions against demonstrators,

including opposition leader Vuk Draskovic, in Belgrade.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Serb and Croat leaders, with the connivance

of Belgrade and Zagreb, finalized a new plan for the division of BosniaHerzegovina into three ethnic provinces. The plan was deemed

unacceptable by the Bosnian presidency, which viewed it as tantamount

to partition. The proposal received the tacit support of the UN, whose

representatives urged Sarajevo to accept an agreement, lest they face

further bloodshed and loss of territory. The collective presidency became

divided between the Muslim majority, which refused to accept the plan,

and some pragmatic Croat and moderate Serb delegates who believed the

arrangement might be the last chance to salvage a peace settlement. The

UN announced the establishment of six “safe havens” for entrapped

Muslim civilians, including Sarajevo, Bihac, Tuzla, Srebernica, Zepa, and

Gorazde. As the UN was unwilling to defend these territories, Serb

forces sought either their demilitarization or their surrender.

CROATIA: Serb leaders in Croatia abandoned peace talks with the

Croatian authorities and held a referendum on the unification of the

Serbian Republic of Krajina with the Serb Republic in neighboring Bosnia.

The danger of full-scale war escalated in Croatia.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Serb unification wafs placed temporarily on

hold pending the outcome and speed of the partition of BosniaHerzegovina by Serb and Croat forces.

July SLOVENIA: Slovenia was rocked by several scandals over illicit arms

shipments to Croatia and Bosnia, financial misappropriations, and the

continuing activities of Yugoslav security services. Some observers

believed that government ministers and party leaders might be implicated

and the possibility of new general elections was raised.

MACEDONIA: A contingent of U.S. troops was stationed in Macedonia,

signaling Washington's concern about the escalation of the Yugoslav
BALKANS-APPENDIX F F-40

wars. The small force was envisaged as a “trip wire” against potential

aggression by Belgrade. As political pressures mounted from Albanian

and Macedonian nationalist parties, the authorities scheduled new general

elections and the holding of a national census in 1994.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Serbian troops, at times in collaboration with

Croatian units, launched further offensives against government forces in

Bosnia to open up new corridors connecting pockets of already-controlled

territory. Karadzic threatened an all-out offensive to defeat Muslim

forces unless Sarajevo accepted the partition plan. The Bosnian

government was on the verge of disintegrating , and the country was on

the brink of a de facto partition. Presidents Milosevic and Tudjman met

in Geneva to endorse the division of Bosnia-Herzegovina into three

loosely-confederated mini-states; Izetbegovic was pressured by UN/EC

negotiators to accept the new arrangement.

Return to Table of Contents
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-1

Appendix G

Indigenous Peoples, Invaders and Immigrants

in the Balkans During the Dark Ages

(AD 476 to AD 1000)

The position of the Balkan Peninsula and the structure of its land have always

invited outside invasions. Waves of people coming by land from west, north,

and east, coming by sea from west, south, and east have flooded it again and

again since the beginning of recorded time. Some waves retreated, leaving little

permanent effect; others temporarily left a deep impression which was effaced or

modified by a succeeding wave; still others made a lasting mark. This

succession of human waves produced a mixture of peoples of quite extraordinary

complexity and interest. No group of the present inhabitants of [Albania,

Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia] . . . could avoid receiving the impress of the

people whom it found upon its arrival in the Balkan area. None could continue

its residence there unaffected by further pressures applied by new arrivals. All

of the people we shall encounter were in their time invaders. All were repeatedly

invaded. In widely varying degrees each was molded by previous settlers and

by later attackers. The present ethnic structure has been created by a long and

complex process of stratification. (Wolff, 1974, p. 25)

All ethnic groups are mixed. One element may predominate but not be exclusive. In the

Balkans, this is true perhaps even more than anywhere else. The land the Balkan states

occupy today has been divided for centuries. A line can be drawn running east to west on

the Balkan Peninsula roughly through present-day Albania, Macedonia, and Thrace, to

Constantinople. The Greeks were chiefly south of this line; and the Illyrians, Thracians,

and Dacians lived north of the line (Fine, 1983). Gewehr (1967) observed that of the

contemporary peoples of the Balkan Peninsula, the Illyrians-Thracians-Dacians, as well as

the Greeks and the pastoralist Vlachs were settled there so much longer than the others

that they may be regarded as native. These were the peoples who were indigenous to the

Balkans.

The Illyrians lived in the western portion (northwestern Greece, Albania, and a

large portion of present-day Yugoslavia) . . . . The Thracians dwelled in Thrace,

much of modern Bulgaria, and eastern Macedonia . . . . The Dacians inhabited

Moesia (roughly what is now Bulgaria and northeastern Yugoslavia) and Dacia

(what is now Rumania). Linguistically these three peoples were all IndoEuropeans, and some scholars believe that the Thracians and Dacians until a

millenium or so earlier had been one people. (Fine, 1983, pp. 9-10)

The racial and national emotions and affinity of the “Macedonians” have been problematic

since early times. From the time of Alexander the Great, Greece had considered

Macedonia to be part of the Grecian world. In the 4th century, the Romans divided the

geographic region of Macedonia into three parts: New Epirus (present-day southern

Albania), Macedonia Salutaris (the former Dardania and the present-day YugoslavMacedonia), and Macedonia proper (the present Greek Macedonia). After the division of

the Roman Empire in AD 395, Macedonia was incorporated into the Eastern, Byzantine

Empire. The Macedonian cities were among the first communities of the Mediterranean
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-2

to accept Christianity. By the 4th century, Macedonia was almost wholly Christianized.

The incursion of Slavs brought a resurgence of paganism, except in the cities controlled by

Byzantium (Stoianovich, 1992b).

The portions of the former Yugoslavia referred to as Bosnia and Herzegovina and

Montenegro are almost wholly mountainous—a factor that served in some measure to

isolate people, encourage localism, and hinder the development of states. The mountains

have also permitted minority peoples to take refuge and to escape conquerors and large

migrations, thus retaining the identities rather than being entirely assimilated. The most

ancient inhabitants of the land referred to today as Bosnia and Herzegovina were Illyrian

tribes. Following conquest by the Roman Empire, the region became part of the Roman

province of Illyricum. Under Roman rule, Bosnia had no separate name or history,

remaining an undifferentiated part of Illyria. The portion of the region along the Sava

River belonged to the province of Pannonia. The Adriatic coastal region, part of the

Roman province of Dalmatia, was also occupied by Illyrians (Fine, 1983; Seton-Watson,

PurkoviÉ, & Allcock, 1995).

In addition to these native inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula, recorded history tells of

sojourns on and through the region during the first millennium AD first by the ancient

Romans, Goths, Visigoths, and Ostrogoths, and subsequently by the Huns, Avars, Bulgars

and Pechenegs, Slavs, Magyars, and Mongols and Tatars. The Bulgars and, eventually,

the Ottoman Turks came out of central Asia as invaders and stayed. The Huns and

Avars also came as invaders; but from today’s perspective, they left a less visible mark.

The Slavs seem to have moved gradually into the region from their homeland to the north

and east. The Slovenes seem to have retained ties to other Slavic peoples to the north—

the Czechs and Slovaks. Apparently at least some of the time, the Slavic immigrants

were under the leadership of Slavic-speaking Iranians—the Slaveni and Antes, and

subsequently, the “Serbs” and “Croats.” The shifting, but significant, influence of the

major religious institutions—the Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians and ultimately,

the Muslims—also left a significant impression in the region (Fine, 1983).

While the Balkans formed a natural route of invasions from Asia as well as from Europe,

the geographic barriers that served, in part, to isolate local residents also served to provide

ready external access to the region. Several major migratory or invasion routes cut

across the Balkans and funneled European armies—Romans, Crusaders, and German

tribes—into Asia. One route ran along the north shore of the Black Sea to the Danube

and into either Central Europe or southeast through present-day Bulgaria to

Constantinople (Istanbul). Another route flowed down the Danube from Central Europe

and diverged along two paths: Down the Vardar River through the Skopje Gate in

Macedonia to Thessaloniki in Greece, or toward Sofia in Bulgaria and along the Maritsa

River to Constantinople. Another route began in Italy, crossed the Adriatic, moved across

Albania and northern Greece, and terminated in Constantinople. The extensive coastlines

of the Adriatic, Aegean, and Black Seas also opened the Balkans to penetration (Johnsen,

1995; Ristelhueber, 1971).

. . . the peninsula is a crossroads between Europe, Asia, and Africa. Here the

peoples and cultures of three continents have met and mingled, or clashed and

conquered. The major powers of each historical epoch have made their influence

felt here and left their marks upon the peoples. The great imperial powers of the

past—Greeks, Romans, Turks, Venetians, Austrians, Germans, French, British,
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-3

and Russians—all in their turn have dominated or sought to dominate this area.

(Jelavich, & Jelavich, 1965, pp. 2-3)

The mountain chains that crisscross the Balkan Peninsula fragmented not only the

geography of the region, as we have already seen, but also its ethnic and political

development. The isolation and physical compartmentalization of people on the peninsula

undermined the emergence of a cohesive ethnic or national identity. The presence of

fragmented ethnic identities and geographic divisions retarded the development of any

single large power in the region, leading instead, to several smaller, less powerful and

competing states (Hosch, 1972; Johnsen, 1995).

The following sections comprise a brief review to show the varying influences—both

western and eastern—that left an imprint on the Balkan region as well as on the wider

world. Initially, the stage is set with the introduction of general and regional history,

including: (1) the reign of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, following the fall of the

Western Roman Empire in AD 476 and prior to the establishment of the Ottoman

Empire—the period from the 4th through the 14th centuries; and (2) the impact of the

spread of Christianity and Islam. A review of the groups of people who repeatedly

invaded the Balkan Peninsula from the East is then presented. Following this, the focus

turns to the migrations of the “Slavs,” the emergence of the Slavic languages in Europe,

and the initial development of separate identities in the Balkans. The chapter concludes

with a discussion of the possible significance of language differences to the maintenance

of physical boundaries.

AGRARIAN ROOTS AND URBAN CLASSES:

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

Beginning with the 1st century AD, southeastern Europe had been conquered by the

Romans. Subsequently, the Balkans became a battlefield between Hellenization and

Romanization—between the influences of the Greeks and the Romans. Although the city

was the dominant influence in Roman life, agriculture remained the basic economic

activity in the empire. The Roman Empire represented a vast area with a single currency

aided by an elaborate network of roads and protected harbors in which neither frontiers

nor pirates provided any obstacle to commerce. The majority of the population in the

Empire were served by local agriculture and craftsmanship although Greco-Roman

civilization involved the long-distance movement of natural products and manufactured

goods on a grand scale. Many cities throughout Greece and Asia Minor were regularly

dependent on imported grain. Wool- and linen-producing areas of the Empire also

supported trade in expensive textiles, while armies stationed in frontier provinces created

a large demand for both natural and manufactured products (Barraclough, 1978).

In many parts of the Empire, city colonies with an attached territory were settled

and farmed by the retired soldiers. Such settlements greatly contributed to the

agricultural development of the Empire. Armies, colonies and the urbanisation of

the wealthier of the provincials all created a new demand in the provinces of

western Europe and the Balkans for commodities reflecting the Roman way of life

. . . . By the end of the 2nd century the export trade of Italy had dwindled and

large areas of the Empire had become self-sufficient in the principal items of

Roman living, but . . . the northern Balkan provinces continued to import wine,
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-4

olive oil, glassware and fine pottery from other parts of the Empire. (Barraclough,

1978, p. 90)

By the beginning of the Byzantine period, much of the trade in the interior of the Balkan

Peninsula was ‘in kind’ (i.e., in produce), and local markets were based more on barter

than on cash (Fine, 1983).

In AD 395, on the death of Emperor Theodosius I, the Empire was divided into two parts

as an inheritance to his sons. From that point on, the Empire was never again united, and

the two differing civilizations developed along their own trajectories: Latin/Roman and

Greek/Byzantine. Following establishment of Constantinople as the capital in the east, in

scholarly references, the Empire became the Eastern Roman Empire, also called the

Christian Roman Empire. The term Byzantine was an invention of Renaissance scholars

following the fall of the Empire, however; it was never used contemporaneously with the

existence of the Empire (Fine, 1983).

Essentially the Byzantine Empire was a combination of three major cultural

components: (1) Roman in political concepts, administration, law, and military

organization, (2) Greek in language and culture, and (3) Christian in religion.

(Fine, 1983, p. 16)

Expansion (AD 330 – 565)

By the 4th century AD, the Roman Empire had been divided into the Eastern and the

Western Empires, and Southeastern Europe became a contested region between

Byzantium (the Eastern Roman Empire) and Rome in the west. The city of Byzantium

grew from an ancient Greek colony founded on the European side of the Bosporus Straits.

In AD 330, the Roman Emperor Constantine I refounded the city as Constantinople—the

‘New Rome’ and eastern capital of the Empire—in an effort to strengthen the Roman

Empire. The Empire was divided at the death of Emperor Theodosius in AD 395 when

his sons split the Roman Empire into eastern and western halves—a division that was to

become a permanent feature of the European cultural landscape. Theodosius had made

Christianity the sole religion of the Empire, and Constantinople assumed preeminence over

other Christian centers in the East as Rome had in the West. The fall of Rome to the

Ostrogoths in AD 476 left Constantinople the sole capital of the Empire. Although the

western half of the Roman Empire had crumbled into a variety of feudal kingdoms, the

eastern half—the Byzantine Empire—survived for a thousand years before finally falling

to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 (Byzantine Empire, 1995; Curtis, 1992; Fine, 1983; Teall &

Nicol, 1995).

The Empire in the East differed from that in the West in a number of respects. It was

heir to the Hellenistic civilization—a blending of Greek and Middle Eastern elements

dating back to the conquests of Alexander the Great. It was more commercial, more

urban, and richer than the West. In addition, its emperors, in the Hellenistic tradition, had

combined political and religious functions, and were more firmly in control of all classes

within the society. They were also more skillful at fending off invaders, through a

combination of warfare and diplomacy. With these advantages, the Byzantine emperors

considered themselves to be Romans; and they maintained the hope that they would be

able to subdue the barbarian kingdoms of the West and reunite the Empire (Byzantine

Empire, 1995; Teall & Nicol, 1995).
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-5

After its capital was established in the east, the empire became, in scholarly

parlance, the Eastern Roman Empire. Furthermore, because Constantine and all

of his successors (except Julian the Apostate, 361-363) were Christians, the

empire from here on can also be called the Christian Roman Empire. As a

consequence of these two changes the Roman Empire had become the

Byzantine. However, though used by scholars, none of these three names was

used at the time. Though the empire had its center in a Greek cultural and

linguistic area, as a result of which there followed a gradual hellenization of its

institutions and culture, the emperors recognized no change. The empire

remained the Roman Empire and the citizens (even though Greeks came to

dominate it) still called themselves Romans. The term Hellene (Greek) connoted

a pagan. The term Byzantine was an invention of Renaissance scholars after the

fall of the Byzantine Empire and was never used by its contemporaries . . . .

nevertheless the empire remained “Roman” and despite divisions of its territory

at times it was always seen as a single unit. Essentially the Byzantine Empire was

a combination of three major cultural components: (1) Roman in political

concepts, administration, law, and military organization, (2) Greek in language

and culture, and (3) Christian in religion. (Fine, 1983, p. 16)

Administrative reforms, the stimulation of trade (by reducing taxes on commerce), the

strengthening of a common Greek language, and the introduction of the Christian religion

through the efforts of the emperors of Byzantium were primarily responsible for the unity

maintained in the East. Moreover, the geographical position of the Balkan Peninsula, with

its mountainous area and the protection given by the Danube to the north, enhanced the

prospects for the survival of Byzantium. As a result, the reputation of Constantinople as a

commercial and industrial center was furthered. Jewelry, pottery, weaponry, shipping,

and textiles (mainly silk goods) were its main industries (Byzantine Empire, 1995; Gianaris,

1982; Teall & Nicol, 1995).

The Balkan region was split among three imperial prefectures: The Prefecture of the

East included Constantinople and Thrace in addition to Asia Minor (Turkey) and the other

eastern provinces. The Prefecture of Illyricum had its capital in Thessaloniki and included

Greece and the central Balkans. The Prefecture of Italy included not only the Italian

Peninsula but also Pannonia, Istria, and Dalmatia, which at that time included a great deal

more of the land inland from the coast than it does now. The Italian Prefecture roughly

encompassed the Balkan territory that later became Roman Catholic, while the Prefecture

of Illyricum comprised the Balkan regions that were later to become Eastern Orthodox

(Fine, 1983).

A significant feature of the period from the 4th through the 6th centuries was the growth of

large estates and the absorption of many state lands and the lands of many free

peasants—including whole villages—by the great magnates, although many small holdings

and free villages remained.

At the same time various peasants, probably in large numbers, were fleeing to the

mountains or to other distant regions out of the reach of tax collectors. Others

sought the protection of patrons by becoming serfs on estates; and the number

of serfs increased in this period. Since many magnates had tax exemptions—or

enough pull to evade taxes—the peasant often found himself better off

financially as a serf than as a free peasant. The effect of abandoned lands and of

free men becoming serfs was to reduce the income of the state at this critical time

when it needed cash to raise armies to fight the barbarian invaders. To try to

keep the peasants on land and taxpaying artisans in their places, the state passed
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-6

laws intended to bind men to their trades (and sons to the trades of their fathers)

and the peasants to the land. (Fine, 1983, p. 21)

As a result of state limitations on the number of artisans in any trade, the artisans of the

time had a guaranteed income. Peasants who were guaranteed the right to their own

plots were usually content to remain on the land. Raids as well as increasing tax demands

that were often impossible to meet led to fights and disruption of the system. The state,

faced with ever increasing budgetary needs, experienced reductions in its income during

those insecure centuries when the population was decreasing as a result of people either

fleeing to the hills (often becoming brigands) to escape taxes, or being killed or carried off

by raiders (Fine, 1983).

At the start of the reign of the emperor Justinian (527-565), the barbarians beyond the

Danube were the focus of concern. Justinian ordered that fortresses be built along the

Danube to tighten defenses. Older fortresses were repaired, as were the walls and

fortifications of various cities in the interior of the Balkans, giving shelter for urban

populations and neighboring peasants when raids came. Justinian fought an almost

continual war for forty years, recovering the parts of the Balkans that had been held by

the Goths (Dalmatia, in 537; and Istria, in 539), as well as Italy, Spain, and North Africa

(Fine, 1983).

In order to carry out these western campaigns Justinian ignored two major

problems: the Persians in the east and the barbarians to the north of the Balkans.

Not only did he not concentrate serious efforts on these two frontiers, but,

lacking sufficient manpower to carry out his western conquests, he had to take

troops away from them to send west, leaving these frontiers relatively

unprotected. This led not only to the weakening of imperial defenses but also to

all sorts of financial problems . . . . he had to hire mercenaries and to bribe

barbarians with tribute not to attack, both of which were costly. And raids

continued anyway, since the empire was faced with many individual tribes, each

under its own leader; tribute paid to one had no effect on others. The result of

these raids was . . . reduction of manpower and tax income . . . . [Justinian] was

then forced to increase the rate of taxes on the remaining peasants. Many could

not pay and fled. Some of these became brigands, which increased the law and

order problem (Fine, 1983, p. 23)

Continuing depopulation led to more lands being out of cultivation, causing further

decline—both in productivity and in the state’s income. Troop shortages meant that many

of the frontier forts on the Danube were left unmanned or undermanned. As a

consequence, they were worthless, encouraging barbarian raids, and in turn, intensifying

the economic problems of the area.

The attacks from the north that had plagued the Western Roman Empire continued

against the Byzantine Empire. In addition, the eastern front also opened. In the 6th

Century AD, the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, who considered himself a Roman,

defeated the Persians on the eastern frontier of the empire and destroyed various heresies

that had alienated the Roman Catholic church. The latter years of Justinian’s rule,

however, were marred by renewed war with Persia, by incursions by Bulgar and Slavic

tribes, and by outbreaks of bubonic plague creating severe shortages of manpower and

revenue. The attempts to unite and defend the two parts of the empire left it with

exhausted manpower and economic resources and an empty treasury, unable to face

serious threats from the Persians in the east and the Slavs and others from the north.
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-7

Shortly after [Justinian’s] death in 565, the empire found itself involved in a

costly Persian war. To make matters worse, the Slavs had from the late 550s

become a serious threat to the empire; they were to become even more

dangerous after Justinian’s death, when their raids across the weakly defended

Danube frontier became almost annual. Justianian thus left an enormous empire

with huge commitments which spread its limited resources far too thin. (Fine,

1983, pp. 23-24)

Peril (AD 565 - 867)

The early years of the 7th century witnessed the birth of a new faith in Arabia—Islam.

The Muslims launched a wholesale conquest with fanatical zeal against the eastern and

southern provinces of the Byzantine Empire. Before the century had ended, their armies

had subjugated much of the Byzantine Empire, including Palestine, Syria, Egypt, North

Africa, and part of Asia Minor. Their navies had seized Cyprus and Rhodes and were

harassing Byzantine shipping in the Aegean. Annually for a period of years, an Arabian

fleet and army besieged Constantinople until the Empire began to lose its grip on the

Balkans to a new menace. Arriving from the East, the Hunnish Bulgars settled in what is

now Bulgaria in 680 (Byzantine Empire, 1995; Fine, 1983; Gianaris, 1982; Teall & Nicol,

1995; Wallbank, Taylor, Bailkey, & Mancall, 1970).

By 700 the eastern empire stood on the brink of disintegration. The power of the

emperor sometimes extended little farther than the environs of the capital and a

fringe of ports in the eastern Mediterranean. In Asia Minor the emperor’s hold

was precarious, and in the western Mediterranean his power was disappearing

altogether. (Wallbank, Taylor, Bailkey, & Mancall, 1970, p. 228)

In its weakened state, the Byzantine Empire grew less and less concerned with the West,

and was transformed into a medieval empire that differed considerably from its Roman

predecessor. The most significant cultural feature of the Byzantine Empire was the type

of Christianity that developed there. It was more mystical and adhered more to a

prescribed body of rites for public worship than Roman Christianity. Because of age-old

ethnic hostilities in the region, it was also less unified. The clergy in Syria, Egypt, and

other provinces generally conducted religious services in the native languages and adhered

to doctrines that were contrary to the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church (Byzantine

Empire, 1995; Teall & Nicol, 1995).

The disunity in the Byzantine Empire was, in part, responsible for sweeping successes of

Arab invasions that began in the years after the death of their prophet, Muhammed, in AD

632. Within 10 years, Muslim Arabs controlled Syria and Palestine, Egypt, and North

Africa. Religious disunity, including a dispute over the use of religious images or icons in

the 8th and early 9th centuries, continued to weaken the Byzantine Empire (Byzantine

Empire, 1995; Teall & Nicol, 1995).

Although the Byzantine Empire lost a considerable amount of territory to the Arabs in the

Near East and to independent kingdoms that had been established in the Balkans, a

number of institutional reforms strengthened the remainder of the Empire. New

administrative units were introduced along with a system of military land grants and

hereditary service that not only insured an adequate supply of soldiers but also laid the

foundation for the emergence of large landed families who in later centuries waged

dynastic struggles for the imperial throne. The loss of territory actually strengthened the
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-8

Byzantine economy, because the shrinking empire allowed more freedom to the

merchants and to those engaged in agricultural labor (Byzantine Empire, 1995; Teall &

Nicol, 1995).

