Croatia: A History by Ivo s> Goldstein Nikolina Jovanović (review)

Abstract

156 SEER, 79, I, 2001 Goldstein, Ivo. Croatia: A Histoy. Translated by Nikolina Jovanovic. Hurst, London, I999. iX+ 28I pp. Maps. Bibliography.Index. C4o.oo;LI 4.95. Ivo GOLDSTEIN is a respected medieval historianat the University of Zagreb and, duringmost of the period of Yugoslavia'sviolent disintegration,servedas director of the University'sInstitute of Croatian History. He was thus at the centre of the project to create a new Croatian national identity after Yugoslaviaand sawhisprofessionpoliticizedbytheforcesofFranjoTudjman's Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). To his credit, though, Goldstein managed to steerclearof the multifariouspoliticalpressuresin Croatiabefore I999 and produce a generally balanced narrative of Croatian history from aroundthe fourthcenturyBC untilthe late I990s. Goldstein is usually able to resist the temptation to read back on early Balkan history the ethnonational lines that emerged in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But he is not always as careful as he might have been. For example, Fausto Veranzio's multilingual dictionary of European languages,publishedin the late sixteenth century, included entries in 'Dalmatian,'by which, Goldsteinsays, 'theauthormeant Croatian'(p. 38). It is difficultto know to what extent Veranzio might have meant 'Croatian'at all;he certainlydid not mean it in the sensethat otherwriterswould have used it later on, and certainly not in the sense that we mean it today. As in other points in the book, Goldstein failsto engage criticallywith the ways in which the political strugglesof the nineteenth century(andthe late twentieth)helped shape the present-day boundaries of both states and nations in Europe's southeast. In his most uncriticalmoments, Goldstein fallsback on the worst tropesof both nationalist and socialist writing about ethnic identity, speaking of the Croatian 'ethnic corpus' (p. 2), 'ethnogenesis' (p. I I), and 'Croatian blood' (p. 20). The author does not offer a completely teleological account of Croatian statehood; there is little of Tudjman's 'thousand-year dream' of Croatianindependence here, and Goldsteinopenly criticizesthe HDZ regime as criminal and an obstacle to Croatia's full integration into European structures.But the attempt to see modern Croatian statehood as, in some sense, the logical conclusion of an inexorable historicalprocess will earn this book plenty of critics,from Serbscertainly,but alsofromcriticalhistorians. The book has been very professionallytranslatedand its style is clear and straightforward:a chronological account of the emergence of the Croatian nation. That isalso, however, itschiefweakness.There isnot a singlefootnote, not even in areas where there is still considerable controversy (such as the number of victims during the Second World War, especially among Croatia's Jews). Figuresare given with no discussionof theirprovenance, or even of the fact that they are in dispute. The book thus reads more like a very long encyclopaedia entry than a historiographically engaged work of scholarship. It is, of course, possible to write both good historyand accessiblehistory,but Goldsteinhas unfortunatelyfocusedmore on the latterthan the former. The book is intended as a general introduction to Croatian affairs, an 'accessible history of the country and people,' as the back copy says. Yet the publisher has done a great deal to prevent its being such. The maps are REVIEWS 157 terriblyconfusing, usuallywith fartoo many geographical,demographic, and political detailsthat arenever dealtwith in the text. They are also,with one or two exceptions, very poorly produced; some are nearly illegible. A bibliographicalessaywould have been a usefulway of pointing the interestedreader to further resources on Croatia, but the bibliography here is simply chronological and not annotated. Nearly three-quartersof the entries are in Croatian. This is a good book, but with only a bit more attention, the author and publishercould have made it a genuinelyexcellent one. School ofForeign Service CHARLES KING Georgetown University Ryan W. F. 7heBathhouse atMidnight: AnHistorical Survey ofMagicandDivination in Russia.Magic in History Series. Sutton Publishing, Stroud, I999. viii + 504 pp. Notes. Illustrations.Bibliography.Index. ?5o; f 1499. THEdustcover of thislargetome alluringlyproclaims7The Bathhouse atMidnight. MagicinRussia,and in so doing seems set to attracta largepopularreadership, certain of them with what might be called a dubious interest in the subject. Inside, the addition of the words 'an historical survey', especially the 'an' should frightenaway some. But though the amateur magic buff or part-time witch will find a good deal that is instructiveand entertainingin this account of a huge range of...