Brussels Whole Issue20160123-9512-2x3p21

TRANSITIONS
* Les volumes I à XXXIII ont été publiés sous le nom « Revue des Pays de l’Est »
The Post-Yugoslav Space: Politics and Economics
edited by
Barbara DELCOURT & Klaus-Gerd GIESEN Vol. 52 • 2
© IS/Ieug mars 2013
avenue Jeanne, 44, B - 1050 BRUXELLES
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ISSN n° 0779-3812
Table of contents
Introduction
Barbara Delcourt & Klaus-Gerd Giesen 5
Yugoslavia In Western Nation-Building Strategy – A Historical

Kees van der Pijl 11
State Borders, Symbolic, Boundaries and Contested Geographical Space

Citizenship Struggles In
Gëzim Krasniqi 29
Linguistic Politics In Ex-Yugoslavia: The Cas Of Purism In Croatia

Tea Pršir 53
Economic Wheels Of Transition: Yugoslav Space 20 Years On

Miroslava Filipović 71
Post-Yugoslav Sovereignties, Rentier Capitalism, and The European

Economic Crisis
Klaus-Gerd Giesen 101
‘Truth And Reconciliation’: A New Political Subjectivity For Post-Yugoslavs?

Slobodan Karamanić 113
INTRODUCTION
Barbara DELCOURT and Klaus-Gerd GIESEN
In December 2011, an international conference held in Brussels gathered twenty-five

scholars from different disciplines with the objective of taking stock of the economic,
political and cultural trends that have profoundly transformed the Yugoslav Space. At
the same time on the campus, an exhibition elaborated by artists of Yugoslav origin
offered different narratives of the Yugoslav project. Pictures, artefacts, posters, films,
performances were presented aiming at questioning the so-called “Yugo-nostalgia”
phenomenon. But far from claiming a unique way of being Yugoslav, or better post-
Yugoslav, they proposed a critical view on the issue of identities expressing sort of
tiredness with discourses that tend to confine/lock up people from the Balkans in a
common fate made up of warfare, dramas, and enduring crisis1.
The organizers of the conference were also willing to overcome the clichés
associated with Balkans in general, and Yugoslavia in particular. As Slavoj Žižek
formulated it, “It seems as if there is no definitive answer to the question ‘Where do
the Balkans begin?’ – the Balkans are always somewhere else, a little bit more towards
the southeast… For the Serbs, they begin down there, in Kosovo or in Bosnia, and
they defend the Christian civilization against this Europe’s Other; for the Croats, they
begin in orthodox, despotic and Byzantine Serbia, against which Croatia safeguards
Western democratic values; for Slovenes they begin in Croatia, and we are the last
bulwark of the peaceful Mitteleuropa; for many Italians and Austrians they begin
in Slovenia, the Western outpost of the Slavic hordes; for many Germans, Austria
itself, because of its historical links, is already tainted with Balkan corruption and
inefficiency; for many North Germans, Bavaria, with its Catholic provincial flair, is not
free of a Balkan contamination; many arrogant Frenchmen associate Germany itself
with an Eastern Balkan brutality entirely foreign to French finesse; and this brings us
to the last link in this chain: to some conservative British opponents of the European
Union, for whom – implicitly, at least – the whole of continental Europe functions
1 On this topic, see also the special issue of Transitions edited by Sylvie Ramel and Francis
Cheneval, “From Peace to Shared Political Identities. Exploring Pathways in Contemporary
Bosnia-Herzegovina”, 51, 1-2.
•5
Barbara DELCOURT & Klaus-Gerd GIESEN
today as a new Istanbul, a voracious despotic centre which threatens British freedom
and sovereignty…”2
The Yugoslav space offered to the European Union an image of its past, the one
that it tried so far to overcome, a convenient story, not to say an ideology3, legitimating
in a way its raison d’être and perhaps its Nobel Prize.
While all contributors do not share the same assumptions, the common thread of
the papers lies certainly on the fact that this simple story does not hold or, at least, is too
simplistic. First and foremost because it tends to obfuscate the role of external actors
and factors that not only contributed to the break-up of Yugoslavia but, still, continue
more or less to shape the governance of the new independent republics according the
“status” they have been granted under the new European order (member of the EU,
candidate countries, ...)4.
The analysis provided by Kees van der Pijl is thus a welcome reminder of the
various strategies uphold by Western Powers during the 19th and 20th centuries to
accommodate the ethnic diversity in coveted territories with their own economic
interests and political concerns. His analysis of nation-building built on the four
categories of state/society complexes sheds an interesting light on the very notion of
nationality. Conceived as “a result of centuries of class struggles”, nationality takes
at the same time a different meaning according precisely the capacity of the state and
its ruling elite to homogenise its population. Interestingly enough, Yugoslavia is put
in the same category as Belgium even if the former has experienced a federal model
inspired by an austro-marxist conception of multi-nationality (dissociating nationality
and territory) while the latter is still fighting with its bourgeois version. The author
emphasizes that when state socialism in Yugoslavia began to crumble in the debt
crisis, the USA and the newly reunified Germany moved to cultivate client governing
classes among national elites seeking to secede from Yugoslavia. These insights are
tantamount to an invitation, not only to study what has been often presented in a rather
simplistic way as a peculiar case of “decommunisation” in its historical background,
but are also a compelling demonstration of the added value of a comparatist approach
in political science.
The concept of citizenship is also at the core of Gezim Krasniqi’s contribution,
but it is built on a different theoretical framework in order to understand the physical
and symbolic transformations of the space in Kosovo during the last twenty years. It
describes the attempts of both Serbs and Albanians to take control of this disputed
territory and to impose their own identity markers. Indeed, war is not only about
territory’s control; it also involves symbolic changes in the public space that epitomize the
2 Žižek, Slavoy (2000). The Fragile Absolute. London: Verso, 3-4.

