Mandate of History:
Serbian National Identity and Ethnic Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia

Ivelin Sardamov ₁

Institute on East Central Europe
Columbia University

March, 1996

With the "end of history" once again indefinitely postponed, recent years have seen the rapid resurfacing of national movements and ethnic conflict in many parts of Europe and beyond. Most ominously, for the past several years we have almost learned to live with the prolonged agony of the former Yugoslavia, in what increasingly looks like Western Europe's newly-acquired backyard. Yet the failure of millions of relatively well-educated, normally skeptical individuals to grasp the presumed obsolescence of nationalist slogans seems to have taught us little.

In the past, it was common to dismiss nationalism as resting on irrational passions. Lately it has become more popular to emphasize exclusively the "invented" or "constructed" nature of modern nations and the perils of elite manipulation of innocent populations. Pursued with moderation, this approach puts us on guard against the pretensions of nationalist leaders and intellectuals. Taken to an extreme, it can leave us ill-equipped to understand the stakes and dynamics of the Yugoslav conflict and other similar outbursts.

Explaining Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict

Since the early 1980s the rapidly expanding literature on nationalism has tried to account for the unexpected resurgence of ethnic and ethnically-based national identities around the world. Its main thrust is perhaps best exemplified by the works of Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm and his associates, and Benedict Anderson. ₂ Gellner has reduced nationalism to a function of the structural imperatives of industrialization. For Hobsbawm and his associates, what passes for national identity consists largely of "invented traditions" employed by elites to channel mass political mobilization in periods of rapid social change, as in the case of Europe between 1870 and 1914. Anderson, for his part, maintains that nations are "imagined communities" produced by the interplay of what he calls "print-capitalism" (the commercial production and circulation of books and later newspapers) and the "fatality" of linguistic diversity.

The main thrust of these "constructivist" theories of nationalism is to present nationhood as a distinctly modern phenomenon, marking a radical break with a population's inchoate sense of pre-modern identity. Some authors have gone even further and adopted a straightforward "instrumentalist" approach. They have presented ethnic and national identity as a highly malleable and pragmatic sentiment, or even as a form of "false consciousness," wilfully "'constructed' and manipulated cynically or opportunistically in pursuit of advantages, mostly material, by individual promoters and activists." ₃ Despite their claim to innovativeness, especially compared to the "primordialist" bent of some older explanations, these accounts have a long pre-history. They do not depart much from Hans Kohn's view of nationalism as a healthy West European idea that has degenerated since being transplanted to the unripe social conditions of Eastern Europe. ₄ The beginnings of the "constructivist" approach can be traced even further back, at least to Renan's famous definition of the nation as an "everyday plebiscite," ₅ or to Lord Acton's description of the new concept of the French nation after the 1789 revolution as something worse than an abstraction, a "fiction." ₆

More profoundly, this view draws on the heavy individualist bias that has long predominated in modern social and political thought. Since Hobbes's time it has become customary to describe society as a habitat of accidentally associated, atomistic individuals pursuing personal security, prosperity and power. Consequently, everything that surpasses this basic reality has been discarded as a "social mythology" which ascribes to artificial social constructs the reality and naturalness appropriate only to individual existence. ₇

This leaning is apparent also in the most influential theories of ethnic conflict, which have adopted an "instrumentalist" approach parallel to the perspective of many students of nationalism. From such a perspective, the decision of thousands of people to forego their daily preoccupations in favor of intercommunal violence is presented as an effect of calculated manipulation by elites trying to hold or aspiring to power and status. ₈ This diagnosis has recently been popularized by many western observers, who have asserted that "[the] breakup of Yugoslavia is a classic example of nationalism from the top down -- a manipulated nationalism" in an otherwise peaceful region. ₉

Such an outlook may have some credibility in the study of social unrest in modern western societies. With some qualifications, these have seen the destruction of corporate communities and folk culture ₁₀ and the subsequent rapid withering away of history as a privileged dimension of human experience shaping current social identities and purposes. ₁₁ Applying the theoretical models developed to capture the problems of personal action and social integration under these conditions to the ethnic rivalries in the former Yugoslavia, though, may be highly misleading.

Beyond the Atomist Folly

It takes at least two for a conflict to occur, but there is wide agreement that an appreciation of the force of Serbian nationalism is indispensable to understanding Yugoslavia's violent disintegration. Ironically, we may not have to look far for a theoretical framework more pertinent to this task than the mainstream theories discussed so far. Arguably, a more holistic approach can be better suited for understanding the intercommunal struggles in the former Yugoslavia than is the methodological individualism still predominant in the social sciences. A first step toward a holistic approach would be to go back to Burke's now symptomatically outdated understanding of nationhood:

[A] nation is not an idea only of local extent and individual momentary aggregation but it is an idea of continuity in time as well as in numbers and space ... it is a constitution ... made by the peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil and social habitudes of the people which disclose themselves only in a long space of time. ₁₂

What is so remarkable about this passage is that in it Burke discards the empiricist, atomistic assumptions of the conventional wisdom of his own age. At the same time, he avoids the excessively organicist conception of society espoused by the German romantics, some of whom were heavily influenced by him. Burke's main weakness, however, is that for him political identity rests too heavily on the cohesion and continuity of political institutions, a feature peculiar to his native England but unknown to the powerful nationalist movements on the European continent since the early nineteenth century.

