Balkan History Research Articles

Riga, Liliana. The Bolsheviks and the Russian Empire Smith. Jeremy. Red Nations: The Nationalities Experience in and afer the USSR (review)

REVIEWS 565 pool where Biondich looks for his overarching argument. His model focuses on the long, and frequently ‘abortive’, modernization process undergone by the region, starting from the early national independence wars of the nineteenth century and going all the way to the recent crises in Yugoslavia. Seen through this overstretched, but not unappealing, explanatory framework, the wars of the 1990s were ‘in actual fact the culmination of a process of state-building that had been initiated in the nineteenth century’ (p. 195). The key link here is the slightly vague concept of the ‘modernizing’, ‘nationalizing state’ (pp. vi) and its elites, which opt for violence always as a calculated choice in order to establish and affirm their authority. The book charts how again and again, in conflict after conflict, local actors made specific choices that led to specific forms and acts of violence. Despite its relativizing tendencies, Biondich’s argument leaves Balkan exceptionalism without any oxygen on which to breathe, political choice being the author’s answer to the stereotype of primordial instincts. Although the nebulous spectre of ‘Europe’ is never far away (see p. 156), nonBalkan players have a secondary role in this story. They are present mainly diplomatically, while the foreign occupation regimes of the two World Wars receiveonlyabriefmention.Butthisisanoddomission.Balkanexceptionalism cannot be understood outside the European comparative framework on which it is judged. Nor can a complete analysis of Balkan violence avoid an integrated history of local actions in constant dialogue with the foreign factor, whose interventions have been the catalyst in generating and/or ending the most important violent outbursts in Balkan history. Bader International Study Centre E. Michail Queen’s University, Canada Riga, Liliana. The Bolsheviks and the Russian Empire. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2012. xiii + 313 pp. Tables. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Indexes. £60.00: $99.00. Smith. Jeremy. Red Nations: The Nationalities Experience in and after the USSR. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2013. xix + 391 pp. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £19.99: $34.99 (paperback). As a graduate student I would quip, ‘parochialists of the world, unite!’ It seems that this was not so wide of the mark, for as Liliana Riga argues, it is in the local context that ‘a revolutionary narrative takes root, embeds itself in particular social locations, or experiences, and then organizationally moves across them’ (p. 21). The most fruitful starting point for understanding imperial Russia and its politics, Bolshevism’s included, is therefore the reality SEER, 92, 3, JULY 2014 566 of empire. In an ambitious move, Riga intends to get ‘right the essence of Bolshevism’ (p. ix) by challenging ‘both the Russianness and the class basis of Bolshevism’s political mobilization’, and offering ‘an account of how a revolutionary class-universalist ideology was materially organized around — and indeed was itself constituted by — socioethnic particularlism’ (p. 4). The method is two-fold. First, there is recourse to sociological theory to understand the sense of grievance that permeated the borderlands. The central idea here is that the: ‘radicalizing political dynamic […] was classically Tocquevillian: the non-Russian Bolsheviks’ radicalism was characterized by the promise of social mobility and access upon assimilation or Russification, but by the reality of ethnopolitical exclusion’ (p. 35). Set against this sense of ethnic alienation, Riga contends that Bolshevism’s ‘Russian-inflected classuniversalism ’ (a key term never properly defined) had a particular appeal: ‘in its secularist and universalist theory of an implied Rossiiskii or imperial state, in its ecumenicalism, and in its seeming indifference to ethnicity’ (p. 7). Second, Riga draws upon the work of Michael Mann to examine the pre-Revolutionary biographies of ninety-three leading Bolsheviks from the years 1917–23 to ‘explore how socioethnic experiences influenced routes to socialist radicalism through an interpretive use of historically situated or embedded biographies’ (p. 13). The biographies are examined in separate chapters around Jewish, Polish and Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Latvian, South Caucasian and Russian Bolsheviks. This is an impressive book that draws upon a very wide range of secondary sources. It is elegant and cohesive, yet there is a suspicion that ‘evidence’ is produced to fit the theory. It is not clear to me, for example, that ethnic ‘identity’ and ethnic...

