ABSTRACT
Nation as victim or as hero, as justified by God or fate or history, as old or new, as united or divided by unjust forces—nation is the value at the heart of many such struggles over language. Accompanying the war against the “enemy” is a war against “enemy ideas,” and consequently an effort to alter not merely boundaries but language as well. Tito rebuilt a new Yugoslavia on the ashes of the old, and the second Yugoslavia lasted 46 years—exactly twice as long as the first Yugoslavia—before once again sliding into interethnic war. As of the end of 1990, some 70 percent of unemployed persons in Yugoslavia were women. The perpetual Yugoslav crisis was often seen largely in national terms and indeed, the national question affected every sphere of social life. By contrast, the Serbian press has repeatedly argued that the war against Bosnia is a “religious war,” occasioned by the need to defend Serbian Christians against Islamic “fundamentalism”.