There are unmistakable signs of agricultural expansion even before 800; and, at

about that time, urban life, which had never vanished in Asia Minor, began to

flourish and expand in the Balkans . . . evidence of the Farmer’s Law, dated in the

7th century, [confirmed that] the technological base of Byzantine society was

more advanced than that of contemporary western Europe: iron tools could be

found in the villages; water mills dotted the landscape; and field-sown beans

provided a diet rich in protein. None of these advances was to characterize

western European agriculture until the 10th century. Byzantine agriculture

enjoyed the further advantage of a highly developed tradition of careful farming

that persisted even in the darkest days, enabling the peasant to make the most of

the soil upon which he worked. (Teall & Nicol, 1995, p. 387)

The large estates that had characterized the 4th through the 6th centuries had been broken

up by years of invasions on the part of the Avars, Bulgars, Persians, and Arabs; and the

‘normal’ form of rural organization had come to consist of many small peasant holdings.

A kind of collective village organization persisted in the form of a rural commune and

certain collective agricultural practices (Teall & Nicol, 1995).

Recovery (AD 867 – 1057)

When the Roman Empire was divided in AD 395 into two parts, East and West, it was

never again united. Two differing civilizations, Latin and Greek, developed independently

and ultimately led to differing forms of the Christian church. By the 6th and 7th centuries,

invasions from the North as well as by sea cut off east-west communication, enhancing

the differences between the western and eastern parts of the Empire and fomenting

separate political ambitions (Fine 1983).

The line dividing the two parts of the empire was basically the same as the old

Greek-Latin cultural line and the later Orthodox-Roman Catholic line. This

boundary ran through the Balkans from Sirmium on south to Skadar. Thus the

Balkans became the border region between Old Rome and New Rome

(Byzantium) and between Latin and Greek. The Balkans also served as a

borderland between civilization (the empire) and the barbarian world beyond the

Danube . . . . When the Roman Empire was centered in Italy, the Balkans had

been a distant borderland. The establishment of the capital in Constantinople

brought the Balkans much nearer the center of things. More Roman influences

penetrated the peninsula, which, owing to its proximity to the capital, became

more important for the empire to defend and hold. Now there was more Roman

activity here; more officials and troops were present than had been the case

when the imperial center lay in Italy. (Fine, 1983, pp. 15, 18)

A golden age emerged for the Byzantine Empire that was marked by literary renaissance

and a brief resurgence of military and naval power under the Macedonian dynasty (867-

1057) that was founded by the peasant adventurer, Basil, who murdered his way to the

throne. Nine Macedonian emperors supervised the Hellenization of the Justinian Code,

adding a principle of imperial absolutism that was tempered only by the spiritual authority

of the church. For a time, they also reversed the military defeats experienced by their

predecessors, reclaiming large areas from the Arabs and Bulgars. Despite the centralized
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-9

administration and the expressed power of the emperors, they were once again unable to

stop the feudalization of the empire and the concentration of land and wealth in a few

great families (Byzantine Empire, 1995; Fine, 1983; Nicol, 1995).

Under the dynamic leadership of Basil II (976-1025), the empire reached a high

level of power and prosperity . . . . Because Basil II had fostered commerce and

industry, a large surplus was built up in the imperial treasury by the time of his

death. The empire stretched from the Danube into Syria, its once formidable . . .

foes were shattered, and Byzantine influence reached deep into Russia.

(Wallbank, Taylor, Bailkey, & Mancall, 1970, p. 229)

CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM

In the first five centuries of its history, Christianity was for the most part confined to the

Roman Empire. The decline of the Empire had decisive effects on the history of the

Church. The events that completely changed the Church were the Germanic invasions of

western Europe in AD 440-461 and the rapid advance of Islam after AD 635

(Barraclough, 1978).

The Spread of Christianity

Christianity arose in Palestine—a country that had been formally annexed by Rome in AD

6. By the 1st century, there were Christian churches in Rome and possibly in Spain. By

the mid 2nd century, many Christian churches also existed in the eastern provinces of the

Roman Empire; and the Christian church was beginning to spread to the Rhine valley and

to North Africa. The Christians refused to worship the Roman emperors or to serve as

magistrates or carry arms. As a result, they were officially suspect despite the strong

appeal of their beliefs to the oppressed and insecure within the Empire. As traditional

Roman cults began to wither during the 3rd century, Christianity became a force to be

reckoned with in the Roman Empire (Barraclough, 1978).

Early in the 4th century the emperor Constantine, whose family had worshipped

the Unconquered Sun, decided to accept Christianity. His reasons were partly

political, but it was a momentous decision. Recognised by the Edict of Milan

(313), Christianity quickly established itself as the Empire’s official religion,

especially in the new capital, Constantinople. (Barraclough, 1978, p. 92)

During the 4

th century, Christianity extended beyond the imperial frontier to the

‘barbarians’ of northern Europe. Soon after 340, the Goths near the mouth of the Danube

were also converted to Christianity. After 376, many of the Germanic invaders were also

already Christians, although the Church condemned their preferred beliefs as heresy

(Barraclough, 1978).

A hierarchy of bishops ultimately supplanted the early elders of the Church. Although

theologians of the 2nd and 3rd centuries had reconciled Christianity with Greek philosophy,

acute theological controversies developed. The spread of Christian churches by the late

3

rd and early 4th centuries required complex structures to maintain discipline and safeguard

doctrinal purity. A variety of heresies and schisms persisted, tending to split the Church.

The tendency of monks to withdraw by the thousands to live a life of desert solitude posed

another threat to Church unity. Basil (c. 330-379) in the east and Benedict (c. 480-544) in
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-10

the west sought to curb this trend by bringing the religious ascetics together in monastic

communities, subject to strict ecclesiastical rules (Barraclough, 1978).

The structure of the Christian church was modeled on that of the Roman Empire with

dioceses that mirrored the administrative divisions established by Diocletian. Important

decisions, particularly the definition of doctrine, was in the hands of the clergy until late in

the 4th century when evidence has emerged regarding the primacy of the pope. In

practice, however, Christianity was a state religion that was often subjected to imperial

constraint, creating the seed of conflict between Church and State (Barraclough, 1978).

However, when Rome succumbed to barbarian attack, it was the Church and its

bishops, with their vast estates and pervasive influence, who emerged as

guardians of the classical tradition, and guided Europe, as well as Christendom,

into the new age. (Barraclough, 1978, p. 93)

The first five centuries of the history of Christianity were largely confined to the Roman

Empire. Except for limited missionary activity to the Goths (311-384) and to Ireland (c.

450), little effort was made to spread the beliefs of the Church outside the Empire. Thus,

the decline of the Roman Empire had a significant effect on the history of the Church. By

the 5th century, various attempts to strengthen the failing Empire by imposing religious

orthodoxy alienated the churches of Egypt, Syria, and Armenia, as well as those in Upper

Mesopotamia who took refuge in Persia.

. . . the events which completely changed the position of the Church were the

Germanic invasions of western Europe at the time of the pontificate of Pope Leo I

(440-61), and the rapid advance of Islam after 635. The advance of Islam

swamped three of the five patriarchates (Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch) and

threatened a fourth (Constantinople). The western patriarchate (Rome) was

similarly affected. North Africa and (later) Spain were lost; Illyria passed into the

hands of heathen Slavs; while in the west most of the invaders, though Christian,

were Arians and did not recognise papal authority. The Franks (though

converted to Catholicism in 497) and the Anglo-Saxons were pagan.

(Barraclough, 1978, p. 100)

By the end of the 6th century, Christianity was on the defensive throughout her realms—a

situation that worsened over the next 100 years. Instead of a united Church in a united

empire, there was disintegration and disruption. The Church’s authority was

compromised as a result of disputes between Rome and Constantinople over the

supremacy of the pope. At a time when the churches of Gaul and Spain were largely

independent but tended to favor obedience to the Church in Rome, and when Christianity

in its original Mediterranean homeland was under severe pressure, salvation for the

Church came from outside. The strength of the Christianity came not from the official

Church, but from the Nestorian Christians of Persia, the Coptic Christians of Egypt, and

the Celtic Christians of Ireland. Between the 7th and 11th centuries, the expansion of the

Nestorian church from eastern Syria and across central Asia into China and south into

Arabia placed it ahead of any other Christian church of the period, in both size and

influence. Although missionary activity in the west served to lead a revival of Christianity

there, by the 9th century Rome and Constantinople had continued to draw apart into two

separate obediences—Catholic and Orthodox (Barraclough, 1978).

The decline of Christianity in the east began with mass conversions to Islam in the 11th

century, however; and the Eastern Orthodox church split into factions and became further
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-11

alienated from Rome. In 1054, a formal schism between Eastern and Western churches

was mutually agreed upon. By that time, the Eastern Orthodox church had been

revitalized by successful missions among Russians, Bulgars, and Slavs. Literacy was

spread along with Christianity in Slavic lands through the work of the monks Cyril and

Methodius who invented the Slavonic alphabet (still called ‘Cyrillic’), into which they

translated the Bible (Barraclough, 1978; Byzantine Empire, 1995).

The Appearance and Spread of Islam

Islam had developed in the west-central Arabian Peninsula east of the Balkans in the

early 7th century AD. It was the religious force that unified the desert subsistence

nomads—the Bedouins—with the town dwellers of the oases. Within a century, Islam

spread throughout most of the present-day Arabic speaking world and beyond, into central

Asia and to the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). The early Arabs of the Arabian

Peninsula were predominantly nomadic pastoralists who herded sheep, goats, and camels

through the harsh desert environment. Settled Arabs practiced date and cereal agriculture

in the oases that served as trade centers for caravans transporting spices, ivory, and gold

from southern Arabia and the horn of Africa to the civilizations farther north (Arab,

1995).

The historic mission of the founder of Islam, Mohammed, who was born in Mecca c. AD

570, was to weld together the divided Arab peoples through the unifying force of a new

monotheistic religion. Conservative Arabs saw this movement as a threat to their own

local cults, and in 622 they forced Mohammed to withdraw to Medina—the famous

migration that formed the traditional beginning of the Mohammedan era. Mohammed

returned to Mecca in 630 following a victory at the battle of Badr (624); and when he died

in 632, his authority was supreme. The new religion was poised to expand into the Fertile

Crescent and beyond (Barraclough, 1978).

The initial advance was facilitated by the exhaustion of the Roman and Persian

empires, both riven by religious dissension and discontent. The first caliph . . .

(632-34) completed the subjection of Arabia and entered Palestine. His

successor . . . (634-44) advanced to Damascus, and a decisive victory over the

Roman armies . . . (636) opened the way for a thrust east to the Euphrates and

Tigris [Iraq] and west into Asia Minor [Turkey]. By 642-3 Persia had been

overrun. Simultaneously Arab forced debouched westwards into Egypt,

occupied Alexandria (642) . . . . progress was held up by Berber resistance: but

Islam, in occupation of the dockyards of Alexandria, was now a seapower, and

the construction of a great naval and military base . . . (670) enabled the advance

to be resumed. After the subjection of the Maghreb [Morocco, Algeria, and

Tunisia] (709) Arab forces crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and occupied Spain,

where divisions among the Christians made conquest easy. But logistic

difficulties and conflicts in the Islamic world brought the advance to a halt. After

reaching the rich plain of Toulouse and the Rh^ne valley [in France], the Arabs

were defeated by the Franks at Poitiers (832) and in 759 finally withdrew behind

the Pyrenees. (Barraclough, 1978, p. 104)

In 673 and 717, the Arabs launched direct attacks against the capital of the Byzantine

Empire, Constantinople. Byzantium was successful in withstanding this assault—a turning

point that enabled the Empire in the east to continue in existence until 1453. Although the
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-12

Arabs were halted before they reached Constantinople in 677 AD, they remained a

threat.

The Arab conquests were the direct product of the preaching of Muhammad

(Mohammed). In his teachings, monotheistic revelation is accompanied by

exaltation of a way of life based on warrior virtues. The Quran (Koran), God’s

word, says precisely this: the sincere believer is the warrior, the one who

accepts exile, and the spoils of war shall be his viaticum. These conquests,

which Islam needed if it was to survive beyond its early years, proceeded swiftly.

When Muhammad died in 632, western Arabia was under his control. The

caliphs who followed him as leaders of the true believers roved far and wide in

their campaigns of conquest . . . amputating the Syrian and Egyptian provinces

from the Byzantine Empire. . . . [The] sweep of conquest was blocked by some

effective resistance put up by opposing armies and populations, especially by

the Berbers and the Byzantines, who sealed off the north of Syria against them.

(Vidal-Naquet, 1992, p. 76 [emphasis added])

Until the Abbasid dynasty (750-936) replaced the Umayyad caliphs (661-650), Islam had

not been a proselytizing religion. Mohammed himself had respected both Christianity and

Judaism, considering himself to be linked to the line of prophets from Abraham to Jesus

whom he regarded as his precursors. The Umayyads left the Jews and Christians alone,

subjecting them only to taxation. The Abbasids, however, moved the seat of their empire

from Damascus to Baghdad; and power passed from the Arab minority to a non-Arab

element of professionals and merchants. Large-scale conversion henceforth became

common. By 936, the Abbasic caliph was restricted to religious functions, leading to a

period of division among the various Arab dynasties (Barraclough, 1978).

Islam itself remained a major religious force and continued to gain adherents. Its

growth was partly the result of expansion by Muslim conquerors, but its spiritual

conquests were at least as impressive as its military conquests. Some

conversions were undoubtedly opportunist, but whereas in Muslim Europe

comparatively few Christians deserted their religion, in Asia and Africa the

teaching of the Koran, with its message of compassion and mercy, was freely

embraced by the peoples who came under Muslim domination. Elsewhere the

new faith was propagated by Muslim traders. (Barraclough, 1978, p. 105)

Divisions Plague Islam and Eastern Christianity

By the 8th century, differences of opinion about the interpretation of Islam had arisen.

The main group, the Sunnis, believed that authority had passed from the prophet

Mohammed to the caliphs, while the Shi’is claimed that it had gone to Ali, husband of the

Prophet’s daughter, Fatima, and then to a line of imams, or Muslim leaders. The imams

had divided into a number of groups, establishing a dynasty in Morocco. In the 9

th

century, others created states in eastern Arabia and Yemen, and by the 10th century

another, the Ismailis, set up an important state—the Fatimids—in Tunisia and later in

Egypt and Syria.

By the beginning of the 10th century, the efforts of the Abbasid caliphs to

maintain the political unity of the Muslim world were faltering; provincial

governors and army commanders were gaining local autonomy, and one military

group, the Buyids, established itself in the capital, Baghdad, in 945 and limited

the caliph’s power. In some places the bases of society were weakened: there

were movements of social and economic unrest . . . . [The Ismailis] took the title
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-13

of caliph in opposition to the Abbasids; in opposition . . . so did the branch of

the Umayyads who had established themselves in Spain after they had been

defeated in the east by the Abbasids . . . . (Barraclough, 1978, p. 134)

In most of the Middle East and North Africa, settled agriculture depends on strong

government and good irrigation. Rainfall is scanty and irregular, however, and vegetation

is sparse in this region. In the 10th century, there was a shift in the balance between

sedentary cultivators and nomadic pastoralists (Barraclough, 1978).

Berbers expanded northwards in Morocco, Arabs westwards along the North

African coast, and Turks southwards and westwards from central Asia. But

pastoral groups also provided the manpower and leadership which made

possible a restoration of strong government. (Barraclough, 1978, p. 134)

The Seljuk Turks and their successors ruled in the name of the Abbasid caliphs and were

called sultans rather than caliphs. Their limited kingdoms existed within a relatively stable

international Islamic social order that by this time had been created through gradual

conversions of Christians and Jews. Despite these conversions, the religious communities

of the Christians and Jews persisted as well. The Seljuk kingdoms maintained order

through common religion and law and the widely distributed Arabic language through

which they were expressed. Widespread trade was organized along the sea routes of the

Mediterranean, Black Sea, and Indian Ocean as well as along the land routes of Asia

(Barraclough, 1978).

[The Seljuk] state was the first important example of a new type of Muslim state,

based on a partnership between ‘men of the sword’, mainly of Turkish origin, and

bureaucrats and men of the law, Persian or Arab in culture, and on an alliance

with the interests of the merchant and landowning classes. (Barraclough, 1978,

p. 134)

Officials and officers in these new Muslim states received the right to collect and keep

the tax on land in return for their service. As a result, an interest in the prosperity of the

countryside and the stability of society was bestowed on these ‘men of the sword,’ men

who often were of alien or nomadic origin (Barraclough, 1978).

THE CRISIS OF THE CLASSICAL WORLD:

MIGRATORY TRIBES AND NOMADIC HORDES FROM THE EAST

Through the millennia, the physiography of the Balkan Peninsula has left it vulnerable to

outside invasions from the north and east and to a lesser extent from the west and south.

Successive waves of people have crossed the peninsula since the beginning of recorded

time. Some merely passed through or retreated, leaving little record of their presence.

Others left a significant, although not long-lasting, impression.

The earliest outsiders whose presence was felt on the peninsula were Celts and Gauls,

farmers from northwestern Europe, who left a record primarily by the tools they had

developed in connection with their agricultural pursuits more than 2,000 years ago. The

Romans had also invaded the Balkan Peninsula, leaving behind improvements including a

network of roads, while the indigenous Greeks engaged in trade with the other native

populations. At this time, the Persian Empire extended to the eastern regions of the

Balkan Peninsula, bordering on the Black Sea; and the Greeks under Alexander the Great

had extended their influence south of the Black Sea to the traditional lands of the
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-14

Persians—an Iranian group. Between AD 25 and 568 and on a more or less continuous

basis, various Iranian peoples occupied significant portions of the Balkan Peninsula. They

came from the steppes of southern Poland, Moldava, and Ukraine north of the Black Sea

and settled the lower and middle Danube, the Pannonian steppes of southern Hungary and

Romania, and the Roman provinces of Dacia (Romania), and Thracia (Bulgaria/eastern

Greece). In essence, for a period of more than 500 years during the existence of the

Roman Empire, Iranian peoples had also inhabited much of the Balkan Peninsula north of

the Balkan Mountains (Barraclough, 1978; Sokal, 1996).

A period of great migrations began with the descent of the Goths from the Baltic

region into Ukraine about AD 200. They displaced the Sarmatians, but their own

power was broken about 375 by the invading Huns from the east, who were

followed in the 5th-6th centuries by the Bulgars and Avars. (Hajda, 1995, p. 980)

By the 3rd Century AD, waves of nomadic pastoralists such as the Germanic-speaking

Goths of northern Europe had begun their invasions of the Roman Empire. Within 100

years, the Huns—fierce warriors out of Asia—had invaded Southeastern Europe; and the

Visigoths, after killing the Roman Emperor, subsequently invaded Italy. At the end of the

4

th Century, the Roman Empire was officially divided between the East and the West, a

division that in many ways has characterized the European cultural landscape to the

present. Near the end of the 5th century, in AD 467, the last Roman Emperor in the West

was deposed; and the center of power officially shifted to the East (Sokal, 2000).

The crisis of the classical world reached its height in the 5th century AD. It was

prepared by earlier movements on the edge of China and affected all the great

established civilisations of Eurasia, not merely the Greeks and the Romans. Its

cause was the irruption of mounted nomad peoples from the north-west into the

great crescent of ancient civilisations, which stretched from the Mediterranean to

China. Its result was a setback to civilisation, which ushered in the so-called

‘Dark Ages’ not only in Europe but also in the whole of Eurasia. (Barraclough,

1978, p. 94)

The invading nomads were no longer Indo-Europeans, although they were joined by some

Indo-European peoples who were either their subjects or their allies, and who also were

mostly nomadic. These nomad groups were not under any form of central control although

their movements radiated from a common center.

They all followed the pastoral mode of life with movable encampments of tents.

In war they fought as mounted archers, using composite bows made of strips of

bone, short, strong and convenient for riders. They also used sabres at close

quarters and, when they came to possess taller horses and to use stirrups, the

lance. This light and effective panoply was seldom adequately copied by

civilised peoples, and accounts for the nomads’ successes against them.

(Barraclough, 1978, p. 94)

The region was subject to repeated waves of migration from the north and east. As is

discussed below, the Huns were subsequently followed by the Avars in the 6th century,

the Bulgars in the 7th, and the Magyars in the 9th, with successive waves of migration in

the 11th and 12th centuries, ending with the Mongols in the 13th century. All of these

westward-moving groups had certain similarities: “They were typical Asiatic nomads,

generally Mongoloid in appearance, living in felt tents, eating meat and cheese, drinking

milk and fermented drinks made from milk, and raiding far and wide on horseback”

(Wolff, 1974, p. 37).
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-15

The Indo-European Slavic populations that were indigenous to northern and eastern

Europe had also begun a slow dispersal—to the west, to the south, and even further

eastward. Ultimately, by the 6th century, the Slavs had crossed the Danube and had

begun displacing the native Illyrians, Thracians, and Dacians on the Balkan Peninsula.

Although this began a permanent presence of Slavic peoples on the Balkan Peninsula,

they were not without oppression in the years to follow. The slow, steady movement of

the South Slavs from their homeland in the northern and eastern parts of Europe once

again brought farmers to the northern parts of the Balkan Peninsula. Although the Slavs

remained on the peninsula, the prevalence of mountains as well as limited agricultural land

south of the Danube River did not promote the widespread development of farming,

instead favoring economies based on pastoralism. To the Slavic populations were added

the Bulgars—wild, barbarous, fierce horsemen from Asia—and the Magyars—seminomadic hordes from Asia who spread terror throughout Europe. Thus, even prior to the

Ottoman occupation of the Balkan Peninsula, a well-developed culture of nomadic

pastoralist warriors was well represented.

Early Waves of Uralic-Speaking Peoples of Asia: Huns

Repeatedly over a thousand-year period beginning about AD 170, groups in central Asia

would rise to prominence. Inspired either by the desire for conquest or by the economic

and political conditions they faced on the steppe, these groups moved west into Europe,

often disrupting the local populations. The Huns, speaking non-Indo-European languages

of the Uralic language family related to modern Turkish, were the first of the Asiatics

who entered Europe in waves. It appears that the vast 4th and 5th century movements of

the Germanic peoples (including the Goths, Visigoths, and Ostrogoths) into the Roman

Empire—often referred to as the ‘barbarian invasions’—were in some measure touched

off by the Huns (Wolff, 1974).

The Huns were a nomadic pastoralist people who invaded southeastern Europe about AD

370. They apparently had no knowledge of agriculture and had no settled homes or rulers.

It is still a matter of dispute whether or not they had a single overall leader in the 4th

century. During the seven decades following their invasion of southeastern Europe, they

built up an enormous empire there and in central Europe.

The Huns originated beyond the Volga River after the middle of the 4

th century,

overrunning the people who occupied the plains between the Volga and the Don Rivers.

They quickly overthrew the empire of the Ostrogoths in AD 376 between the Don and the

Dniester Rivers in present-day Ukraine, and defeated the Visigoths who lived in what is

now Romania, to arrive at the Danube frontier of the Roman Empire. For half a century

after overthrowing the Ostrogoths, the Huns extended their power over many of the

Germanic peoples of central Europe and fought for the Romans (Hun, 1995).

Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 330-400) drew a picture of the Huns which has

remained classical: small, squat, beardless, with ‘horrible’ faces, they might be

called ‘beasts on two feet’ rather than human beings. Their apparel consisted of

a linen coat, the fur of wild rats, and goatskin round their legs. Riveted to their

horses, ‘there they eat, there they drink, there they sleep, bent on the lean necks

of their mounts’; there they ‘hold counsel’. They neither cook nor season their

food, and none of them ever touches a plough. They have no houses; they are
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-16

always on the move. Their wives and children follow them in carts. (Huns, 1973,

p. 308)

As previously noted, the migrations of Germanic peoples in the 4th and 5th centuries into

the Roman Empire and the subsequent Slavic movements into the Balkans were triggered

at least in part by the westward movements of the Huns and their Asian successors. The

typical pattern was for the Huns to establish headquarters somewhere in Europe for a

period, keeping less warlike people in servitude, eventually retreating to the steppes of

southern Russia or central Asia (Wolff, 1974).

By AD 432, the leadership of the various groups of Huns had become centralized under a

single king; and upon his death in AD 434, his two nephews, Bleda and Attila, succeeded

him. Although these joint rulers negotiated a peace treaty with the Eastern Roman

Empire, the Romans apparently failed to pay the agreed-upon subsidies. In AD 441 Attila

launched a heavy assault on the Roman Danubian frontier, advancing almost to

Constantinople. As warriors, the Huns inspired almost unparalleled fear throughout

Europe. They were extremely accurate mounted archers, and their command of

horsemanship, their ferocious charges and unpredictable retreats, and the speed of their

strategic movements brought them overwhelming victories. Between AD 445 and 447,

Attila murdered his brother and launched a second great attack on the Eastern Roman

Empire. He devastated the Balkans and drove south into Greece. The Huns had

acquired huge sums of gold as a result of their treaties with the Romans as well as by

way of plunder and by selling prisoners back to the Romans; and this influx of wealth

altered the character of their society. The military leadership became hereditary in

Attila’s family; and Attila himself had autocratic powers both in peace and in war (Hun,

1995).

In AD 451, Attila invaded Gaul (France) but was defeated by Roman and Visigothic

forces. This was his first and only defeat. In AD 452, the Huns invaded Italy and sacked

several cities, but famine and pestilence forced them to leave. Attila died in AD 453 and

his many sons divided his empire and began quarreling among themselves. Their subjects

revolted; and following a series of costly struggles with them, the Huns were finally routed

in AD 455 by a combination of groups, including the Ostrogoths, in a great battle in

Pannonia—a Roman province west of the Danube in what is now Hungary, Slovenia, and

Croatia. The government of the Eastern Roman Empire subsequently closed the frontier

to the Huns, and they ceased to play any significant part in history, gradually disintegrating

as a social and political unit (Hun, 1995).

Early Waves of Altaic Speakers from Asia: Bulgars and

Pechenegs

The Bulgars probably originated as a Turkic tribe of Central Asia race related to the

Tatars and Huns. Their original homeland was the region between the Ural Mountains

and the Volga River. They arrived in the European steppe west of the Volga River with

the Huns (whose subjects they may have been) about AD 370. They retreated with the

Huns and resettled about AD 460 in an arc of country north and east of the Sea of Azov,

north of the Black Sea, and along the lower Don. They were hired by the Byzantines in

AD 480 to fight against the Ostrogoths and subsequently became attracted by the wealth

of the Byzantine Empire (Bulgaria, 1911; Bulgaria, 1973; Fine, 1983; Pechenegs, 1995).
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-17

The Bulgars were a horde of wild horsemen who took several wives and who were fierce

and barbarous. They were governed despotically by their chiefs (khans) and nobles

(boyars or bolyars). In the 6

th century AD, the Bulgars continually attacked the

Danubian provinces of the Byzantine Empire, until, in the 560s, they were themselves

threatened by the Caucasian-speaking Avars of the region north of the Caucasus

Mountains to the east. Although the Avars destroyed one Bulgar tribe, the rest of the

Bulgars saved themselves by submitting for two decades to another horde of Turkic

newcomers, most of whom retreated back into Asia (Bulgar, 1995).

In the 7th century, an army of Bulgars or Volga Turks occupied the area around the lower

part of the Danube. After securing their position, the Bulgar rulers pushed southward.

Unified under a single ruler who reigned from about AD 605 to 642, the Bulgars

constituted a powerful khanate known to the Byzantines as Great Bulgaria. After his

death, his five sons split the people into five hordes. One of these migrated to central

Europe and was merged with the Avars. Another horde moved westward across the

Dniester River and then southward, crossing the Danube in AD 679. The conquering

Bulgars were soon permeated by Vlach and, even more thoroughly, by Slavic elements.

There, on the plain between the Danube and the Balkan Mountains, they established the

kernel of the so-called first Bulgarian Empire, subjugating the Slavonic population of

Moesia and advancing to the gates of Constantinople and Salonica (Bulgar, 1995;

Bulgaria, 1911).

The Bulgars initially were nomads, but by the 7th century, they were assimilated into a

Slavic majority on the Balkan Peninsula who were primarily engaged in agricultural as

well as pastoral pursuits. The history of the early Bulgarian dynasties reflects a record of

continuous conflict with the Byzantine emperors. Krum (AD 802-815) was a leader

noted for his cruelty as well as his military and political capacity. He ruled Bulgaria from

the Carpathians to Adrianople. Under his rule, Serdica (the present Sofia) was taken; and

the valley of the Struma was conquered. Although the Greek emperor Nicephorus

attacked and burned the Bulgarian capital, the Greek army was annihilated, the emperor

was killed, and his skull was converted by Krum into a goblet (Bulgaria, 1911).

The reign of Boris (AD 852-884) was notable principally for the introduction of

Christianity into Bulgaria. At this time, the two monks from Salonika, Cyril and

Methodius, worked among the Slavs of Moravia; and their disciples evangelized the

Bulgarians. Finding himself surrounded by Christian states, Boris gave up paganism for

political reasons and was baptized in AD 864. At this time, controversies broke out that

ultimately ended with the schism between the Churches of the East and the West. Boris

had vacillated between Constantinople and Rome; and when the Pope refused to

recognize an autocephalous Bulgarian church, Boris gave his allegiance to the Greek

Orthodox patriarch (Bulgaria, 1911).

Under Simeon (AD 893 – 927), Bulgaria assumed its place among the civilized powers of

the earth, with the First Empire extending from the Black Sea to the Adriatic and from the

borders of Thessaly to the Sava River and the Carpathians. Simeon became the most

powerful monarch in eastern Europe, assuming the title of Emperor and Autocrat of all

the Bulgars and Greeks, a title recognized by the Pope. During the latter years of his

reign, which were peaceful, his people made considerable progress, literature flourished,

and the capital at Preslav rivaled Constantinople in magnificence. After Simeon’s death,

Bulgaria declined as a result of internal dissension. Religious differences divided the
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-18

country; and a separate western empire that included Albania and Macedonia was

founded at Ochrid. The Bulgars were not numerous; and during the next two centuries,

they gradually merged with the growing Slavic populations in the Balkans (Bulgaria,

1911).

The conquests of the Bulgars carried them deep into the realm of Byzantine Christianity.

Territorial expansion into the regions that are now Serbia and Macedonia in the 9

th

century was followed by the conversion of the Bulgars to Christianity under Boris I. The

liturgy of the new church was in the Slavic language as spoken in the Bulgars’

Macedonian possessions. This language, known as Old Church Slavonic, proved to be a

powerful agent in creating a common culture among the Bulgars and Slavs. By the time

Bulgaria was initially incorporated into the Byzantine Empire in AD 1018, the Bulgars and

Slavs had melded into a Slavic-speaking, Christianized people essentially identical to

today’s Bulgarians (Bulgar, 1995).

By the end of the 9th century, the Bulgars possessed an empire that included virtually all of

Macedonia except Thessaloniki. To cope with the Bulgar threat, Byzantium settled

Armenians in western Thrace. For a full century, however, the Slavs of Macedonia

remained under the domination of the Bulgars. During the 9th and 10th centuries, this

population mix created its own (Bulgarian) ethnicity, and once even threatened to overrun

Constantinople. At this time, the Bulgarians reached the peak of their political and

economic power. The Bulgarians accepted Christianity from Constantinople earlier than

any of the other Slavic peoples in the Balkans and were influenced by Greek culture

(Bulgar, 1995; Gianaris, 1982; Stoianovich, 1992b; Wolff, 1974).

In AD 967, the Russians made their first appearance in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian tsar,

Boris II, expelled the Russian invaders; but the Greeks took advantage of their victory to

dethrone Boris, ending the first Bulgarian Empire after three centuries. The empire at

Ochrid rose to considerable importance under Samuel, son of Shishman (976 – 1014), who

conquered the greater part of the Balkan Peninsula and ruled from the Danube to the

Morea. After a series of campaigns, Basil II defeated Samuel and put out the eyes of

15,000 prisoners who were taken in the battle. After seeing his maimed soldiers, Samuel

died of grief. His dynasty disappeared within a few years. For more than a century and

a half (1018 – 1186), Bulgarians remained subject to the Byzantine emperors (Bulgaria,

1911).

The origin of the name ‘Bulgarian’ is most likely from the Turkish verb that means ‘to

mix,’ reflecting the mixture of various Turkish tribes that invaded the region and

established the first Bulgarian political organization. Contemporary Bulgarians trace their

origins to the Slavs who came from the north between the 5th and 6th Centuries AD and

the subsequent incursion of Turkic tribes—Bulgars—from central Asia in the 7th Century

AD. The Bulgars

. . . were the first Asiatic people who established a permanent home in Balkania.

They effected the conquest of the Slavs, but in the course of about two centuries

were absorbed by the more numerous race, and largely lost their identity.

Intermarriage and mixture of blood modified the physical type of the Bulgars;

they lost their language; they were converted to the same type of Greek

Orthodox Christianity as the Slavs; they adopted the same Cyrillic alphabet and

became thoroughly Slavicized. Hardly more than the name Bulgarian remains to

associate this people with their Asiatic forebears. (Gewehr, 1967, p. 8)
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-19

The Pechenegs, also a nomadic Turkic people, occupied the steppes north of the Black

Sea between the 6th and 12th centuries. The Pechenegs had originally inhabited the region

between the Volga and Ural Rivers, north of the Caspian Sea, in what today is part of

Russia and Kazakhstan. Under attack from the Khazars and the Oghuz Turks about AD

889, they moved westward. As the Khazar state declined and was unable to impede their

migration, the Pechenegs drove the Hungarians into the Carpathian Basin and attacked

Russian territory. By the 10th century, they were in control of the lands between the Don

and lower Danube Rivers, after having driven the Hungarians out. Their strength posed a

serious menace to the Byzantine Empire, Although the Pechenegs were restrained by

both the Russians and the Hungarians, they repeatedly invaded Thrace during the 10th

century (Fine, 1983; Pechenegs, 1995).

Between the 7th and 9th centuries, the Ukrainian steppe formed part of the Turkic

Khazar kaganate, a mercantile empire centred on the lower Volga. Khazar control

of the steppe was breached in the late 9th century by the Magyars. The

Pechenegs, who followed, dominated much of southern Ukraine in the 10th and

11th centuries, and they were in turn succeeded by the Polovtsians (Cumans).

Throughout this period of nomadic invasions, only a few of the Greek

settlements in the Crimea . . . maintained a precarious existence, relying on the

support of the Byzantine Empire. (Hajda, 1995, pp. 980-981)

Caucasian Speakers from the East: Avars

The Avars were nomads who made their appearance in Europe, like the Huns, in the area

north of the Caucasus Mountains between the Volga River, the Caspian Sea, and the

River Don. This region consisted of the steppe region best known today as being north of

the Caucasus Mountains and the present-day republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia, and

Chechnya among others that were formerly part of the Soviet Socialist Republic. Some

authors describe the Avars as a Turkic people, suggesting that they lost a major war to

other nomads in the east and migrated west, subjecting various Caucasian tribes and other

groups north of the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea in modern-day Ukraine. It is more

likely, however, that they originally spoke a language of the Caucasian family. Relatively

few in number and living by plunder and by the domination of others, the Avars by AD

555 had pressed forward to the north of the Danube and established themselves in the old

Roman provinces of Dacia and Pannonia in what later became known as the Hungarian

plain. The Roman provinces on the right bank of the Danube were fought over by many

invaders from the 6th century on, suffering considerably at the hands of both the Huns and

the Avars (Fine, 1983).

In the 560s, in their advance into central Europe from the eastern border with Asia, the

Avars threatened the Bulgars, destroying one Bulgar tribe. Under their ruthless khan, the

Avars built up a great tributary empire of Bulgars and Slavs that stretched from the Baltic

to the Black Sea. Their main settlements were between the Danube and the Tisza Rivers.

The arrival of the Avars in eastern Europe is also associated with the beginning of largescale Slavic settlement in the Balkans in the late 570s and early 580s (Avars, 1995b;

Bulgar, 1995; Fine, 1983; Twombley, 1992; Vidal-Naquet, 1992).

In the Balkans archaeologists have found vestiges of Avar settlements along the

Sava and Danube rivers as far east as the mouth of the Morava. Further east

along the Rumanian and Bulgarian sides of the Danube, Slavic sites are found
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-20

but not Avar. Thus the Avars settled to the west of the main Slavic

concentrations. The Avars were excellent soldiers and horsemen; they were

tightly organized with their ruler, called a khagan, supreme over the various Avar

groups. They made treaties with their neighbors and fixed frontiers. Below them

was a vast array of subject peoples, various Slavic and Bulgar tribes plus the

remnants of the Huns. In addition to subject tribes, they also had large numbers

of vassal tribes while others were allies. (Fine, 1983, pp. 29-30)

Once the Byzantine Empires’ war with the Persians had ended in 591, the Avars were

seen as the key problem facing the Empire. Troops were then sent into the Balkans,

retaking Beograd and pushing the Slavs and Avars back across the old Danube-Sava

frontier. This war lasted ten years and was generally successful. The Avars did not give

up without a fight, however; and after their expulsion, they laid siege to Beograd in 593

and 596. The following year, the Avars sent a massive raid through Dalmatia, which was

then a large province that included most of modern Bosnia. They destroyed nearly forty

fortresses; and in about 599, a massive army under the Avars broke through the

Byzantine defenses extended to the walls of Constantinople

. . . where a plague struck them, killing off large numbers, including several sons

of the khagan. The khagan at this point retreated, carting off many prisoners . . .

[taking] seventeen thousand and [demanding] a ransom of half a gold piece for

each. (Fine, 1983)

When the Byzantine emperor refused to pay the ransom for the prisoners, the Avars

slaughtered them all. In 600, the Byzantines crossed the Danube in all likelihood with the

aim of destroying the centers of Avar power. Permanent gains against the Avars were

difficult, however, because the tribes under Avar leadership were only loosley bound to

them. The defeat of one had no effect on the others. The destruction of one alliance led

to the formation of others. In 601, the Byzantines sent new forces across the Danube,

proceeding up toward the Tisza River, winning a major victory over the Avars. The

emperor wanted to continue his campaign the following year, but his troops were unused

to wintering away from imperial territory. The failure to ransom the seventeen thousand

captives had also contributed to poor morale. A revolt broke out, forces crossed back

over the Danube and marched on Constantinople. Civil war ensued. The Emperor and

his family were captured while trying to escape, and all were butchered (Fine, 1983).

The Avars ravaged the Balkans, attacking Constantinople in AD 626, penetrating far into

Greece as well as into Germany and Italy. The Avars subjugated hordes of Slavs, who

were divided into numerous petty tribes, either by driving them into these areas or by

settling them through peaceable measures. The presence of the Avars also led other

Slavs to move south across the Danube to escape subjection or tribute. It has been

suggested by Rumanian archaeologists that other Slavic groups were driven up into

Transylvania by the Avars. It appears that the presence of the Avars curtailed the

gradual settlement of Slavs in the Balkans that had been the pattern up to then. The

presence of the Avars, either by mobilizing Slavs as troops or causing them to flee in large

numbers, provided the impetus for large-scale Slavic settlement to the south of the

Danube (Fine, 1983; Vidal-Nauquet, 1992).

The Avars were masters of sieges, and . . . cities began falling to them and their

Slav clients. The loss of cities often led to the loss of imperial control over whole

regions. In 582 the Avars conquered the Byzantine border fortress of Sirmium
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-21

(modern Sredska Mitrovica), which eliminated a major Byzantine border defense

post, and soon the Slavs were pouring into the Balkans. (Fine, 1983, p. 30)

In the 7th century, the western reaches of the Balkan Peninsula were peopled primarily by

the Avars. They controlled all the country of Dalmatia except along the Adriatic

coastline—which remained in Roman hands—until the Croats, who at that time were

living north of the Balkan Peninsula in Bavaria and were known as the Belocroats (White

Croats), arrived in Dalmatia. The Belocroats were ‘unbaptized,’ i.e., non-Christians, who

intermarried and were friendly with the Hungarians. After a number of years of conflict

between the Croats and the Avars, the Croats prevailed in Dalmatia. The Belocroats,

however, remained in the region to the north. The Croats in Dalmatia were for a number

of years subject to the Frankish king as they had been in their native country. They were

treated with such brutality by the Franks, however, that they revolted. A seven-year battle

ensued, but the Croats were victorious and remained independent and autonomous,

ultimately requesting holy baptism from the bishop of Rome (Fine, 1983).

In the remainder of the 7th and in the 8th centuries, the Avars continued to push Slavic

groups southward into the heart of the Balkans. Before the end of the 8th century,

however, the Avar power had decayed. Charlemagne was able to defeat the Avars in

AD 791-796, taking the great rings or fenced enclosures—some of which were many

miles in circumference—where the Avars lived, successfully keeping the treasures the

Avars had plundered from central Europe. By the end of the 9th century, the Avars had

disappeared from history, having been amalgamated with a fresh horde of Asian

nomads—the Magyars (Avars, 1995b; Fine, 1983; Twombley, 1992; Vidal-Naquet, 1992).

Later Waves of Uralic Speakers from Asia: Magyars

The remote ancestors of the Magyars spoke a Uralic language and inhabited the eastern

slopes of the Urals in western Siberia forming the easternmost branch of the Finno-Ugrian

family of nations. From this homeland, they moved for unknown reasons to the open

grasslands of the steppes to the west, adopting the manners and organization of the local

Turkic races with whom they intermingled. They later migrated southwestward in the

company and often under the leadership of various Turkic people, roaming over the

Khazar Turkish empire near the Caspian Sea, to cross the Volga River between AD 400

and 500 (Hungarian, 1995; Hungary, 1973, Magyar, 1973; Vidal-Naquet, 1992).

The Magyars crossed the River Don east of present-day Ukraine about AD 830. They

entered their present location in modern Hungary in AD 889 and subjugated the resident

Slavs and the remaining Huns. They were initially a wild and semi-nomadic horde whose

raids spread terror through Europe (the English word ‘ogre’ is a corruption of ‘Hungar,’

attesting to their notoriety). Arriving from Asia as the Huns and Avars had, the Magyars

finally settled the middle Danube basin and launched raids into Germany, France, and

Italy. In AD 898, they broke up the Slavic kingdom of Moravia in the former

Czechoslovakia and conducted more than 30 incursions into Europe between AD 900 and

950, crossing the Carpathians under pressure from the Petchenegs. This period ended

with their great defeat outside Augsburg in 955 in the Bavarian region of southwest

Germany (Hungarian, 1995; Hungary, 1973, Magyar, 1973; Vidal-Naquet, 1992).

The foundation of the Hungarian state took place when the seven tribes of the

Magyars, under their leader ;rp<d, settled in the middle Danube basin, in or
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-22

about A.D. 896 . . . . in 1000 Stephen, great-great-grandson of ArpBd, adopted for

his nation the Latin form of Christianity, receiving from Pope Silvester II the

famous holy crown of Hungary. Stephen broke the power of the old tribal leaders

and reorganized Hungary on a unitary system of counties governed by royal

officials and uniform throughout the country, except for certain special districts,

mainly on the frontiers (including much of Transylvania). Only Croatia, attached

to the holy crown in 1102, preserved its separate institutions and diet. The

centuries after Stephen’s death were full of vicissitudes. In the 11th and 12th

centuries Hungary had to fight hard for its independence against eastern

invaders and against its Germanic neighbours. In 1241-42 it was ravaged and half

depopulated by the Mongols. (Hungary, 1973, p. 304)

Although ;rp<d’s warriors had been a community of free and equal men owing allegiance

only to their tribal chiefs, once they were conquered by the Mongols, their social structure

adapted to new conditions. The conquered population was enslaved, a condition that

ended with the arrival of Christianity.

. . . as nomadic stock-breeding gave place to agriculture, the bulk of the

population became attached to the land in varying degrees of servitude. Sharply

contrasted with them stood the free and privileged class of ‘nobles’; the

difference between the Hungarian system and that simultaneously evolving in

west and central Europe lying less in the situation of the unfree class than in the

larger number . . . of the ‘noble’ class and the theoretical equality between all its

members . . . . (Hungary, 1973, p. 304)

Later Waves of Altaic-Speakers from Asia: Mongols and Tatars

The original habitat of the Altaic peoples is supposed to have been on the

steppe area bordering on the Altai and Ch’ing-hai mountains between Tibet and

China; in the north, it probably stretched to the Siberian taiga region adjacent to

the steppe. It is assumed that Tungus peoples lived in the northern and

northeastern parts of this area and the Mongols in the central and southeastern

parts. Turkic peoples probably inhabited the northwestern and western parts,

while the southern and southwestern region was occupied by Hunnic groups.

Although the Hun language is not known, Huns are supposed to have spoken

an Altaic idiom. In historical times, the Uralic, Indo-Iranian, Sino-Tibetan, and

Korean languages have bordered on this Altaic language area. (Hazai, 1995, p.

693)

The historically active role of the Altaic speakers led to representation of their languages

over a large geographic area. Because Altaic peoples “. . . overpowered their present

territories in Asia and Europe in succeeding waves” (Hazai, 1995, p. 693), they have at

varying times played a dominant role in the history not only of China, Iran, India, and the

Arab caliphate, but also of Byzantium and eastern Europe (Hazai, 1995).

The Mongols—speaking a Mongolian language from the Altaic language family—were a

nomadic people, largely due to climate and geographical situation. They were excellent

horsemen, fierce fighters, and clever herdsmen who migrated with their flocks—cattle,

camel, horses, sheep, and goats—between winter and summer grazing grounds. Due to a

history of warring and migration, Mongols are presently found throughout central Asia

(Mongol, 1995; Mongols, 1973).

Traditional Mongol society, in which men served as herdsmen and soldiers, was

based on the family, the clan, and the tribe, with clan names derived from those
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-23

of common male ancestors. As clans merged, the tribal name was taken from that

of the strongest clan. In the tribe, weaker clans retained their own headmen and

livestock but were subordinate to the strongest clan. In periods of tribal unity,

khans (Mongol monarchs) assigned commanders to territories from which troops

and revenues were gathered. Mongol history alternated between periods of

tribal conflict and tribal consolidation. (Mongol, 1995, p. 255)

The Mongols proved to be a serious and untiring enemy from the east for the Byzantine

Empire. Although prior to the 7th century AD, little is known of the early history of the

Mongols, beginning in the 8th century, Turkish tribes, mainly Mongols, moved westward

and overwhelmed the western empires.

Although the term Tatar first appeared among nomadic tribes living in northeastern

Mongolia and the area around Lake Baikal from the 5th century AD, it first appeared in

Europe in association with the Mongols in the early 13th century as a description for the

Asiatic people led by Genghis Khan. By 1227 under Genghis Khan, military campaigns

had extended Mongol domains as far west as Russia. Upon his death, the western

regions went to his son Jochi, who was ultimately dominated by another son, _g`dei.