Biondich, Mark. The Balkans: Revolution, War, and Political Violence since 1878 (review)

SEER, 92, 3, JULY 2014 564 Biondich, Mark. The Balkans: Revolution, War, and Political Violence since 1878. Zones of Violence. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2011. xv + 384 pp. Maps. Tables. Chronology. Notes. Bibliography. Index.£65.00. Since the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s scholars have dedicated a considerable amount of effort in countering the common perceptions of a certain Balkan exceptionalism and a particular predisposition to violence. Theories and methods from a range of disciplines have been utilized both to deconstruct the othering discourses that inform such myths — Maria Todorova’s Imagining the Balkans (Oxford, 1997) remains the classic text in this field — and to offer alterative explanations as to the causes of violence in the region. It is within this tradition that Mark Biondich’s book falls. It approaches the task with the historian’s tools, producing a serious survey of the most violent chapters of modern Balkan history. In less than three hundred pages the book covers an impressive amount of data, offering quick summaries of long tracts of Balkan history that will be very helpful to the non-specialists, along with focused studies of key violent episodes of Balkan history. It is all informed by an impressive bibliography that is remarkably diverse, relevant and up to date. Biondich has produced the new essential reference work on the history of violence in the Balkans. As with all stereotypes, the image of the violent Balkans relies on vagueness and elusiveness as to the origins, aims and forms of violence, but Biondich does not tackle this methodological challenge head on. ‘Revolution, war and political violence’ could mean many things. Soon, however, it becomes clear that the author is really focused on the link between violence and nationalism, on which he puts all his analytical attention. And in this he is excellent: detailed and balanced, offering long passages of creative synthesis, avoiding any sort of deterministic linearities, looking persistently for explanations that are time and space specific, and always in dialogue with his extensive bibliography. The most original sections of the book are on this nationalist-related theme: on the Macedonian Question at the turn of the twentieth century (pp. 63– 75), the treatment of minorities and the rise of the fascist ‘New Right’ in the interwar (pp. 98–130), the civil war in Yugoslavia during the Second World War (pp. 130–49), the minority policies of the Cold War Communist states (pp. 159–80) and the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. It is on the latter that the author offers his most elaborate analysis on the forms and motives of violence (pp. 215–37). Balkan modernities — their roots, adaptations and effects — are an old scholarly preoccupation. At least since John Allcock’s Explaining Yugoslavia (London,2000)modernityhasbeenalsocentralinthemorefocuseddiscussions on the origins and particularities of violence in the region. It is in the same REVIEWS 565 pool where Biondich looks for his overarching argument. His model focuses on the long, and frequently ‘abortive’, modernization process undergone by the region, starting from the early national independence wars of the nineteenth century and going all the way to the recent crises in Yugoslavia. Seen through this overstretched, but not unappealing, explanatory framework, the wars of the 1990s were ‘in actual fact the culmination of a process of state-building that had been initiated in the nineteenth century’ (p. 195). The key link here is the slightly vague concept of the ‘modernizing’, ‘nationalizing state’ (pp. vi) and its elites, which opt for violence always as a calculated choice in order to establish and affirm their authority. The book charts how again and again, in conflict after conflict, local actors made specific choices that led to specific forms and acts of violence. Despite its relativizing tendencies, Biondich’s argument leaves Balkan exceptionalism without any oxygen on which to breathe, political choice being the author’s answer to the stereotype of primordial instincts. Although the nebulous spectre of ‘Europe’ is never far away (see p. 156), nonBalkan players have a secondary role in this story. They are present mainly diplomatically, while the foreign occupation regimes of the two World Wars receiveonlyabriefmention.Butthisisanoddomission.Balkanexceptionalism cannot be understood outside the European comparative framework on which it...

MILITARY ENCOUNTERS AND DIPLOMATIC AFFAIRS IN THE NORTH BALKANS DURING THE REIGNS OF ANASTASIUS AND JUSTINIAN

Balkan history in the late 5th to 6th c. A.D. period is viewed by scholars as, at best, a respite from a series of devastating barbarian raids and, at worst, as another stepping-stone on the path to the inevitable loss of imperial control over the region. This paper redresses these perceptions by portraying the reigns of Anastasius and Justinian as a period in which the Romans/Byzantines were taking the initiative and ‘winning’ in their military and diplomatic dealings with the barbarians. These emperors devoted considerable political energy and economic and military resources to restoring imperial military authority in the northern Balkans.

