The Serbs
History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Who are the Serbs? Branded by some as Europe's new Nazis, they are seen by others—and by themselves—as the innocent victims of nationalist aggression and of an implacably hostile world media. In this challenging new book, Timothy Judah, who covered the war years in former Yugoslavia for the London Times and the Economist, argues that neither is true. Exploring the Serbian nation from the great epics of its past to the battlefields of Bosnia and the backstreets of Kosovo, he sets the fate of the Serbs within the story of their past.
This wide-ranging, scholarly, and highly readable account opens with the windswept fortresses of medieval kings and a battle lost more than six centuries ago that still profoundly influences the Serbs. Judah describes the idea of "Serbdom" that sustained them during centuries of Ottoman rule, the days of glory during the First World War, and the genocide against them during the Second. He examines the tenuous ethnic balance fashioned by Tito and its unraveling after his death. And he reveals how Slobodan Milosevic, later to become president, used a version of history to drive his people to nationalist euphoria. Judah details the way Milosevic prepared for war and provides gripping eyewitness accounts of wartime horrors: the burning villages and "ethnic cleansing," the ignominy of the siege of Sarajevo, and the columns of bedraggled Serb refugees, cynically manipulated and then abandoned once the dream of a Greater Serbia was lost.
This first in-depth account of life behind Serbian lines is not an apologia but a scrupulous explanation of how the people of a modernizing European state could become among the most reviled of the century. Rejecting the stereotypical image of a bloodthirsty nation, Judah makes the Serbs comprehensible by placing them within the context of their history and their hopes.
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After a brief historical overview, Judah, formerly Balkan correspondent for the London Times, turns his focus to the past 100 years, and specifically, to the decades since WWII. During the 17th century, the Serbs (aided by Austria) waged almost continuous warfare against the Turks, eventually pushing the Turkish forces southward and recapturing Belgrade. But in the 20th century, Serbia (protected by Russia following the Russo-Turkish War) had a far dimmer view of Austrian interference in the region , particularly after Austria's annexation of the former Turkish provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina--the step that eventually led to Gavrilo Princip's assassination of Austria's Archduke Ferdinand and WWI. The crisscrossing armies left Serbia, says Judah, as a mosaic of mini-states with much in common: they spoke the same language, looked alike and shared many customs. However there was one big line dividing them--religion. With Roman Catholics in the West, Eastern Orthodox Christians in the East and Muslims in the center, there was constant tension between the centrists and dispersionists. Even though the Serbs, more than any other group, were spread across Yugoslavia, Judah believes the breakup following Tito's death was inevitable. Judah's analysis of Serbia's history and the large cast of characters who shaped the country is complex, even tortuous at time, which can make for a tiring read.