A way of overcoming this limitation has been more recently shown by another conservative thinker, Gerhard Niemeyer, who has carefully steered a course between a Burkean preoccupation with political forms and a Romantic emphasis on cultural authenticity and permanence. ₁₃ Niemeyer places at the core of political identity what he calls "succession," or the enduring sameness/continuity in time of a political community through changing generations. ₁₄ In his view, political identity is inextricably bound with historical memories, since "[the] content of each succession is invariably a common past, a concrete history acknowledged as 'ours' by a multitude of persons." ₁₅ Such an identity is historically anchored, referring to a continuous, self-same "we" of yesterday, today and tomorrow as a historical communal subject. It inspires reverence of the political community as a time-abiding entity transcending the here-and-now of those belonging to it.

Unlike the old romantic theories, this understanding of national identity does not totally obscure the purposes and strivings of individuals, since they are the carriers of significant historical recollections. At the same time, it overcomes Burke's excessive institutionalism by taking up a key Romantic insight about the nature of political communities. What distinguishes Niemeyer from most of his contemporaries and many predecessors is that for him political identity is a quasi-existential rather than a purely mental or discursive category. ₁₆ In his account, the key characteristic of political communities is that they are experienced as quasi-sacred entities, providing a source of meaning and values beyond the existence of the individual and even of any single generation:

The myth of public succession secures, for the common existence of a multitude, a transcending ground of being, so that men are what they are by virtue of the public identity enduring for centuries. ₁₇

This surpassing of immediate experience is an aspect of human existence fully ignored by the mainstream theories of nationalism and ethnic conflict discussed above. Nevertheless, it is a decisive aspect, since it provides a supra-personal political reality to be contested, manipulated, and captured in struggles for power and legitimacy. ₁₈ In such struggles elites cannot appeal only to the momentary priorities of individuals or even of the national collectivity in its current incarnation. To gain and hold power effectively, they have to dig deeper and invoke the trans-generational responsibilities imposed on themselves and on the whole people by the fact that their lives represent but a passing moment in the enduring being of the nation.

The main implication of Niemeyer's conception of political identity is the necessity to acknowledge the abiding power of "history as an identity-forming myth" to provide lasting standards for legitimate political action. ₁₉ These can be manipulated by elites, but they have typically been formed over a long period of time; they form part of an overall not fully conscious world orientation and can thus largely escape deliberate orchestration. ₂₀ These standards can be conceived as a peculiar "mandate of history" (by analogy with the ancient Chinese "mandate of heaven") with which national leaders are vested and exercise authority, but which they are not fully free to reinterpret.

This conceptualization builds upon (without departing very far from) Niemeyer's judgment of the crux of most decisive political struggles. The one moment in his theory in need of serious revision is the impression he creates that all political communities are equally bound to their remembered past by the vital link of trans-generational "succession" he has identified. As many other thinkers have demonstrated, in western societies incessant social innovation, technological progress, social fragmentation, and the explosion of the electronic media have brought about a largely ahistorical modern worldview. ₂₁ In recent decades these societies have been plagued by an even more extreme form of presentism culminating in the exponential proliferation of occurrences, life-styles, images and ideas with little significance beyond their representation in the media. ₂₂

Early Serbian Ethnoreligious Identity

To outside observers who subscribe to the Kohnian notion that East European nationalism is a later and paler version of the West European original, Serbian nationhood may seem a relatively recent development, a product primarily of state-sponsored nationalist propaganda. ₂₃ Nothing could be further from the truth. The claims of native writers and historians who have often spoken of a full-fledged, self-conscious Serbian nationhood as the basis of the medieval Serbian kingdom do seem excessive. ₂₄ Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that a widespread sense of a common destiny and ethnic unity prevailed among the Serbs long before any profound impact of social modernization. ₂₅ It found expression in the mediums of folk poetry and religion, and this early momentum has not been completely lost despite the modern onslaught of secular education, urbanism and industrialization.