DOUĂ CREAŢII ETERNE CARE ÎNFRUNTĂ TIMPUL – MĂNĂSTIREA ARGEŞULUI ŞI ZIDIREA CETĂŢII SKADAR

În lucrarea de faţă se cercetează câteva motive din literaturile populare română şi sârbă. Aici sunt identificate temele şi motivele de bază din folclorul local, situaţiile asemănătoare din folclorul celor două popoare, sârb şi român. O istorie balcanică comună şi, îndeosebi, lupta împotriva turcilor reprezintă punctul de plecare, într-o mare parte, a legendelor sârbeşti şi româneşti (Mănăstirea Argeş şi Zidirea Cetăţii Skadar). În această lucrare încercăm să prezentăm câteva motive şi prezenţa lor în legendele celor două popoare vecine, evidenţiind atât asemănările, cât şi diferenţele. Trebuie puse în evidenţă studiile anterioare elaborate despre folclorul local şi cel balcanic, plecând de la câteva lucrări de cercetare de referinţă, a celor mai mari oameni de știință din acest domeniu. Una dintre diferenţele definitorii, care va structura întreaga semnificaţie de ansamblu a celor două creaţii populare, ţine de specificul etnic, de credinţele şi de tradiţiile fiecărui popor. Dacă la români, construcţia este o biserică, deci un lăcaş de cult, imagine a creaţiei, un arc peste timp şi peste generaţii, la sârbi construcţia este un turn de apărare împotriva turcilor. Nelimitarea lor în timp şi spaţiu este cercetată din punct de vedere al genezei edificiilor de la Argeş şi Skadar, iar Lucian Blaga vorbeşte despre timpul mitic românesc în piesa sa de teatru, despre Meşterul Manole. În varianta românească, Manole s-a sacrificat pe sine, ideea creaţiei eterne care să înfrunte timpul implicând în conştiinţa populară nevoia jertfei totale, moartea este transformată în nemurire prin edificiu şi prin fântână. Motivele comune din literatura populară română şi sârbă, sunt o consecinţă a relaţiilor de bună vecinătate şi convieţuire din acest spaţiu, iar cel mai bun exemplu îl găsim în legendele/baladele Zidirea Cetăţii Skadar şi Mănăstirea Argeşului (Meşterul Manole). Aceste legende au fost concepute în literatura populară, dar şi în cea modernă, simbolizând duhul creator al celor două popoare. Personajele principale sunt simboluri reale, căci popoarele român şi sârb au realizat ceea ce deţin astăzi, printr-o jertfire continuă, iar în istorie, foarte des, au fost obligate să piardă ceea ce au strâns dobândit cu greu de-a lungul veacurilor.

Vampire Nation: Violence as Cultural Imaginary (review)

Anastasia Karakasidou, Wellesley CollegeThe recent violence in the Balkans has perplexed foreign analysts. The mainstream interpretation conjured images of the violent Balkan man and blamed atrocities on inherent national maladies. A few historical constructivist voices contextualized the violent events in world politics and emphasized how the peoples of the Balkans lived within or on the margins of empires. They consumed the images of aggression and brutality assigned to them by the West. Struggles to create a sense of collective identity outside of that domineering framework have been futile. Vampire Nation joins these constructivist voices, but offers a unique deconstruction of nationalism through a detailed textual analysis of the metaphor. Longinovic tells us how in 2007, a year after Slobodan Milosevic's death, a man visited his grave and planted a stake in the ground, a metaphorical second killing of sorts, making certain that the will never come back to haunt the living again. The culture and its connection to bloody Balkan history has indeed begged for an interpretation.Tomislav Longinovic grew up in Yugoslav Belgrade and has a unique perspective on society: not quite a detached ethnographer, nor a fully national participant, he critiques his own upbringing and writes an insightful analysis of the character of the nation. He chooses his informants from a wide range of fields and from throughout Balkan history, and analyzes a myriad of texts, films, plays, and orations. Although the work is reflexive, it is free from the insufferable self-reflections of the Western observer seeking local acceptance. The author is well-known from his previous writings on the metaphorical image of the vampire, but Vampire Nation is the first of his works that takes the leap into nationalism and stands as a critique of violence. The is a mythical creature with origins in the 17th century Balkans, and was well embedded in the magic and mysticism of daily life along with witches and werewolves. The was the worst demonic being of all, however, with an unsurpassed lust and thirst for blood. The stories circulated widely in western Europe as well, as did the images of the Slavs as the European other. On the far edges of civilized lands, these fearful people were perceived to be as violent as the magical creatures they themselves feared. The image of the Serbian vampire is rooted in these early European cosmologies: the Serbs are a backward, ancient people that feast on blood and fear the light of civilization. The Serbs, as Longinovic argues, had little choice but to conform to this assigned identity. They embraced it, but the Serbian vampire for internal consumption is quite different: he is a heroic figure, an individual who spills blood for the nation.Once with their own empire, the Serbs coexisted with the Byzantine Empire, but fell to Ottoman hands in the 14th century. Destabilized and without a territorial permanent base, the Serbs did not fully unite as a national collectivity until the rebellions against Ottoman rule in the early 19th century. The memory of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo united the Serbs and it was transformed into a mythical bloody battle between the invading Ottoman army and the Principality. The battle set up an ethnic memory of Orthodoxy against Islamic invaders and the defeat was considered to be a great loss for national and pride.Serbia became a republic within socialist Yugoslavia after World War II, but the cultural strength of the Serbs put them in an advantageous position within the Federation. Serbia was accused of having controlling interest in Yugoslavia, especially when leader Slobodan Milosevic became president of the ailing Federation. In 1991 Yugoslavia ceased to exist and the Yugoslav wars erupted, giving way to ethno-religious conflicts involving genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape, internment camps, mass graves, and torture. …