Jochi and his successor, Batu, roamed the plateau of western Asia, controlling Russia and

terrorizing eastern Europe and finally sweeping through the Balkan Peninsula in waves by

1241 (Gianaris, 1982; Mongol, 1995).

The term Tatar was later extended to include almost any oriental, nomadic invader.

Unlike the Mongols, the Tatars spoke a Turkic language—representing one of the other of

three groups of Altaic languages (Tatar, 1995; Tatar, 1973).

After various groups of these Turkic nomads became part of the armies of the

Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan in the early 13th century, a fusion of Mongol

and Turkic elements took place, and the Mongol invaders of Russia and Hungary

became known to Europeans as Tatars. After Genghis Khan’s empire broke up,

the Tatars became especially identified with the western part of the Mongol

domain, which included most of European Russia and was called the Golden

Horde. These Tatars were converted to Sunnite Islam in the 14th century.

Owing the internal divisions and various foreign pressures, the Golden Horde

disintegrated late in the 14th century into the independent Tatar khanates of

Kazan and Astrakhan on the Volga River, Sibir in western Siberia, and the Crimea.

(Tatar, 1995, p. 575)

The Tatars were a people who favored a pastoral economy and seasonal nomadism.

From the 9th to the 15th centuries, the Tatar economy became based on mixed farming and

herding—practices that persist into the present. They developed a tradition of

craftsmanship in wood, ceramics, leather, cloth, and metal, achieving a reputation as

traders (Tatar, 1995; Tatar, 1973).

THE DISPERSAL OF SLAVIC-SPEAKING PEOPLES TO THE

BALKANS

The Slavic, or Slavonic, languages constitute a separate branch of the Indo-European

language family. These languages are closer to the Baltic languages than to any other

Indo-European subgroup, but they also share certain linguistic innovations with the other

eastern Indo-European languages, such as Indo-Iranian and Armenian.
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-24

Some scholars believe that, after the common Indo-European area had been

divided into different dialect zones (approximately after the 3rd millennium BC), a

protodialect developed in the Baltic and Slavic areas that had many features

peculiar to only these two branches of Indo-European. At the same time this

protodialect was connected with certain western Indo-European protodialects

called Old European that are identified as the source of a number of river names .

. . . The dialects of the Slavic protolanguage spoken near the Carpathian

Mountains in the upper Vistula area may have been part of the intermediate zone

situated between the western Indo-European dialects (Germanic, Celtic, Italic,

and so on) and the eastern Indo-European ones; in addition to the Baltic and

Slavic in the north, this intermediate zone included the Indo-European languages

of the Balkans (Illyrian, Thracian, Phrygian). (Ivanov, 1995, p. 676)

According to Ivanov (1995), the original homeland of the Slavic languages was situated

between the Oder River in central Europe that rose in the Czech Republic and flowed to

the Baltic, and the Dnepr River in Ukraine that flowed to the Black Sea. From this

region, the Slavic speakers subsequently spread into central and eastern Europe, the

northern parts of Asia, and the Balkans. Each subsequent branch of Slavic originally

developed from a dialect of Proto-Slavic, or beginning Slavic, that was the ancestral

parent language of the group. This ancestral language, in turn, developed from an earlier

language that was also an antecedent of the Proto-Baltic language.

Slavic-Speaking Peoples Migrate from their Homeland

in Eastern Europe

Although some Slavs had apparently begun to reach the basins of the Danube and the

Sava Rivers in the western portions of the Balkans as early as the 2nd century, the first

significant movements are dated to the middle of the first millennium AD. Their migration

was slow, however, and was not a mass movement. The movement of the Slavic peoples

into the Balkans differed from the impact left by most of the preceding groups and is

considered to be the most significant of all the peoples who intruded into the Balkans over

the centuries. According to written sources of the time, Slavs first showed up north of the

Danube in the 5th century.

Many scholars feel that they had arrived in that region even earlier than that.

Where they had come from has long been a most controversial point . . . . The

evidence used for locating the homeland of the Slavs—that is, the region where

they became a distinct people from their Indo-European cousins—is all linguistic

and archaeological . . . . but at present the best case can be made for the Ukraine .

. . . Adherents of this view believe that the Slavs followed the path toward the

Danube used by a large number of Turkic peoples—including Huns, Avars,

Bulgars, Pechenegs, and Cumans. (Fine, 1983, p. 25)

By about 500 AD, the Slavs were known to other Eurasian peoples as being the

inhabitants of the enormous territory between the Dnepr River in present-day Ukraine,

and the Vistula River in central Poland. This territory had receded from the west

somewhat in comparison to the ancestral homeland of the Slavs, presumably under

contact with Germanic-speaking people (Ivanov, 1995).

Evidence of Slavic tribes in the Balkans before the 6th and 7th centuries AD is sparse.

The resident population in the Balkans still included the Illyrians, Greeks, Romans, Avars,

and various other peoples who were generally controlled by the Roman—and later by the
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-25

Byzantine—Empires. Beginning in the 5th and 6th centuries, tribal groups of Slavs crossed

the Danube and pushed the native Illyrians and Thracians southward. By the end of the

7

th century in the Balkans, the Illyrian language was lost.

Christian centers and monuments were destroyed and, when the Slavs took

possession of the country, the Daco-Illyrian native population was reduced to an

inferior status. The Latinized former Dacians, now called Vlachs, took refuge in

the mountainous terrain, leading a half nomadic life with their herds of goats and

sheep, but their language was profoundly influenced by the Slavic idiom.

Besides 2,600 words of the old Latin stock, the modern Rumanian language has

3,800 Slavic terms in addition to some Albanian words. In spite of that, the

Vlachs were not Slavicized. (Fine, 1983, p. 186)

The early Slavic groups in the Balkan Peninsula consisted primarily of groups of

scattered—although related—tribes who often were at odds with each other. Their

advance was irregular, with no full-scale military campaigns or formal sieges. Although

the Byzantines adopted a variety of defense measures, the Slavs just kept on coming—

often driven ahead by the Avars. According to Byzantine sources, the Slavs lived ‘under

a democracy’ and everything involving the welfare of the people, whether good or bad,

was referred to the people. Although Slavic invasions of the 6th and 7th centuries forced

the Byzantine Empire to withdraw from a large part of Macedonia, the Slavs failed to take

or destroy the important Macedonian cities of Thessalonika, Serres, Edhess, and Veroia.

Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, who ruled from AD 610 to 641, was successful, however

in imposing the political authority of Byzantium over the Slavic tribes (Mojzes, 1995;

Singleton, 1985; Wolff, 1974).

It appears that tribes living in eastern Poland and Ukraine spoke Slavic before the 3rd

century AD. Due to their rapid expansion, by the end of the 8th century AD, Slavic was

spoken from northern Russia to southern Greece, and from the Volga River in southern

Russia to the Elbe River in Germany and the Czech Republic and the Adriatic Sea. Slavic

remained a single language until at least the 8th or 9th century AD. With the migration and

expansion of Slavic tribes, the differences between regional dialects became greater. The

ancestors of most of the modern Slavic languages had appeared by the 10th century AD

(Waxman, 1992).

[The Slavs] have stamped their impress upon all the others. An Indo-European

people, they lay behind the Germans, whose movement into western Europe left a

place for the Slavs in eastern Europe. Their invasions occurred in the sixth and

seventh centuries, in the form of a stealthy infiltration during a period of about a

hundred and fifty years . . . . they came as homeseekers rather than as raiders,

and were often temporarily subjugated by various Asiatic invaders like the

Avars, whose mission was primarily one of plunder. In the process of their

occupation the Slavs settled the whole interior of the Balkan peninsula . . . . Only

along the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic can the Slavs be said to have become a

seafaring people (Gewehr, 1967, pp. 7-8)

With the exception of the Albanians, Romanians, and Vlachs who appear to retain ties to

the early indigenous peoples in this region, the contemporary peoples in the Balkans are

the descendants of the early immigrant Slavs in the Balkans. These Slavs migrated

southward from their land of origin beyond the Carpathian Mountains in what is today

Ukraine and southeast Poland. From their homeland, the Indo-European Slavic-speaking

peoples began to slowly disperse west, east, and south during the first century AD. The
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-26

people who were to become known as Poles, Czechs, and the islands of Slavic population

in eastern Germany resulted from the westward migration of Slavic groups, while those

who came to be identified as Russians, Ukrainians, and White Russians arose from their

eastward migration of Slavs. From the southward migration, the Slavs of the Balkans

emerged. Although occasional wars were waged, particularly against the Greeks, the

Slav movement into and settlement in the Balkans was largely peaceful (Mojzes, 1995;

Wolff, 1974).

In terms of subsistence type, the Slavs of the 6th century were in a stage intermediate

between nomadism and settled agricultural life and lived generally in widely separated

hovels, frequently changing their homes. The lands they first encountered in the Balkans

were very different geographically from their earlier homelands in the Vistula Basin and

the Ukraine. The Slavs had been accustomed to expansive plains in which they engaged

in farming, and the mountainous regions of the Balkans formed a geographic impediment

to their southward migrations. Their influx into the Balkan Peninsula began as a gradual

infiltration. Although other peoples, primarily Mongolian Huns (with Attila as their main

leader) and Avars from Asia, crossed the area, they had not settled, as the Slavs did.

These Slavic groups did not fully occupy the middle and lower Danube basins on both

sides of the Carpathians until later (Wolff, 1974).

Slavic migration southward toward and across the Danube frontier of the

Byzantine Empire was not a sudden invasion of the kind which could be repelled

in battle, but a slow and inexorable infiltration, which could be retarded by a

consistent policy of frontier defenses, but which apparently could not be

arrested, any more than the movement of a glacier. (Wolff, 1974, p. 38)

By the 7th century, Byzantium recognized the Slavs as permanent settlers. While most of

the Mongolian invaders were nomads, dropping no roots in the Balkans, the Slavs kept

advancing slowly to the south, creating agricultural settlements. On several occasions, the

Slavs rebelled against the Byzantine rulers in the Balkans. To weaken the Slavs, the

Byzantine emperors forcibly transported some of them from Macedonia to Asia Minor

and replaced them with Scythians (Iranians) along the lower portion of the Struma River,

and with Christian Turks who settled near the Vardar River (Gianaris, 1982; Hamp, 1995;

Stoianovich, 1992b; Wolff, 1974).

The Slavs occupied the entire Adriatic littoral as well as the interior of the Balkan

Peninsula and Greece itself by the 7th century —the period of their greatest southern

penetration on the Peninsula. They controlled Greece itself until approximately AD 800,

although the native Greek population ultimately absorbed the Slavs. In the area of

present-day Bulgaria and former Yugoslavia, however, the Slavs became the dominant

people. At about the time that the Slavic people had reached and crossed the Danube and

the Bulgars had set up a kingdom in Thrace, the Arabs from the east had conquered

Syria, Egypt, Palestine, and North Africa. The stage was set for the ultimate demise of

the Byzantine Empire (Wolff, 1974).

As has been noted, the movement of Slavic peoples into the Balkans may have begun as

early as the 1st century AD. Over the succeeding five or six centuries, their movement

was slow and their numbers were not significant. In 582 AD, the Avars conquered a

major Byzantine border post at Sirmium (the modern Sremska Mitrovica). In addition,

wars between the Byzantine and Persian Empires, led to the subsequent collapse of the
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-27

Balkan frontier along the Danube and Sava Rivers and opened the Balkans to Slavic raids

and a greater degree of settlement (Fine, 1983).

Early in the 7th century, the Byzantine Empire was in no position to oppose the Slavs,

being preoccupied with a war with the Persians to the east. At that time, the regions in

the west (in what is now western Bosnia, Croatia, and Dalmatia) continued to be subject

to Avar raids and settlement. Slavic settlement was chiefly in what is now Bulgaria,

Serbia, Macedonia, and parts of Greece, ultimately reaching the Aegean—settlement that

was to provide the basis for Slavic states that appeared in these regions later. There is

also evidence that between 614 and 616 AD some Slavic tribes had arrived by sea in

small boats presumably having sailed down along the coast of the Black Sea to Thessaly,

western Anatolia, and various Greek islands. About ten years later, a small Slavic fleet

was annihilated by the Byzantine navy; however; and after this battle, any surviving Slavic

sailors were butchered by the leader of the Avars (Fine, 1983).

During the middle of the 9th century, two Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius, invented

an alphabet based somewhat on the Greek alphabet and began translating various religious

texts into Slavic. This literary language—Old Church Slavonic—was a blend of the

Macedonian-Bulgarian dialect of Slavic with the Bohemia-Moravian dialect of

Czechoslovokia. Old Church Slavonic was the literary language of all Slavs for two

centuries, and in many areas, continued as the literary language until the 18th and 19th

centuries. (Waxman, 1992).

West Slavs, East Slavs, and South Slavs

. . . under the impact of Germanic migrations, the movement of Slavic tribes from

their primordial homeland north of the Carpathians began in the 5th and 6th

centuries. While some Slavs migrated westward and others south into the

Balkans, the East Slavs occupied the forest and forest-steppe regions of western

and north-central Ukraine and southern . . . Belorus . . . thence they expanded

farther north and to the northeast into territories of the future Russian state

centred on Moscow. The East Slavs practiced agriculture and animal husbandry,

engaged in such domestic industries as cloth-making and ceramics, and built

fortified settlements, many of which later developed into important commercial

and political centres. Among such early settlements was Kiev on the high right

bank of the Dniepr River. (Hajda, 1995, p. 981)

By the 6th century AD, the Slavs had expanded to the Elbe (Labe) River in the presentday Czech Republic and eastern Germany, south to the Adriatic Sea, and across the

Danube River to the Peloponnese Islands in Greece. In that period, according to the

oldest Greek and Latin sources about the Slavs, they were already divided into several

groups. The Slavic language, however, was uniform in its phonological and grammatical

structure with important dialectal variations occurring only in the vocabulary (Ivanov,

1995).

An important marker in the Slavic languages with respect to their separation is the manner

in which the name of the French emperor Charlemagne (742-814) was represented. It

has been proposed that this name entered into Slavic before the language branches

separated. Subsequently, the proper name for Charlemagne (‘Karl’) became the generic

term for ‘king.’ In part, as a result of the pattern of similarities and differences in the
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-28

modern Slavic languages for the term ‘king,’15 the Slavic language group is now divided

schematically into three branches:

♦ The West Slavic branch, with three subgroups: Czech-Slovak, Sorbian, and Lekhitic

(Polish and related languages);

♦ The East Slavic branch, also with three subgroups: Russian, Ukrainian, and

Belorussian; and

♦ The South Slavic branch, with two subgroups: Serbo-Croatian-Slovene, and

Bulgarian-Macedonian (Ivanov, 1995).

Another important period in Slavic linguistic history occurred in the period from the 10th to

12th centuries. During this period, the Slavic speakers in the Balkans were cut off from

those in the North and East by a wedge of Finno-Ugric speakers (Magyars in Hungary)

and the Germanization of the Slavic regions of Bavaria and Austria. As a result, many of

the remaining uniformities of the Slavic language area began to disappear and separate

branches and languages emerged (Ivanov, 1995).

In the spoken Slavic dialects, the linguistic frontiers are not always apparent. Several

transitional dialects and mixed forms of speech connect the different languages, with the

exception of the area where the South Slavs are separated from the other Slavic groups

by non-Slavic speaking groups, including Romanians, Hungarians, and German-speaking

Austrians. It is possible, however, to still trace some vestiges of continuity in dialects

between Slovene and Serbo-Croatian, on the one hand, and Czech and Slovak, on the

other. Similar traces of the old links are also apparent when comparing Bulgarian and

Russian dialects (Ivanov, 1995).

. . . the traditional schematic division of the Slavic group into three separate

branches is not to be taken as the real model of historical development. It would

be more realistic to represent the historical development as a process in which

tendencies to differentiate and to reintegrate the cognate dialects have been

continuously at work, bringing about the remarkable degree of uniformity in the

different dialects. Still it would be an exaggeration to suppose that

communication between any two Slavs [from different subgroups] is possible

without any linguistic complications . . . . For a Slav to master effectively a

second Slavic language demands time and work. (Ivanov, 1995, p. 675)

Slovenes: South Slavs or West Slavs?

During the 6th century AD, ancestors of the Slovenes, now referred to by

historians as Alpine Slavs or proto-Slovenes, pushed up the Sava, Drava, and

Mura river valleys into the Eastern Alps and the Karst. There they absorbed the

existing Romano-Celtic-Illyrian cultures. At that time the Slavs owed allegiance

to the Avar khans. (Lavrencic, Allcock, & Barker, 1995, p. 664)

After the defeat of the Avars by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, a Slavic kingdom

emerged under Samo, who was probably a Celtic slave trader from the Kingdom of the

Franks. He ruled from 623 to 658 AD over a territory that extended from the Sava valley

 

15 Compare Russian korol, Polish kr\l, Czech kr<l, Bulgarian kral, Serbo-Croatian kralj, and

Slovene kr<lj (Ivanov, 1995).
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-29

northward as far as Leipzig in present-day Germany. Although Samo’s large Slavic

confederation broke up upon his death in 658, the Slavs of Greater Carinthia (in Austria)

retained the semblance of a state under the leadership of their own dukes. In 748 AD,

Samo’s kingdom collapsed, and they fell under the yoke of the Bavarians and the Franks

to obtain aid against the hostile Avars. In time, they gave way to German rule and were

Christianized (Stoianovich, 1992e).

By the 7th Century, the Slovenes had settled in and just beyond the northern reaches of

the Balkans. They lived in parts of present-day Austria that included the southern half of

Carinthia and Styria in the eastern Alps, in the northern part of Istria (a peninsula between

present-day Slovenia and Croatia), in parts of northeastern Italy, and in the extreme

southwest of Hungary. Charlemagne conquered the Slovenes in AD 778. From then, the

Slovenes were under Teutonic (ancient Germanic or Celtic), followed by Frankish and,

later, by Austrian domination until the end of World War I (Lavrencic, Allcock, & Barker,

1995; Minns, 1911b; Slovenia, 1995; Stoianovich, 1992e).

Over the next two centuries, the Alpine Slavs who lived in present-day Austria and

western Hungary were absorbed by waves of Bavarian and Magyar invaders. Most of

the Slovene settlements north of the Drava River were Germanized; and the Slovene

linguistic boundaries contracted to the south. A Slovene tribal group, centered in the

Klangenfurt basin in Austria, persisted for nearly 200 years, however. Ancient Carinthia

in Austria is still seen as a symbol of nationhood for contemporary Slovenes. Although

the Slovene language is traditionally considered to be South Slavic, strong ties with the

West Slavic Czech languages over time have contributed to the distinctions between

Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian (Lavrencic, Allcock, & Barker, 1995; Minns, 1911b;

Slovenia, 1995; Stoianovich, 1992e).

The Slaveni and the Antes: Bilingual Iranians who Spoke Slavic

Early historical sources for the 5th and 6th centuries cite many disunited tribes divided into

two groups north of the Danube—the Slaveni and the Antes. In attempting to clarify the

identity of these groups, some linguists have argued that the word Antes is not Slavic but

Iranian. A 6th century source stated that the two groups spoke the same language and did

not differ appreciably from one another in visual appearance. It has been suggested that

if they were not originally Slavs, they had more than likely been conquering Iranian

peoples who had asserted authority over various Slavic groups, donating the names

“Slaveni” and “Antes,” and, in time, becoming linguistically and culturally assimilated by

the larger Slavic population. At any rate, there seem to have been two groups north of

the Danube which were linguistically Slavic and—although not ‘pure’ Slavs—which were

ethnically probably more Slavic than anything else. Ultimately, most of the Balkan

Peninsula to the south was settled by Slavs of one of two types—excluding the smaller

group of Slavic Slovenes: 1) A component which seems to have been derived from the

Antes, and 2) a component who seem to have been derived from the Slaveni. By the end

of the 7th century, the Slaveni were settled over most of all of what was Yugoslavia,

except for Slovenia and Macedonia (Fine, 1983).

Some scholars . . . think . . . that the Slaveni to the west were the ancestors of the

linguistic group that became Serbo-Croatians while the Antes were the ancestors

of those who were to become Bulgaro-Macedonians. The name Antes suggests

this people was intermixed with Iranians, and linguists point to a large number of
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-30

Iranian loanwords in Slavic that were acquired very early. This would not be

surprising if the Slavs came from the Ukraine because there they would have had

contact with both Iranian Scythians and Sarmatians. (Fine, 1983, pp. 25-26)

The “Croats,” the “Serbs,” and the Slavs

Despite recognition that each of the two main Slavic groups was named for a separate

(non-Slavic) conquering group, the confusion does not end there. The early 7th century

was a period of chaos on the Balkan Peninsula. First the Balkans were infiltrated by

Slavic settlement, much of it under the direction of the Avars. Then ensued their

conquest by the Iranian Slaveni and Antes. After the initial Slavic and Iranian incursions

into the Balkans, there was a second migration of peoples known as the “Croatians”and

the “Serbs,” people who arrived from northern regions beyond the Carpathians that were

occupied by “Belocroats” (White Croats) and “Beloserbs” (White Serbs). They were

also probably Iranian, or under Iranian leadership (Fine, 1983).

. . . there is considerable evidence to suggest that the Serbs and Croats who

came into the Balkans in the early seventh century were not Slavs but members

of another ethnic group (probably Iranian). But though their names probably are

Iranian, it does not rule out the possibility that some or even all the Croats and

Serbs were then Slavic-speaking . . . . . such groups are named after their

leadership. Thus many Slavs could have participated in their armies and have

migrated to the Balkans with them. Furthermore, assimilation of the actual

Iranians could already have been taking place beyond the Carpathians . . . . The

Croats and Serbs seem to have been relatively few in number, but as warrior

horsemen fighting against disunited small tribal groups of Slavs on foot, they

were greatly superior militarily. They arrived, expelled the Avars, and then, as

tough, tightly knit groups of warriors, were able to dominate the disorganized

Slavic tribes. They were able to provide a ruling class and be a source of unity

for the different Slavic groups. Soon the newcomers came to provide a general

name for all the people (the majority of whom were Slavs) under them. But they

did not establish a single Serbian or a single Croatian state. (Fine, 1983, p. 56)

THE SLAVENI AND THE BELOCROATS AND

BELOSERBS

Over time, some of the Slaveni were ruled by a Croatian military aristocracy and some by

a Serbian one. Eleven fairly autonomous Òupas (counties) eventually coalesced into two

different states, with nobles retaining great local independence in each.

These Slavs came to be dominated by two different but similar tribal peoples

called Serbs and Croats in the second quarter of the seventh century. But

though subjected by a smaller military elite of true Serbs and Croats, who gave to

the larger number of Slavs these new names, the masses who made up these

peoples go back to a single group of Slavs (probably Slaveni [Iranians]) who

settled in the Balkans during the sixth and early seventh centuries . . . . they were

a single people (though one broken up into many small tribal groups) (Fine, 1983,

p. 37)

The Slavs were the vast majority; and as the Serbs and Croats intermarried with them, the

conquerors came to speak Slavic (Fine, 1983).
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-31

THE ANTES AND THE BULGARO-MACEDONIAN SLAVS

Late in the 7th century, the Antes Slavs were conquered by the Turkic Bulgars; and

although the Slavs eventually assimilated the Bulgars, the Bulgar name survived as a

descriptor from the 9th century throughout the rest of the Middle Ages and into modern

times. They became known as the Bulgaro-Macedonian Slavs. by the Turkic Bulgars

who conquered the Antes Slavs and ‘donated’ their name to denote the language being

spoken. Although they had a hyphenated name, they had an ethnic consciousness based

on a belief that their group comprised a single people—the Bulgarians.16 In a similar

fashion, the Slavic language in the Balkans, which had been spoken by the earlier arriving

Slavs (the Slaveni), was eventually called by a name—Serbo-Croatian—that referred to

the Iranian newcomers. It was a process that was nearly identical to that exhibited for

Bulgaro-Macedonian (Fine, 1983).