3 Kølvraa, Christoffer (2012). Imagining Europe as a Global Player. The Ideological
Construction of the New European Identity within the EU. Bern, Bruxelles, …, P.I.E./
Peter Lang, 179 et ss.
4 See also, Dallara, Christina (ed.), “External and Internal factors of Democratization in the
Western Balkans”, Transitions, L-1.
6•
Introduction
conception of the citizenry that will prevail5. The exclusionary dynamics underpinning
this process prove to be quite efficient and the analysis conducted by the author can
help understanding why reverse dynamics sustained (but unevenly) by external actors
stalled; and their ideas of “multiculturalism” kept at bay6.
With Tea Pršir’s paper, the issue of nationalism is tackled through different lenses.
As a linguist, she unveils the political nature of the language by studying the purisms
that nationalist elites in Croatia try to impose in order to “sanctify” the Croatian
secession from Yugoslavia and to get rid of any traces of the common past or foreign
influence (mainly anglicisms). Here again, the undergoing processes that are described
are not peculiar to this region, and a considerable amount of literature has already dealt
with this question of nation-building and language7. From a political point of view,
this piece is particularly interesting in showing the different institutions and measures
that are needed to curb social practices for the sake of a nation whose genuine identity
is supposedly restored through this purification process. If, at the end, most of the
Yugoslav people can nonetheless still understand each other, yet it contributes to keep
away people from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro.
In this regard, one can wonder to what extent these political endeavours are effective
and to what extent economic transformations are pushing for further dissociation or,
on the contrary, to a rapprochement thanks, for instance, to the standardization process
implied by the accession to the European Union.
Miroslava Filipovic offers us a thorough analysis of the economic situation of
each republic before and after the break-up, arguing that, while initial conditions can
explain variations between the republics, in the long run, it is macroeconomic policy
and institutional reforms that will affect the most the results of the transition. The
state is back in a way, but the political project has profoundly changed alongside its
role in the economy. Still, according to the World Bank, ex-Yugoslav republics are not
enough business friendly. Corruption is widespread and partly linked to the large-scale
privatizations. Has liberalization delivered on its promises? This question is addressed
by the author who turns to EBRD surveys to provide some answers. Differences
between republics resurface clearly but somehow in a paradoxical way. As a matter
of fact, Slovenians who enjoy the highest living standard are the less optimistic about
their future. The percentage of people expressing support for market economy and
democracy remains below 50% for all, with only 20% of positive opinion in Serbia
despite the fact that the GDP has increased by 40% since 1991 while the percentage of
5 Heleen Touquet who was also participating to the conference wrote interesting articles on
post-ethnic mobilization in Bosnia, the topic of her PhD Dissertation.
6 Hugues, James (2009). “EU conflict management policy: comparing the security-
development model in the ‘sui generis’ cases of Northern Ireland and Kosovo”, ECPR
Conference Paper, 10-12 September 2009, available on: http//eprints.lse.ac.uk
7 On this topic, see also the contribution of another guest of the conference,
Marinov, Tchavdar, “Adieu Tito, Bonjour Europe: la République de Macédoine
face aux dilemmes du passé communiste et de l’avenir européen”,
on line: http//www.cairn.info/article_p.php?ID_ARTICLE=EUFOR_349_0159
•7
population below national poverty line decreased. The author underlines the fact that
even before the Yugoslav break-up distinct regional policies had started to disintegrate
the already rather heterogeneous economy. However, nowadays the majority of the
successor states still share quite some burdens and economic features.
Genuine rule of Law is precisely what seems to be lacking in all post-Yugoslav
societies. Klaus-Gerd Giesen shows that the dialectics between politics and economy
produce rent-seeking societies (rent being defined as the misuse of public power for
private gain), which stalled not only the process of state formation, but also economic
productivity and growth. The new political system emerging from the transition is
labelled neo-patrimonialistic combining features of patrimonialism based on private
patron-clients relations and legal-rational state bureaucracy with the result of hampering
democracy and market economy as well8. He adds to the picture the external economic
and financial factors (foreign direct investment, assistance, loans...) that enable such a
rentier system to keep up in most former Yugoslav republics. In the second part of his
paper, the author wonders whether this situation is going to be changed by the recent
transformation of world capitalism into “international rentierism” due to the financial
and economic crisis since 2008. Western capitalism is indeed also evolving towards
an international rent-seeking pattern. For the post-Yugoslav countries the situation
is very sensitive, as West European banks may be tempted to reduce their exposure
to private credit risk, a measure that may be mainly applied in the “European super-
periphery” 9, and could lead to a disastrous credit crunch.
The break-up of Yugoslavia in the beginning of the 90’s and the further recognition
of the independence of the new republics were frequently explained and legitimized by
the reference to the right to self-determination for people. Twenty years later, this very
idea seems to vanish. As suggested by Klaus-Gerd Giesen in his conclusion, popular
sovereignty, or market democracy, are prevented by internal rent-seeking structures;
moreover a credit crunch scenario would possibly lead to a severe recession and a major
political crisis. On the one hand, this situation could open a window of opportunity
for political contestation asking for better representation. On the other hand, the worst
case scenario could also entail less loyalty to the existing state while radical religious
groups and irredentist ethnic movements will gain more and more support10.
Against this backdrop, the latest decisions issued by the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (chamber of appeal) to release the suspected war
criminals, Gotovina (from Croatia) and Haradinaj (from Kosovo), nourish the suspicions
and critics against what has been labelled “transitional justice” and was deemed to, not
8 Such problems are obvious in all republics and even in Slovenia, see for instance the
latest demonstrations in Maribor City, “Bruit, fureur et ultra-libéralisme en Slovénie: les
raisons de la colère”, 4 décembre 2012, Courrier des Balkans, disponible sur:
http//balkans.courriers.info/article21311.html
9 Bartlett, Will (2013). “European Super-Periphery”, Academic Foresights, 7, January-March
2013 (www.academic-foresights.com/European_Super-Periphery.html).
10 See for instance, “Balkans. Les rêves de grandeur des Albanais”, Courrier International,
28 novembre 2012.
8•
Introduction
only fighting impunity, but also to contributing to lasting peace in war-torn regions
and divided societies11. No surprise then that one of our host, Svejtlana Nedimovic,
raises the issue of an alternative pathway for reconciliation and truth-seeking in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, a pathway that would challenge the political elites’ monopoly
in building a collective historical narrative and proved more fruitful for ensuring
long-term reconciliation.
In this regard, Slobodan Karamanić’s theoretical reflection on truth and
reconciliation sheds a light on the antinomies ferried by attempts to organise a collective
memory while fostering a liberal principal of individual autonomy and points out
the side-effects of “nationalising” responsibilities, with a focus on Serbia. He doubts
that the mechanisms experienced so far will restore hope of a better future for the
post-Yugoslav region as it rests on a reified conception of national identity related to
a pre-political common cultural substance, unconsciously reproduces the same line of
division based on ethnic categories that caused the war12, and reactivates all the myths
linked to the Balkans we referred to in the first lines of this introduction.
The author is also critical of the tendency to propose a sort of collective psychotherapy
for the victims insisting on moral obligations instead of dealing with political problems
that impinge upon their daily life. He actually doubts that any of the endeavours taken
in the name of truth and reconciliation could bring “lessons” for the public.
To come full circle, between the domination phenomenon described by Kees van
der Pijl and the collective therapy evoked by Slobodan Karamanić, the observations
made by Mariella Pandolfi and Laurence McFalls seem particularly relevant. Having
studied the modernization dynamic sustained by foreign interventions in the region, they
turn to Weber for understanding the new form of domination carried on by intervening
“global bureaucracies”. Thus they propose a fourth ideal-type of domination13: “as in
the doctor-patient relationship of command, the ruler claims obedience by virtue of
the application of a scientifically valid, impersonal procedure, – a treatment protocol –
in the extraordinary context of crisis. The concept of therapeutic domination can
make sense of power relations on sites of military and humanitarian interventions in
political and medical crisis zones, where an international corps of experts, the migrant
sovereign, arrives with a panoply of standard operating procedures to cure social and
physical ills with varying degrees of success but also with paradoxical side effects,
11 Isabelle Delpla and Jasna Dragovic-Soso were also our guests, we strongly recommended
their articles on this topic; see publications on line: http://recherche.univ-montp3.fr/ea738/
chercheurs/delpla.htm; http://www.gold.ac.uk/politics/staff/dragovic-soso/
12 Slobodan Karamanic is working with a team of young researchers who also participated
to the conference, Elissa Helms, Isabelle Ströhle and Daniel Suber; their main works have
been published in a collective book, Retracing Images. Visual Culture after Yugoslavia,
Netherlands, Brill, 2012.
13 See McFalls, Laurence (2010). “Benevolent Dictatorship: The Formal Logic of Humanitarian
Government”, in Didier Fassin and Mariella Pandolfi (eds.), Contemporary States of
Emergency. The Politics of Military and Humanitarian Interventions, Brooklyn, Zone
Books, 318.
•9
including self-defeating, form of resistance to therapeutic domination (...). Analogous