Birinci Balkan İttifakı, 1866-1868

The Balkan alliance system of 1912 was one of the most important political developments in the modern Balkan history. Before the Balkan wars, the Balkan states formed the alliances between them (Serbia-Bulgaria, Bulgaria-Greece and Montenegro-Bulgaria-Serbia). They defeated the Ottoman Empire in the First Balkan War with the help of these alliances. This article examines the First Balkan Alliance of 1866-68 which was regarded as a kind of rehearsal or a historical proto-example of the alliance system of 1912, and which was formed by the Serbian Prince Mihail Obrenovich and his minister of foreign affairs Ilija Garasanin. The main goal of alliance system was to eliminate the Ottoman Empire from the Balkans. In this context, Serbia signed the alliance treaties with Montenegro in September 1866 with the Bulgarian Secret Central Committee in January 1867, with Greece in August 1867 and with Romania in January 1868. Although the 1866-68 alliance system was not able to achieve its main goal due to some local, regional and continental reasons, it had remained in the minds of Balkan political leaders. When they found a more suitable political and military atmosphere in 1912, they immediately revitalized the alliance of 1866-68.

“Yugoslavia in 1989 and after”: a comment

V.P. (Chip) Gagnon, Jr. (2004, 2010) has provided a useful corrective to what he has called the “Myth of Ethnic War,” the notion that what was Yugoslavia was torn apart by primeval communal hatreds. He is not alone in this. Maria Todorova's variation on Edward Said's “Orientalism” take on the same question, and edited volumes put together by Dušan Bjelić and Obrad Savić and by Raymond Detrez and Pieter Plas have also attacked the problem posed when public intellectuals and politicians paint a crude caricature of Balkan history. The readers of this journal no doubt have their own favorites when it comes to the sport of bashing this particular myth.

What is in Balkan History? Spaces and Scales in the Tradition of Southeast-European Studies

AbstractThis article takes a distance from the debate about 'symbolic geographies' and structural definitions of historical spaces as well as from surveying discrete disciplinary traditions or political agendas of regionalist scholarship in and on Southeastern Europe. Its purpose instead has been two-fold. On the one hand, to bring to light a preexistent but largely suppressed and un-reflected tradition of regionalist scholarship with the hope that this could help us fine tune the way we conceptualize, contemplate and evaluate regionalism as politics and transnationalism as a scholarly project. In epistemological terms, on the other hand, it proposes a theoretical perspective to regionalist scholarship involving rigorous engagement with the scales of observation, and scale shifts, in the interpretation of history. The hypothesis the article seeks to test maintains that the national and the (meso)regional perspectives to history chart differentiated 'spaces of experience' — i.e. the same occurrences are reported and judged in a different manner on the different scales — by way of displacing the valency of past processes, events, actors, and institutions and creating divergent temporalities — different national and regional historical times. Different objects (i.e. spaces) of enquiry are therefore coextensive with different temporal layers, each of which demands a different methodological approach. Drawing on texts of regional scholars, in which the historical reality of the Balkans/Southeastern Europe is articulated explicitly or implicitly, the article discusses also the relationship between different spaces and scales at the backdrop of the Braudelian and the microhistorical perspectives.

Reflecting on Illyrian helmets

The so-called Illyrian helmets, with a rectangular opening for the face, are a frequent topic in archaeological literature for several reasons. They are distributed over a large territory - on the Balkan Peninsula and beyond, so many archaeologists from various countries were involved in their study. Then there is the great diversity of forms, where each type or subtype represents a theme in itself posing various questions, and finally new Illyrian helmets appear all the time, even in regions far from their main concentration areas, or with unfamiliar details, demanding new analyses and explanations. The author discusses their division into types and subtypes, chronology, variants, and comes to the conclusion that a proper study of this theme will be possible only when various aspects of their appearance, including ancient written sources as well as the material culture of this period in particular regions, are taken into consideration because of their complex and versatile role in ancient Balkan history.

