ABSTRACT
Some authors who have involved themselves in the discussion on the causes of the war have paid plenty of attention to history and this approach to the problem is certainly connected to a broader antipathy to the Balkans. Plenty of examples of this line of thought can be found at random throughout modern history. A typical one describes the richness of the country and its natural resources only to conclude: There is an abundance of plants which could be used for medicinal, domestic and technological purposes (such as dyestuffs), if the region were not inhabited and governed by such wild and barbarous people.’1 Many authors in the past, some of whom even fell in love with the Balkans, like Rebecca West, described its character as savage. Indeed, similar descriptions have also appeared in some of the most known and arguably the best works of literature by Bosnian authors, such as Ivo Andric and Mesa Selimovic. This kind of artistic writing certainly gives the reader some specific flavour of a strange, unknown place, but does the region no historical justice. Academic and pseudoacademic works looking into a ‘history of hatred’ could be well presented through the arguments of Lenard Cohen who counted three major factors:
…first, the persistence and intensification of deep-seated animosities among the country’s diverse ethnic and religious groups; who lived together rather uneasily in the Balkan region for centuries…second, the desire of many Yugoslav citizens to redress grievances arising from the
violent bloodletting among ethnic groups during World War II; and, finally, the failure of the communist regime’s nationality policy…2
This kind of argument is more common for journalists and politicians or military officers involved in peacekeeping missions during 1990s. Thus Patrick Bishop writes of ‘an inability to forget hatreds of the past [that] has condemned successive generations to perpetuate them’.3 General Michael Rose, in Fighting for Peace, blames throughout the work ‘hatred and history of violence’.4 Finally, most of the politicians and envoys involved in peace negotiations during the 1990s accepted a necessity to divide the country on the basis of historical animosity of the ethnic groups because there was hardly any other argument to favour this option. Such descriptions often rely on stereotypes that prevent proper analysis and conclusions, if any. There is no proper understanding of history and plenty of prejudice based on early Balkan travellers through ‘European Turkey’ as the Balkans used to be known in western Europe only two centuries ago. As Maria Todorova has rightly found:
It would do much better if the Yugoslav, not Balkan, crisis ceased to be explained in terms of Balkan ghosts, ancient Balkan enmities, primordial Balkan cultural patterns and proverbial Balkan turmoil, and instead was approached with the same rational criteria that the West reserves for itself: issues of self-determination versus inviolable status quo, citizenship and minority rights, problems of ethnic and religious autonomy, the prospects and limits of secession, the balance between big and small nations and states, the role of international institutions.5