The region with which the Slavs under the Croats ultimately became associated had been

conquered by the Roman Empire in 35 BC and occupied by the Pannonians. When the

Roman Empire was divided in AD 395, the area remained part of the Western empire. In

AD 495, the region was overrun by the Ostrogoths; and in AD 568 it was conquered by

the Avars. The Croats, who came from the western Carpathians, in the region of

modern-day Slovakia and southern Poland, expelled the Avars. Some authorities have

asserted that in the 6th century the Czechs (western Slavs) drove the Croats (south Slavs)

from the Bavarian region between the western reaches of the Czech Republic and

southeastern Germany. At any rate, small groups of Croats had begun a southward

migration beginning in AD 548. The main body of the Croats occupied most of the area

now known as Croatia-Slavonia, Dalmatia on the Adriatic coast, and northwestern Bosnia

between AD 634 and 638. They displaced or absorbed the earlier inhabitants everywhere

in this region except along the Dalmatian littoral where the Italian city-states maintained

their independence, and in certain districts of Slavonia where a mixed population of

Slavonian immigrants, Avars and Pannonians, other Slavs, and especially the Serbo-Croats

became dominant.

Although some of the Croatians who lived in central Croatia and what is now

Bosnia threw off the Avars in the seventh century and lived in independent

groups under their Òupans . . . the Croatians to the north in Pannonian Croatia,

though under their own prince, seem to have remained in a position of some

dependence on the Avars. By the late eighth century the original Iranian

Croatians had become assimilated by the Slavs, and became for all practical

purposes Slavs speaking a Slavic language. (Fine, 1983, p. 251)

The Croats formed the western division of a great migratory group of Slavic peoples who

colonized the lands between Bulgaria and the Adriatic. The Croats became associated

with the Adriatic coast and southward including the Dalmatian littoral, gradually coming

under Italian influence in the extreme West, and under Byzantine influence in the south

and southeast. By AD 806 the northern and northeastern districts were added to the

 

16 Although references to ethnic Macedonians in the Middle Ages appear in some modern

works, the term Macedonian was used entirely in reference to a geographical region and was

applied to anyone who lived in its confines, regardless of nationality (Fine, 1983).
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-32

empire of the Franks, and hence under the influence of the Western (Roman Catholic)

church (Jayne, 1910b; Wolff, 1974).

In AD 877 the Croats were subdued temporarily by the Byzantine emperor. After

numerous insurrections that tended to centralize their loosely knit patriarchal tribal

organization and vest power in a military chief, the Croats regained their independence in

AD 910. They founded a national kingdom that was ruled by a series of independent

national rulers over a period of nearly two centuries—a period viewed by many as the

golden age of their country.

The Serbs, speaking substantially the same language as the Croats with slight dialectical

differences, appeared along the Adriatic Coast in approximately the 6th century AD. The

Serbs were not separated from the Croats by any clear geographical line; and in the

region of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the peoples were inextricably mixed. The influence of

the land once again left its imprint. The Serbs generally occupied the region to the east

and south of the Croats.

The region we know as Bosnia had no separate name or history until Slav settlement of

the provinces of Illyricum and Pannonia began. During the subsequent 300 years, Bosnia

became the generally accepted name for the valley of the Bosna River and, subsequently,

for several outlying tributary principalities. The old Illyrian population was either absorbed

rapidly or expelled, and autonomous Slavic tribal divisions replaced the Latin institutions.

For nearly 500 years following the migration of the Slavs into the Balkans, various parts of

the region fell under the rule of the Byzantines, the Serbs, Croats, Hungarians, and

Venetians (Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1995; Jayne, 1910a).

The Byzantine emperor Constantine VII . . . (reigned 913-957) referred to it

[Bosnia and Herzegovina] as a part of the land of the Serbs. From the arrival of

the Slavs in the 7th century, it seems to have preserved to a considerable extent

the local autonomy of the tribal Òupe (districts), although different areas from

time to time recognized the overlordship of Croats, Serbs, Hungarians, and

Venetians, as well as that of the Byzantine emperors. During the early Middle

Ages, Bosnia never developed the sense of political cohesion that was displayed

by other regions in the Balkans, possibly owing in large measure to the

characteristics of its physical geography. (Seton-Watson, PurkoviÉ, & Allcock,

1995, p. 621)

South of the Serbs lived the Macedonian Slavs who spoke a dialect intermediate between

Bulgarian, which was spoken by the peoples to their east, and Serbo-Croat. In the 7th

century, the Roman Catholic Church began preaching the gospels to the Slavic pagans, a

practice continued by the patriarchate of Constantinople in the 8th century. After the

Bulgarian khan accepted Christianity in AD 865, he and his son, Simeon, invited two

monks—Kilment and Naum—to come to Macedonia to teach the Christian faith. The

two were disciples of Cyril and Methodius, missionaries sent by the patriarch of

Constantinople to proselytize among the Slavs. Kaliment and Naum simplified the

alphabetic script devised by Cyril and Methodius and, using this new ‘Cyrillic’ script,

translated the Christian scripture into the dialect of the Slavs of southern Macedonia. The

Macedonian archbishopric of Orhid became the ecclesiastical center from which the

Cyrillic script and the Eastern Orthodox faith were spread throughout Serbia, Bulgaria,

and Russia. By the middle of the 9th century, however, only the Slavs of southern

Macedonia had been Christianized. The conversion of the Slavs in northern Macedonia to
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-33

Christianity occurred after the province was conquered by the Bulgars (Stoianovich,

1992b).

The Beginnings of Slavic Nation-States

The first Slavic national state was founded in the 9th century in Great Moravia (central

Czechoslovakia) in an attempt by the West Slavs to counteract the influence of the

Western Christian Church that was associated with the German Empire. In 863, Prince

Rostislav of Great Moravia invited St. Cyril and his brother, St. Methodius, to create a

national church with a language and writing system of its own. As a result, through the

introduction of the Old Church Slavonic language into the liturgy in Great Moravia,

different groups speaking West Slavic dialects were united (Ivanov, 1995).

During the Bulgarian kingdoms of Symeon (893-927) and Peter (927-969) and the

kingdom of Samuel (997-1014), the second period in the history of the Old Church

Slavonic language has been identified. This period was connected with the literary

activity of many Bulgarian scholars who not only translated Greek texts into Slavic but

also produced a small number of original works. The writings of Symeon and Peter

reflected Western (Macedonian) features that were substituted for Eastern Bulgarian

ones (Ivanov, 1995).

Fate of the Indigenous Balkan Population

What was the fate of the indigenous population? Many were killed, while others

were carried off beyond the Danube as captives (some of whom were ransomed

and returned), or fled to walled cities or to the islands. Still others withdrew to

the mountains or remote regions, and their descendants reappeared later as

Vlachs or Albanians who begin to turn up in written sources in the eleventh and

twelfth centuries. The Thracians disappeared from history. But many

indigenous peoples . . . remained; perhaps in their original homes or perhaps

moving a short distance to establish new homes in the same general area. (Fine,

1983, p. 37)

Although Slavs came to reside in every region of the Balkans, they were not everywhere.

There were considerable numbers of the indigenous population that remained, either in

isolated pockets in close proximity or in the same communities as the Slavs. It is

presumed that the heaviest concentrations of the Slavs were along the main travel routes,

as there are historical references to early settlement by the Slavs as well as to many early

Slavic placenames (Fine, 1983).

It may have been that fewer Slavs penetrated into the more remote or less fertile regions,

such as much of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. These regions provided

refuge areas where the original population could have remained in large numbers, perhaps

joined by refugees from other regions that had been under Avar control. The Avars were

primarily pastoralists and not numerous. It is unlikely that they would have completely

depopulated an area that they conquered. It is more likely that they ruled over existing

populations, collecting taxes and tribute (Fine, 1983).

In these western refuge areas . . . it is likely that the ratio of indigenous people to

Slavs would have been higher. If so, this probably would have led to more

indigenous influence on these Slavs, and the greater the number of remaining
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-34

pre-Slavic peoples, the greater would have been the intermixture of the two

groups and the greater the likelihood of their forming joint communities . . . .

(Fine, 1983, p. 38)

LANGUAGE DIFFERENCE AS BOUNDARY-MAINTAINING

MECHANISM

For more than a century, linguists have attributed patterns of linguistic change and

diversity to naturally occurring, inevitable, spontaneous processes. For linguistic

divergence to proceed, the suggested causes included spatial and/or temporal isolation,

geographic barriers, and/or social isolation (Boas, 1966; de Saussure, 1959; Hoenigswald,

1966; Hughes, 1962; Jespersen, 1949; Sayce, 1880; Swadesh, 1950). Sapir (1921, 1931)

felt that groups of dialects were simply the socialized forms of a universal tendency

toward individual variation in speech.

These theories, however, have failed to account for widely divergent empirical patterns of

linguistic diversity that are evident when comparing patterns of linguistic diversity in

ecologically differing ecosystems. For example, despite vast distances, the languages

spoken by the peoples of the Arctic are intelligible from eastern Greenland and Labrador

to the Yukon River in western Alaska (Driver, 1969). In contrast, tropical Melanesia has

been described as a ‘tangle of severally uncomprehensible languages’—a place where

every single village on the coast had its own dialect, where villages a mile apart had many

different words, and where people from villages 6 to 8 miles apart could hardly understand

one another (Jespersen, 1969).

Naturally-occurring patterns of species diversity in plant and animal communities arise in a

manner that differs from those suggested by the aforementioned linguists, however.

Closely related plant and animal species may occur (1) either in different geographic

regions, where they are referred to as allopatric species; or (2) in the same area or

habitat—without loss of identity from interbreeding—where they are referred to as

sympatric species. The process by which these related species diverge into separate

species—a process which we may consider as analogous to separate languages—is

noteworthy. In closely related allopatric species (those in different regions), differences

between the species decrease or tend to converge. In closely-related sympatric

populations (those in the same area or habitat), differences between them increase or

diverge (Odum, 1971).

When isolation occurs through geographic separation of populations descended

from a common ancestor, allopatric speciation [decreasing of differences] may

result. When isolation occurs through ecological or genetic means within the

same area, sympatric speciation [increasing of differences] is a possibility.

(Odum, 1971, 241) [emphasis added]

The process of species diversification is accomplished through an evolutionary process

known as character displacement. When two closely related species occupy

overlapping ranges, the process of natural selection may favor a process of displacement

involving changes in one or more behaviors of one or both species, thus insuring that the

populations become more divergent and more easily distinguishable. The adaptive values

of character displacement include reduction of competition and enhancement of species

distinctiveness, maintaining a greater species diversity in the community (Odum, 1971).
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-35

In nature, organisms with wide geographical range almost always develop locally-adapted

populations that are adjusted to local conditions and are regulated, both internally and

externally, through behavioral as well as physiological means. Behavior is an important

component in the manner in which species compensate for the relative availability of

limiting factors in their environment and is significant in the development of ecotypes—

locally adapted populations (Odum, 1971).

Communication is an especially important social behavior that is directly related to the

aggregation and dispersal of animal groups. Marler (1968) discussed communication

among non-human primates, noting that:

The requirements of spatial distribution . . . restrict . . . many aspects of social

behavior. Behavior concerned with social communication is related to patterns of

spatial distribution in a particularly intimate way, for the nature of signaling

behavior may be profoundly influenced by the distance over which the signal

must be transmitted. (Marler, 1968, p. 420)

Dr. Clarence Carpenter, pioneer in field observations of non-human primates, confirmed

that gibbon groups living in close proximity to one another can be distinguished through

‘dialect’ differences in their vocalization patterns (1972, personal communication). He

described these differences as being related to the ability of members of the groups to

distinguish one from another and, thereby, avoid incursions into the territory of differing

groups and the inevitable conflicts that would ensue. It seems quite likely that language

behavior in humans, as well as in non-human primates, functions as a sort of boundarymaintaining mechanism—a way of distinguishing ‘us’ from ‘them.’

The differentiation of languages as well as other cultural behaviors may represent a

specific type of differentiation, akin to the accentuated patterns of displacement shown by

sympatric species. This form of ‘character displacement’—that of linguistic

differentiation—then could be seen as adaptive. By enhancing niche displacement,

linguistic differentiation could serve to reduce competition for resources and, thus,

maintain greater diversity in the environment. Through various (speech) behaviors, groups

of people could maintain a relative constancy in their internal environment (within their

group). The development of dialects, and ultimately, of differing languages, could function

to maintain the patterns of spatial distribution of the differing groups.

The differentiation of Slavic languages may illustrate aspects of both types of linguistic

‘speciation.’ As Slavic groups began to move from their homeland, it is thought that they

spoke mutually intelligible dialects until approximately AD 1000, despite their spread

from the general region of eastern Poland. Even though these Slavs became more

geographically dispersed, their languages did not diverge rapidly. The East Slavs, West

Slavs, and South Slavs retained the ability to communicate with one another. In the

Balkans, the South Slavs displaced and ultimately contributed to the disappearance of the

Illyrian language in approximately AD 700. Following AD 1000, the incursion of Magyars

into Hungary disrupted the contact between the South Slavs and their linguistic relatives to

the north and east, with the result that over time the east, west, and south language

branches were no longer mutually intelligible.

Following the ecological model presented here, it is suggested that the linguistic

differentiation that occurred initially for Slavic languages may have resulted through

‘allopatric’ speciation—through geographic separation of populations descended from a
BALKANS-APPENDIX G G-36

common ancestor. In a discussion of the process through which Proto-Indo-European

began to split into the dialects that became the first generation of daughter languages, it is

noted that different innovations may have spread over different territories.

This pattern is general for changes dating from the time the parent language was

breaking up into distinct languages. Each of the resulting languages shares

some innovations with some of its neighbours, but only rarely do different

innovations shared by two or more branches of Indo-European cover exactly the

same territory. Once the dialects had become differentiated enough to be

distinct languages—probably by 2000 BC, at least in most cases—each largely

went its own way, and agreements in developments since then are due either to

borrowing across language boundaries . . . or to parallel but independent

workings out of the same base material. (Indo-European Languages, 1980, p. 437,

emphasis added)

It is more difficult to argue that the subsequent differentiation into the languages of

Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and ‘Bulgaro-Macedonian’ in the South was due to geographic

separation or isolation. Instead, a pattern of increasing differentiation through a process

of ‘sympatric’ speciation, as part of an on-going process of enhanced group

distinctiveness and identity, seems more likely. Just as the prevailing argument from

linguistics has been anchored to the notion of change resulting from isolation, Odum

(1971) pointed out that the primary mechanism by which new subspecies arose generally

had been considered to be my means of allopatric speciation. Increasing evidence,

however, has pointed to sympatric speciation being more widespread and important than

formerly believed.

The following chapter is entitled, “The Birth of the Contemporary Balkan States (AD

1000 – 1999).” The continued influence of ‘predators and pilgrims’ on the Balkan states

is reviewed, including the disintegration of the Byzantine Empire. The ‘Dark Ages’ are

revisited under the rule of the Ottomans in the Balkans. Growing tensions between the

Great Powers and the Ottomans until the latter were finally expelled from the Balkans

early in the 20th century are reviewed. The impact of the succession of 20th century

wars that have marked the Balkans is also summarized. Specifically, the 1

st and 2nd

Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, World War I, and World War II are examined. The political

developments leading to the various ‘versions’ of Yugoslavia and its recent dissolution are

presented. Appendix C contains more extensive chronologies of the prehistoric period,

the early history, 20th century history, and the collapse of Yugoslavia.

Return to Table of Contents
BALKANS-APPENDIX H H-1

Appendix H

Index to the NATO Handbook

Online version ~

Preface

What is NATO?

The Fundamental Tasks of the Alliance

Origins of the Alliance

NATO Today

Part I The Transformation of the Alliance

Part II How NATO Works

Part III Organization and Structure

Part IV The Wider Institutional Framework

Part V Non-Governmental Organizations

Appendices

Part I: Transformation of the Alliance

~ The Foundations of Europe's New Security Environment

~ Security Architecture --A Broad Approach

~ The Alliance's Strategic Concept

~.The North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC)

~ Partnership for Peace

~ Relationship Between the NACC and PfP
BALKANS-APPENDIX H H-2

~ Aims of the Partnership

~ Obligations and Commitments

~ Implementation

~ NATO's Role in Peacekeeping

~ The Political and Strategic Framework ..

~ Maritime Operations

~ Air Operations

~ Operations on the Ground

~ Contingency Planning

~ Implications of Peacekeeping Activities for NATO Defense Planning

~ Cooperation in Peacekeeping

,~ Alliance Interaction with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)

~ The European Security and Defence Identity

~ Arms Control

~ The Challenge of Proliferation

~ Alliance Policy Framework on Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction

~ NATO's Role

~ The Political Dimension

~ The Defence Dimension

~ The Mediterranean

Part II: How NATO Works

~ The Machinery of NATO

~ The Machinery of Cooperation

~ Fundamental Operating Principles

~ Joint Decision-Making

~ Political Consultation

~ Crisis Management

~ The Defense Dimension

~ Nuclear Policy
BALKANS-APPENDIX H H-3

~ Economic Cooperation

~ Public Information

~ The NATO Security Investment Program (Common Infrastructure)

~ Logistic Support

~ Armaments Cooperation

~ Armaments Planning

~ Standardization

~ Communications and Information Systems

~ Air Defense

~ Civil Emergency Planning

~ Civil and Military Coordination of Air Traffic Management

~ Scientific Cooperation and Environmental Challenges

Part III: Organization and Structures

~ NATO Headquarters

~ Permanent Representatives and National Delegations

~ The International Staff

~ The Secretary General

~ Private Office

~ Office of the Secretary General .Executive Secretariat

~ Office of Information and Press

~ NATO Office of Security

~ Division of Political Affairs

~ Political Directorate

~ Economics Directorate

~ Division of Defence Planning and Policy

~ Force Planning Directorate

~ Nuclear Planning Directorate

~ Division of Defence Support

~ Policy and Coordination Staff

~ Directorate of Armaments Planning, Programs and Research
BALKANS-APPENDIX H H-4

~ Directorate of Command, Control and Communications

~ Directorate of Air Defence Systems

~ Division of Infrastructure, Logistics and Civil Emergency Planning

~ Infrastructure Directorate

~ Logistics Directorate

~ Civil Emergency Planning Directorate

~ Division of Scientific and Environmental Affairs

~ Office of Management

~ Office of Financial Control

~ Office of the Chairman of the Budget Committees

~ International Board of Auditors ~ New Structures

~ Production and Logistics Organisations

~ National Military Representatives

~ The Military Committee

~ International Military Staff

~ Organisation of the International Military Staff

~ The Role of Allied Military Forces

~ New Force Structures

~ Force Reductions

~ Characteristics of Military Forces under the New Force Structure

~ Composition of Forces

~ Availability and Readiness of Forces

~ NATO's Integrated Command Structure

~ The Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR)

~ Allied Command Europe (ACE)

~ ACE Reaction Forces Planning Staff(ARFPS)

~ The Reaction Forces Air Staff (RFAS)

~ NATO Airborne Early Warning Force (NAEWF)

~ The ACE Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC)

~ Immediate Reaction Forces (Maritime)

~ The ACE Mobile Force (AMF)

~ The Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT)

~ Allied Command Atlantic (ACLANT)
BALKANS-APPENDIX H H-5

~ Military Agencies and Organisations

~ Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development (AGARD)

~ Military Agency for Standardization (MAS)

~ NATO Electronic Warfare Advisory Committee (NEW AC)

. ~ NATO Training Group (NTG)

~ Committee of the Chiefs of Military Medical Services in NATO (COMEDS)

~ Military Committee Meteorological Group (MCMG)

~ Military Telecommunications and CIS Agencies

~ SHAPE Technical Centre (STC)

~ SACLANT Undersea Research Centre (SACLANTCEN)

. ~ NATO Defense College

~ The NATO (SHAPE) School

~ NATO Communications and Information Systems (CIS) School

Part IV: The Wider Institutional Framework

~ The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)

~ Origins of the OSCE

~ The Council of Foreign Ministers

~ “'The Challenges of Change”

~ "Towards a Genuine Partnership in a New Era”

 ~ The European Union (EU)

~ The Western European Union (WEU)

~ Petersberg Declaration

~ Kirchberg Declaration

~ The EUROGROUP and the Independent European Program Group (IEPG)

~ The Council of Europe

Part V: Non-governmental Organizations

~ North Atlantic Assembly (NAA)

~ Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA)
BALKANS-APPENDIX H H-6

~ Interallied Confederation of Reserve Officers (CIOR)

Appendices

~ Members of the North Atlantic Council

~ Secretaries General of NA TO

~ Members of the Military Committee

~ Principal Officials of the NATO International Staff

~ Major NATO Commanders

~ Principal Officials of the NATO International Military Staff

~ Principal NATO Agencies

~ The North Atlantic Treaty

~ The Alliance's Strategic Concept

~ NACC Work Plan for Dialogue, Partnership and Cooperation (1994/1995)

~ Partnership for Peace Invitation

~ Partnership for Peace Framework Document

~ Declaration of the Heads of State and Government

~ Key Arms Control Treaties and Agreements (1963-1995)

~ Abbreviations in Common Use

~ Chronology of Events (1945-1994)

~ Financial and Economic Data Relating to Defence

~ The NATO Integrated Data Service (NIDS)

Return to Table of Contents
BALKANS-APPENDIX I I-1

Appendix I

Index to United Nations Security Council Resolutions

on the Former Yugoslavia

Every resolution ever passed by the UN Security Council, from its 1946 inception to the

present, can be accessed online at: http://www.un.org/Docs/scres.htm Resolutions

relating to the former Yugoslavia are listed below, separately for each year from 1992 to

2001. The most recent resolutions (1998 – 2001) are hot-linked directly to the UN web

site to enable interested readers to easily access the full texts of the original resolutions.

1991 Security Council Resolutions

S/RES/713 - 25 September 1991. Arms embargo, applying to (former) Yugoslavia.

S/RES/721- 27 November 1991. Full compliance with Geneva ceasefire agreement

(Croatia).

S/RES/724- 15 December 1991. Dispatch of small group of personnel (Croatia);

mandate UN Sanctions.

1992 Security Council Resolutions

S/RES/727- 8 January 1992. Dispatch of 50 military liaison officers (Croatia).

S/RES/740- 7 February 1992. Approval of peacekeeping plan; increasing military liaison

officers to 75.

S/RES/743 -21 February 1992. Establishment of UNPROFOR (Croatia) for initial 12

month period.

S/RES/749- 7 April 1992. Authorization for full deployment of UNPROFOR (Croatia).

S/RES/752 -15 May 1992. Stop fighting and outside interference in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

S/RES/753 -18 May 1992. Recommending General Assembly UN membership of

Croatia.

S/RES/754- 18 May 1992. Recommending General Assembly UN membership of

Slovenia.

S/RES/755 -20 May 1992. Recommending General Assembly UN membership of

Bosnia-Herzegovina.

S/RES/757 -30 May 1992. Mandatory sanctions against FRY (Serbia and Montenegro).