An Interview with Margaret MacMillan

An Interview with Margaret MacMillan Donald A. Yerxa Donald A. Yerxa: How is history used in civic discourse? Margaret MacMillan: It is used in many ways: to mobilize people around a common theme, whether it’s a grievance or triumph or hope for the future; to construct both individual and national identities; and to make analogies, teach lessons, and convey information. History can be misused. History can be dangerous when leaders claim we should do this or that because history teaches us it is the right thing to do. I argue that we need to look at such assertions more skeptically. Yerxa: What are some of the more egregious ways that history has been abused? MacMillan: Balkan national identities rely heavily on history. But it’s a very partial history, designed only to show that a particular people—whether it’s Croat or Bulgarian—has always been a distinct nation. Now that is a very tricky concept. People didn’t even define themselves as nations before the 19th century in most places. History is dangerous when it’s used to portray a current enemy as someone who has always been hostile. In certain nationalist histories the Serbs have been portrayed as Orthodox Christians fighting on the front line against Islam, and the Muslims have always been their enemy. But that isn’t what happened at all. For much of Balkan history, Muslims and Christians lived very comfortably together. Osama bin Laden and other fundamentalists often paint pictures of an idyllic past, an Eden where everything worked perfectly. Society worked well; people knew their place; there was harmony. But then some fell away from the faith or outsiders came (in the case of Bin Laden, the Crusaders and then Western imperialists). This kind of history can be a very powerful mobilizing force. Marx used history in this way: primitive communism was a wonderful Eden. A made-up past is often used to portray a future that will be a paradise for all. Click for larger view View full resolution A Norman Rockwell illustration from Everett Titsworth Tomlinson, Scouting with Daniel Boone (Grosset and Dunlap, 1914). Yerxa: What would be a better use of history? MacMillan: History helps us to understand other people. I know people better when I know something of their past. It is impossible to understand the American black community unless you know the history of slavery and the very complex relations between the races. How can you make any sense of the recent incident with Professor Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge police unless you know something of how tricky race has been in America? In Ireland there is an interesting process going on where Republican historians are accepting that Irish Protestants and Catholics have not always been enemies. So history can be used not just to understand others, but also as a means of reconciliation between enemies. Yerxa: You join a chorus of commentators who note that history is wildly popular these days. Why is there this public appetite for history now? Are you fearful that this appetite is not being adequately nourished? MacMillan: It is fascinating, isn’t it? Some historians are quick to distinguish between real history and this nostalgic “history craze.” The heritage business is a form of entertainment. In affluent societies there are people with money and leisure time, and they don’t all want to sit around in Florida. They travel to historic sites and reconstructions and witness reenactments. There is also a sense that we are living in a rapidly changing world, and I think we feel this even more than in past decades. There have been some real ups and downs: climate change, the end of the Cold War, the shift in international power relations, the huge electronic revolution, and so on. Society is changing fast, and not always for the better. People look to the future with a certain amount of apprehension. Oddly enough, I think Americans do more of this now than during the Cold War. I was talking the other day to someone who was very concerned about what it is going to be like for our grandchildren. Aside from the threat of nuclear war, that’s...

Catholicism, Culture, Conversion: The History of the Jesuits in Albania (1841-1946) by Ines A. Murzaku (review)

I38 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 200g Murzaku, Ines A. Catholicism, Culture, Conversion:The History of the Jesuits in Albania (1841-1946). Orientalia Christiana Analecta 277. Pontificio Istituto Orientale, Roma, 2006. 280 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography. Index. 25.00: $29.00 (paperback). Albanian history is one of the national histories of Europe least familiar to English speakers, and themodern ecclesiastical history ofAlbania is one of the more obscure corners of this history, a corner made even darker by the absence of a sizeable literature on the topic in languages other thanAlbanian. This volume, therefore,provides an important service to anyone interested in Balkan history and especially for students ofJesuit missions in theperiod after the restoration of the Society in 1814. Moreover, Ines A. Murzaku has drawn on rare archival material that gives us a window into the experiences and attitudes ofJesuits working inAlbania and the impressions they gained from their surroundings. Perhaps most interesting for the more general reader are the firsthand accounts of vendettas and blood feuds among the Albanian mountaineers, which the fathers strove to reduce, and the references to customs in rural Albanian society before the Communist era. Yet thisvolume has significant limitations. The author offers littleanalysis of thematerials she uses to tell the storyof theJesuit presence inAlbania for over a century, and the historical survey ends abrupdy without a concluding summary. The reader hoping to gain insights into life inAlbania during the First and Second World Wars will be disappointed. The immediate reason for this and other omissions, such as more details about relations between the Catholic Church and King Zog, or the way the Jesuits responded to Mussolini's occupation ofAlbania in 1939, isperhaps the limited nature of the surviving archival materials, much having been destroyed by theCommunists after 1945. The reader is left wondering, however, why other sources were not used to round out thispicture. Other omissions include, most noticeably, the absence of any concluding summary or synthesis of the author's research, or exploration of theJesuit politics beyond Albania that shaped the Society's approach to this remote and impoverished region. These lacunae make it much more difficult to place the frequently heroic efforts of these Jesuit missionaries and teachers in the larger contexts of the nineteenth and early twentieth-century society, or of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Albania. Relying on Jesuit generated documents, Murzaku has little critical to say about individualJesuits.We gain intriguingglimpses of a few rivalries between the fathers, and sense the ongoing tensions between Italian and native Albanian Jesuits, but the root causes of these conflicts are mostly obscured by the lack of specifics provided in these documents. The occasional bishop or foreign diplomat also comes in for criticism, but again the basis for this criticism is primarily drawn from frequently opaque Jesuit sources. In addi tion, although thebook contains rare and fascinating photos of theJesuits and people theyministered to, the absence of a map leaves the reader at times unable to appreciate the significance of thedistances or geographical obstacles that theJesuits confronted. However, by presenting straightforwardly and without analysis theJesuit perspective, Murzaku inadvertently gives us an insight into how these men reviews 139 saw themselves and their relations with others, including theChurch hierar chy,Muslims, Ottoman officials and diplomats; while this is of course an incomplete picture, it does contribute to our understanding of the broader question of Jesuit self-representation. Finally, two additional factors have clearly influenced the composition of thisbook. The firstis the destruction of theJesuit mission and persecution ofJesuits by theCommunist government. This sad chapter produced martyrs for the Society and cast the history of the Jesuits in a light that anticipates these sacrifices. The second factor is the return of the Society in 1991 following the fall of Communism. The return of theJesuits allows Murzaku to tell her story as one inwhich setbacks and martyrdom are at least potentially redeemed by the end of overt oppression and the resumption of theJesuits' mission. Yet asMurzaku documents amply, the story of theJesuits inAlbania is one of repeated expulsions followed by dogged effortsto return and rebuild. The history of theJesuits inAlbania is a narrative whose ultimate significance has yet to be determined. Murzaku's work helps us understand...