The medieval Serbian kingdom disintegrated and then succumbed to the Ottoman invasion of the Balkans in the late fourteenth century. Part of the Serbian nobility perished in the process and part fled the country. Some enlisted to serve the Ottoman administration, but by the seventeenth century most of them had either converted to Islam or lost their privileges. At the same time, the Serbian population became subject to policies of imperial "apartheid" under the millet system of the Ottoman empire, which promoted social segregation along ethnoreligious lines. Serbs led a largely self-enclosed rural existence, with a degree of local self-government and cultural autonomy. Reduced to a humiliating inferior status, they sought refuge in the zealous cultivation of their patriarchal tradition within closely-knit kinship associations. Most importantly, in numerous epic folk songs (recorded by foreigners since the late fifteenth century) they preserved idealized memories of their medieval kingdom and a hope that its greatness had not been lost forever. ₂₆

Alongside epic folklore, the other major pillar of Serbian self-consciousness under Ottoman rule was undoubtedly religion. In 1557, the Serbian Patriarchate at Pec was reestablished by the Ottoman authorities and was given jurisdiction over practically all Serb-populated provinces. The patriarch became the leader and representative of the Serbian millet within the empire not only in ecclesiastical, but also in secular matters. The Serbian church enjoyed enormous respect and material support from the Serbian population, and in response provided spiritual guidance. It canonized scores of Serbian kings and lesser political figures, commissioned and popularized their mythologized biographies and, in general, "assiduously invoked the memory of the medieval Serbian kingdom in its ritual." ₂₇ Curiously, what the Serbian population espoused at the time was not so much "religion defined as a belief in the dogmas and mysteries of an organized church." Rather, it "involved a localized and superstitious folk-religion" which served primarily as a symbol of collective identity and differentiation from other communities. ₂₈ The mainstay of the Serbian church's teaching was a compendium of sermons, the so called Srbljak, ₂₉ dedicated only to Serbian saints and extolling the sanctity of the Serbian church, land, and people, or narod. ₃₀ In Michael Petrovich's words, "Serbian Orthodoxy (pravoslavlje) became in large measure "Saint-Savism" (svetosavlje), ₃₁ so much so that Serbs came to regard their religion as being distinct from that of the Greeks." ₃₂

Eventually, the religious and ethnic elements in the self-understandings of the Serbian population under Ottoman rule "became so interwoven as to become inseparable." ₃₃ The sense of unity and common destiny of the Serbian population of the time, however, was not merely a result of the verbal message of epic poetry and the church. Rather, it derived from a more fundamental solidarity of the Serbian narod, which had been brought together by oppression and the sense of irrevocable, unconditional belonging to one's kin nourished within the Serbian rural communities. With a degree of credibility, Vasa Cubrilovic has argued that

it was not the Serbian church that preserved the Serbian people in Turkish times, but rather the Serbian people used the Serbian church as an autonomous clerico-political institution after the restoration of the Pec Patriarchate in 1557 in its struggle for the protection of its ethnic individuality, religious faith and cultural separateness within an Islamic state like Turkey. ₃₄

In a similar vein, Albert Lord has claimed it was Serbian nationalism that kept epic folk poetry alive until the advent of published literature, rather than the other way around. ₃₅

From the seventeenth century onward, the patriotic themes of Serbian ecclesiastical texts and epic folk poetry were taken up by written secular histories. These culminated in Jovan Rajic's History of Various Slav Peoples, Namely the Bulgars, Croats and Serbs, written in 1768 and published almost three decades later. Despite the title of his book, Rajic focused heavily on the history of the medieval Serbian kingdom, drawing extensively on the works of his predecessors. He similarly glorified the deeds of the old Serbian heroes and held them as a paragon to be emulated by the coming generations. Rajic's History remained an authoritative text for several decades and was a central influence on the work of many later historians and writers.

Again, this historiographic trend was another articulation, rather than the prime mover, of Serbian ethnoreligious identity. This identity had become firmly established and widely shared much earlier and was poised to fuel a prolonged liberation struggle. It was most forcefully expressed in the millenarian outlook that became central to Serbian folk culture after the late fifteenth century. Serbs came to look forward to the messianic return of St. Sava or Marko Kraljevic, the most famous epic hero in their folk poetry, who would lead them to liberation. ₃₆

Inspired by such expectations, in 1593 the Serbs in Slavonia, Rashka (Old Serbia), Bosnia, and southern Hungary took advantage of the Ottoman empire's entanglement in a series of wars. They rose against Ottoman rule with the blessing of the then Serbian Patriarch Jovan II, who presented the leaders of the insurgents with a Serbian white-blue-red standard with the portrait of St. Sava emblazoned on it. Consequently, the insurrection became known as "the insurrection of St. Sava" and the Turks sought to discourage support for it by exhuming the remains of the Serbian saint and burning them. This did not help much, but after the Austrians made peace with the Ottoman empire in 1606, the rebellion lost momentum and was finally suppressed in 1609.

This was only the largest in a series of early risings against Ottoman oppression. Several decades later it was followed by a comparable insurrection, prompted by the start of another Austrian-Turkish war in 1683. ₃₇ After the hostilities ended, the insurgents were again left to their own means and in 1690 Patriarch Arsenij III Carnojevic led a large exodus of Serb families (perhaps as many as 100,000 people) into the Habsburg empire. In their new lands across the Danube and the Sava, they immediately sought to establish a separate Serbian polity with recognized ecclesiastical and even political autonomy. They were granted limited rights to this effect by the Austrian authorities, but these concessions were gradually taken away. Nevertheless, the Serbian community under Habsburg rule managed to cultivate a distinct cultural and political life of its own. It prospered economically, made great advances in education, and later provided numerous teachers, intellectuals and administrators to Serbia proper.