S/RES/758 -8 June 1992. UNPROFOR mandate enlarged for re-opening Sarajevo airport.
BALKANS-APPENDIX I I-2

SIRES/760- 18 June 1992. Exceptions to sanctions (UNSCR 757).

SIRES/761- 29 June 1992. Authorization deployment UNPROFOR Sarajevo airport /

delivery humanitarian aid.

S/RES/762 -30 June 1992. Joint Commission and strengthening monitoring pink zones

(Croatia).

S/RES/764- 13 July 1992. Additional deployment to Sarajevo airport.

S/RES/769 -7 August 1992. UNPROFOR mandate enlarged to boder controle in UNP

As (Croatia).

S/RES/770- 13 August 1992. Delivery of humanitarian aid and access to camps, etc.

(BH)

S/RES/771- 13 August 1992. Condemnation of human rights violations (former

Yugoslavia).

S/RES/776- 14 September 1992. UNPROFOR mandate enlarged to protect relief

convoys in BH.

S/RES/777 -19 September 1992. Non- participation of FRY (S+M) in UNGA and apply

for UN membership.

S/RES/779 -6 October 1992. UNPROFOR mandate enlarged, including monitoring

demilitarization of Prevlaka.

S/RES/780 -6 October 1992. Commission of experts to investigate human rights

violations.

S/RES/781 -9 October 1992. Establishment of No-Fly Zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina.

S/RES/786- 10 November 1992. Monitoring NFZ, including deployment of 75 UNMOs

on airfields.

S/RES/787- 16 November 1992. Strict implementation of UNSCRs 713 & 757;

observers for border control BH.

S/RES/795 -11 December 1992. Authorization for UNPROFOR presence in FYROM.

S/RES/798- 18 December 1992. Condemnation of abuse of women in BH.

1993 Security Council Resolutions

S/RES/802 -25 January 1993. Cessation of Croatian offensive (UNP A South) & safety

UN personnel.

S/RES/807 -19 February 1993. Extension of UNPROFOR mandate until 31 March 1993.

S/RES/808 -22 February 1993. Establishing International Tribunal (former Yugoslavia).

S/RES/815 -30 March 1993. Implementing UNSCR 802 & extension UNPROFOR

mandate till 30 June 1993.
BALKANS-APPENDIX I I-3

S/RES/816 -31 March 1993. Extending No-Fly Zone Bosnia-Herzegovina (enforcement).

S/RES/817- 7 April 1993. Recognition of interim denomination FYROM.

S/RES/819- 16 April1993. Srebrenica declared "safe area."

S/RES/820 -17 April 1993. Tightening of sanctions against FRY (S+M) (transit).

S/RES/821 -28 April 1993. Position FRY (S+M) in UN.

S/RES/824 -6 May 1993. Sarajevo, Tuzla, Bihac, Gorazde, Zepa, & Srebrenica "safe

areas."

S/RES/827- 25 May 1993. International Tribunal (former) Yugoslavia.

S/RES/836 -4 June 1993. UNPROFOR mandate enlarged to protect "safe areas" incl.

“air power.”

S/RES/838- 10 June 1993. Requesting UN Sec Gen further reports on border controls.

S/RES/842 -18 June 1993. Authorization for additional (US) deployments to

UNPROFOR-FYROM.

S/RES/843 -18 June 1993. UNSC Working Group on request for UN assistance.

S/RES/844 -18 June 1993. Authorization for 7,600 troops for " safe areas " and use of air

power.

S/RES/845- 18 June 1993. Cooperation FYROM-Greece.

S/RES/847 -30 June 1993. Extension UNPROFOR mandate until 30 september 1993.

S/RES/855 -9 August 1993. FRY (S+M) to reconsider tennination of CSCE monitor

missions.

S/RES/859 -24 August 1993. Principles for a settlement of the BH crisis.

S/RES/869 -30 September 1993. Extension of UNPROFOR mandate until1 October 1993.

S/RES/870- 1 October 1993. Extension of UNPROFOR mandate for 5 days.

S/RES//871- 4 October 1993. Extension of UNPROFOR mandate until 31 March 1994.

S/RES/877 -21 October 1993. Appointment Mr. Escovar-Salem as prosecutor Inter- national tribunal.

1994 Security Council Resolutions

S/RES/900 -4 March 1994. "Sarajevo" and feasibility of extending "safe areas."

S/RES/908 -31 March 1994. Extension UNPROFOR mandate 30/09/94; extra 3,500

troops and CAS Croatia.
BALKANS-APPENDIX I I-4

S/RES/913 -22 April 1994. Ceasefire and withdrawal of forces from Gorazde.

S/RES/914 -27 April 1994. Authorization for increase UNPROFOR strength with 6,500

troops.

S/RES/936- 8 July1994. Appointment of Mr. Goldstone as prosecutor of International

tribunal.

S/RES/941- 23 September 1994. Condemnation of "ethnic cleansing" by the Bosnian Serbs.

S/RES/942 -23 September 1994. Stricter sanctions against the Bosnian Serbs.

S/RES/943 -23 September 1994. Partial lifting of sanctions against FRY (S+M) for initial

lOO days.

S/RES/947 -30 September 1994. Extension of UNPROFOR mandate until 31 March

1995.

S/RES/958- 19 November 1994. Extension of air power to Croatia.

S/RES/959 -19 November 1994. Strengthening "safe areas" Bihac and Sarajevo.

S/RES/967- 14 December 1994. Allowing export of diphteria anti-serum to FRY (S+M)

for 30 days.

1995 Security Council Resolutions

S/RES/970- 12 January 1995. Extending UNSCR 943 with 100 days.

S/RES/981- 31 March 1995. Establishment of UNCRO (Croatia); mandate till 30

November 1995.

S/RES/982 -31 March 1995. Restricting UNPROFOR to BH; mandate til1 30 November

1995.

S/RES/983 -31 March 1995. Establishment of UNPREDEP (FYROM) mandate till 30

November 1995.

S/RES/987 -19 April 1995. Safety and security UNPROFOR.

S/RES/988 -21 April 1995. Extending UNSCR 943 with 75 days.

S/RES/990 -28 April 1995. Authorizing troop strength of 8,750 for UNCRO (Croatia).

S/RES/992 -11 May 1995. Use of Iron Gates locks on the Danube.

S/RES/994 -17 May 1995. Implementation of UNCRO mandate in Western Slavonia.

(Croatia).

S/RES/998- 16 June 1995. Authorizing 12,500 extra UNPF / UNPROFOR troops (Rapid

Reaction Force).

S/RES/IOO3 -5 July 1995. Extending UNSCR 943 with 75 days.

S/RES/IOO4- 12 July 1995. Restoration of safe area Srebrenica.
BALKANS-APPENDIX I I-5

S/RES/IOO9 -10 August 1995. Croatian offensive against Sectors North and South

(Krajina).

S/RES/IOIO- 10 August 1995. Missing persons -Srebrenica and Zepa.

S/RES/IOI5- 15 September 1995. Extending UNSCR 943 with 6 months.

S/RES/IOI6 -21 September 1995. Calling on parties to continue negotiations and to stop

fighting.

S/RES/IOI9- 9 November 1995. Condemnation of violations of international humanitarian

law.

S/RES/IO21- 22 November 1995. Phased lifting of the arms embargo.

S/RES/IO22 -22 November 1995. Immediate suspension of sanctions on FRY (S+M).

S/RES/IO23 -22 November 1995. Welcoming Basic Agreement on Eastern Slavonia,

Baranja and Srem.

S/RES/IO25 -30 November 1995. Extension of UNCRO mandate until 15 January 1996.

S/RES/IO26- 30 November 1995. Extension of UNPROFOR mandate until 31 January

1996.

S/RES/IO27 -30 November 1995. Extension of UNPREDEP mandate until 31 May

1996.

S/RES/IO31- 15 December 1995. Authorization of IFOR; endorsement of HR (Mr.

Bildt); interim CivPol.

S/RES/IO34- 21 December 1995. Calling on Bosnian Serbs to cooperate with the ICTY.

S/RES/IO35 -21 December 1995. Establishment of UN CivPol (Annex 11 of the Peace

Agreement).

1996 Security Council Resolutions

S/RES/1037- 15 January 1996. UN Security Council Resolution 1037 on UN

Peacekeeping Operation UNTAES.

S/RES/1038- 15 January 1996. UN Security Council Resolution 1038.

S/RES/1043 -31 January 1996. UN Security Council Resolution 1043.

S/RES/1046- 13 February 1996. UN Security Council approves Establishment of Force

Commander Position for Mission in Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

S/RES/1047- 29 February 1996. Resignrnent of Mr. Richard Goldstone and appointment

of Mrs. Louise Arbour as Prosecutor of the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of

Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law

Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia.
BALKANS-APPENDIX I I-6

S/RES/1058 -30 May 1996. UN Security Council Resolution 1058 on the extension of the

mandate of UNPREDEP.

S/RES/1066- 15 July 1996. UN Security Council Resolution 1066.

S/RES/1069 -30 July 1996. UN Security Council Resolution 1069 authorizing the

deployment of 100 military observers as part of UNTAES.

S/RES/1074- 1 October 1996. UN Security Council Resolution 1074 terminating the

embargo on deliveries of weapons and military equipment.

S/RES/1079- 15 November 1996. UN Security Council Resolution 1079 expressing its

full support for UNTAES.

S/RES/1082 -27 November 1996. UN Security Council Resolution 1082 extending the

mandate of UND REP .

S/RES/1088 -12 December 1996. UN Security Council Resolution 1088 giving 18-month

mandate to new effort to achieve comprehensive implementation of Peace Accords.

1997 Security Council Resolutions

S/RES/1 093 -14 January 1997. UN Security Council Resolution 1093 authorizing the

United Nations military observers to continue monitoring the demilitarization of the

Prevlaka peninsula.

S/RES/1103 -31 March 1997. Authorizing an increase in the strength of UNMIBH by

186 police and 11 civilian personnel.

SIRES/1104 -8 April 1997. Forwarding the nominations for Judges of the International

Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

S/RES/1105- 9 April 1997. Suspending the reduction of the military component of the

United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP)

S/RES/1107- 16 May 1997. Authorizing an increase in the strength of UNMIBH by 120

police personnel.

S/RES/ 1110 -28 May 1997. Extending the mandate of UNPREDEP until 30 November

1997 and to start as of 1 October 1997 a two-month phased reduction of the military

component by 300 all ranks.

S/RES/1112 -12 June 1997. Designating Mr. Carlos Westendorp as High.Representative

in succession to Mr. Carl Bildt

S/RES/1119- 12 June 1997. Authorizing United Nations military observers to continue

monitoring the demilitarization of the Prevlaka peninsula.

S/RES/11fO- 12 June 1997. Extending the mandate of UNTAES until 15 January 1998.

S/RES/1144 -19 December 1997. Extending the mandate of the United Nations Mission

in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which
BALKANS-APPENDIX I I-7

includes the IPTF, for an additional period terminating on 21 June.

S/RES/1145- 19 December 1997. Establishing a support group of 180 civilian police

monitors.

1998 Security Council Resolutions

S/RES/1147 -13 January 1998. Authorizing United Nations military observers to continue

monitoring the demilitarization of the Prevlaka peninsula.

S/RES/1160 -31 March 1998. Calling upon the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

immediately to take the further necessary

steps to achieve a political solution to the issue of Kosovo through dialogue.

S/RES/1166 -13 May 1998. Establishing a third Trial Chamber of the International

Tribunal.

S/RES/1184- 16 July 1998. Approving the establishment by the United Nations Mission

in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH) of a program to monitor and assess the court

system in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Security Council resolution 1186 (1998) on the situation in the former Yugoslav Republic

of Macedonia.

Security Council resolution 1191 (1998) on the International Criminal Tribunal for the

Former Yugoslavia.

Security Council resolution 1199 (1998) on the situation in Kosovo (FRY).

Security Council resolution 1203 (1998) on the situation in Kosovo.

Security Council resolution 1207 (1998) on the International Criminal Tribunal for the

former Yugoslavia.

1999 Security Council Resolutions

Security Council resolution 1222 (1999) on the situation in Croatia.

Security Council resolution 1244 (1999) on the situation relating Kosovo.

Security Council resolution 1247 (1999) on the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Security Council resolution 1252 (1999) on the situation in Croatia.

Security Council resolution 1256 (1999) on the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Security Council resolution 1259 (1999) on the International Tribunal for the Former

Yugoslavia.
BALKANS-APPENDIX I I-8

2000 Security Council Resolutions

Security Council resolution 1285 (2000) on the situation in Croatia.

Security Council resolution 1305 (2000) on the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Security Council resolution 1307 (2000) on the situation in Croatia.

Security Council resolution 1329 (2000) International Criminal Tribunal for the former

Yugoslavia.

2001 Security Council Resolutions

Security Council resolution 1335 (2001) on the situation in Croatia. January 12, 2001.

Security Council resolution 1340 (2001) on the International Criminal Tribunal for the

Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Security Council resolution 1345 (2001) on the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Security Council resolution 1350 (2001) on the International Criminal Tribunal for the

Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Return to Table of Contents
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-1

Appendix J

United Nations Preventive Deployment (UNPREDEP)

Force Mission Backgrounder

Prepared by the United Nations Department of Public Information

Parts of this text have been adapted from “Blue Helmets” (United Nations, 1996), a

review of UN Peacekeeping activities.

Contents

1. UNPREDEP: A FIRST IN UNITED NATIONS PREVENTIVE DEPLOYMENT

2. INTRODUCTION TO UNPREDEP

3. MISSION NEWS: UNPREDEP UPDATE

4. UNPREDEP FACT SHEET: PROFILE OF THE MISSION

5. POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS AND SECURITY COUNCIL ACTION

6. UNPREDEP’s MANDATE

7. UNPREDEP’s MAIN ACTIVITIES

8. MILITARY ASPECTS

9. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SITUATION IN FYROM

10. BACKGROUNDER: THE UN IN THE FORMERYUGOSLAVIA

1. UNNPREDEP: A FIRST IN UNITED NATIONS

PREVENTIVE DEPLOYMENT

The United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) in the former Yugoslav

Republic of Macedonia (also referred to under its acronym FYROM) is the first mission

in the history of United Nations peacekeeping to have a preventive mandate.

UNPREDEP's unique preventive mandate derives from several Security Council

resolutions since December 1992. The mission's aim is to prevent disputes in its mandate

area from turning into serious conflicts. UNPREDEP uses a variety of means to

accomplish this task, including troop deployment, mediation, negotiation, conciliation and

other peaceful means.

UNPREDEP's main mandated task is to monitor and report any developments in the

border areas which could undermine confidence and stability in the former Yugoslav

Republic of Macedonia and threaten its territory. The mission serves as an early-warning

source for the Security Council, helps to strengthen mutual dialogue among political parties

and assists in monitoring human rights as well as inter-ethnic relations in the country.

Thus, UNPREDEP covers political action and good offices, troop deployment, and the
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-2

human dimension. UNPREDEP also assists in the country's social and economic

development along with other agencies and organizations of the United Nations system.

UNPREDEP maintains close cooperation with the Monitoring Mission in Skopje,

FYROM's capital, of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)

and enjoys an excellent relationship with the host Government.

The mission has demonstrated that preventive deployment is an effective form of peacekeeping and that results can be achieved even with a small, almost symbolic deployment

of United Nations peace-keepers, if it is done at the right time and with a clear mandate.

In November 1995, the Secretary-General reported to the Security Council that the

fundamental objective of the operation, that the conflict in the former Yugoslavia be

prevented from spreading, had been achieved. He noted, however, that the causes that led

to the establishment of the United Nations preventive deployment operation had not

ceased to exist and that the continued presence of UNPREDEP remained vital to the

maintenance of peace and stability in the country.

The Secretary-General, in a message to the International Workshop "An Agenda for

Preventive Diplomacy: Theory and Practice" (Skopje, 16-19 October 1996), stated that

'preventive diplomacy requires the constructive engagement of the international

community. Rhetoric must be matched with deeds, theory must be closely linked with

practice, and goodwill has to prevail over prejudice. Few will doubt that, in terms

of human and material resources, prevention is less costly than cure. The challenge

is to summon the political will to act. UNPREDEP remains the first and only United

Nations preventive peace-keeping operation. It is a demonstration of what can be

accomplished in the realm of conflict prevention when good offices and troop

deployment are put to effective use. Experience has taught us that postponing

action to avert conflict is often a recipe for disaster. If we are to have any hope of

ending human suffering and material destruction, preventive diplomacy must remain

a prime objective of the United Nations "

2. INTRODUCTION TO UNPREDEP

UNPREDEP's Achievements

UNPREDEP, as the first preventive diplomacy and deployment operation of the United

Nations, has contributed to the stabilization of the host country's security through patrolling

its northern and western borders. The mission has been recognized as a significant

instrument for facilitating dialogue, restraint and practical compromise between different

segments of society.

From UNPROFOR to UNPREDEP: Evolution of a mission

On 21 February 1992 the Security Council, by resolution 743 (1992), established the

United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) for an initial period of 12 months to

create the conditions of peace and security required for the negotiation of an overall

settlement of the crisis in the former Yugoslavia. The Security Council authorized the full
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-3

deployment.of the Force by resolution 749 (1992) of 7 April 1992. UNPROFOR was first

deployed in Croatia. Subsequently, Its mandate was extended to Bosnia and Herzegovina

and to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, widely known by its acronym,

FYROM.

On 11 November 1992, the President of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

requested the deployment of United Nations observers in view of his concern about the

possible impact of fighting elsewhere m the former YugoslavIa. On 9 December 1992,

the Secretary-General recommended to the Council an expansion of UNPROFOR's

mandate and strength to establish a United Nations presence on the republic's borders

with Albania and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). The

mandate would be essentially preventive, to monitor and report any developments in the

border areas which could undermine confidence and stability in the republic and threaten

its territory. The enlargement would comprise a battalion of up to 700 all ranks, 35

military observers, 26 civilian police monitors, 10 civil affairs staff, 45 administrative staff

and local interpreters. The headquarters would be in the capital, Skopje.

The Security Council authorized the establishment of UNPROFOR's presence in the

former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia by its resolution 795(1992) of 11 December

1992 as "UNPROFOR's Macedonia Command.” Its mandate was to: monitor the border

areas with Albania and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro),

strengthen, by its presence, the country's security and stability; and report on any

developments that could threaten the country.

Subsequently, on 18 June 1993, the Council welcomed the offer by the United States to

provide about 300 troops to reinforce UNPROFOR's presence in the republic and, in its

resolution 842( 1993 ), authorized the deployment of the additional personnel.

On 31 March 1995, the Security Council decided to replace UNPROFOR by three

separate but interlinked peace-keeping operations. Within the former Yugoslav Republic

of Macedonia, the Council decided, by adopting resolution 983(1995), that UNPROFOR

would be known as the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP)

with mandate, responsibilities, and composition Identical to those in place.

UNPREDEP is headed by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the

former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Mr. Henryk Sokalski (Poland). Its military

commander was Brigadier-General Juha Engstrom (Finland), who was subsequently

replaced by Bo Lennart Wranker (Sweden) in March 1996 as UNPREDEP Force

Commander.

Formally established by the Security Council in resolution 983(1995) of 31 March 1995,

the Security Council, on 30 May 1995, by adopting resolution 1058(1996), extended

UNPREDEP's mandate for a further six-month period through 30 November 1996. On 1

February 1996, the Security Council concurred with the Secretary-General's

recommendation that UNPREDEP become an independent mission. By its resolution

1046( 1996) of 13 February 1996, the Council authorized an increase in the Force's

strength by 50 military personnel and approved the establishment of the position of Force
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-4

Commander of UNPREDEP. In March 1996, Brigadier-General Bo Lennart Wranker

(Sweden) took up those functions. On 30 May 1996, the Security Council extended

UNPREDEP’s mandate through 30 November 1996. By adopting resolution 1082(1996)

on 26 November 1996, the Council extended the mission’s mandate for a further SIX

month period through 31 May 1997 and decided on a reduction of its military component

by 300 all ranks by 30 April 1997. The situation changed with developments in the

neighboring Kosovo province of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia which saw violent

ethnic clashes during the summer and fall of 1998.

The Security Council called on 24 August 1998 (Press Release SC/6562) for an

immediate ceasefire in Kosovo, emphasizing the need for the achievement of a political

solution to the conflict by the authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the

Kosovo Albanians. The Council reiterated the importance of the implementation of its

resolution 1160 ( 1998) of 31 March, by which it banned the sale or supply to the Federal

Republic of Yugoslavia, including Kosovo, of arms and related materiel of all types. By

that resolution, it also decided that States shall prevent arming and training for terrorist

activities in Kosovo. The Council reaffirmed the commitment of all Member states to the

sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

On that date, the Council also considered the report of the Secretary-General on the

Kosovo situation (S/1998/712), which stated that while all organizations contacted stated

their readiness to contribute actively to the monitoring of the prohibitions imposed by

resolution 1160 (1998), the overall resources pledged by them would not allow for the

establishment of a comprehensive monitoring regime as envisaged in the resolution.

Nonetheless, their proposed contributions, coupled with that of the United Nations

Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP), would provide a useful framework for

reporting on violations of the prohibitions and for assisting the Committee established

pursuant to Security Council resolution 1160 (1998) in discharging its mandate. The

Committee, consisting of all Council members, was established to facilitate implementation

of the arms embargo.

The report noted that through the adoption of resolution 1186 (1998) on 21 July, the

Council had authorized an increase in the troop strength of the UNPREDEP and an

extension of its current mandate for a further six months, until 28 February 1999, including

the tasks of monitoring the border areas and reporting to the Secretary-General on illicit

arms flows and other activities prohibited under resolution 1160. In the absence of an

integrated coordinating mechanism, representatives of participating organizations,

UNPREDEP and the Secretariat must exchange information on the monitoring of those

prohibitions.

By adopting resolution S/RES/1186/1998 of 2l July 1998, the Security Council reaffirmed

its commitment to the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the former

Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and decided to authorize an increase in the troop

strength of UNPDEP up to 1,050 and to extend the mandate of UNPREDEP for a period

of six months until 28 February 1999, including to continue by its presence to deter threats

and prevent clashes, to monitor the border areas, and to report to the Secretary-General
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-5

any developments which could pose threat to the former Yugoslav Republic of

Macedonia, including the tasks of monitoring and reporting on illicit arms flows and other

activities that were prohibited under resolution 1160 ( 1998).

As at 30 September, 1998, 27 countries were providing 884 uniformed personnel to

UNPREDEP, 823 troops, 35 military observers and 26 civilian police.

In a report dated 29 April 1998 (Al51/508/Add3), the Secretary-General submitted a

revised budget for the maintenance of UNPREDEP for the period from I July 1997 to 30

June 1998 in the amount of $49,474,800 gross ($47,937,600 net). The budget provided for

35 military observers, 1,050 troops, 26 civilian police, 76 international staff and 127 locally

recruited staff. It included non-recurrent costs totaling $1,206,500. Expenditures for

UNPREDEP covering the period l July 1996 through 30 June 1997 amounted to

$50,405,200 gross ($49,593,700 net) (A/52/768 ).

On 26 June 1998, the Assembly appropriated $21.1 million to maintain the force from 1

July 1998 to 13 June 1999 (Press Release GA/9425).

3. MISSION NEWS: UNPREDEP UPDATE

Bigadier-General Stromberg new UNPREDEP Force Commander

On 15 September 1998, the Security Council took note of the Secretary-General's

intention to appoint Brigadier-General Ove Johnny Stromberg of Norway as the new

UNPREDEP Force Commander.