to patient non-compliance or refusal of intervention in a self-perpetuating cycle so
that intervention begets more intervention as the provision of food and shelter, for
example, quickly necessitates not only the establishment of physical infrastructures but
ultimately legal, political, economic, social and cultural reforms to make life-saving
measures effective, efficient and enduring. Therapeutic domination can thus spill over
from the context of crisis management to become a generalized mode of government,
just as preventive medicine can take over every aspect of a (potential) patient’s life”14.
The metaphor of Yugoslavia as a laboratory we used to refer to in the beginning of
the 90’s still seems to be relevant, and studying its disintegration process over twenty
years and more can also teach us interesting lessons about analogies with the present
crisis and possible disintegration of the European Union15.
14 Mariella Pandolfi and Laurence McFalls (2010). “Global Bureaucracy: irresponsible but
not indifferent”, in Allessandra Dal Lago and Salvatore Palida (eds.), Conflict, Security
and the Reshaping of Society, London&New York, Routledge, 181.
15 See for instance: Popović, Milan (2012). “The Yugoslav Space Twenty Years Later: Historical
Progress or Retrocession?”, in Milan Popović, AlterVizija: Balkanska Postmoderna 7,
Podgorica, Daily Press, 2012, 116-128. The text was presented and discussed at the
conference in December 2011.
10 •
YUGOSLAVIA IN WESTERN NATION-BUILDING STRATEGY – A HISTORICAL 1
Kees VAN DER PIJL
This paper argues that that the West (understood as an intercontinental constellation
configured around a liberal, English-speaking core) throughout the 19th and 20th
centuries has pursued a strategy of supporting national independence against empires
or otherwise multinational states. The underlying aspiration in this strategy was to
open up new nations to Western influence on a permanent basis by seeking a ‘national’
governing class willing to grant minority rights to those on the wrong side of borders.
The paper looks at successive episodes affecting the Balkans region divided between
the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires.
Socialist Yugoslavia after 1945 developed its multinational structure in line with
Austro-Marxist thinking about cultural autonomy. It was nobody’s client state but
when state socialism began to crumble in the debt crisis, the US and newly reunified
Germany both moved to cultivate client governing classes among the local elites
seeking to secede from Yugoslavia. This has resulted in a mosaic of political formations
enjoying limited sovereignty, as articulated by US political scientists/policy-makers
such as Stephen Krasner.
Today’s world order is nominally made up of nation-states enjoying sovereign
equality, as enshrined in classical international law. Increasingly it is also under ‘global
governance’ with individual human rights irrespective of national citizenship the lever
used by Western states to claim the right to intervention. Who actually constitutes the
international community (the UN or any particular ‘coalition of the willing’) tends to
be contested at every juncture.
‘Western states’ (say, North America or the EU) are not just in a separate class
from the rest of the world on account of wealth or otherwise. There also runs a profound
divide within the West between the English-speaking states and the continental
European ones in terms of their state/society complexes. As I have argued elsewhere
(van der Pijl 1998, 2006), the Anglophone states constitute a ‘heartland’ in the global
political economy bound together by a common Lockean constitutionality, which
1 I thank the participants of the Yugoslavia Conference in Brussels, 15-16 December 2011
and an anonymous reviewer for comments on the earlier version of this paper.
• 11
Kees van der PIJL
legally enshrines private property and contract and allows society to self-regulate on
that basis. By creating the transnational space for capital to move in and out of the
different constituent societies, the English-speaking West obtained a ‘first-mover’
advantage over the rest of the world. Indeed on the continent, countries like France
or later, Prussia-Germany, could withstand the more powerful liberal West only by
imposing state power on their societies in order to drive forward social and economic
development. Japan, the USSR and China today henceforth followed comparable
patterns, developing as ‘contender states’ challenging Western hegemony.
I will first outline how the West has developed its world-historic pre-eminence also
in the domain of nation-state formation. We then turn to how the Balkan nationalities
crystallised into what became Yugoslavia. Here the tortuous process of balancing ethno-
territorial claims of the different component nations produced a fragile multinational
state that eventually broke down under the strains of world market discipline and a
loss of belief in the possibilities of socialist development. My argument will be that the
West has sought to impose a global governance over open nation states it expects to pay
homage to it, with client governing classes guaranteeing political and economic access.
I. ATLANTIC EXCEPTIONALISM IN MATTERS OF NATIONALITY