The great exodus of 1690 was the most significant, though hardly the only large-scale Serbian migration of the time. Serbs moved not only into southern Hungary, but also into parts of the old Croatian kingdom. These territories became designated as the Austrian Military Border, and their inhabitants were granted certain privileges in return for open-ended military service. Due to the ravages of war and these population movements, large parts of the medieval Serbian kingdom became almost depopulated, attracting new Serbian settlers from the mountainous region to the southwest. These massive migrations did much to break localist attachments and were another important factor in forging a sense of belonging to an inherently unified Serbian narod. ₃₈

The next Austrian-Turkish war of 1716-1718 triggered another Serbian uprising and led to two decades of Austrian occupation. In 1737-39, however, the Austrians suffered a dismal defeat and had to withdraw across the Danube, an event which prompted another great Serbian exodus. The Ottoman authorities eventually punished the disloyalty of the Serbs by abolishing the Patriarchate at Pec in 1766, an act which made the lower Serbian clergy even more militantly patriotic and drove them closer to the Serbian peasants. In their next military expedition into Ottoman territory in 1789-91, the Austrians enlisted numerous Serb volunteers into the so called Freicorps and let Serbian units do most of the fighting, led by their own compatriots. The war was again unsuccessful, but it gave many Serbs valuable military experience and greater confidence in their limited resources.

The Fascination and Perils of the Cult of "Srpstvo"

After 1791, the Ottoman central authorities initiated a series of reforms aimed at broadening Serbian local autonomy. These measures were opposed by the local Janissaries, and the governor of Belgrade organized Serbian armed detachments to fight them. Eventually this policy was reversed, but it proved impossible to reduce the Serbs to full submission again. The local Turkish warlords felt increasingly insecure and in 1804 attempted to preempt a possible Serbian uprising by executing as many of the Serbs' elected communal leaders, the so called oborknjezovi, as they could. This move in fact provoked an insurrection on the territory of the entire Pasalik of Belgrade. Under the leadership of Karadjordje (Black George) Petrovic and a number of local leaders (many of them former participants in the Austrian Freicorps), the Serbs quickly took control of most of the Ottoman province. They eventually established as their main military force a regular army made up of volunteers and called "the National Army." ₃₉

The fact that the insurgents initially fought against the local Turkish warlords who themselves openly defied the Ottoman central authorities has led some western historians to argue that the insurrection of 1804 never became a national movement seeking the liberation and political unification of all Serbs. ₄₀ This judgment may hold some truth, but the limited objectives of the insurgents seem to have been dictated more by their scarce resources rather than any lack of greater ambitions. There are indications that the leaders of the uprising looked back to the glory of the old Serbian kingdom and saw their own actions as a step to restore the continuity of the Serbian state tradition. After the initial military successes, the relics of Stephen the First-Crowned (the first Serbian medieval king) were transferred to Serbia, and in 1808 a portrait of Tsar Dusan (the great fourteenth century Serbian king) decorated the headquarters of the newly established Serbian Administrative Council. ₄₁

The insurrection had serious repercussions among the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Southern Hungary, who clearly identified with the struggle within the Pasalik of Belgrade. Most importantly, even after they were offered almost complete local autonomy in 1806, the insurgents chose to heed the Russian urgings to fight the imperial armies for full independence. ₄₂

After the Russians abandoned their allies in 1812, the uprising faltered and was finally crushed in 1813. But this outcome was achieved only after nine years of excruciating and largely successful military campaigns in which much of the male Serbian population of the Pasalik of Belgrade and many other volunteers proved capable of utmost exertions. Even the reign of terror the Ottoman authorities established after their victory could not bring back the old state of affairs. Despite the devastation of the numerous campaigns and battles between 1804 and 1813, in that period the Pasalik of Belgrade had become a center of Serbian aspirations and its population had doubled. Irrespective of the losses suffered, the Serbian population remained more defiant than ever and ready for another outburst. ₄₃

After some local disturbances, the signal for a new general uprising came in 1815 from Milos Obrenovic, one of the leaders of the first insurrection. The insurgent army faced overwhelming odds, however, and Milos had to negotiate a semi-autonomous status for the Pasalik of Belgrade. The settlement provided for a return of an Ottoman governor to Belgrade and of Turkish garrisons to the major towns, but again, the Serbian population could not be fully subdued. Gradually Milos was able to wrestle increased powers from the Ottoman authorities, until 1830, when the Sultan recognized him as a hereditary prince. By that time he had managed not only to establish himself as an uncontested despot within the Pasalik of Belgrade, but also to put in place the foundations of the administration of the prospective Serbian state. ₄₄

