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Identity Politics, Imagined Communities, and the March of History: An

Examination of the Balkan Region

The Balkan region is at the crossroads of multiple small ethnic groups, at least

three major religions, and has historically been a territory with immense strategic value

for both local powers and supranational empires. Unfortunately, the confluence of all

these factors has rendered the Balkan region highly unstable as multiple outside interests

attempt to use local identity politics in order to gain control of the region for defense or

trade purposes, even as the pressure and influence of these forces tears apart the very

communities they ostensibly try to protect and lead.

1. Slavs Fighting Slavs: Identity Politics in the Balkan Region

Key to the study of the Balkan region throughout its history and the multiple

levels of power politics is to look at the ethnically Slavic makeup of the region and

examine the ethnic and linguistic power dynamics at play. The Slavic peoples are the

largest ethno-linguistic group in Eurasia and comprise over 50% of its population. The

Slavic peoples can be largely divided into three separate groups: the Western, Eastern and

Southern Slavs. Western Slavs comprise modern-day Poland, Czechs and Slovak peoples,

while Eastern Slavs are usually the Russians, Ukrainians, and inhabitants of Belarus. The

Western and Eastern Slavs are sometimes known as the Northern Slavs, in contrast to the

more isolated Southern Slavs of the Balkan region. Due to continuously changing

national boundaries, the area henceforth referred to as the Balkan region consists of the

current Serbian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Albanian,

Bulgarian, Romanian, and Slovene nations in addition to slivers of modern-day Greece

that have since been absorbed as populations have migrated and demographics changed.

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The Slavic peoples initially show up in historical records in the early sixth

century, moving into former Germanic lands in present-day Albania. The formerly

Germanic lands were empty because much of Europe was fleeing from the Huns, a

nomadic group of warriors that contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire and set the

stage for the development of Eastern Europe as a whole. The Slavic peoples moved into

the region vacated by the Germanic peoples and established their own semi-nomadic

social structures. By the time the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires had grown out of

the ruins of Rome the Slavic peoples were in the middle of “invasive expansion in great

numbers” (Moravisick and Jenkins, 1967) during the reign of Emperor Heraclitus of

Byzantium, somewhere between 610 and 641AD. Of particular note in this time was that

the Serbian people had already established an identity with a ruler known as an Archon

who had led them to Byzantine protection from the North, though any further details

concerning Slavic identity beyond their existence are not mentioned. When the Slavs

began to distinguish themselves as a distinct identity is unclear, as Mr. Kobylinski

believes such an identity might have begun development as early as 200 AD while others

hold it as late as 500 AD. As Byzantine historical sources are the ones that directly state

the presence of a Slavic people at the time of the sixth century, the latter interpretation is

more likely or at least confirmable.

The Christianization of the Slavic peoples and the beginning of a widely spread

Slav identity both occurred in the ninth century with the rise of the Bulgarian Empire,

which developed as a regional buttress against both Byzantine and Muslim invasion of

Southern Europe. In the process of establishing the Bulgarian Empire, the Slavic identity

reached the apogee of its cultural influence while paradoxically isolating the Southern

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Slavs from their Northern fellows. As the Bulgarian Empire established itself in the

Eastern European region, the Serbians and Croatians attempted to fight them off, only to

be subjugated by the Bulgarians in 924 and again in 998AD. Once subsumed by the

Bulgarians, the Southern Slavs then faced competing cultural dominance between their

Bulgarian conquerors who introduced the Slavic identity against the Grecian-influenced

Byzantine Empire, causing the Balkan lords to subdivide into smaller national groups

once more according to whichever empire offered the best deals at any given time, a

pattern which reoccurs with depressing regularity throughout Balkan history.