Russian Advancement into the Balkans and the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji (1774)

Undoubtedly, the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union played an important role in modern Balkan history. In international politics, the treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji (1774) is considered as one of the most significant points for Russian advancement into the Balkans. This article outlines the significance of this treaty by analysing its background and stipulations.After the Ottoman Empire lost its predominance over the West European countries and Russia at the end of the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, the Habsburg Empire and the newly emerging Prussia coexisted in the first half of the following century and these four countries gradually strengthened their ties. In this situation, Russia attempted to expand its influence into the Balkans. However, at that time the Ottoman control over the Balkans was still so firm that such attempts were unsuccessful.This situation, however, changed when the Russo-Ottoman war broke out in 1768. In this war, the Russian troops defeated the Ottoman troops at most fronts including Greece and the Danubian principalities. As Russia's victory continued, the orthodox subjects in the Balkans began to expect Russian protection. Consequently, the Habsburg Empire and Prussia sensed an impending crisis due to the expansion of the Russian influence into the Balkans, and they began to intervene in this war as mediators. In the peace negotiations, although Russia occupied most of the territory of Wallachia and Moldavia, it was obliged to return both countries to the Ottoman Empire because of immense pressure from both the mediators. Nevertheless, Russia attempted to maintain its influence on the Danubian principalities and to obtain some clues for its advancement into the Balkans in the future. In 1774, Russia and the Ottoman Empire signed a peace agreement at Kuchuk Kainardji.Then, we analyse the contents of this treaty. We consider that there were three articles that enabled Russian advancement into the Balkans. Firstly, Article 16 stipulates Ottoman protection for the local subjects in Wallachia and Moldavia and in this article Russia obtained a voice concerning the affairs of both principalities. This right allowed Russia to officially involve itself in the issues pertaining to the Danubian principalities, and these two countries provided the base for Russia's further advancement into the Balkans. Secondly, some researchers have conjectured that owing to this treaty, Russia obtained the right to protect the orthodox Christian subjects in the Ottoman Empire; however, this is not true. Article 7 states that the orthodox Christian subjects in the Ottoman Empire must be protected by the Porte and not by Russia. The above-mentioned misunderstanding was caused due to Russia's exaggerated insistence on the eve of the Crimean War that in this treaty, it had obtained the right to protect the orthodox Ottoman subjects. However, it is true that this treaty was indirectly the beginning for Russia's insistence. Thirdly, Article 11, which stipulates the activities of merchants, provides Russia the right to open consulates anywhere within the territory of the Ottoman Empire. Using this right, Russia opened consulates and vice-consulates in the Danubian principalities in the 1780s, followed by those in the other Balkan areas in the nineteenth century. These consulates played an important role in Russian advancement into the Balkans by collecting information, maintaining contact with local leaders, ecclesiastics and other local influential men.Thus, this treaty was of great significance for Russian advancement into the Balkans.