The key and often overlooked fact (under the influence of the "constructivist" theories discussed above) about all of these struggles is that their catalyst was not a patriotic Serbian intelligentsia. Nor was the widely-shared Serbian ethnoreligious self-consciousness that drove them the result of secular education or printed patriotic propaganda. In 1804, there were only two Greek-language schools within the entire Pasalik of Belgrade and Karadjeordje, and Milos and most of the other leaders were themselves illiterate. ₄₅ Under these conditions, Serbian dedication and perseverance was a result primarily of the millenarian outlook and sense of historical destiny embedded in Serbian folk culture, including its folk-religious variant. ₄₆ The ability to put the dramatic events after 1804 in historical context is especially evident in the numerous epic poems composed by folk singers during the uprising. ₄₇

The central feature of this folk tradition was that it posited the essential unity and historical continuity of the Serbian narod and held before it the prospect of a messianic liberation. It embodied a form of "militant historicism" ₄₈ and envisaged a world of deadly intercommunal conflict. Folk songs abounded in images not only of heroic Serbian figures (both medieval and contemporary in the face of the hajduks) but also of resentment against everything "Turkish" and of intercommunal violence. They conveyed a "deep-seated hatred and religious bigotry" ₄₉ and a "prosaic exultation at bloodshed." ₅₀ is ethos was expressed most forcefully in Njegos's great Montenegrin epic, The Mountain Wreath, in which one of the protagonists proclaims "That both our faiths will be swimming in blood./Better will be the one that does not sink." ₅₁ This outlook survived long after the establishment of the semi-autonomous Serbian principality and was to have a profound impact on later Serbian culture and politics.

The reasons for the remarkable tenacity of this Serbian conflictual, historically-grounded ethos are difficult to identify. Undoubtedly, part of the answer lies in the fact that the newly-established and semi-autonomous Serbian principality incorporated only a small part of the Serbian narod, and its cultural and political life came to be dominated by ambitious irredentist aspirations. Perhaps equally important was the course that social modernization took in Serbia. Although Milos himself was occupied primarily with strengthening his own authority and amassing personal wealth, his successors in the 1840s and 1850s began to understand the need to build a strong centralized state in order to embark on a project of national expansion and unification. Lacking the support of any significant local commercial and industrial capital, they pursued modernization through the creation of a massive bureaucracy, a police apparatus, and later a military establishment. Needless to say, the resulting regime was too intrusive for Serbian society, which consisted predominantly of peasant small-holders (over 80 percent of the population) and was a severe drain on its resources. In addition, the ferocity of the developing primitive capitalism and the resulting social differentiation and fragmentation were experienced as a crippling assault on traditional values. As a result, broad circles of the Serbian population and many intellectuals sought refuge (in a way somewhat reminiscent of the epoch under Ottoman domination) in Serbia's glorious history and praised its disintegrating communal tradition. ₅₂ his orientation sustained a quasi-folk, traditionalist, and backward-looking worldview long after its time had seemingly passed.

From its very beginning in the writings of Vuk Karadzic, modern Serbian literature remained almost entirely based on historical themes, repeating endlessly the Serbian ethnic name and exploring the collective historical destiny of the Serbian narod. As Jovan Deretic has noted, it "was being written as history," with a strongly didactic purpose and initially predominated by non-fiction, historiographic works such as biographies, memoirs, chronicles, and others of this kind. ₅₃ Even when Serbian fiction and poetry became dominant beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, they continued the same historical/patriotic themes. The most popular artistic genre of the late nineteenth century was historical drama, which typically took its plots from medieval Serbian history. ₅₄ Not only romantics, but even the later symbolists and other modernists composed numerous patriotic odes, or what Deretic terms "poetry of collective inspiration." ₅₅ In general, all of Serbian literature of the time was historically-oriented and entirely ethnocentric. Its protagonists embodied the values and strivings of the whole Serbian narod and often found fulfillment in self-sacrifice for the future of their people. Nothing could be further from its concerns than a Shakespearean plot taken from a faraway or fictional land. This historical and ethnocentric orientation was also strengthened by scores of popular histories. ₅₆ In a similar fashion, the embryonic Serbian social sciences immediately made the ethnic group their main subject and dedicated much effort to the study of ethnopsychology, which resulted in the development of elaborate ethnic stereotypes. ₅₇

This historical and ethnocentric fixation found its prime expression in the cult of srpstvo (Serbdom), and pan-Serbism, the objective of unifying the whole Serbian narod in a single state, which came to pervade the whole of Serbia's social and political life. From the 1840s, pan-Serbism, as expressed in Ilija Garasanin's famous Nacertanije (Outline or Memorandum), lay at the foundation of Serbian grand strategy. ₅₈ It had wide popular support, and for many decades the primary qualification of any Serbian leader was his faithfulness to the national cause. ₅₉ During the 1850s and 1860s there were hopes that the Serbian national objectives could be achieved with a general anti-Turkish uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Old Serbia, directed from Belgrade. After these plans were frustrated, Serbian leaders eventually staked all their hopes on the Serbian army. Like elsewhere in the Balkans, all mainstream Serbian political currents unswervingly pursued the solution of the "national question," though with various degrees of determination. ₆₀ According to Ivo Lederer, starting from the 1880s,