The competing cultural influences and divisions of regional medieval powers

isolated Southern Slavs linguistically, as Southern Slavic languages and culture drew

from both Bulgarian and Byzantine influences from Western Europe. At the same time,

the return of Germanic peoples to Austria in the tenth century also isolated the Balkans

on an ethnic and geographic level as well as linguistic. This isolation created a sense of

alienation that persisted in the cultural mindset of the Balkans and was only reinforced by

the domination of the Muslim Ottoman Empire from the 15th century to the 17th. The

consistent intrusion of foreign elements into the Balkan region combined with the cultural

remnants of Slavic identity to create a sense that the community is under siege by outside

threats and made it easy for successive rulers as well as outside powers to gain influence

or power by appealing to a nationalist fear of the “other” and asserting that the

community identity is under threat. This is exemplified by the 11th through the 14th

centuries, where the Serbian Empire under the Vojislavljević dynasty went through seven

kings in ten years as it alternatively sought to ally with Bulgaria against Byzantium,

proclaim its independence, and then ally with Byzantium as Hungary and Bulgaria

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pressured it in turn. Croatia experienced a similar state of unrest during this time, as its

territory consisted of both modern Croatia as well as Bosnia-Herzegovina, leaving it

vulnerable to Hungarian pressure from the north and Byzantine influence from the South.

Unlike its neighbor, Croatia joined with Hungary and was thus open to the cultural

exchange and ideas Hungary gained from Western Europe when the 15th -16th century’s

Renaissance and Enlightenment ideals began to flower. Still, the rapid changes of

leadership, local loyalty and uncertainty contributed to Balkan Slavic culture an

uncertainty in their political situation that allowed for the growth of easily manipulated

nationalism and ensured the prioritization of stability and constructed identity.

The Ottomans Arrive

As the Byzantine Empire collapsed, the many Orthodox Christian kingdoms in the

Balkans began competing with one another to maintain their territory or gain from a less

attentive rival. From the 10th through the 15th centuries there were a succession of

Bulgarian, Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian kingdoms, many of which held the same

territory, just at different times as the power of certain ethnic groups waxed and waned.

This historical phenomenon created the principle of “overlapping kingdoms” as

nationalist groups in the future would be able to use these contested territories to claim

their own legitimacy to the same territory. With a largely isolated population of farmers

and smaller ethnic groups combined with multiple groups of ambitious elites, the Balkan

region post Byzantine collapse was set to degenerate into continuous wars between the

ethnic states. However, the Ottoman Empire saw the power vacuum lefty behind by the

departure of the Byzantines and expanded into the area over the course of the 14th and

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15th centuries. While many of the specific gains and territorial losses the Ottomans

achieved were increased or rolled back by temporary Slavic victories, on the whole

Ottoman rule lasted in the region for the following five hundred years, a considerable

span of time for any national power to maintain control of a separate region.

Most importantly while the later narratives created by nationalist movements and

dissatisfied elites was one of Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, in fact a majority of the

conquest was actually through political alliance and intermarriage of local leader’s

children with those of Turkish kings. For the Ottomans, the Balkans were very much a

frontier and the convoluted nature of the small Orthodox kingdoms necessitated a slow

process of alliances, voluntary conversions and elite intermarriage. The Ottomans were

initially viewed by both the elites and the local citizens as a largely stabilizing force,

bringing weapons, supplies, and logistical forethought to the region necessary for

security. A common dilemma the Balkan region faced in this period and would face in

the post-World War and Cold War environments was a decision between stability and

identity-based leadership. When identity-based politics threatened to tear the region apart

in ethnic strife and civil war, citizens looked towards a local strongman or authoritarian

government who could guarantee public safety and common societal laws at the expense

of personal freedoms and ethnic identification.

Part of what made the Ottoman rule of the Balkan region so successful was that

the Ottoman government did not destroy local political identification, displace large

masses of local citizens or impose Islam on the citizenry, but rather operated a relatively

hands-off approach at first. Local populations remained in place even though certain

potentially troublesome elite social classes in Serbia, Bulgaria, and Macedonia were

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married into to generate legitimacy then decimated and destroyed despite previous

alliances. It is through these previously elite groups that a narrative of conquest and

Ottoman oppression began to take root as the Orthodox elite were understandably

disgruntled to see their power bases demolished and families destroyed. To the layman,

however, Ottoman rule was a significant improvement because as long as they paid their

taxes their new landlords who had the feudal system demolished and allowed them to join

the military protected them. Additionally, most of the Balkans were spared the cultural

and religious destruction usually associated with occupying armies, a significant relief for

the now exhausted Balkan citizens.