One characteristic of the English-speaking, white-majority state/society complexes
of the Lockean heartland that is often overlooked are their histories of ethnic cleansing
and genocide. On the British Isles, this affected the Celtic fringe, elsewhere it was a
matter of advancing settlement and expropriation of land. By forcibly removing the
natives to the point of extinction, the link between ethnicity and historic territory was
suspended. The Protestant notion of divine election has been a powerful ideological
force in this process (Toynbee, 1935, I: 211-2).
So in addition to first-mover advantages associated with intercontinental expansion
and capitalist industrialisation, English-speaking society also gained a paradoxical
advantage in terms of nation-state formation. Paradoxical, because in the words of
W.R. Brubaker (as in Stewart, 1995: 66):
“[…] the concept of citizenship as membership of a legal and political community
was foreign to British thinking. Legal and political status were conceived instead
in terms of allegiance—in terms of the vertical ties between individual subjects
and the king. The ties of allegiance knit together the British empire, not the
British nation’. It was only in the 1948 Nationality Act that British citizens
were created from what used to be ‘subjects of the Crown’ living either on the
British Isles or in the Empire; but this has not altered the underlying ‘imperial’
identity.” (McCrone and Kiely, 2000: 26)
As far as nationality is concerned, then, “England stands as the exception rather
than the model” (Brown, 1998: 5). This can be argued to hold for the entire English-
speaking West, which evolved in ways combining transnational commonalities of
language and political-legal culture, with separate, sovereign state formation. This
duality is articulated, for the transnational aspect, in a non-ethnic ius civitatis originally
developed by the Roman Empire and reproduced in the English-speaking West. It is
then combined with either the ius soli, the law of the soil that was enshrined by the
French Revolution and which resonates notably in North America and Australasia; or
12 •
Yugoslavia in Western Nation-Building Strategy – A Historical
the quasi-tribal ius sanguinis, the idea of blood ties that holds for instance in Germany,
Japan, or Hungary. This would account for the racist subtext of the Anglophone identity
(Vucetic, 2011).
So on the surface the ‘national’ complexes on the British Isles, in North America
and white Australasia are not different from others in the sense that in each state
jurisdiction, cumulative compromises have shaped distinct social compacts, with a
‘national character’ in each case the longer-term result. But the transnational connection
covered by the ius civitatis, which Francis Bacon in the early 17th century argued would
facilitate the absorption of new blood into the British empire (Bacon, 1942: 127),
embeds this nationality in the wider heartland, whilst federalism accommodates internal
fractures such as Scotland/England or Quebec/Anglo-Canada. Of course in the case of
nations we are always speaking of “fictive ethnicity” (Balibar, 1991: 10), or “imagined
community” (Anderson, 1991). But whilst elsewhere, primordial ethnicity has remained
closely linked with historic territory, in the Anglophone West it is primarily connected
to constitutional and moral concepts of belonging which are easily transmitted across
the different constitutive entities.
This gives the Lockean West a major advantage in world politics because it can
play on ethno-territorial divisions within contender states which these cannot pay
back in kind because there are no such divisions in the West. Hence in the course
of the 19th century British and later Anglo-American strategies were developed that
aimed at carving out client nation-states for use against powerful contenders. As
their own industrial power grew and the need for overseas markets added economic
considerations to merely geopolitical ones, the British were increasingly willing to
fight, as Otto Bauer put it (Bauer, 1907: 474-5) “for the freedom of other countries—
those without factories”.
The secession of the United States fundamentally reproduced the Lockean
constitutionality, and thus the transnational connection. Although there were real
conflicts (the war of independence, the war of 1812, tensions during the US Civil
War), Britain and the US showed a restraint that stands in sharp contrast to the lead
they would take in re-ordering Europe and the world beyond.
“As a leading protagonist of “scrambles” and “carve-ups” in the eastern
hemisphere Britain pursued a conspicuously inactive policy in the Americas.
Conversely, the United States never moved to annex—either through force or
purchase—a single part of British territory in Canada, Newfoundland, or the
British Indies.” (Vucetic, 2011: 23)
On the basis of this much-celebrated Special Relationship, Britain in the 19th
century and the United States in the 20th, and on the threshold of the 21st century,
the EU countries (notably Germany and France) too, have operated as patrons of
national state formation. The strategy playing off contenders against each other,
and intervening to ‘protect’ communities within states not (sufficiently) amenable
to Western direction continues to guide these actions. Creating client states held by
friendly elites, often at the cost of defeated contenders, whilst imposing provisions by
which future intervention may be legitimated (capitulations, minority rights, human
rights…), has been the perennial motif here.
• 13
Kees van der PIJL
1. Sponsored nation building against the Ottoman empire

At the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15 the memory of the French Revolution and
its concept of popular sovereignty was still too fresh to allow anything like national
self-determination to be supported. British and French concerns about the different
levels of civilisation of the populations due to be exchanged, were dismissed by the
negotiators of the Holy Alliance; a Polish state taking the place of the Grand Duchy
of Warsaw was out of the question (the Polish client formation according to Gramsci
reflected the preference of the Polish aristocracy to strike a compromise with distant
revolutionary France rather than with their own peasants, Gramsci, 1971: 103). The
best that British foreign secretary Castlereagh could achieve to ensure the loyalty
of a future governing class in Poland was to implore the conservative monarchs to
“treat as Poles […] the portions of the nation that may be placed under their respective
sovereignties.”(Liebich, 2008: 254)
If the rulers of the Holy Alliance could still afford to smile at such pleas (at least
until 1848), the Ottoman empire that controlled large parts of the Balkans stands as the
model of a formation vulnerable to foreign sponsorship of its minorities. Indeed the
historical precedent for Western powers enjoying an agreed right of intervention was
the capitulations regime dating from the early 16th century. At that point the Sublime
Porte had been prevailed upon to grant the French king the protectorate over French
travellers. Russia in 1700 assumed sovereign protection of the Orthodox Christians
such as the Serbs and the Greeks. The British were supposed to protect the Protestants
but in the absence of any, only used this to have a ground for intervention (the nominal
beneficiaries were the Druzes). By the 19th century, the capitulations were turned into
“nationalist and economic forward positions” for all imperialist powers (Rajewsky,
1980: 40).
So when Serbian notables and the Greek diaspora along the Black Sea coast
attempted to gain control over local tax revenues in the 1820s, Russia used this to
gain ground at the expense of the Ottomans. Initially the British held back but after
Canning had taken over at the Foreign Office, the first signs of making ‘national’
revolts part of obtaining forward positions for Britain at the expense of an opposing
multinational formation were in evidence. Canning held that qualified support for
national aspirations might just tilt the balance to the ‘moderates’ in any independence
movement and thus avoid revolution. Even if he kept his distance from Byron’s Greek
adventure (the womanising poet financed his own brigade in the struggle), Canning did
accord the rebels the status of belligerents, and in combination with his support for the
Monroe Doctrine for Spanish America “discredited the Holy Alliance and established
Great Britain as the patron of a new age” (Nicolson, 1961: 272).
However, throughout the century Russia’s advance towards the Mediterranean
remained a key concern. The UK ambassador in Istanbul in the 1820s and again from
1841 to the late 1850s, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe (a cousin of Canning’s) believed that
a strong Ottoman state would hold both Russia and France in check. The Baltalimani
Agreement of 1838 that gave trade advantages to UK interests, seemed to confirm
the wisdom of this position (Özdemir, 2009: 153). Byron on the other hand thought
that Greece and its commercial diaspora might serve the purpose. In 1823 he warned
14 •
Prince Mavrokordatos, the Greek independence leader in whom he finally thought he