Serbian political parties gradually ceased to distinguish between issues of political and economic democratization on the one hand and the national "mission" of all-Serbian unity, involving liberation from foreign rule, on the other. In short, Serbian affairs at home and abroad were perceived essentially as a whole. ₆₁

In 1875 there was a large Serbian uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Serbian government knew the unpreparedness of its army and for a time attempted to stay out of the crisis, but this proved an impossible feat. There was wide popular pressure for immediate war at any cost to help the insurgents, and in 1876 Prince Milan Obrenovic overcame his hesitation to intervene. Serbia declared war and its army marched into Ottoman territory, only to be promptly defeated by the superior Ottoman forces. Just two years later, though, Serbia was awarded full independence and some territories to the south at the Congress of Berlin, following the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878. ₆₂ However, in Berlin, the Great Powers also allowed Austria-Hungary to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina, a move which blocked Serbian expansion in this direction and diverted it to the south. After this episode Prince Milan Obrenovic sought protection for his regime from Austria and surrendered much of Serbia's independence.

At the turn of the century, Milan's son, Alexander Obrenovic, was also more interested in strengthening his own personal regime than in Serbia's mission of liberation. In 1903, however, he was killed by a group of patriotic officers who objected mainly to his foreign orientation. Petar Karadjeordjevic, whom the officers invited to the throne, agreed to become a constitutional king. Serbia emancipated itself from Austria's guardianship and proceeded to embark on an intense preparation for a new, decisive war against the Ottoman empire. The favorable moment came in 1912 when the Serbian and Bulgarian governments managed to patch up their differences over Macedonia and concluded a military alliance. It was quickly joined by Greece and Montenegro, and in October 1912 the allies declared war on the Ottoman empire. In a few weeks the Serbian army scored a series of decisive victories in its theater of operations, and the following year proceeded to defeat the Bulgarian army in the Second Balkan War over the division of Macedonia.

In the summer of 1914, however, the Serbian army had to take to the field again, this time against Austria-Hungary at the beginning of World War I. For more than a year, it repelled a series of overwhelming offensives against all odds. During this time, the Allies sought favor from Bulgaria by convincing the Serbian government to cede part of Macedonia to it, but they met with stubborn resistance. As a result, in the autumn of 1915 Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Serbia was attacked from three sides, and its defense quickly collapsed. Yet the Serbian government did not surrender, but ordered a withdrawal through the Albanian mountains to the Adriatic Sea. This disastrous winter march was joined by many civilians and children and cost tens of thousands of lives. The remains of the army which reached the sea were reequipped by the Allies and the following year were thrown against the German-Bulgarian front near Salonika. There they again fought with unwavering perseverance, spearheaded several decisive breakthroughs, and in late 1918 reentered Belgrade after a gruesome 45-day forced march.

In these remarkable campaigns, the Serbian soldiers, the majority of them illiterate peasants, showed a tenacity and dedication striking to many foreign observers. The latter often sought the reason for this phenomenon in the soldiers' immersion in Serbia's glorious past and in their sense of righteousness fed by memories of past injustices. In 1917, Harold Temperley wrote:

Kossovo and Stephen Dushan, Czar Simeon and Kustendil waken far more living sentiments between Serbians and Bulgarians than do names like Sebastopol or Waterloo to us and to our Allies. National policies in the Balkans are still affected by the wrongs wrought five centuries ago. ₆₃

According to observers present at the scene, dozens of Serbian soldiers reported seeing St. Sava on a chariot or Marko Kraljevic on his horse lead them to victory. Also, they were conscious of the historic significance of their exploits and sought to preserve the memory of them in numerous lengthy songs composed in the old epic tradition. ₆₄

As a result of the doggedness of its government and the morale of its troops, Serbia suffered the highest casualty rate of any country in the war. It lost approximately a quarter of its population in hostilities, retributions, and from disease, including more than half of its male population of military age. Strangely enough, there was a widely-shared sentiment that all these excessive losses had been vindicated by Serbia's eventual victory. ₆₅ The newly-established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was seen as a fulfillment of the perennial Serbian objective of bringing the whole Serbian narod within a single state, rather than as the creation of a genuine multiethnic entity. The Yugoslav movement, which had started in Croatia and found support among the Serbian omladina at the turn of the century, had apparently remained an elitist phenomenon with rather limited appeal at the grass roots.