The massive change that Ottoman rule inspired in the Balkans was the mass

arrival of Islamic populations in the region, largely from Anatolia and intended to work

as military and administrative elites to replace the Orthodox nobles who had been

married into to gain legitimacy then either destroyed or converted voluntarily. Some of

these migrations and concentration of Muslim populations occurred in Bosnia, Albania,

Eastern Macedonia and Southern Bulgaria. There was also a small, but noticeable influx

of Jews from Spain, notable because of the Ottoman’s emphasis on tolerance for “People

of the Book”, namely Jews, Muslims, and Christians who would live together more or

less in harmony, save additional taxes on non-Muslims. Of particular note for the social,

religious and political development of the Balkans was the Ottoman implementation of

their millet and devsirme systems, which contributed to the ongoing ethno-religious

conflict in the region.

The term millet means community or nation in modern Turkish. At the time it also

meant confessional, or religious community. So, there was the Muslim millet, the

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Orthodox Christian millet, the Jewish millet, et cetera, a millet for each religion.

Essentially, what this meant was that the religious leaders of their community ruled each

community, and each religious committee had a representative in Istanbul. For the

Muslim community, this was the rule of the land because Islamic law was the official law

rule of the Ottoman state, but other religions they were almost like states within a state,

but not autonomous territories though extraterritorial. So, within your own village or

within your own neighborhood if you were in a larger city, you went to the religious

officials of your religion to pay taxes, go to school and settle disputes through court

systems. When a dispute crossed over between a Muslim and non-Muslim, the Muslim

court took precedence, but on the whole Balkan existing communities and their belief

systems would deal with cases.

There has been controversy and disagreement in the historical community over

how much the millet system was truly a system, because even though all these

communities technically had representation in Istanbul transportation time and distance

rendered most if not all of the truly important issues down to the local millet officials to

deal with them. It wasn’t very centralized, but it also operated in line with Ottoman rule

itself which was largely focused on maintaining its own existence by minimizing inter-

ethnic or religious strife in Turkey itself and didn’t emphasize Turkish nationalism at all.

There was a lot of local autonomy and patchwork sovereignties among Ottoman

territories, which largely contributed to the Balkan tolerance for Ottoman rule, as it

provided stability and security to the people with minimal loss of perceived self-rule due

to the millet system. But while the millet system and Ottoman rule allowed a great deal of

religious and ethnic tolerance at the time, it proved to merely be deferring ethno-religious

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strife to a later date.

One of the largest root causes for later ethno-religious strife the Ottoman empire

created the conditions for was the devsirme system, a form of state slavery which

increased religious tensions in the Baltic region and generated powerful and log-lasting

communal memories of inter-identity conflict. The devsirme system began under the

reign of the Sultan Murat the First as a counter to the power of Turkish nobles by

developing his own private organization of soldiers and officials. These soldiers and

officials were originally Christian children conscripted from families in Albanian,

Bulgarian, Serbian, and Greek communities at seven to ten years old. The practice also

involved the conversion of these formerly Christian children to Islam, a decision that

inspired great resentment and reluctance among the Baltic communities, to the extent that

some families would disfigure their children to prevent their conscription and conversion.

(Christos Yannaras, 2006) But while these largely Christian children were being forcibly

converted to Islam and taken away from their homes to distant corners of the Ottoman

Empire, they were also being given unparalleled opportunities for success and

advancement, in not only the military Janissary Corps but also the Enderun School,

which trained officials for the Turkish palace and other areas of the empire. Even the

highest administrative post in the Empire that of the Grand Vizier, was open to members

of the devsirme system if they worked hard enough and were successful at their posts. As

a result of this two-pronged approach of conversion and conscription that paradoxically

offered opportunities for advancement there were some members of Balkan communities

that offered up their children for the Janissary program which would teach reading,

writing, and other vocational skills which would elevate the Janissaries to status far

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beyond military chattel and into their own social class which would occupy much of the

Ottoman ruling class. Adding to the prestige was the tendency for powerful or wealthy

officials who were the products of the devsirme system to donate large sums of money or

establish schools in their old hometowns of the Balkans, reinforcing both the invasive

presence of foreign religion and culture as well as the positive effects it could have on its

citizens, which continued to polarize public thought. The system became so successful

that under Suleiman the Magnificent in 1563 it was noted by contemporary Muslim

observers that children were even being entered into the devsirme system for tax benefits.

But devsrime became a victim of its own success and was closed by other Ottoman

nobles jealous of the influence and power the Janissaries and converted officials held.