Conversion in Ottoman Balkans: A Historiographical Survey

AbstractThis article surveys the Islamization of South‐eastern Europe under the Ottoman rule. In Balkan history writing the question of conversion to Islam was, and still is, a highly charged political issue. It is intrinsically linked to the issues of formation of national identities and rival territorial claims of the Balkan states. The nationalist discourse of the current Balkan historiography defines all forms of Islamization as results of the Ottoman government's centrally organized policy of forced conversion. This study argues against this position and maintains that Islamization in each Balkan country took place in the course of many centuries and its nature and phase was determined not by the Ottoman government but by the specific conditions of each locality.

Greek-Romanian Symbiotic Patterns in the Early Modern Period: History,Mentalities, Institutions - I

<p>The patriarchal decree validating the establishment of the Wallachian archdiocese in 1359; a series of documents pertaining to the early history of the Koutloumousiou monastery on Mount Athos; the surviving redactions of Patriarch Niphon II's lost vita; the proceedings of the interrogation of a Greek priest arrested by the Polish authorities on charges of conspiracy and espionage; and an emphatically digressive section in Matthew of Myra's verse chronicle known as <em>History of Wallachia</em>. This article, of which the first part is presently published, offers a discussion of these textual materials - which span four crucial centuries of Balkan history and represent an intriguing variety of discursive practices and traditions. It aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the intricate mechanisms that generated a climate of toleration, mobility and inter-ethnic contact in the Ottoman Balkans, enabling a symbiotic relationship between Greeks and Romanians, which found its vital space in the semi-autonomous and strategically located Danubian principalities, and endured throughout the early modern period despite having been severely undermined by opposing tendencies and conflicting interests. The two sections at hand focus on the Bishop of Myra's pivotal text, as well as on written records related to the early, and yet formative, contacts between the nascent Romanian states and the late Byzantine Empire; in the two remaining sections, which will appear in the next volume of <em>The Historical Review</em>, this endeavour will be brought to a conclusion by means of a (necessarily selective) presentation of evidence dating from the period after the fall of Constantinople and up to the beginning of the seventeenth century.</p>

Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages: 500–1250 by Florin Curta (review)

REVIEWS 215 Florin Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages: 500–1250 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 2006) xxvii + 496 pp., maps. Florin Curta’s Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages: 500–1250 presents a new multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the complexity of the medieval period in this broadly defined region, and is a fitting addition to the Cambridge Medieval Textbooks series. Building on the author’s earlier work, which has provided fascinating new methods of envisioning southeastern Europe and the emergence of the various peoples between late antiquity and the Middle Ages, this survey of medieval history presents a cohesive view of the historical issues within the framework of a narrative history while applying innovative research. For example, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages enlarges the body of sources to include and to rely heavily on recent archaeological findings and the scholarship that it has inspired, as opposed to the traditional presentation of medieval Balkan history primarily conceived through literary sources. The geographic range of the work has also been greatly increased from earlier surveys (which primarily were concerned with narrow definitions of the Balkans ) to include the areas of present day Hungary and Romania. Curta argues that although there is a great diversity in histories in this expanded area, traditional arbitrary models of political histories have been slow to recognize that this broad perspective allows for reevaluation of the interactions between various areas and comparison “across visible and invisible frontiers” (38). This new survey of early medieval southeastern Europe is not only a response to the growing importance of archaeological research for this period, but also a reassessment of the geographic concepts of the “Balkans” and southeastern Europe, which seems to be highly influenced by changes in the modern concept of a unified Europe and the desire to break from “national(ist)” paradigms. Although Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages balances many types of sources and adopts broad perspectives on some of the most contentious issues, the organization of the work is surprisingly conventional, divided into relatively arbitrary chronological periods which are subdivided by historical issues. The periodization tends to be divided into centuries: for example, the first chapter , “The end of late Antiquity or the beginning of the Middle Ages?” covers the sixth century; the second chapter covers the seventh and eighth centuries (“Dark Ages”); and the penultimate chapter focuses on the first half of the thirteenth century (“Between Crusade and the Mongol Invasion”). The subdivisions are less uniform and are primarily focused on either groups or locations (Croats/Croatia, Bulgarians/Bulgaria, Byzantines) or issues (The problem of Greater Moravia, the Byzantine-Hungarian wars and the rise of Serbia). The conclusions presented in the final chapter do not follow the organization of the rest of the work, and are broadly thematic, covering economy, society, and religion over the entire period. The final chapter is also very short, given the range of material and issues present in the rest of the work, and functions more like a location in which these types issues (such as agriculture) can be included rather than a set of conclusions. Curta’s presentation of archaeological evidence, and the weight which he gives it, is one of the greater methodological differences compared with earlier REVIEWS 216 scholarship, for example Fine’s The Early Medieval Balkans.2 A short illustration of this phenomenon can demonstrate the growing authority with which archaeological evidence has come to play in creating the history (or histories) of the people of Southeastern Europe. The location of “Greater Moravia,” both as a political entity and as a pseudo-mythic country where the Slavic conversion was first attempted, has been greatly contested in previous scholarship. After outlining the various theories (primarily that Moravia was located on the Morava river in present day Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which is the traditional view, or that is located south of the Danube in Serbia), Curta turns to the archaeological evidence based on grave goods and the emergence of certain types of settlements which are interpreted as clear indicators that in the period of the ninth century, the region north of the Danube should be considered as Moravia. Curta’s work is not simply an...