After the enormous Serbian sacrifices for "the liberation of their Slav brothers," practically all Serbian politicians and intellectuals believed they were entitled to a predominant position in what was soon to become Yugoslavia. They imposed strict centralization and sought full control of the administrative apparatus and the army. This policy was naturally resisted by the mainstream Croatian political and intellectual circles, and eventually the central Yugoslav authorities became all but paralyzed. In March 1941, a group of patriotic Serbian officers gambled one more time against all odds, bringing down the government which had just agreed to join the Axis. Within a few days Hitler ordered the destruction of Belgrade by the Luftwaffe, and the disorganized Yugoslav army quickly collapsed before the German panzer divisions.

Parts of Yugoslavia were occupied by German, Italian. and Bulgarian troops, while most of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina was incorporated into a German protectorate called the Independent State of Croatia. As early as June 1941 the Serbian peasants of Herzegovina rose in a spontaneous rebellion, without much instigation or direction from communist functionaries. ₆₆ It was quickly crushed, but later Serbs formed the overwhelming majority of Draza Mihajlovic's nationalist and anticommunist resistance movement concentrated in Serbia proper, and the backbone of Tito's partisan movement, which was strongest in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Again, in the course of its armed struggle the Serbian population suffered enormous losses, a large portion of them inflicted by the anti-Serbian genocidal campaign of the Croatian puppet state.

The Latest Stage

The reason for this lengthy exposition of the Serbian national struggles before 1918 is that they, especially the wars of 1912-1918, rehearsed the main themes of the recent Serbian military campaigns in the former Yugoslavia: the sense of national mission and the natural right of the whole Serbian narod to live in its own state; the defiance and doggedness of the leadership against overwhelming odds and the comparable perseverance of the military units; the overwhelming consensus in political and intellectual circles over the long-term objectives of Serbia's grand strategy; the almost automatic legitimacy conferred upon national leaders by the espousal of militant pan-Serbian patriotism; and the overall predisposition to think in terms of the collective actions and rights of ethnic groups rather than of individuals.

Most observers have so far put the blame for the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia almost squarely on the manipulative policies of the ex-communist Serbian leadership under Slobodan Milosevic. He has been blamed for fueling nationalist hysteria through the tightly-controlled Serbian media and enlisting the support of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army in his drive to establish a Greater Serbia. ₆₇ doubt, these accusations are not entirely groundless, but the truth is that after breaking the Titoist taboo against nationalist propaganda in 1987, Milosevic largely reiterated the old Serbian national dream. If he wanted to hold to power, he was hardly free to do anything else, least of all to continue preaching "brotherhood and unity." As in many other cases, with regard to Serbia the elitist picture of a passive population whose mobilization is "altogether contingent on the intervention of charismatic leaders, advanced political organizations or upper classes" can be extremely misleading. ₆₈

In his drive Milosevic had the support not only of the party and state apparatus, but also of most of the influential intellectuals who "saw the unification and liberation of all Serbs as the unfulfilled aim of Serbian history." ₆₉ The initial program of the strongest opposition grouping, the Serbian Renewal Movement led by Vuk Draskovic, included the demand that all the territories where the Serbs had formed a majority before the wartime Ustasa massacres be returned to Serbian rule. ₇₀ In Misha Glenny's account, "[i]n the Serbian Parliament, even the most liberal members will stress their patriotic commitment to the maintenance of Serbian rule over Kosovo." ₇₁ Public events after the beginning of the conflict demonstrated that "there is virtually no disagreement among prominent Serbian intellectuals and political leaders over the merit of creating a Greater Serbia." The only differences among them concerned the choice of means to achieve this obvious end. ₇₂

Milosevic's nationalist rhetoric, as well as that of the local Serbian leaders outside Serbia proper, resonated also at a more basic level among the majority of the Serbian population. They extolled the Serbs' historical role as liberators and emphasized the extent of their past sufferings at the hands of others. ₇₃ doing this, as John Allcock has noted, Milosevic habitually employed "the language of traditional Balkan values -- the collective responsibilities of kin for the defense of moral values, and shared responsibility for the avoidance of shame." ₇₄ He routinely referred to the rights and actions of ethnic groups rather than of individuals. ₇₅ Most importantly, thinking in ethnic terms, the Serbian leaders viewed self-determination as the right of the individual narodi, rather than of the administrative units of the federation. ₇₆

The Serbian leaders were so assured of the rightness of their cause that they made almost no efforts to advertise it before the larger world. They were arrogant because of their certainty in the final Serbian victory and hardly feared that they could be one day prosecuted for war crimes. The self-proclaimed Serbian republics in the Croatian Krajina and Bosnia and Herzegovina were able to enlist tens of thousands of Serbian fighters, had inherited the heavy weapons of the Yugoslav army on their territory, and initially enjoyed general military superiority. Also, they counted on the fact that if Milosevic wanted to hold to power in Belgrade, he would not be able to abandon them to their fate.