Though the resentments it inspired among Balkan religious communities remained,

creating a narrative that the Muslim communities in the region stole children and cultural

heritage from Orthodox Christian groups regardless of the successes the converted

children were able to attain elsewhere in the Empire. Finally, the devsirme system

highlighted a continuing cultural trend in the Balkan region which continues to this day:

the idea that prosperity and better lives for local children were best acquired outside of

their native lands, driving many citizens to seek employment and learning either in

Western Europe or further to the East in Orthodox Russia, further cementing a three-way

cultural split between Western European, Eastern Orthodox, and Islamic communities in

the region.

The patchwork cultures and closely-knit communities of the Balkan region that

were nonetheless split by ethnic or religious difference survived intact under the millet

system while elsewhere in Europe the powerful forces of the Reformation and the rise of

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nationalism were ripping formerly heterogeneous populations apart and gluing them back

together into homogenous identically secure communities united around a common

identity of religious belief or faith in a nation-state.

Nationalism and the Baltic Region

Ever since its emergence as a widespread political phenomenon in the 15th

century, nationalism has been a potent and driving force in international politics and has

shaped the decisions and fates of millions of people around the globe. However, there

are significant differences between the civically minded, initial burst of nationalism that

propelled Western European and colonial nations into ascendancy, and the ethnically

minded modern version of nationalism that holds sway among nation-states of the

Balkans.

Benedict Anderson’s succinct description of the initial surge of nationalism is “an

imagined political community-and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”

(Anderson, 1991). The basic framework of the nation-state is the idea that “like shall be

ruled by like”, where a common language and beliefs are unified within the structure of

the state. This has proven to be difficult in the Balkans as the historical influence of

multiple empires and Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Islamic faiths provide

fertile ground for incessant subdivision and identity politics. Furthermore, nation-states

are imagined in the sense that they are constructed identities, built up around historical

myths and common lifestyles. The most important aspect of early nationalism, founded

within the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, was its aspect of non-interference. The

sovereignty of nations, the idea that “states should refrain from interfering in each other’s

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affairs” (Smallman & Brown, 2011), has proven to be a critical building block in the

development of the international system but is noticeably absent in the history of the

Balkans, generating a sense of instability that larger nations and local politicians both fed

into and capitalized on as needed.

Nationalism was aided by the invention of the printing press and subsequent

increase in administrative efficiency, which allowed for Slavic groups formerly separated

by language and distance to forge a common identity as based on a commonly spoken

language and state-based record-keeping. Southern Slavic nations were still

geographically isolated from their Northern brethren by Germanic states, so the ideas of

common identity subdivided into even smaller ethno-religious groups and kingdoms

which allowed competing local princes to claim legitimacy over one another based on the

favoritism of regional powers.

The resurgence of nationalism at the turn of the century, during the First and

Second World Wars was in many respects similar to the first wave among Western

European countries, with disparate groups forming a cohesive identity as a nation, though

their attempts to build an official identity challenged established narratives of divine or

religious rule and often involved armed revolt and ethnic strife. In the 19th century, under

the influence of the Romantic Movement as well as French and German philosophy,

Balkan scholars began exploring their nations' identities through the collection of folk

stories, languages or histories, forging a communal narrative for their groups to rally

around. The well-educated colonial administrations left over in the Balkan area from the

Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian systems were able to mobilize their fellow citizens

through creation of new imagined communities as they became enveloped in the surge of

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nationalism. This second wave of nationalism occurred much more quickly than the

previous European version because their former subjects were able to build on the state

structure the Austro-Hungarians, Ottomans, and Russians had implemented to control

their conquered territories, though the overall principles of the developing nations

remained the same: mutual adherence to noninterference and recognition of the nation’s

right to exist.

