Can the analysis of a bloody ethnic conflict 30 years ago illuminate aspects of today’s European, and not only, treaty? This is what the University of Pittsburgh Professor Emeritus of Political Anthropology argues Robert Hayden in his latest book entitled “From the to the Western Balkans. Studies of a European fragmentation 1991-2011”, published by the University Press of Crete. “To Vima” talked to him about the current lessons that can be learned from a difficult past.
Why today a book about Yugoslavia and its disintegration?
“In Yugoslavia we observe for the first time the return of fascism and its re-legitimization in Europe. Look what is happening today with Meloni in Italy, AfD in Germany, look what is happening in the USA. A resurgence of fascism, which we thought had been eradicated in 1945. In one of the articles in the book, written two years after the war began, I described this resurgence as a “vampire scouring”. The vampires were the Serbian Chetniks and the Croatian Ustasi of World War II (note: two movements exemplified by extreme nationalism during the wars in Yugoslavia 1941-1945). Yugoslavia was one of the bloodiest and most complicated battlegrounds because we not only had people fighting against the occupation, but also the fascist Ustasi movement in Croatia, supported by the Germans and Italians and trying to establish a fascist regime in Croatia, the Serbian royal state and its forces, the Chetniks, who were hostile to the Muslims and Croats, as well as the communist revolution”.
The latter of course prevailed…
“A key reason for this was that the Communists were the only political actors who tried to involve the entire population. But with the fall of communism, within a few years, the Croatian Right resurrected the Ustasi, and Serbian royalists who supported the Chetniks became increasingly active.”
You analyze how state socialism turned into state chauvinism, through the constitutionalization of the ethnic nation, providing the framework for the ethnic cleansing that followed. Explain this process to us.
“American students do not fully grasp the concept of European nationalism because in American English the terms ‘nation’ and ‘state’ are equivalent. When we say the president spoke to the nation, we mean he spoke to all the people in the country, not just white people. In the European constellation, nation refers to a group linked by a common place of birth, while state refers to territory and government. The state exists to serve the nation. The nation is sovereign over its territory through government. If you are not part of the nation, you are not part of the dominant community, even if you are a citizen of the country. In this respect, Israel, since its inception, has been a classic European nation-state because it was formed as a Jewish-dominated state. Non-Jews can be citizens, even members of the Knesset, but they are not part of the sovereign nation.”
But communism reverses this
“Marx argued that the fundamental groups are the economic classes. Thus, under communism, the working class was dominant, not the ethnic nation. But suddenly communism disappeared… The Slovenians were the first to change their Constitution. And then everyone else followed, except Bosnia, where there was no single ethnic majority. The transition from the rule of the working class to the rule of the ethnic nation can only work if there is a strong majority of that ethnic nation. But Bosnia-Herzegovina had no such majority: 42% were Bosniaks, 32% Serbs, 14% Croats, and the rest called themselves Yugoslavs, etc. Only if everyone declared themselves Bosnian could there be a Bosnian nation or state. There was only one politician who ran with this program, a Bosnian Croat, who was popular in 1990. But he only got 5% in the election. Serbs voted for the Serbian party, Croats for Croatian, Muslims for Muslim, and have been doing the same ever since. The war led to an internal ethno-territorialization of the state.”
In Europe we have not had ethnic cleansing between different nations in modern history…
“Didn’t we? Let me remind you that the biggest ethnic cleansing in Europe happened in 1945, when 10 million Germans were expelled to Germany from Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.”
Do you think this is a mechanism that characterizes Europe?
“It is a European construct that causes these kinds of events.”
I was also impressed by the application of the concept of Orientalism, “superimposed Orientalisms”, to the Yugoslav context.
“Introducing the concept of Orientalism into Balkan literature was my wife’s idea. When Yugoslavia began to experience difficulties, we began to read that Yugoslavia was an artificial jumble of industrious Roman Catholics in the North and West, and the Orthodox and Muslim populations of the South and East, who are not intellectually so industrious, etc. And then we began to see the same pattern repeated inside Yugoslavia. Slovenes were said to be superior and those to the east of them were infected. Croats called those east or south of them “Orientals”, and so on.”
Like a pyramid?
“Like Russian dolls, where one contains the other… If those to our east are inferior, we have the right to separate ourselves from them, we have the right and duty to protect ourselves from them. Nationalist discourses always consider the minority as a threat to the majority. This is what Trump is doing now in America.”
Wasn’t another form of Orientalism the once popular idea that the Balkans were not actually part of Europe?
“Yes, but how come the Balkans were not considered part of Europe? Take a look at the map… But let’s also say this: How European is the EU today? How European is Meloni’s Hungary or Italy? And speaking of European ideals, Europe did not do very well in Yugoslavia. He couldn’t handle the situation. Partly because the Americans got involved.”
What do you mean?
“The first guiding principle of the Clinton administration was that whatever they did, they had to look good in the New York Times the next day. If their actions had disastrous consequences a month later, it didn’t matter. The second was to make sure that Russia was completely eliminated from European affairs. And the third was to show that the USA is the “necessary country”, according to the words of Madeleine Albright”.