recognised somebody “of the stature of Washington or Kosciusko”, that Greece would
have to shake off Ottoman rule but also resist colonial status under a European monarch
(Russia being the obvious reference), since there was no alternative to being “forever
free, true and Independent” (Byron, 1981: 71). An influential French commentator and
admirer of Anglo-American constitutionalism, Bishop Dufour de Pradt, even claimed
that the entirety of European Turkey should become a Greek state (De Pradt, 1824: 218).
For Tsarist Russia, the Orthodox connection with the Balkans also included a
distinct ethnic bond with the South Slavs, notably Serbia and Montenegro. Many
Serbs, however, along with Romanians and others, unexpectedly found themselves
subjects of Hungary when Austria in 1867 granted the Hungarian nobility the Ausgleich
(constitutional compromise). Only one-half of the new kingdom’s population were
actual Hungarian-speakers, making further national adjustments inevitable (Brubaker,
1994: 50). So when Russia attacked the Ottoman empire again in 1877, using the
capitulations regime to ‘protect’ the Orthodox Christians of Herzegovina, it recruited
Serbia and Montenegro, as well as Rumania, as allies. As in the Crimean War in
mid-century, Britain then moved to block the Russian advance by backing the Sultan
diplomatically, taking Cyprus from the Turks as payment.
At the Congress of Berlin in 1878 London imposed minority provisions for
Muslims on the new states that were to gain their independence (Serbia became a
sovereign kingdom in 1882, along with Montenegro). Since the governing classes of
the new formations owed their independence to Russia, Britain along with France,
under the pretext of compensating the Sultan, wanted to ensure for themselves a legal
ground for intervention (Liebich, 2008: 260). So if Serbia, Montenegro and Rumania
had to grant rights to Britain, Bulgaria saw its status of an autonomous principality
compromised by continuing tribute to the Ottoman Empire. Herzegovina was linked to
Bosnia and passed under Austrian control. All this worked to relegate the sovereignty
of the new states to a subordinate plane. In Özdemir’s words (Özdemir, 2009: 149),
“whole populations …[were made] the subject of tactical alliances aiming to break
the peripher[al] polities into pieces for easier governance”. As we will see below, this
was still the attitude in the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
II. RIVAL NATIONALITY POLICIES FOR THE BALKANS