Many of the modern Balkan states had formed by the time of the First World

War: Serbia, Greece, Montenegro, Albania, Romania, and Bulgaria, with a more-or less

unified Yugoslavia formed out of the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian

Empires. During the interwar period, these new countries, as well as their neighbors in

the rest of Eastern Europe proved unable to meet many of their basic challenges in food

production, to ensure good relations with minorities, and to create workable political

systems, mostly focused on land allocation disputes or grievances brought about by

partitions drawn during the Treaty of Versailles. The Second World War made prospects

for Yugoslavia even worse as in addition to fighting against the Italian and German

invaders of the country and their local satellite governments, the Yugoslav citizens also

carried out a civil war between guerrilla nationalist and ethnic groups. Hundreds of

thousands of people were killed, leaving a legacy of mistrust and a thirst for revenge

exacerbated by the Nazi’s infamous puppet governments under the Croatian Ustate and

the Serbian Chetnik groups, which the former performed genocide against Serbian,

Jewish, and Roma, groups and the latter Croat and Muslim communities. This caused

over 1,014,000 deaths at least, most notoriously in the Bajic concentration camp run by

both the SS and the Serbian State Guard, former Serbian policemen who firmly

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established a reputation for genocide in the Yugoslav communities and whose reputation

caused ethnic grievances as the nation broke apart.

The modern ethnic and national mobilization occurring across the developing

world, however, are proving to be a much more scattered and chaotic form of change

than the relatively ordered and peaceful waves of nationalism that preceded it. After the

fall of the Soviet Union, dozens of nations and ethnic groups found they were free to

pursue whatever courses they wished, with formerly repressed ethnic and regional

tensions springing to the surface. “Political identities often take ethnic form, producing

competing communal claims for power…the product of a violent process of ethnic

separation” (Muller, 2008) Yugoslavia is the most salient Balkan example, with Serbian

constructed identity clashing with the ethnically mingled Bosnia-Hzergovina and Croatia,

with devastating results. The notable factor in the new wave of ethnic mobilization is that

all the ethnic groups whose salient identities are in dispute continue to seek statehood and

recognition from both the United Nations and the European Union is still a valuable

prize. The concept of nation-states remains the vital international social unit, though

ethnic mobilization among the Basques, Tartars, and Czechs continue to challenge

existing state structures in the region. The rise in ethnic nationalism is driven by the twin

gearshifts of globalization and the resulting clash of identity fault lines. Samuel

Huntington, in his paper The Clash of Civilizations outlines this friction, “People can and

do redefine their identities and as a result, the boundaries of civilizations change”

(Huntington, 1993). The interaction of the six civilizations: Western, Confucian, Islamic,

Latin American, Hindu, and Slavic-Orthodox have been exponentially increased by

globalization. As populations along the boundaries of the civilizations interact and

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exchange ideas, the global interaction makes their own identities more obvious and

oftentimes preferable to that of other civilizations. Thus, some groups that feel threatened

or uncertain how to deal with the globalized world turn inwards, strengthening their own

ethnic and cultural ties as a defense against the “other”. The historical subdivision of the

Balkan area between the Western, Islamic, and Eastern Orthodox civilizations allow for

the confluence of both ethnic and religious identity and is a testament to an upswing in

ethnic and national mobilization.

While the initial stages of nationalism were the creation of imagined communities

to organize and build a prosperous society, the resurgence of ethnic nationalism is a result

of the friction between the large civilizations that dominate the geopolitical landscape. In

Eastern Europe, small ethnic communities seek to mobilize and create their own place in

the world in response to the visible forces of globalization, which reveal to them the vast

sociopolitical boundaries of civilizations, grown from the seeds of early nationalism.

Tito’s World: Authoritarian Leaders as Managers

With only the force of will and authoritarian governance of Joseph Broz Tito

holding together an artificial country with seven national groups, three religions, and a

teetering economy, his death caused the gradual disintegration of his country. As power

and interest shifted away from the continuation of Yugoslavia as a state, nationalist

politicians rose up. In 1992, the Serbian and Croatian leaders met to divide up Bosnia,

which eventually resulted in the genocide and displacement of thousands of Muslims and

Bosnian citizens. The history of the Balkan region enabled Tito’s government and his

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successors to build authoritarian states that focused most of their power on individual

leaders as managers of the ethnic, political, and economic systems.