24 August 1998: Security Council calls for end of violence in Kosovo; Mentions

role of UNPREDEP in the region

The Security Council called on 24 August 1998 (Press Release SC/6562) for an

immediate ceasefire in Kosovo, emphasizing the need for the achievement of a political

solution to the conflict by the authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the

Kosovo Albanians. The Council reiterated the importance of the implementation of its

resolution 1160 (1998) of 31 March, by which it banned the sale or supply to the Federal

Republic of Yugoslavia, including Kosovo, of arms and related materiel of all types. By

that resolution, it also decided that States shall prevent arming and training for terrorist

activities in.Kosovo. The Council reaffirmed the commitment of all Member States to the

sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

On that date, the Council also considered the report of the Secretary-General on the

Kosovo situation (S/1998/712), which stated that while all organizations contacted

expressed their readiness to contribute actively to the monitoring of the prohibitions

imposed by resolution 1160 (1998), the overall resources pledged by them would not allow

for the establishment of a comprehensive monitoring regime as envisaged in the

resolution. Nonetheless, their proposed contributions, coupled with that of the United
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-6

Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP), would provide a useful framework

for reporting on violations of the prohibitions and for assisting the Committee established

pursuant to Security Council resolution 1160 (1998) in discharging its mandate. The

Committee, consisting of all Council members, was established to facilitate implementation

of the arms embargo.

21 July 1998: Resolution 1186(1998) Increases UNPREDEP Troop Strength to

1,050 Personnel; Extends Mission Mandate Until 28 February 1999

By adopting resolution S/RES/1186/1998 of 21 July I998, the Security Council reaffirmed

its commitment to the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the former

Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and decided to authorize an increase in the troop

strength of UNPREDEP up to 1,050 and to extend the mandate of UNPREDEP for a

period of six months until 28 February 'i 1999, including to continue by its presence to

deter threats and prevent clashes, to monitor the border areas, and to report to the

Secretary-General any developments which could pose a threat to the fonner Yugoslav

Republic of Macedonia, including the tasks of monitoring and reporting on illicit arms

flows and other activities that were prohibited under resolution 1160 (1998).

14 July 1998: Secretary-General reports on UNPREDEP

On 14 !uly 1998, the Secretary-General submitted to the Security Council his report on the

UnIted NatIons PreventIve Deployment Force {S/1998/644).

15 June NATO air exercises over FYROM aim at assisting the country to maintain

stability and integrity; NATO defense ministers condemn violence in Kosovo and

support continuation of UNPREDEP

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General in FYROM reported on 15 June

1998 that, following NATO's decision to carry out a military air exercise over FYROM

and Albania as a demonstration of the Alliance's firm stand on the ongoing crisis in

Kosovo, approval was given after intense consultations by the FYROM government.

Defense Minister Lazar Kitanovski emphasized that the air exercise proved NATO's

determination to assist FYROM in maintaining its integrity and stability. Some 85 NATO

planes carrying live ammunition participated in the 15 June air exercise 'Determined

Falcon". On 11 June in Brussels, NATO defense ministers condemned the violence in

Kosovo and extended support for the continuation of UNPREDEP and provision of

possible support for UN and OSCE monitoring powers.

Kosovo crisis affects mission area; 1 June report of the Secretary-General includes

Security Council option to extend UNPREDEP through 28 February 1999

In a report of I June 1998 to the Security Council on UNPREDEP (S/1998/454), the

Secretary-General stated that, according to Security Council resolution 1110 (1997) of 28

May 1997, :the phased reduction of the UNPREDEP military component by 300 all ranks

was completed by 30 November 1997, bringing its strength to 750 troops. At the same

time, the total number of observation posts was reduced from 19 to 8, all of which are
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-7

situated at strategic locations along the border with Albania and the Federal Republic of

Yugoslavia.

In response to the crisis in Kosovo, UNPREDEP has increased its patrols along the

border with Yugoslavia, using both ground. and air assets. It has also established

temporary observation posts for 24-hour monitoring and reporting on activities at the

border throughout the area of operation. Patrolling by boat has also commenced at Ohrid

and Prespa Lakes. Such intensive monitoring, however, could not be sustained over a

long time with the current troop strength.

Pursuant to the last report of the Secretary-General of 20 November 1997 (S/1997 /911 ),

his Special Representative convened in Skopje a consultative meeting of the United

Nations system present in FYROM (10-12 March 1998). Twenty-two participating UN

entities and sixteen government ministries agreed on a program of action for a

consolidated approach to developmental issues in FYROM:

1. regional and international cooperation based on expanded trade, economic,

political and cultural relations;

2. confidence-building measures, including macroeconomic stability;

3. measures to establish and enabling legislative framework for private sector

development;

4. structural reforms and modernization required to prepare the ground for a competitive

export-oriented economy;

5. reforms to strengthen public administration, corporate governance and transparency

and professionalism in public sector management; and

6. consolidation of an etat de droit based on the rule of law.

Participants welcomed the forthcoming establishment of a UNDP country office to

continue and expand the social action program of UNPREDEP.

The Secretary-General observed that the overall climate of inter-ethnic relations has been

negatively affected by the imprisonment of the ethnic Albanian mayor of Gostivar, Mr.

Rufi Osmani, whose sentence was recently reduced from 13 years and 8 months to 7

years. His subsequent imprisonment sparked a series of protest marches launched by

ethnic Albanians in FYROM.

Overall, the Secretary-General observed that recent developments in Kosovo have

highlighted the danger of renewed violence in the area and the serious repercussions such

violence can have upon the security situation in the former Yugoslav Republic of

Macedonia. The slow progress in implementing some civilian aspects of the Dayton

Peace Accords in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the return of refugees and displaced

persons caused concern that could affect regional peace and security. The presence of

UNPREEP has so far contributed successfully to preventing the spillover of conflicts

elsewhere in the region to FYROM. During the past few months, UNPREDEP has been
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-8

particularly important in diffusing tensions that could have arisen as a result of the crisis in

Kosovo.

The Secretary-General stated that the FYROM Foreign Minister had in a letter of 15 May

1998 (S/1998/401) referred to the changed circumstances in the region which spoke

against weakening international presence in the country. Concern was expressed as to

the negative developments north of the border, especially in Kosovo, the yet unmarked

border between FYROM and Yugoslavia, and tensions along the border between Albania

and Yugoslavia. Thus, peace and security In FYROM could be endangered and a

security gap would arise should UNPREDEP's military's component be withdrawn after

31 August 1998. Against this background, the Secretary-General noted that one possible

option the Security Council.might wish to consider was to extend the mission with its

mandate unchanged for a further period of 6 months untl28 February 1999.

4. UNPREDEP FACT SHEET:

PROFILE OF THE MISSION

.Security Council authorization: Resolution 983 of 31 March 1995

Location: Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

Headquarters: Skopje, capital of FYROM

Date of establishment: 31 March 1995

Duration: Initial period of 8 months; currently extended by Security Council resolution

S/RES/1186/1998 of 21 July 1998 until 28 February 1999 with a strength increase up to

1,050 personnel in view of the Kosovo crisis, and to deter threats and prevent clashes, to

monitor the border areas, and to report developments which could pose a threat to the

former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, including illicit arms flows and other activities

that were prohibited under resolution 1160 (1998).

Authorized strength: 1,050 troops; 35 military observers; 26 civilian police

Support staff : some 50 international civilian staff and about 109 local staff

Current strength as of 30 September 1998: 884 military personnel mission total: 823 troops,

35 military observers, 26 civilian police, provided by 27 nations

Special Representative of the Secretary..General in the former Yugoslav Republic of

Macedonia, Head of Mission: Mr. Henryk J. Sokalski (Poland) (until September 1998)

Force .Commander: Brigadier-General Ove Johnny Stromberg (Norway); succeding

Brigadier-Generals Bent Sohneman (Denmark) and Bo Wranker of Sweden

Senior Police Monitor: Mr. Hans-Peter Tanner (Switzerland)

Chief Military Observer: Colonel David Kattah (Ghana)
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-9

Fatalities: 4 (3 military and 1 civilian) as of 1 September 1998

Financing: A report of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary

Questions of 7 May 1998 estimated the gross budgetary requirements for UNPREDEP

for the period 1 July 1998 to 30 June 1999 to amount to $22.3 million. An earlier report of

the Secretary-General dated 25 February 1998 (A/52/805) contained the budget for

maintaining UNPREDEP from 1 July through 31 August 1998, amounting to $15.7 million

gross ($15.4 million net) and. for its liquidation thereafter in the amount of $6.6 million

gross ($6.3 mIlhon net). The combined costs would result In gross requirements of $22.1

million and $21.6 million net. A total amount of $51.6 million gross ($50.1 million net) was

appropriated by the General Assembly for UNPREDEP for the period 1 July 1996 to 39

June 1997. By adopting resolution 51/154 B on 13 June 1997, the General Assembly

decided to appropriate $46,506,700 gross ($44,969,500 net) for maintaining UNPREDEP

during the period 1 July 1997 to 30 June 1998. By adopting resolution 51/154 B on 13

June 1997, the General Assembly decided to appropriate $46,506,700 gross ($44,969,500

net) for maintaining UNPREDEP during the period 1 July 1997 to 30 June 1998. The

General Assembly, on 16 December 1996, appropriated a total of $25,373,400 gross

($24,615,600 net) for maintaining UNPREDEP during the period 1 July 1996 to 30 June

1997, inclusive of $632,400 for the support account for peace-keeping operations

(resolution 51/154). In so doing, the Assembly took into account the amount of

$26,296,200 gross ($26,296,200 net) already appropriated for UNPREDEP for the period

1 July through 31 through December 1996 in resolution 50/243 of 7 June 1996.

5. POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS AND SECURITY

COUNCIL ACTION

14 July 1998: The Secretary-General’s report on UNPREDEP recommends mandate

extension and strengthening of Force

On 14 July 1998, the Secretary-General submitted to the Security Council his report on

!the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (5/1998/644) . The SecretaryGeneral stated that, since the start of the Kosovo crisis, UNPREDEP has intensified

patrols along the borders with Albania and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and has

also established temporary observation posts for 24-hour monitoring and reporting on

activities at the borders throughout its area of operation. The imposition of these

additional tasks has come at a time when the fulfillment of UNPREDEP's existing

responsibilities have already stretched the reduced strength of the operation to the limit.

The Secretary-General recommended thus that the Security Council might consider the

extension of UNPREDEP's mandate for a further period of six months, until 28 February

1999. In view of the constraints placed on UNPREDEP in monitoring and reporting on

developments along the borders, including the Kosovo stretch of the border, the Council

might also consider increasing UNPREDEP's troop level by 350 all ranks. The majority

of these troops, 230 in total, would be deployed at nine new permanently manned

observation posts in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia along the Kosovo

(Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) and Albanian borders. The troops would, in accordance

with resolution 795 (1992), monitor and report developments in the border area, including
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-10

those developments that would have a bearing on the implementation of the relevant

provisions of resolution 1160 (1998). A reserve of two platoons composed of

approximately 60 soldiers would perform limited ground and air patrolling duties. Due to

the important confidence-building role played by the military observer and the civilian

police elements of UNPREDEP, the Security Council might consider increasing their

strength by an additional twelve and twenty-four personnel respectively. The

strengthened military observers and civilian police elements would intensify community

and border patrols as well as monitoring and reporting of the situation at border crossing

stations.

15 June NA TO air exercises over FYROM aim at assisting the country to maintain

stability and integrity; NATO defense ministers condemn violence in Kosovo and

support continuation of UNPREDEP

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General in FYROM reported on 15 June

1998 that, following NATO's decision to carry out a military air exercise over FYROM

and Albania as a demonstration of the Alliance's firm stand on the ongoing crisis in

Kosovo, approval was given after intense consultations by the FYROM government.

Defense Mimster Lazar Kitanovski emphasized :that the air exercise proved NATO's

determination to assist FYROM in maintaining its integrity and stability. Some 85 NATO

planes carrying live ammunition participated in the 15 June air e,xercise 'Determined

Falcon". On 11 June In Brussels, NATO defense ministers condemned the violence in

Kosovo and extended Support for the continuation of UNPREDEP and provision of

possible support for UN and OSCE monitoring powers.

Kosovo crisis affects mission area; 1 June report of the Secretary-General includes

Security Council option to extend UNPREDEP through 28 February 1999

In a report of I June 1998 to the Security Council on UNPREDEP (SI19981454), the

Secretary-General stated that, according to Security Council resolution 1110(1997) of 28

May 1997, the phased reduction of the UNPREDEP military component by 300 all ranks

was completed by 30 November 1997, bringing its strength to 750 troops. At the same

time, the total number of observation posts was reduced from 19 to 8, all of which are

situated at strategic locations along the border with Albania and the Federal Republic of

Yugoslavia.

In response to the crisis in Kosovo, UNPREDEP has increased its patrols along the

border with Yugoslavia, using both ground and air assets. It has also established

temporary observation posts for 24-hour monitoring and reporting on activities at the

border throughout the area of operation. Patrolling by boat has also commenced at Ohrid

and Prespa Lakes. Such intensive monitoring, however, could not be sustained over a

long time with the current troop strength.

6. UNPREDEP MANDATE

Established on 31 March 1995 by Security Council resolution 983 (1995) to replace

UNPROFOR in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, UNPREDEP's mandate

remained essentially the same: to monitor and report any developments in the border areas
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-11

which could undermine confidence and stability In the former Yugoslav Republic of

Macedonia and threaten its territory.

7. UNPREDEP's MAIN ACTIVITIES

UNPREDEP has the following main activities: 1) Preventive deployment and good

offices, 2) Monitoring borders and reporting on the situation along the borders with the

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Albania, 3) fulfilling the military component of

UNPREDEP by cooperating with civilian agencies and offers ad hoc community services

agencies, 4) provision of humanitarian assistance to the local population, 5) promoting

reconciliation and engaging in peace-making, peace-building humanitarian activities.

8. MILITARY ASPECTS

The crisis in neighboring Albania, where a collapse of investment schemes bereft

thousands of their lifetime savings, has caused much anxiety in FYROM. The

Macedonian army, especially its border guards, has been mobilized on a state of alert. The

Albanian-Macedonian border is closed during curfew hours as the authorities fear an

influx of refugees which could disrupt the country's already fragile inter-ethnic balance.

The start of the drawdown of UNPREDEP, which began in the first week of March

1997, coincided with the debacle in Albania and added to the apprehension of the

Macedonian Government and its citizens. Thus, the Macedonian Ministry of Foreign

Affairs deplored on 7 March 1997 that the reduction of UNPREDEP personnel and

withdrawal from certain observation posts along the border with Albania, as mandated in

Security Council resolution 1082 (1996), appeared to have begun at the most inappropriate

time. In this context, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General stated on 6

March that, despite the drawdown schedule, UNPREDEP patrolling at that border had in

fact intensified in view of the situation in Albania.

9. THE POLITICAL AND SOCIA SITUATION IN

MACEDONIA

The political situation in the republic remained very complex. Some leaderws of the

ethnic Albanian population stepped up their demands for omprovements in their political,

economic, social, cultural and economic status, including recognition of Albanian as

FYROM’s second official language. Internal political and social stability were also

endangered by rising unemployment and a declining economy. The political scene

remained divided across ideological and ethnic lines. A complex network of thnic

problems, in particular between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians, contributed to

political uncertainty and social tensions.

10. BACKGROUNDER: THE UN IN THE FORMER

YUGOSLAVIA

Historically, Yugoslavia's internal boundaries rarely coincided with demographic

distribution. Among the major communities, all of them Slavic, were Croats, Muslims and
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-12

Serbs; in addition, there were numbers of Macedonians, Montenegrins and Slovenes, as

well as those who referred to themselves as Yugoslavs. The population also included a

number of ethnic Albanians, Hungarians and others. According to the 1991 census, Serbs

comprised about 36 per cent of a total population of some 23.5 million people, Croats

about 20 percent and Muslims about 10 per cent. In Serbia, Serbs comprised some 66 per

cent of the population, Muslims 2.5 per cent and Croats 1.1 per cent; more than 81 per

cent of the population in Kosovo was ethnic Albanian, and in Vojvodina there was a large

minority of ethnic Hungarians. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, 44 per cent of the population

were Muslims, 31 per cent were Serbs and 17 per cent Croats. In Croatia, 78 per cent

were Croats, 12 per cent Serbs and fewer than 1 per cent Muslims. During the

administration headed by Josip Broz Tito, the political life of the country and of the

republics was structured to balance the diversity of the population and knit it together.

Independence declarations, fighting begins

In June 1991, following popular referendums in Croatia and Slovenia, those two republics

declared themselves independent. A referendum in the republIc of Macedoia (now

refer:ed to as the former Yugoslav RepublIc of Macedorua or FYROM) on 8 September

also supported Independence as did a vote in the Assembly of the Republic of Bosnia and

Herzegovina in October. The vote in the assembly was supported by Bosnian Muslims

and Bosnian Croats, but it caused the Bosnian Serb members to walk out and the Bosnian

Serb community to affirm separateness. The Republic of Serbia strongly disapproved the

declarations of independence and expressed grave concern over the fate of Serbs resident

in Croatia and of Serbs resident in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Fighting in Croatia began in

June 1991 when Serbs living in Croatia, with the support of the Yugoslav People's Army

(JNA), opposed the declaration of independence. In Slovenia, where there was not any

significant Serb minority, fighting was brief and JNA withdrew after an agreement

brokered by the European Community [now the European Union] entered into force at the

beginning of July 1991.

United Nations involvement

The United Nations involvement in the former Yugoslavia began on 25 September 1991

when the Security Council unanimously adopted its resolution 713 ( 1991) calling on all

States to implement immediately a general and complete embargo on all deliveries of

weapons and military equipment to Yugoslavia. Secretary-General Javier Perez de

Cuellar appointed Mr. Cyrus Vance, former United States Secretary of State, as his

Personal Envoy for Yugoslavia on 8 October 1991. By its resolution 724 (1991) of 15

December, the Security Council approved a report by the Secretary-General which

contained a plan for a possible peace-keeping operation.

UNPROFOR established

On 21 February, the Security Council, by its resolution 743 (1992), established

UNPROFOR for an initial period of 12 months as an interim arrangement to create the

conditions of peace and security required for the negotiation of an overall settlement of

the crisis within the framework of the European Community's Conference on Yugoslavia.

The Council requested the Secretary-General to deploy immediately those elements of
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-13

UNPROFOR which could assist in developing an implementation plan. The Security

Council authorized the full deployment of the Force by its resolution 749 (1992) of 7

Apn11992.

UNPROFOR was first deployed in Croatia. Subsequently, its mandate was extended to

Bosnia and Herzegovina and to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. It also had

.an operational mandate in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and. Montenegro, and a

liaison presence in Slovenia. UNPROFOR established its headquarters in Sarajevo,

Bosnia and Herzegovina. The headquarters was later moved to Zagreb, in Croatia. From

March 1992 to Apri11993, UNPROFOR was headed by its Force Commander. In May

1993, the Secretary-General appointed Mr. Thorvald Stoltenberg (Norway) as his Special

Representative for the former Yugoslavia and first civilian head of UNPROFOR. In

January 1994, he was succeeded by Mr. Yasushi Akashi (Japan) as Special

Representative and Head of UNPROFOR. In March 1995, UNPROFOR's operational

commands in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia was led by Brigadier-Genera

Juha Engstrom of Finland.

First United Nations preventive operation authorized

On 11 November 1992, the President of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

requested the deployment of United Nations observers in view of his concern about the

possible impact of fighting elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia. Such deployment was

also recommended by the Co-Cha1rmen of the ICFY Steering Committee. With the

Security Council's approval, the Secretary-General sent a group of military , police and

civilian personnel to assess the situation.

On 9 December 1992, the Secretary-General recommended to the Council an expansion

of UNPROFOR's mandate and strength to establish a United Nations presence on the

Republic's borders with Albania and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia

and.Montenegro). The mandate would be essentlally preventive, to monitor and report

any developments m the border areas which could undermine confidence and stability in

the Republic and threaten its territory. The enlargement would comprise a battalion of up

to 700 all ranks, 35 military observers, 26 civilian police monitors, 10 civil affairs staff, 45

administrative staff and local interpreters. The headquarters would be in the capital,

Skopje.

The Security Council authorized the establishment of UNPROFOR's presence in the

former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia by its resolution 795 (1992) of 11 December

1992. Subsequently, on 18 June 1993, the Council welcomed the offer by the United

States to provide about 300 troops to reinforce UNPROFOR's presence in the republic

and, in its resolution 842 (1993) authorized the depIoyment of additional personnel.

The first civilian police monitors arrived in Skopje on 27 December 1992. They were

subsequently deployed along the northern and western borders of the republic. As of midMay 1993, there were 24 I monitors. A joint Nordic battalion, consisting of contingents

from Finland, Norway and Sweden, became operational on 18 February 1993. It took

over from the Canadian company which had been employed on an interim basis on 7

January, pending the arrival of the joint battalion. The battalion, a 434-man force
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-14

composed of three rifle companies, was deployed on the western border from Debvar

northward and on the northern border up to the border with Bulgaria. The western border

area south of Debar was covered by United Nations military observers, who constituted

the main United Nations presence there. As at mid-May 1993, there were 19 military

observers in the area of operations. The United States contingent of some 300 soldiers

arrived in the Skopje area in the first two weeks of July 1993, deploying to the Republic's

side of the border with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) on

20 August.

Border demarcation between FYROM and the Federal Reoublic Of YugosIavia

The Secretary-General reported in July 1993 that UNPROFOR military personnel

stationed within FYROM have had a number of encounters with soldiers of the Federal

Republic of Yugoslavia who claimed that UNPROFOR had intruded into the country's

territory. These Incidents have so far been resolved satisfactorily. The problem arose

from the fact that the borders between the two former republics of the former Socialist

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, previously only an internal border, has not been definitely

delineated. The two Governments have not been yet able to resolve this matter

conclusively. This constituted a potential source of conflict, but both sides have so far

refrained from resorting to threats or moves against one another or against UNPROFOR.

Meanwhile, UNPROFOR continued to lend its good offices in the role of "go-between" as

and when required. In addition, the United Nations Military Observers (UNMOs) and

United Nations Civilian Police (UNCIVPOL) continued regular patrols to monitor the

situation and visited border villages to gain the confidence of their Inhabitants and assist

In defusing possible Inter-ethnic tensions.

Securitv Council establishes three successor missions to UNPROFOR: UNPREDEP

succeeds in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

On 31 March 1995, the Security Council decided to replace UNPROFOR by three

separate but interlinked peace-keeping operations. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the

Council retained the mandate and name of UNPROFOR. In Croatia, it established the

United Nations Confidence Restoration Operation, to be known as UNCRO. Within the

former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the Council decided by resolution 983(1995) that

UNPROFOR would become the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force

(UNPREDEP), with mandate, responsibilities and composition identical to those in place.

Thus, with respect to UNPREDEP, the Secretary-General Proposed on 12 May 1995 that

the present composition of military contingents from Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden

and the United States of America be maintained.