Modern Greek Studies in the United Kingdom: Suggestions for the Future

The future for Modern Greek Studies, with particular reference to the UK, lies in the potential for Neohellenists to position themselves and their subject in relation to the wider intellectual context, both inside and outside the "academy." In this, their US-based colleagues have often proved more adaptable, while usually lacking, on the other hand, the departmental base and developed graduate programs that are the norm in the UK. Contemporary fields of enquiry to which the specialist knowledge and skills of the Neohellenist ought to make a significant contribution include: classical tradition; study of nations and nationalism; modern Balkan history; comparative/world literature; translation studies; historical linguistics and socio-linguistics; film and gender studies. In contexts such as these, Modern Greek Studies can expect to come out of the "ghetto" and achieve both visibility and academic integration, without diluting the discipline-based rigor that has a long tradition in British universities.

The Balkans: Identities, Wars, Memories

Neven Andjelić, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The End of a Tragedy (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 228 pp., $34.95 (pb), ISBN 0-7146-8431-7.Tom Gallagher, The Balkans after the Cold War. From Tyranny to Tragedy (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 256 pp., $114.95 (hb), ISBN 0-415-27763-9.John Lampe and Mark Mazower, eds., Ideologies and National Identities. The Case of Twentieth-Century Southeastern Europe (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2004), 309 pp., $23.95 (pb), ISBN 9639241822.James Pettifer, ed., The New Macedonian Question (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave and St. Martin's Press, 1999), 311 pp., $24.95 (pb), ISBN 0-333-92066-X.Michael Parenti, To Kill a Nation. The Attack on Yugoslavia (London and New York: Verso, 2000), 246 pp., $10.00 (pb), ISBN 1-85984-366-2.Maria Todorova, ed., Balkan Identities: Nation and Memory (London: Hurst & Co., 2004), 374 pp., £17.50 (pb), ISBN 1-850-65715-7.Emerging from the obscurity of old-fashioned, specialised ‘area studies’, since 1989 the Balkans have attracted much attention from historians. The primary reason for that has been, tragically, the war in Yugoslavia and the emergence of a postwar order. Even the post-communist transitions (in Romania, Bulgaria and Albania) attracted less attention. Nevertheless, the field benefited substantially from the increased interest in the area, and lively debates took place on contested issues, sparked not least by hasty initial schemata (and stigmata) used by outside observers, such as ‘ancient hatreds’ and the like. Parallel to the attention paid to what was going on in Yugoslavia, and perhaps more productively in the long run, was the postmodern, postcolonial approach to Balkan history, inspired by Maria Todorova's Imagining the Balkans, which followed Edward Said's monumental Orientalism and appeared parallel to Larry Wolff's Inventing Eastern Europe. Such refreshing studies of Western representations of the region were later complemented by the internal perspective of how such representations were received, and coped with, in the region. A profusion of ‘cultural studies’ in the broadest sense followed, reflecting both the ongoing reshaping of Balkan identities and outside demand for such studies.

An ounce of prevention: Macedonia and the UN experience in preventive diplomacy

The science of medicine was the first to discover that 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, ' Henryk Sokalski reminds us as he begins this study of a unique United Nations mission. the political realm, however, its full potential has yet to be realized. Sokalski, former head of the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, provides the ultimate insider's look at the UN's attempt to establish a mission in this former Yugoslav republic before the imminent eruption of mass violence spilling over from neighboring Balkan states Serbia and its overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo in particular.An Ounce of Prevention and the UNPREDEP mission itself begins in early 1995 with a telephone call to Sokalski at his Warsaw home from UN Secretary General Boutros-Ghali, and it ends several years later in a disappointing Security Council veto of the mission's renewal. In between, Sokalski's study of this novel experiment in UN peacekeeping describes the mission's three pillars as well as contending theories on preventive diplomacy and early preventive action, contemporary Balkan history, and the daily bureaucratic and human challenges of reinventing civil society. All the while, Sokalski attempts to answer the question of whether the mission's renewed mandate could have prevented the country's recent destructive insurgency and whether UNPREDEP's truncated success could serve as a model for future UN preventive deployments.

Changing Professional Practice, Training Balkan History Educators to Become Agents of Change

Changing Professional Practice, Training Balkan History Educators to Become Agents of Change

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

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...