When Yugoslavian security services made violent revolutionary action a dead

end, the choice to not enter a political game dominated by the establishment and force

movement on separate terms was less a sign of a radical movement and merely one that

wished to continue its activism, even if it lost a potentially powerful platform with which

to spread its message. Nationalist groups emerged as Yugoslavia fell and increasingly

began to operate on informal and formal rules, with increasingly legitimized groups

joining the political system even as their slogans and narratives were purged of material

that might seriously threaten the post war regime’s power. In the early years of Tito’s

reign hundreds of explicitly pro-Serbian or Muslim organizations were banned along with

the wider idea of religious or ethnically based political parties. The authoritarian

governments of the Baltic region have since realized that protests, while they do

challenge the infallibility of the regime, also act as a pressure valve to release frustrations

about poor economic conditions, lack of social movement, and other emotions that

threaten the stability of the regime. As a result, the political and social system created by

these circumstances is one that allows dissent, but defanged, and only on the regime’s

terms. Dissenters who have not allied themselves with “opposition” groups or parties are

then forced to walk a social and legal tightrope or regulations and police harassment

where the government can cut any wire and throw protestors into jail when the previous

day they were allowed to protest freely in public spaces. In short, political and social

mobilization opportunities are managed by Eastern European regimes in order to preserve

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their own grip on power, creating a stagnant political situation, dissatisfied citizens who

have no real influence on power, and resulting economic woes.

Perhaps more important than their management of the political system is the

authoritarian management of national economies. While many Eastern European nations

attempted to initially continue a modified form of socialism, the exponential revenues

offered by goods deals with Western powers proved all too tempting, prompting the

creation of private economies and collapsing previously state-funded enterprises during

the post-Communism shocks of 1980’s and 90’s. In the 1970’s Yugoslavia used

economic ideas of import substitution and large-scale nationalization of the economy in

order to provide economic growth, but like many resource-rich states, the prosperity was

short-lived. Rising national deficits coupled with foreign debt weakened the Yugoslav

economy and caused local groups to withdraw from cross-regional or ethnic

collaborations in favor of safeguarding their own interests. Under a smokescreen of

liberalization the economy of Eastern European states became “a strong client network of

politicians allowed to enrich themselves by often illicit manipulations of the economic

openings his policies afforded” (Owen, p66). Russia followed a similar pattern of

economic corruption and nepotism under the guise of necessary liberalization. State

businessmen became new political assets in many Eastern European countries, being used

to gain legitimacy for economic reforms on the international stage while secretly

providing loans and money-laundering services to the government which had so

graciously offered these men the opportunity for control of national monopolies.

However, Yugoslavia’s President Ivan Stambolic was able to provide some measure of

legitimate economic reform in the 1980’s with slightly more transparency, reformation of

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public enterprise, and privatization measures even as the privileged elite held onto their

interests as tightly as possible. Tito’s increased flexibility compared with other

communist leaders and their leader’s delicate political and economic balancing game are

what allowed the nation to escape the very worst of the 1989 reactions, as citizens could

legitimately look upon their leader’s efforts and see there had been positive developments

under his rule, even if later economic analysis showed that troubles had merely been

deferred, the perception of Tito’s rule as a “Golden Age” persists in the public mind.

(Predag, Rajsic, 2014)

To describe Eastern European leaders economic decisions for the past fifty years

is also to describe the inherent problems with resource traps, a prevalent situation in a

region that invested too much in heavy industry and minerals for export to the Soviet

Union. Resource traps are the combination of economic, social, and political effects that

result when a leader builds their entire economic sector on the creation and exportation of

a single natural resource. Rather than have their citizens pay harsh taxes which might

incite rebellion, Eastern European leaders financed the redevelopment and reconstruction

of their nations through heavy industry such as oil, coal mining, steel production and

shipbuilding, allowing the excess national budget to be used to line elite pockets, create

national stipends, or to create enormous welfare states. Such welfare states gave citizens

basic needs of living and medical care, at the cost of long-term economic stability,

political freedoms, and productivity, though Tito’s Yugoslavia notably pushed the

boundaries of the communist system to the point that the region isolated itself from

Soviet Union policy and economic assistance. Under national stipends and welfare state

funds, Eastern European nations stifled their own growth as non-coal or industrial

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companies couldn’t gain enough foreign or domestic investors to become profitable,

while thousands of citizens simply worked in assigned government jobs, especially in

centralized bureaucracy and socialist states like Albania, Romania, and Bulgaria. Once

the Soviet Union and its economic support fell though, everything unraveled, creating

political tension and requiring Eastern European leaders to step in and manage both the

economy and political needs simultaneously. In short, as a result of Eastern European

leader’s economic management, the region as a whole is poorer and less interconnected

than it could be, as money that could have been used for independent development or

trade ends up being recycled by corrupt businessmen into government accounts and

private fortunes.