Great Power support for national aspirations was always cast as an alternative
for more radical emancipatory strivings; with the advent of Marxism, the national
democracy of the French Revolution obtained a second, socialist edition which made
the nationality issue an even more hotly contested terrain.
If we focus again on the Balkans, divided between the Austro-Hungarian and
Ottoman empires at the time of their initial writings, Marx and Engels set their sights
on the creation of large states around the main constitutive nationalities. Engels tended
to categorise all the Slav peoples in the Austro-Hungarian empire (with the exception
of the Polish minority) as ‘nations without history’ (Engels in MEW, VI: 168). The
Croats especially were dismissed as mercenaries in the service of suppressing Austrian
and Hungarian democracy (Marx in MEW, VI, p.149). If these quasi-nationalities
displayed any desire for independence, it was according to Engels always a matter of
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Kees van der PIJL
Russian designs (MEW, XVI: 158-9). Marx’s writings on Ireland and his later analyses
of India, however, laid the groundwork for an internationalism centring on the idea
that no nation can be free which continues to suppress another (Anderson, 2010).
The internationalism of the socialists towards the end of the 19th century inspired
a new wave of ideas about multinationality as a positive achievement—and not just in
the socialist movement itself. The Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy and the South
Slavs of the Balkans were focal points of this new interest. Robert Musil’s novel, Der
Mann Ohne Eigenschaften (‘The Man Without Qualities’) depicts a group of pre-World
War I notables considering an appropriate present for the jubilee of the Emperor of
the Dual Monarchy. At a critical moment in the discussions, the noble lady Diotima
proposes to offer His Majesty, by way of a present… multinational Austria itself. The
meeting, which includes ‘His Excellency’, Dr Paul Arnheim, a German industrialist
and politician (modelled on Walter Rathenau) appears puzzled. (Musil, 1972: 174,
my trans.).
“She spoke of feminine tact, which actually was a certainty of feeling and which
in its deepest self did not abide by society’s prejudices. His Excellency should
perhaps care to listen to this voice. Arnheim was a European and a spirit known
across Europe; precisely because he was not an Austrian, his presence proved
that the Spirit as such had made Austria its home, and suddenly she made the
assertion that the true Austria was the entire world. The world, she explained,
would no sooner find rest until the nations in it would live in an elevated unity
as did the Austrian tribes in her fatherland. A Greater Austria, a World Austria,
that was what His Excellency had unwittingly kindled in her, in this happy
moment; that was the crowning idea.”
This glowing vision of the future was indeed tried out in Austria-Hungary, but in
the final stages of the Dual Monarchy only progressive democrats and socialists were
thinking along the lines of multinationality as a model for the future. “The Marxist
[social democrats] rejected nationalism as a bourgeois creed, thereby becoming to
its surprise the major de facto supporter of the transnational monarchy” (Mann,
1987: 247). Just before the turn of the century, Victor Adler, the Austrian socialist
leader, indeed qualified the Dual Monarchy as “the experimental laboratory of world
history” on account of its multinationality (cited in Talmon 1981: 133). Karl Renner,
another leading Austrian socialist and a future Chancellor, in 1918 argued that whilst
half a century earlier, an independent Bohemia or Hungary or Serbia might have been
a world-political ideal, meanwhile “states whose diameter is no more than a day’s
fast train ride, can no longer be effective pillars of a world political order” (cited in
Kloss, 1969: 493).
The solution of the Austro-Marxists (Adler, Renner, Bauer) was to dissociate
nationality from territory and to give each nation the right, through an internal
passport system, to its own language and culture. The larger political entity judged
necessary to run a modern socialist economy would thus be saved from being parcelled
out endlessly. Bauer may be credited with writing the most profound and extensive
work supporting this argument. Bauer defines a nation in terms of a shared way of
life struggling with others along Darwinian lines of variation and selection (Bauer,
1907: 16-19). To fixate this process by attaching the exclusive right to a particular
16 •
territory is impossible, especially in the modern age when migrating labour is bound
to upset territorial demarcations of this type (Bauer, 1907: 340). Hence his solution
of cultural autonomy.
Lenin attacked the Austro-Marxist theses on the grounds that these took
ethnic difference for granted as a fixed instead of a historical, passing feature of
social development. Instructed to elaborate this into a full-scale attack, Stalin, with
characteristic use of denunciatory invective, repeated Lenin’s argument that nationalities
should strive for their own territorial sovereign state (Stalin, Werke, II: 270). What he
tended to omit was Lenin’s concern about national chauvinism, which led him (Lenin)
to argue that a state of their own would permit the workers to claim the nationality
issue for socialism and outflank bourgeois particularism—whilst retaining the option
of integration later (Lenin, Collected Works, XXI: 102-6) This paradoxically fitted
much better with the Western conception of the nation-state than the Austro-Marxist
concept, at least in the short run (the phase of secession).
1. The Western Powers and the Creation of Yugoslavia
The Balkans were a key arena in which imperialist rivalries played out, but the trigger
for the First World War was of course the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
in Sarajevo. Austria-Hungary in 1908 had annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in an attempt
to counter Great-Serbian designs, but Franz Ferdinand, the designated successor to
the Austro-Hungarian throne, also had his own plan for the South Slav peoples—an
autonomy within the empire along the lines of the Ausgleich with Hungary, an idea that
had its greatest resonance in Croatia. His assassination by a Serbian ultranationalist
buried this project with him (Marácz, 1995: 119; cf. Woodward, 1995: 204).
During the war, the Slav Orthodox connection with tsarist Russia threatened the
Austro-Hungarian south, but when revolutionary forces began building up in Russia
in the course of 1917, this turned from an asset to a liability for the Western allies. The
United States, which at that point assumed the global responsibility for liberalism from
Britain, set its sights on creating a cordon sanitaire of client nation-states to check the
spread of revolution. In his address to the US Senate on 22 January 1917, President
Wilson declared that national self-determination should be the guiding principle of a
post-war settlement in Europe (Wilson, 1919: 12-14).
For the Western powers, national self-determination was a matter of having an
organising principle to dissolve the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. Nationalism was
once again seen as the key force able to neutralise more radical popular demands. For
socialists, it was a concession to be made to allow the revolution to triumph; for the
West, the aim was the creation of bourgeois-ruled ethno-territorial formations with
minority rights for those inadvertently left within the jurisdiction of another nationality.
Already in the Peace Treaty of Bucharest that terminated the Balkan Wars of 1912 and
’13, Washington insisted on a guarantee of civil and religious liberties in the territories
of the belligerents and especially the newly acquired areas. Certainly this was rejected
by the Balkan states, as Liebich argues (Liebich, 2008: 261), just as they would have
liked to reject the minority clauses of the Treaty of Berlin. However, Washington’s
entry in the war on the side of the Allies made it less easy to sidestep US preferences.
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Kees van der PIJL
Future president Herbert Hoover in early 1919 reported to Wilson that the Bolsheviks
or equivalent revolutionary forces were a minority in every country in which they played
a role (including in Russia itself). Hence outside intervention as had been launched
against the Soviets would be counterproductive. Hoover, in charge of the US mission to
disburse food aid in Europe, recommended instead that forces associated with national
demands should be supported. “In the swing of the social pendulum from the extreme
left back toward the right, it will find the point of stabilization based on racial instincts
that could never be established by outside intervention” (cited in Mayer, 1967: 26).
For the US and Britain, as well as for France, nationality was the trump card to
play against revolution, although it was Italy, itself a former possession of Austria, that
made itself the champion of the national aspirations of the Balkan peoples. A ‘Congress
of Oppressed Nationalities of Austria-Hungary’ was held in Rome in April 1918. Not
only did it express support for the peoples in the Dual Monarchy but it also gave Italy’s
‘unofficial blessing on a united and independent Yugoslavia’ (Mayer, 1967: 197-198).
Italy’s claims on the Adriatic (point 9 in Wilson’s Fourteen) were couched in the
phraseology of nation-statehood in that any “readjustment of the frontiers” had to run
“along clearly recognizable lines of nationality” (cited in Smith, 2004: 124).
The idea of having a state of their own was an easy bait to hold before aspiring
national elites. Also, the sweep that national emotions could achieve over a war-weary
but emotionally aroused mass public, made nationality far easier to embrace than
socialism with its far-reaching changes in the property regime, the role of the state,
etc. The creation of new states in the periphery of Europe was not the consequence of
internal developments, but primarily the effect of great power diplomacy (Özdemir,
2009: 148). At the Paris peace talks, the aim to bring about a permanent settlement of
Balkan non-coincidence of borders and ethnicity brought forth a series of proposals
for population exchanges between Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey. In the Treaties
that made up the Peace Settlement of World War I, the territorial reorganisation into
nation-states had a focus in Central and Eastern Europe to isolate revolutionary Russia
(Seaman, 1964: 201). The concept of ‘minorities’ now emerged formally for the first
time, albeit still reserving the term for ‘racial, linguistic or religious minorities’, not
national ones (Liebich, 2008: 245). This time the Western powers clearly took the
lead in shaping outcomes. The Committee on New States and for the Protection of
the Rights of Minorities (of which the US, Britain, and Italy were members) thus
confirmed Greek Prime Minister Venizelos’ pre-war exchange project with Bulgaria
(Özdemir, 2009: 157), and the South Slavs, too, obtained their state from the victors.
In Gramsci’s view, Serbia “before the [First World] war posed as the ‘Piedmont’
of the Balkans” (Gramsci, 1971: 105); the victory over the Central Powers gave it
its ‘Italy’ in the form of the ‘Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes’ renamed
Yugoslavia in 1929. But as a contemporary British observer wrote, the new Yugoslavia
was the fusion of two ideals, one a Greater Serbia, the other a project for the union of
Serb, Croat and Slovene peoples, which as noted had its strongest base in Zagreb. In
addition, Serbia was an Orthodox peasant nation only recently emerged from 350 years
of Ottoman rule, whereas Catholic Croatia had been a European kingdom as far back
as the 10th century. “The Yugoslav nation was in fact held together in a state of tension
by external pressure, and there was danger that… it might altogether disintegrate when
18 •
the pressure was relaxed” (Gathorne-Hardy, 1944: 78). The Nazi invasion in World
War II gave a taste how this edifice could be dismantled along class and national lines,
with genocidal consequences. Of the up to 2 million Serbs living in the Nazi satellite
state of Croatia (the majority in the parts of Bosnia annexed by Croatia) an estimated
¾ to one million were killed in extermination camps or otherwise (Kloss, 1969: 182).
III. SOCIALIST YUGOSLAVIA IN THE CROSSHAIRS OF RIVAL WESTERN STRATEGIES