Their joint theatre headquarters, known as United Nations Peace Forces headquarters

(UNPF-HQ), was established in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Following the

restructuring of UNPROFOR in March 1995, Mr. Akashi continued to serve as the

Secretary-General's Special Representative and Chief of all United Nations peacekeeping forces in the former Yugoslavia. General Bernard Janvier was appointed

Theatre Force Commander responsible for all three operations. Effective 1 November
BALKANS-APPENDIX J J-15

1995, Mr. Kofi Aru1an (Ghana) succeeded Mr. Akashi as the Secretary-General's

Special Envoy to the Former Yugoslavia and in this context to NATO. UNPREDEP is

headed by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the former Yugoslav

Republic of Macedonia, Mr. Henryk Sokalski (Poland). Its military commander was

Brigadier-General Juha Engstrom (Finland), who was subsequently replaced by Bo

Lennart Wranker (Sweden) on 1 March 1996 as UNPREDEP Force Commander.

UNPREDEP mandate extended and strength enforced

UNPREDEP was formally established by the Security Council in resolution 983 (1995) of

31 March 1995. On 30 May 1995, by adopting resolution 1058 (1996), the Security

Council extended UNPREDEP's mandate for a six-month period through 30 November

1996. On 1 February 1996, the Security Council concurred in principle with the

Secretary-General's recommendation that UNPEDEP become an independent mission.

By its resolution 1046 (1996) of 13 February 1996, the Council authorized an increase in

the Force's strength by 50 military personnel for the duration of its mandate and approved

the establishment of the position of Force Commander of UNPREDEP. On 1 March

1996, Brigadier-General Bo Lennart Wranker (Sweden) took up those functions. By

adopting resolution 1082 of 27 November 1996, the Council extended the mission's

mandate for a further six-month period through 31 May 1997.

Return to Table of Contents
BALKANS-APPENDIX K K-1

Appendix K

Summary of the General Framework Agreement

(The Dayton Accord)

Summary of the General Framework Agreement

The Dayton Proximity Talks culminated in the initialing of a General Framework

Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was initialed by the Republic of

Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

(FRY). The Agreement was witnessed by representatives of the Contact Group of

nations -- the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Russia - and the European

Union Special Negotiator.

General Framework Agreement

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia agree to fully

respect the sovereign equality of one another and to settle disputes by peaceful means.

The FRY and Bosnia and Herzegovina recognize each other, and agree to discuss further

aspects of their mutual recognition.

The parties agree to fully respect and promote fulfillment of the commitments made in the

various Annexes, and they obligate

themselves to respect human rights and the rights of refugees and displaced persons.

The parties agree to cooperate fully with all entities, including those authorized by the

United Nations Security Council, in implementing the peace settlement and investigating

and prosecuting war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law.

Military Aspects

The cease-fire that began with the agreement of October 5, 1995 will continue.

Foreign combatant forces currently in Bosnia are to be withdrawn within 30 days.

The parties must complete withdrawal of forces behind a zone of separation of

approximately 4 km within an agreed period. Special provisions relate to Sarajevo and

Gorazde.
BALKANS-APPENDIX K K-2

As a confidence-building measure, the parties agree to withdraw heavy weapons and

forces to cantonment/barracks areas within an agreed period and to demobilize forces

which cannot be accommodated in those areas.

The agreement invites into Bosnia and Herzegovina a multinational military

Implementation Force, the IFOR, under the command of NATO, with a grant of authority

from the UN.

The IFOR will have the right to monitor and help ensure compliance with the agreement

on military aspects and fulfill certain supporting tasks. The IFOR will have the right to

carry out its mission vigorously, including with the use of force as necessary. It will have

unimpeded freedom of movement, control over airspace, and status of forces protection.

A Joint Military Commission is established, to be chaired by the IFOR Commander.

Persons under indictment by the International War Crimes Tribunal cannot participate.

Information on mines, military personnel, weaponry and other items must be provided to

the Joint Military Commission within agreed periods.

All combatants and civilians must be released and transferred without delay in accordance

with a plan to be developed by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Regional Stabilization

The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Federation and the Bosnian Serb Republic

must begin negotiations within 7 days, under Organization for Security and Cooperation in

Europe (OSCE) auspices, with the objective of agreeing on confidence-building measures

within 45 days. These could include, for example, restrictions on military deployments and

exercises, notification of military activities and exchange of data.

These three parties, as well as Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, agree not

to import arms for 90 days and not to import any heavy weapons, heavy weapons

ammunition, mines, military aircraft, and helicopters for 180 days or until an arms control

agreement takes effect.

All five parties must begin negotiations within 30 days, under OSCE auspices, to agree on

numerical limits on holdings of tanks, artillery, armored combat vehicles, combat aircraft

and attack helicopters.

If the parties fail to establish limits on these categories within 180 days, the agreement

provides for specified limits to come into force for the parties.

The OSCE will organize and conduct negotiations to establish a regional balance in and

around the former Yugoslavia.
BALKANS-APPENDIX K K-3

Inter-Entity Boundary

An Inter-Entity Boundary Line between the Federation and the Bosnian Serb Republic is

agreed.

Sarajevo will be reunified within the Federation and will be open to all people of the

country.

Gorazde will remain secure and accessible, linked to the Federation by a land corridor.

The status of Brcko will be determined by arbitration within one year.

Elections

Free and fair, internationally supervised elections will be conducted within six to nine

months for the Presidency and House of

Representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for the House of Representatives of the

Federation and the National Assembly and presidency of the Bosnian Serb Republic, and,

if feasible, for local offices.

Refugees and persons displaced by the conflict will have the right to vote (including by

absentee ballot) in their original place of residence if they choose to do so.

The parties must create conditions in which free and fair elections can be held by

protecting the right to vote in secret and ensuring freedom of expression and the press.

The OSCE is requested to supervise the preparation and conduct of these elections.

All citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina aged 18 or older listed on the 1991 Bosnian census

are eligible to vote.

Constitution

A new constitution for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which will be known as

"Bosnia and Herzegovina", will be adopted upon signature at Paris.

Bosnia and Herzegovina will continue as a sovereign state within its present

internationally-recognized borders. It will consist of two entities: the Federation and the

Bosnian Serb Republic.

The Constitution provides for the protection of human rights and the free movement of

people, goods, capital and services throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The central government will have a Presidency, a two chamber legislature, and a

constitutional court. Direct elections will be held for the Presidency and one of the

legislative chambers.
BALKANS-APPENDIX K K-4

There will be a central bank and monetary system, and the central government will also

have responsibilities for foreign policy, law enforcement, air traffic control,

communications and other areas to be agreed.

Military coordination will take place through a committee including members of the

Presidency.

No person who is serving a sentence imposed by the International Tribunal, and no person

who is under indictment by the Tribunal and who has failed to comply with an order to

appear before the Tribunal, may stand as a candidate or hold any appointive, elective, or

other public office in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Arbitration

The Federation and the Bosnian Serb Republic agree to enter into reciprocal commitments

to engage in binding arbitration to resolve disputes between them, and they agree to design

and implement a system of arbitration.

Human Rights

The agreement guarantees internationally recognized human rights and fundamental

freedoms for all persons within Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A Commission on Human Rights, composed of a Human Rights Ombudsman and a

Human Rights Chamber (court), is established.

The Ombudsman is authorized to investigate human rights violations, issue findings, and

bring and participate in proceedings before the Human Rights Chamber.

The Human Rights Chamber is authorized to hear and decide human rights claims and to

issue binding decisions.

The parties agree to grant UN human rights agencies, the OSCE, the International

Tribunal and other organizations full access to monitor the human rights situation.

Refugees and Displaced Persons

The agreement grants refugees and displaced persons the right to safely return home and

regain lost property, or to obtain just compensation.

A Commission for Displaced Persons and Refugees will decide on return of real property

or compensation, with the authority to issue final decisions.

All persons are granted the right to move freely throughout the country , without

harassment or discrimination.

The parties commit to cooperate with the ICRC in finding all missing persons.
BALKANS-APPENDIX K K-5

Commission to Preserve National Monuments

A Commission to Preserve National Monuments is established.

The Commission is authorized to receive and act upon petitions to designate as National

Monuments movable or immovable property of great importance to a group of people with

common cultural, historic, religious or ethnic heritage..

When property is designated as a National Monument, the Entities will make every effort

to take appropriate legal, technical, financial and other measures to protect and conserve

the National Monument and refrain from taking deliberate actions which might damage it.

Bosnia and Herzegovina Public Corporations

A Bosnia and Herzegovina Transportation Corporation is established to organize and

operate transportation facilities, such as roads, raIlways and ports.

A Commission on Public Corporations is created to examine establishing other Bosnia and

Herzegovina Public Corporations to operate joint public facilities, such as utilities and

postal service facilities.

Civilian Implementation

The parties request that a High Representative be designated, consistent with relevant

UN Security Council resolutions, to

coordinate and facilitate civilian aspects of the peace settlement, such as humanitarian aid,

economic reconstruction, protection of human rights, and the holding of free elections.

The High Representative will chair a Joint Civilian Commission comprised of senior

political representatives of the parties, the

IFOR Commander and representatives of civilian organizations.

The High Representative has no authority over the IFOR.

International Police Task Force

The UN is requested to establish a UN International Police Task Force (IPTF) to carry

out various tasks, including training and

advising local law enforcement personnel, as well as monitoring and inspecting law

enforcement activities and facilities.

The IPTF will be headed by a Commissioner appointed by the UN Secretary General.
BALKANS-APPENDIX K K-6

IPTF personnel must report any credible information on human rights violations to the

Human Rights Commission, the International Tribunal or other appropriate organizations.

Return to Table of Contents
BALKANS-APPENDIX L L-1

Appendix L

Summary of the Conclusions and Proposals of the International

Commission on the Balkans (1996)

P art 1:

The War and the International Response

Conclusions

The International Commission drew the following conclusions regarding the war in the

former Yugoslavia and the international response:

The primary cause of the failure of negotiations over Bosnia-Herzegovina, until summer

1995, was the refusal of the leading international powers to exert a credible threat of

force much earlier in order to impose a settlement.

The gap between the rhetoric and the actual willingness of the leading international

powers to back their words with actions had devastating and shameful consequences.

Given the forces deployed by the warring parties on the ground, the U.N. forces were

seriously under-equipped to provide the level of deterrence required for successful

peacekeeping.

Bosnia showed that humanitarian intervention, although necessary in its own right, cannot

substitute for a political strategy involving, if necessary, the use of force; it does limit

options for more robust political and military intervention.

The U.N. policy of impartial humanitarian intervention should be measured against the

warring parties' respect for mandates handed down by the Security Council.

The U .N .Secretariat has its own institutional identity and interests. In Croatia and Bosnia

and Herzegovina, the Security Council delivered impracticable, unenforceable, crucially

ambiguous mandates. The U.N. Secretariat reacted by quietly 'redefining' the mandates in

order to minimize the risks of implementation.

The final conclusion is perhaps the most tragic. While the Dayton Settlement was the best

obtainable in autumn 1995, there is a strong argument that, with better coordination among

the outside nations and institutions, a settlement at least as satisfactory could have been

reached earlier.

Part 2:

 Country Conditions, Trends, and Proposals
BALKANS-APPENDIX L L-2

Bosnia and Herzegovina

The International Commission made the following recommendations with respect to

Bosnia and Herzegovina:

I. A reasonable guarantee of long-term security is the precondition for peaceful

reintegration or even peaceful coexistence, and this guarantee can only be provided by an

international military presence that continues for several years after December 1996.

2. The institutions intended to provide a common roof for this divided country must be

secured and strengthened in every possible way.

3. The solemn commitment made at Dayton by all the signatories to cooperate with the

International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia should be enforced.

4. If the signatories of the Dayton Accords do not perform their commitment to deliver

indicted persons for trial before the Tribunal, the Commission recommends that the

Tribunal exercise its legal power to try them "in absentia."

5. The existence of free and independent media must be guaranteed.

6. A critical task for Western governments, foundations, and non-governmental

organizations is to help rebuild "civil society" - the nationally mixed institutions and social

infrastructure destroyed in the war.

7. International efforts should now focus on ensuring that a further round of elections can

be held within two years under truly free and fair conditions.

8. Reconstruction should give priority to projects that promote the economic reintegration

of the country.

Neither the Bosniak-Croat Federation nor Republika Srpska is viable on its own;

economic reconstruction can have positive 'spin-off' effects in terms of unifying the

country, provided that economic and infrastructural reconstruction projects are crafted to

unify rather than separate.

Although there is agreement about the general approach to reconstruction and the

principle of conditionality, there are some differences as to the interpretation of the latter.

One of the most serious aspects of the entire war in former Yugoslavia is gangsterism

and corruption on a huge scale.

9. The civilian side of the Western presence must be rationalized and strengthened.

The role of the High Representative should be strengthened and given a long-term

mandate. Coordination between the civilian and military aspects of the Western presence

should be improved.

Better coordination of peace-building activities should have high priority in the

implementation process.

A fundamental reform of the public security sector is required.
BALKANS-APPENDIX L L-3

Western funding must be assured, but conditioned on the parties' fulfillment of their own

commitments under Dayton.

10. Persistent efforts to implement the right of refugees to return home should be

accompanied by generous conditions for those who choose to remain abroad.

Croatia

The International Commission made the following recommendations with respect to

Croatia:

11. The treatment of minorities should be improved. Peace with its neighbors will largely

depend on Croatia' s action on this issue.

12. There should be a serious attempt, internationally monitored, to promote the return of

the refugee Serb population.

13. Real freedom of the press must be guaranteed, to end party or government control of

the national broadcast media and make frequencies available to independent broadcasters.

14. The local dimension of democracy-decentralization and regional status-should be

promoted.

15. The government in Zagreb should be expected to establish constructive relations with

Bosnia and Herzegovina, help dissolve the 'Croat Republic of Herzegovina-Bosnia,

promote the functioning of the Bosniak-Croat Federation, and take part in BosniaHerzegovina's economic recovery .

Serbia

The International Commission made the following recommendations concerning Serbia:

16. Serbia's reintegration into the community of nations should be made contingent on its

respect for the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its compliance with the

Dayton Accords. This includes the provisions relating to indicted war criminals in Serbia

itself as well as in Republika Srpska. President Milosevic, as the tie-breaking head of the

Republika Srpska delegation of Dayton, should be called upon to fulfill the commitments

he made there in its name.

17. Belgrade should accept the draft treaty regarding the succession of the former

Yugoslavia, regulating the distribution of its debts and assets. The lack of resolution of this

issue has serious implications for all the Yugoslav successor states, including their

relations with international financial institutions.

18. Freedom of the media must be guaranteed (see the specific recommendations

regarding media).

19. There should be a coordinated Western strategy for recognizing the new Yugoslavia,

and integrating it into international institutions. Serbia' s quest for legitimization offers the

West a leverage that should not be wasted. Serbia and Montenegro call themselves
BALKANS-APPENDIX L L-4

Yugoslavia; yet there is a U.N. resolution stating that Yugoslavia has ceased to exist.

Belgrade should be expected to reapply for its admission to these organizations, and that

context offers an opportunity for addressing the fundamental outstanding issues. Chief

among these is Kosovo.

Kosovo

The International Commission made the following recommendations regarding Kosovo:

20. Serbia should lift martial law entirely, restore Kosovo's status of autonomy, and effect

a gradual withdrawal of troops and police, unilaterally, before the start of negotiations.

21. The Kosovo Albania leadership should, in return, be ready to enter negotiations

without further preconditions, thus backing off from their refusal to talk about anything

other than independence.

22. Although the final outcome cannot be prejudged, it would be expected to take

legitimate Serb concerns into account and, at the same time, to acknowledge the right of

the Kosovo Albanians to self-government, including but not limited to:

The right of the Albanians to control their own police and judiciary as well as health,

cultural, and educational institutions.

Reliable guarantees of the rights of the Serbian minority in Kosovo.

If no agreement can be reached within a reasonable time, say two years, the Commission

feels that the future status of Kosovo should be submitted to legally binding arbitration

and, if the arbitrators so recommend, a Kosovo-wide referendum on the various options.

A concerted international effort should buttress this process. A long-term presence of an

OSCE monitoring mission would be indispensable.

23. Along with the lifting of martial law, a coordinated effort is needed by the Albanian

leadership, Western foundations and NGOs, and the Serbs, to restore a normal civil and

cultural life to Kosovo. This means, above all, a unified Pristina University, with financial

aid, technical help, and academic exchange programs aimed at restoring the University as

an open and pluralistic institution.

The Albanians

The International Commission made the following recommendations with respect to the

Albanians:

24. Albania's pro-Western orientation should be encouraged, but the Berisha government

must not be allowed to interpret it as a license for undemocratic behavior.

25. Concerted assistance should aim to bring Albania up to the economic level of its

neighbors; the key task is the building of infrastructure. The European Union and the

proposed Balkan Infrastructure Association (see below) should playa significant role in
BALKANS-APPENDIX L L-5

this. Italy and Greece have unique roles to play, both because of traditional ties and

because of their Albanian immigrant workers.

26. Turkish and other Balkan ties should be encouraged over other Islamic ties. Joining

the Islamic Conference was a unilateral decision by President Berhisha. Many leading

Albanians felt disquiet over it, for they do not define their country in religions terms-a

feature that distinguishes Albania from almost all other countries in the Balkans. Any

move to define Albanian nationhood in terms of religion would be a mistake.

Macedonia

The International Commission made the following recommendations with respect to

Macedonia:

27. The primary goal of outside influence should be to encourage an Albanian stake in

Macedonian statehood. This implies looking for a Macedonian-Albanian relationship within

the framework of the existing unitary state. To work, however, this approach will require

a high degree of decentralization and continued political restraint on both sides.

28. The presence of UNPREDEP, which provides a high degree of reassurance at a

relatively low cost and risk, should be maintained pending substantial progress in resolving

the Kosovo problem.

29. Steps should be taken to defuse the tense Tetovo University dispute. Such steps

should include the restoration of normal operations at Pristina University in neighboring

Kosovo, together with the complete opening of the Kosovo-Macedonia border; and the

establishment of a Southeast Europe University (an international graduate school) in

Macedonia with a curriculum designed to attract both Albanians and Slavic Macedonians,

as well as Balkan students from outside Macedonia.

Part 3:

The Region: Conclusions and Proposals

The International Commission drew the following conclusions and developed the following

proposals regarding the region as a whole:

30. The Commission recommends the establishment of a network of regional

commissions, corresponding to the issues and areas of potential conflict discussed in their

Report.

Balkan Regional Cooperation

31. The Commission advocates a free-trade area as the most politically realistic and

economically expedient starting point.
BALKANS-APPENDIX L L-6

32. Such a free-trade area might eventually become part of the Central European Free

Trade Area (CEFTA).

33. The Commission recommends the creation of a Transport and Infrastructure

Association for the entire Balkan space.

34. There should be a concerted, regional effort to combat organized crime, particularly

drugs and arms trafficking, and terrorism.

35. The European Union should provide support, technical and financial, for regional

efforts to counter environmental degradation.

Reconstruction and Development

36. The Commission considers that the following forms of international assistance should

be made available:

Improved market access for Balkan exports, especially those of Yugoslavia's successor

states. Quick financial assistance for infrastructure reconstruction and refugee

resettlement.

Traditional IMF balance-of-payments assistance and World Bank and ERBD

development assistance for stabilization, market reform, and structural adjustment efforts

in Bosnia and Herzegovina (and possible other countries).

Engagement in helping to settle the mutual claims of international banks, governments, and

citizens of the Yugoslav successor states will be critical.

Democracy: Civil Society and Media

37. The Commission recommends that public and private Western institutions establish, as

a long-term priority, the development and revival of the institutions of civil society,

including independent cultural or professional associations, independent judiciaries, and

free media.

38. A coordinating mechanism, an institute based in the Balkans, should be created to help

international NGOs identify the priorities of their local partners and avoid too much

duplication or working at cross-purposes.

39. We would also support the creation of a region-based center for encouraging the

building of democracy.

40. Priority should be given to reviewing the curricula, and in particular textbooks, which

are written from nationalist perspectives.

41. Consideration should be given in this context, too, to the establishment of a Southeast

European University (recommendation 29) on the lines of (or as an extension of) the

Central European University.
BALKANS-APPENDIX L L-7

42. Attention should be given to the development of local government in the Balkan states

and the fostering of intra-regional cooperation at the local level.

43. Western governments and international institutions should place a high priority on

freedom of the media in their dealings with the countries of the region.

44. The Commission considers that, in order to create conditions for the effective

participation of members of national minorities in cultural, social, and economic as well as

political life, the following measures are important:

Provisions for the protection of minorities should be embedded in the state constitution and

not solely in laws that can fairly easily be modified or reversed.

Minority rights should be spelled out as specifically as possible, not left in general terms

for the interpretation of local officials from the majority national group.

The electoral system should include proportional representation with a reasonable

minimum threshold.

Decentralization: regional and municipal autonomy is essential in mixed territories

(particularly where the minority is in a local majority).

45. The Commission recommends the development of an international judicial institution to

elaborate on the meaning of the right to "self-determination" of "peoples," as expressed in

the U.N. Charter. There is an inherent tension between the principle and the no less

important international commitment to the inviolability of borders. All the Balkan

protagonists have different interpretations on these matters. There is a clear need for a

tribunal on the limits to self-determination. This need not be a new institution. One obvious

candidate would be the present World Court; another could be the European Commission

and Court on Human Rights.

46. All Balkan states should recognize the right of individuals to define their identity.

47. Domestic legislation and domestic constitutions should be adapted to conform to

international agreements concerning the protection of minority rights.

48. State tolerance toward all religious communities should be ensured (even where there

exists an established creed).

49. Civil servants, particularly those working in the field of education and the judiciary,

should be trained to implement the minority protections of the law.

50. An independent ombudsman should be installed to deal with complaints concerning the

violation of rights in order to facilitate the relationship between the minorities and the legal

system.

51. Institutions should be established to monitor incitement to ethnic, racial, or religious

hatred in the media, which has been a major factor in all cases of ethnic tension or conflict

in the Balkans. Awareness of this problem and a sense of responsibility (rather than the
BALKANS-APPENDIX L L-8

introduction of restrictive legislation) should be developed among editors, journalists, and

politicians. Workshops and seminars should be organized in cooperation with major

Western media institutions.

52. In ethnically divided areas, such as Cyprus or Bosnia and Herzegovina, consideration

should be given to introducing a system of cross-voting as part of a broader power-sharing

system.

Cross-voting is an elaborately weighted voting system that is a politically

important attempt to build bridges across communities. ... In essence, crossvoting would mean that, in countries divided along community lines, members of

one community would also have a vote, albeit weighted downward, in the

elections of the other community. Thus, for example, Bosniaks would.have a

limited influence over the results of elections in Republika Srpska and vice versa.

Votes cast in the election of the 'other' community would be adjusted so as to

achieve the desired percentage strength of each community elections of the

other. ... The likely effects of cross-voting would be: (1) to give an incentive to

politicians to develop policies that would appeal to members of the other

community; and (2) to enhance in the federal legislature the bridge-building

presence of elected officials who depend on the votes of the other community

(and therefore would be more likely to take into account the wishes of these

voters). (International Commission, 1996, p. 164)

53. The Commission recommends the creation of a "Balkan Association of Partnership

for Peace, linked to NATO's wider structures, which could ensure-through a coordination

office at NATO - that all the members of NATO keep a continuing active interest in the

security of the region.

54. Maintain the Contact Group as a mechanism for common decision-making. (This

applies to Bosnia and Herzegovina, but may be useful for Balkans policy in general.) The

Contact Group might be expanded to include Italy - first, because of its geographic

proximity and many interests in the region; and second, because future uses of force

would most likely originate from bases on Italian soil.

55. Maintain the United States' military presence and engagement.

56. Foster transatlantic unity and a European defense identity.

57. NA TO members should recognize the need to demonstrate their will with military

force when necessary.

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