A Closer View: Yugoslav Identity Dissolution and Civil War

Tone Bringa and Carol Leff both attempt to analyze the Yugoslav conflict in the

modern day; though the former chooses to do so through the lens of a camera and the

latter through historical analysis, their examinations bring the Balkan ethnic identity

conflict into sharp focus. Carol Leff tells a largely political story with a longer view in

Democraticization and Disintegration in Multinational States, that sacrifices a sense of

immediacy and the human perspective in favor of overarching historical themes and

explanations for the conflict. Tone Bringa’s documentary, We Are All Neighbors, is more

biased, as it is rooted in the daily lives of the citizens of Yugoslavia, but it gives the

observer an accurate depiction of how communities are shaken apart as war and conflict

creep ever closer. Even though the two women take very different approaches, they

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complement each other’s views, as they respectively present both the historical overview

and the small personal crises that make up a civil war.

Leff’s theory of state disintegration is largely politically based, as it emphasizes

the creation of ethno-federalism and asymmetric democratization as the inevitable march

of history. Ethno-federalism, Leff writes, was the result of people’s lack of faith in their

appointed governments, which causes division along ethnic boundaries. Asymmetric

democratization was the final straw that tipped Yugoslavia into civil war, as the different

ethnic groups with their disparate levels of societal progress, had opposing goals

regarding the future of the region. As a result, Yugoslavia collapsed and the ethnic groups

began to fight. These theories on ethno-federalism and asymmetric democratization can

be applied to the Balkan region over its entire history and are useful when examining

how great powers such as Russia and the Ottoman Empire were able to manipulate local

events to their liking even as they left the region a disorganized and self-perpetuating

mass of ethnic grievances and retaliatory wars caused by previous divisions or land grabs.

In her analysis, Leff focuses on the root causes of the civil wars, as well as the long-term

implications of her research, while Tome prefers to focus on the effects of the civil war:

the destroyed homes and relationships among people of different ethnic groups. Thus,

both analysts complement analytical views on the conflict by presenting the missing

puzzle pieces of the argument. Bringa’s documentary brings human focus to the vague

and abstract ideas Leff deals with in her paper, while Leff’s, in turn, places Bringa’s

documentary on the collapse of communities into its wider context.

Said documentary is based on examining the identity of a community and how

local conflict can twist, warp, and shatter a community’s collective identity and cause

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distrust and a loss of unity among inhabitants. The Croatian/Christian locals slowly turn

indifferent to their Muslim neighbors out of fear, which prompts the Muslims to act

similarly. As the stresses surrounding the war heightened, both the Croats and the

Muslims sought comfort in prayer, though the Croats increasingly link their religion with

their ethnic identity, separating them even further from their Muslim neighbors. Neither

group is willing to trust the other first, for fear of betrayal or retribution. Thus, the semi-

ironic title, “We Are All Neighbors” reflects the previous optimism of the residents, as

well as the post-tragedy knowledge that even in the smoking ruins of their old lives, they

will still have to live with the consequences. This documentary supplements Leff’s

historical paper by focusing on national identity and ethno-nationalism from the

perspective of the individual, rather than the historian. Such a perspective is ultimately

necessary when considering a “solution” to the ethnic tensions and identity politics in the

region, as a historically-based, long-term view of the region may decrease the weight of

the millions of lives lost and blood spilled over communities who wished to remain

secure in their identities, but at the cost of another’s.

Conclusion

In summation, the Balkan region and the area of Yugoslavia in particular has been

one of continuous ethnic strife and identity politics because of its historical isolation

under the Ottoman Empire from the Reformation Wars of Europe which allowed Western

European groups to consolidate identities in preparation for widespread nationalist

movements. In addition to the area’s continuing adolescence as various ethnic groups

have tried to form their own nations to gain security, the surrounding Great Powers have

used the local tensions to guard their own borders or to aggravate another’s, ensuring

Conor GleesonThesis

continued upheaval and strife as the region’s authoritarian-leaning governments attempt

to manage continuing domestic tension and global upheaval.

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Conor GleesonThesis

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