The original Austro-Marxist programme for national self-determination, inspired
by socialist internationalism, led the Yugoslav communists during the war to agree
on an arrangement in which the Serbs voluntarily conceded a series of territorial
adjustments intended to prevent a repeat of the imbalances resulting from the fact
that Serbs had dominated the pre-war monarchy. Serbia’s territory was made smaller
(21 per cent of the surface) than the actual areas inhabited by Serbs (36 per cent of the
population). This was achieved by assigning Serb-inhabited areas to Bosnia-Herzegovina
and Croatia and in 1974, by granting the Serbian provinces of Vojvodina in the north
and Kosovo in the south autonomy on account of, respectively, the Hungarian and
Albanian population shares.
This momentous achievement, laid down in the 1946 Constitution, was only obtained
through fierce internal struggle and debates. The national question had been prominent
among the issues that divided the communist party, and the Comintern switched sides
several times. The Yugoslav party in the early 1920s accepted the Bolshevik retreat
from the right of secession in light of the negative international situation, although the
Soviet position on Yugoslavia was based on its being a creation of imperialism and
hence, destined to be dissolved. In 1937, following the VIIth Comintern Congress,
Slovenes and Croats founded their own communist parties. Elements of the communist
movement in Macedonia, close to Bulgaria, even resisted the idea of a pan-Yugoslav
resistance during the war (Behschnitt, 1974: 213).
Macedonia was a key problem as it was divided among three state jurisdictions.
Tito, whose all-Yugoslav Communist Party emerged strongest from the war (he was
himself a Croat), hoped that by uniting historic Macedonia, the pivot for a South Slav
or even (bringing in Greece) a South Balkan federation, could be created to overcome
nationality issues. Georgi Dimitrov and his Bulgarian Communist Party, the leadership
of which hailed from Macedonia, was the key partner in these projects. Stalin however
turned the Bolsheviks’ tactical retreat on secession into a strategic position on national
statehood, and distrusted the Yugoslav communists as leftist adventurers. Mocking
their expectation that Britain and the US would ever give up Greece, he dismissed
both the South Slav federation and Dimitrov’s suggestion to make Bulgaria a Soviet
republic, leading to the eventual rupture with Belgrade (Kolko and Kolko, 1972: 408-
409; Claudin, 1975: 461).
The postwar nationality policy of state socialism, both in Yugoslavia with its
Austro-Marxist antecedents, and in the USSR, eventually converged on a broadly
identical platform, characterised not only by a “legal incongruence and a spatial
mismatch between its two national components—national territories and personal
nationalities—but also by a fundamental tension […] between two independent, even
incompatible definitions of nationhood: one territorial and political, the other personal
• 19
Kees van der PIJL
and ethnocultural” (Brubaker, 1994: 55; cf. Carrère d’Encausse, 1979). The concept
of ‘minority’ has no place in either though. In their reply to the 1979 UN report on
minorities, the Yugoslav authorities, then still presiding over a functioning federation,
explained that they preferred to avoid the expression of national minorities “because the
status of a minority can never be fully equal to that of the majority”(cited in Liebich,
2008: 246; cf. Capotorti 1979). The saying “why should I be a minority in your state
if you can be one in mine” in this context captures the chain of dismemberment that
minority status will tend to propagate.
The Western powers, Britain and the US, in accordance with the 50/50 division of
Yugoslavia agreed between Churchill and Stalin, helped keep Tito’s regime in place
also after the rupture with the Cominform, the reconstituted Communist International
under straight Soviet control. This paradoxically allowed Yugoslavian Marxists to
take a leading part in the 1960s renewal of socialist theory, even though the heavy-
handed response by the state class to the ‘Croatian spring’ that sprang up as part of
the student and youth movements of the period, limited political changes. At this
point the United States and the West at large were mainly interested in consolidating
Yugoslavia’s national independence. In a conversation with Cheddi Jagan of British
Guyana, suspected of leftist sympathies, President John F. Kennedy claimed that the
US was not engaged “in a crusade to force private enterprise on parts of the world
where it is not relevant. If we are engaged in a crusade for anything, it is national
independence” (cited in Packenham, 1973: 80). Giving Yugoslavia as the example,
the president argued that as long as a state adopted a national independent stance, he
did not care whether it was socialist, capitalist, or ‘pragmatist’.
1. The Final Onslaught. Creating Client States in the Balkans