This time, however, it turned out that Serbian designs were based on a crucial delusion. Serbia did not enjoy strong support among its former western allies, and 1991 was the year in which Milosevic's chief supporter, the USSR, dramatically unraveled. The rump Yugoslavia became the object of comprehensive economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations. This measure caused colossal economic hardships and eventually Milosevic had to maneuver, distancing himself from the self-proclaimed Serbian republics and repositioning himself as a prospective mediator and peace-maker. He single-handedly curtailed rump Yugoslavia's involvement in the conflict, and this shift of policy tipped the balance of forces decisively.

This was a change of heart that ran counter to the entire historical current of Serbian aspirations. It created not only practical difficulties, but also sowed deep doubt and uncertainty among the Serb population in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ₇₇ The Serb military formations eventually suffered their first significant defeats, initially in Croatia in the summer of 1995. Soon after that, the Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina were further weakened and demoralized by the NATO air campaign and were summarily defeated by the Muslim and Croatian troops, including units from Croatia proper. These military disasters resulted from the fact that Serbia's consumer-oriented society no longer had the ascetic near self-sufficiency it had enjoyed in the past, and Serbian fighters had correspondingly lost much of their once legendary unwavering morale. The defeats triggered a humanitarian tragedy of enormous proportions -- a massive Serb exodus from lands in Croatia and Western Bosnia which had been home to a predominantly Serb population for several centuries.

It may be temptingly simple to explain these recent Serbian disasters as a result of mere miscalculations, motivated only by the momentary pressures of internal Serbian power struggles. ₇₈ They can more credibly be seen, however, as the most recent link in a long-lasting socio-political tradition. As in the past (especially in 1915, 1941 and the World War II years) the Serbian political and intellectual elite evoked the trans-generational responsibilities brought upon the Serbian narod by its glorious tradition of liberation struggles. To large parts of the Serbian population, especially in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, this message rang with unmistaken relevance, and even after the defeats "most Serbs remain convinced that they have been true to their valiant history in the wars of Yugoslavia's destruction." ₇₉ Eventually it turned out that the Serbs, like modern Western societies (though to a lesser degree), had lost much of their ability to suffer hardship and casualties for a prolonged period of time and this brought about their downfall. Nevertheless, the majority of the Serb population both in Serbia proper and outside are still convinced that they have suffered a tremendous injustice, mainly because the world has lined up against their rightful aspirations. This resentful frustration, fueled by a refugee crisis of tremendous proportions, is unlikely to subside soon.

Many decades ago, Temperley wrote with reference to Serbia's participation in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913:

Serbia was bound by a chain to the heroic memories of Kara George and of Kosovo, and prized national independence above every material gain. Sooner than forget the past, she preferred to endure the present and to risk the future, and by this final decision asserted her right to be a nation. ₈₀

This unreserved admiration for Britain's wartime ally may be exaggerated, but it is curious that Cosic has recently lamented in similar terms the "curse of history" brought upon Serbia by its violent past:

It is an enormous exertion and an even more complex responsibility to live in the second half of the twentieth century and belong to a people that has won its place in world civilization by war and regards war victories as the greatest human victories. It is tormenting to be from one's very birth irredeemably indebted to the dead. ₈₁

Serbs have been so far unable to break this curse, which has been at the heart of their most heroic deeds and their most reprehensible crimes even in recent history. Their latest virtual capitulation on the battlefield and at the peace table may be an indication that they are beginning to move in this direction. Until they achieve significant progress (paralleled by similar changes in the self-consciousness of the other Yugoslav communities), the peace in the former Yugoslavia is likely to remain at best a cold war. It is also still unclear whether the Serbs will be able to come to terms with their tragic past without paying the price of lasting disillusionment and cynicism among the general public. The signs so far are hardly encouraging.

The overall historical experience of the Serbian people in many ways defies the theories that see nationalism merely as a modern pragmatic tool of West European origin in the hands of East European elites. In recognition of this peculiarity, Peter Sugar has suggested that in the Serbian (as well as in the Bulgarian) case it is appropriate to speak of "popular" (alternatively, of "populist" or "egalitarian") nationalism, as opposed to the bourgeois, aristocratic and bureaucratic varieties characteristic of other East European countries. ₈₂ The course of Serbian history demonstrates that in similar cases cynical politicians and frustrated intellectuals may play on ethnic grievances to advance their own careers, but they are hardly the prime movers of popular sentiments. ₈₃ In order to be successful, their message has to resonate with a historically formed background of prejudices and preunderstandings which precede and surpass in their implications the efforts of a Milosevic or a Tudjman. As Milton Esman points out,

to argue that mass constituencies can be mystified or hoodwinked to contribute funds, loyalty and support to a movement from which they derive no psychological or material benefits and whose rewards and opportunities are monopolized by a select handful of self-serving manipulators is to miss entirely the effects of socialization into an ethnic community and the force of collective dignity and efficacy that bind individuals to their ethnic roots. ₈₄