Can an analysis of a bloody ethnic conflict from thirty years ago shed light on aspects of today’s European — and not only European — reality? This is what Robert Hayden, Emeritus Professor of Political Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, argues in his latest book From Yugoslavia to the Western Balkans: Studies of a European Disintegration 1991–2011, published by the University of Crete Press. To Vima spoke with him about the contemporary lessons that can be drawn from a difficult past.
Why a book today about Yugoslavia and its disintegration?
“In Yugoslavia, we witnessed for the first time the return of fascism and its renewed legitimization in Europe. Look at what is happening today with Meloni in Italy, with the AfD in Germany, or in the United States. It is a rehabilitation of fascism, which we believed had been eradicated in 1945. In one of the book’s essays, written two years after the war began, I described this resurrection as a ‘digging up of the vampires.’ The vampires were the Serbian Chetniks and the Croatian Ustaše of World War II — two movements that served as models of extreme nationalism during the wars in Yugoslavia from 1941 to 1945. Yugoslavia was one of the bloodiest and most complex battlefields, because it was not only about people fighting against occupation, but also about the Ustaše fascist movement in Croatia — supported by the Germans and Italians — which tried to establish a fascist regime there, the Serbian royalist forces known as the Chetniks, who were hostile toward Muslims and Croats, and, of course, the communist revolution.”
The latter eventually prevailed…
“One major reason for that was that the communists were the only political actors who tried to involve the entire population. But with the fall of communism, within just a few years, the Croatian Right resurrected the Ustaše, and the Serbian royalists who supported the Chetniks became increasingly active.”
You analyze how state socialism turned into state chauvinism, through the constitutionalization of the ethnic nation, providing the framework for the ethnic cleansing that followed. Can you explain this process?
“American students do not fully understand the concept of European nationalism, because in American English the terms ‘nation’ and ‘state’ are equivalent. When we say the president addressed the nation, we mean all the people in the country — not just the white ones. In the European context, however, the ‘nation’ refers to a group connected by common birth or heritage, while the ‘state’ refers to territory and government. The state exists to serve the nation. The nation is sovereign within its territory through the government. If you are not part of the nation, you are not part of the sovereign community — even if you are a citizen of the country. In this sense, Israel, since its founding, has been a classic European nation-state, because it was formed as a state where Jews are the sovereign nation. Non-Jews can be citizens, even members of the Knesset, but they are not part of the sovereign nation.”
But communism reverses this.
“Marx argued that the fundamental groups are economic classes. Thus, under communism, the working class was sovereign, not the ethnic nation. But suddenly communism disappeared… The Slovenes were the first to amend their Constitution. Then everyone else followed, except Bosnia, which had no single ethnic majority. The transition from the sovereignty of the working class to the sovereignty of the ethnic nation can only work if there is a strong majority of that national group. But Bosnia and Herzegovina had no such majority: 42% were Bosniaks, 32% Serbs, 14% Croats, and the rest identified as Yugoslavs, etc. Only if everyone had declared themselves Bosnian could there have been a Bosnian nation or state. There was only one politician who ran on such a platform — a Croat from Bosnia — and he was popular in 1990, but he received only 5% of the vote. The Serbs voted for the Serbian party, the Croats for the Croatian one, the Muslims for the Muslim one, and they have done the same ever since. The war led to an internal ethno-territorialization of the state.”
In Europe, we haven’t had ethnic cleansing between different nations in modern history…
“Haven’t we? Let me remind you that the largest ethnic cleansing in Europe occurred in 1945, when 10 million Germans were expelled to Germany from Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia.”
Do you believe this is a mechanism characteristic of Europe?
“It is a European construct that produces such phenomena.”
I was also struck by your application of the concept of Orientalism — of ‘layered Orientalisms’ — to the Yugoslav context.
“The introduction of Orientalism into Balkan studies was my wife’s idea. When Yugoslavia began to face difficulties, we started reading that it was an artificial mixture of industrious Roman Catholics in the North and West, and the Orthodox and Muslim populations of the South and East, who were supposedly less industrious, etc. Then we began to see the same pattern repeating itself within Yugoslavia. The Slovenes said they were superior and that those to their east were ‘contaminated.’ The Croats called everyone to their east or south ‘Easterners,’ and so on.”
Like a pyramid?
“Like Russian nesting dolls — each one containing another… If those to our east are inferior, then we have the right to separate ourselves from them; we have both the right and the duty to protect ourselves from them. Nationalist rhetoric always portrays minorities as a threat to the majority. That’s exactly what Trump is doing now in America.”
Wasn’t another form of Orientalism the once-popular notion that the Balkans are not truly part of Europe?
“Yes, but how could the Balkans not be considered part of Europe? Just look at the map… But let’s also say this: How ‘European’ is the EU today? How European is Orbán’s Hungary or Meloni’s Italy? And speaking of European ideals — Europe didn’t handle Yugoslavia very well. It failed to manage the situation. Partly because the Americans became involved.”
What do you mean?
“The first guiding principle of the Clinton administration was that whatever they did, they had to look good in The New York Times the next day. If their actions had disastrous consequences a month later, that didn’t matter. The second was to make sure Russia was completely eliminated from European affairs. And the third was to show that the United States was the ‘indispensable nation,’ as Madeleine Albright put it.”