The dissolution of Yugoslavia was the consequence of a complex set of internal
imbalances and external pressures. Here I concentrate on one aspect, the role of
Western-sponsored nation-state formation in the period from the 1980s. The historic
fractures within Yugoslavia referred to earlier, had meanwhile been compounded by a
modernisation differential between the westernmost states, with their manufacturing
and tourist sectors oriented to Europe; and Bosnia, Serbia, and the rest of the southeast,
where the bulk of state-owned heavy industry and mining was concentrated but which
otherwise were mainly agricultural. Slovenia’s product per head was twice the Yugoslav
average, Croatia’s 123 per cent; Serbia proper, 93. Serbia proper had a level of export
orientation equal to Croatia in the early 1990s; but not its autonomous provinces.
The modernisation differential is also brought out by the fact that Slovenia, Croatia
and Serbia in the mid-fifties reached a reproduction rate of 2.5 children per woman,
the developed European level; whilst Bosnia, Macedonia, and Kosovo only reached
this important threshold in 1975, 1984, and 1998, respectively (Todd, 2004: 64-65).
All these fault-lines were activated when, after a decade of simmering tensions, a
sovereign debt of $20 billion was revealed upon the death of Tito in 1980—a year
after Paul Volcker, the head of the Federal Reserve, had shut the inflation valve by
raising the real interest rate.
In the ensuing decade, international support for the Yugoslav government to hold
the country together in deal with the crisis slowly eroded until Germany, with Austria,
20 •
Hungary and the Vatican involvied in various side-shows, made its fatal decision to
support the secession of Slovenia and Croatia. Coinciding with a new self-confidence
as the Soviet bloc was disintegrating and reunification of Germany seemed around the
corner, this application of the principle of nationality as the basis for state sovereignty,
more specifically the ius sanguinis, effectively scuttled the existing Yugoslav state.
This was not just a matter of rewarding elites striving for secession. The German step,
soon to be sanctioned by the European Communities, also demolished the basis for
Yugoslav citizenship as it transformed the internal conflicts into an open competition
to obtain recognition of territorial claims based on ‘fictive ethnicities’ that suddenly
occupied the centre-stage—not just through the Slovenian and Croatian secessions
but importantly, by unleashing Serb nationalism as well.
The United States responded to the German-EU support for Slovenia and Croatia
by casting itself as the sponsor of an independent Bosnia and later, the Albanians in
Kosovo. By establishing bridgeheads among Islamic communities in Yugoslavia this
enhanced the prospect of penetrating the Soviet republics with their (at the time greatly
overrated) fossil energy reserves and left unprotected after the Minsk coup that dissolved
the USSR in 1991. Germany seemed to be moving in through the northwest, along with
Austria and in a covert role as arms supplier, Hungary, all with the Vatican’s blessing.
All this, Susan Woodward writes, “[gave] the appearance to military planners and
politicians in the region that the United States had chosen to divide spheres of influence
north and south in eastern Europe with German”’ (Woodward, 1995: 159-160). The
stakes in this division were different though; whilst the German interest is primarily
in enlarging the common market and supply base of the EU, the United States needs
military bases to guard energy supply routes. In both cases, client governing classes
are required to cover local issues arising from their patrons’ involvement.
Yugoslav nationality policy was the first victim of foreign intervention. In the
Yugoslav constitution, republics had particular rights but the people living in and
across them also had national rights. When the EC recognised the territorial claims of
the republics and the dominant nationality within them, they abrogated the nationality
rights, relegating these to minority protection (Woodward, 1995: 210). Germany
not even waited for minority provisions to be put in place when it moved to support
Croatian secession, but with Bosnia, nation-state formation ran aground completely.
Since there was nothing remotely resembling a ‘Bosnian nation’, the claim of Bosnian-
Serb leader Karadžić that Bosnia was made up of three constituent nations, each with
the right to national self-determination, confronted the West with its own programme
(Woodward, 1995: 211).
German and European influence receded when the United States took the lead in
the intervention in Yugoslavia, making its dismemberment part of its Central Asian
energy agenda and enlisting its Western republics in the geopolitical line-up against
Russia. The latter was part of the Clinton presidency from 1993 and would eventually
entail NATO enlargement and a US-Croatian military agreement (concluded in 1994).
The energy strategy involved bringing in the Muslim networks to which the US had
subcontracted the fight against nationalists and communists throughout the post-
war period, and it began straightaway. Let me go over some of the main dates in the
execution of this strategy.
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Kees van der PIJL
When Kabul fell to the Taliban in April 1992, Arab Afghan jihadists cultivated
by the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to help fight the Soviet intervention looked to
Bosnia (and Azerbaijan) as new opportunities to assist their brethren in the service of
their paymasters. Osama bin Laden, having found refuge in Sudan himself, arranged
top-level consultations in Zagreb to work out the details of their deployment; the al-
Kifah jihadist recruitment network headquartered in Brooklyn, in 1993 established a
Bosnian branch office in Zagreb with assistance of the US military and Saudi support
(Scott, 2007: 149-150). US Special Forces were on the ground in Bosnia at that time
already to facilitate the delivery of arms (Wiebes, 2002: 181).
The role of Iran in support of Bosnian Muslims was initially accepted by the US.
Iranian arms supplies using disguised Jumbo jets were approved by Clinton without
consulting his secretary of state or the CIA director (Wiebes, 2002: 171-174). The head
of Croatian intelligence (and son of President Tudjman) in late 1993 visited Washington
for consultations with the CIA and the NSA to complain about this, and both the
Republican opposition and British PM Thatcher urged Washington to eliminate Iran
from the arms supply structure. The decision to find alternatives indirectly contributed
to the Srebrenica massacre, which led to a crisis in the Netherlands on account of the
Dutch battalion that was guarding the Muslim enclave but had no means of resisting
the Serbs taking it over.
In a detailed study as part of the official Dutch report on Srebrenica, Cees Wiebes
documents how arms supplies to the Bosnian Muslims, meant to substitute for Iranian
deliveries, were flown in by Turkish planes through Tuzla airbase under US auspices
(and with NATO airborne radar surveillance switched off at the required times). At the
receiving end was the Čengić mafia family, which commanded a network of companies
in Croatia and Turkey and was in control of the Bosnian intelligence service (Wiebes,
2002: 185-213). The supplies through Tuzla found their way to the UN-protected
Muslim enclaves including Srebrenica and allowed Muslim troops to undertake raids
into surrounding Serb-held areas, thus eventually provoking the attack that led to the
massacre by troops under General Mládic, currently in custody of the Yugoslavia
tribunal in The Hague (Wiebes, 2002, 227-229).
The connection between US geopolitical and energy strategy and covert operations
to bolster local allies also came to include Kosovo. After the collapse of the Albanian
state in 1996, its military arsenals ended up in private hands in spite of an Italian
intervention. The Kosovo Liberation Army led by former Maoists, a radical alternative
to the moderate Ibrahim Rugova, was early on selected by the West to lead the fight
against Serbia which as part of its nationalist turn had revoked Kosovar autonomy.
In 1996, possibly already much earlier, KLA was in touch with US, UK, and Swiss
intelligence, through the intermediary of private military company MPRI. MPRI
‘general’ Richard Griffiths had a long-standing relationship with KLA commander
Agim Çeku from the time they were jointly involved in the planning of Operation Storm,
the 1995 Croatian offensive to drive out its Serbian minority (Scott, 2007: 168; MPRI
from 1994 had been entrusted, under licence from the State Department, with training
the Croatian and later also the Bosnian army, Wiebes, 2002: 178; Ortiz, 2010: 78 &
passim). The commander of the KLA elite forces, Muhammed al-Zawahiri, was the
brother of Bin Laden’s military commander Aywan al-Zawahiri (Scott, 2007: 169).
22 •
The NATO intervention against Serbia over Kosovo, the bringing down of
Milošević, his death in a cell in The Hague, and Kosovo’s recognition by a majority of
NATO and EU states in 2008, all are awaiting deeper investigation. Here I highlight
the continuity with US policy towards energy flows from the Caspian region and
the need to shut out Russia. This came to include a pipeline linking the Black Sea to
the Albanian coast, a project to which the US and the EU committed themselves in
1994 (Gowan, 1999: 100; The Guardian, 15 February, 2001). Ridiculed at the time by
Blair’s foreign secretary, Robin Cooke (‘Kosovo has no oil’), the $1.2bn Trans-Balkan
pipeline project was made part of Clinton’s South Balkan Development Initiative in
1996 and financed by the US Overseas Private Investment Corporations and several
oil majors (Scott, 2007: 169).
The KLA government of Kosovo meanwhile stands accused of illegal organ
removal from Serb prisoners. Its former commanders operate the key routes in Balkans
drugs trafficking (their role in smuggling heroin from Turkey was subcontracted
to them from 1997-8 by Albanian drug syndicates, Scott, 2007: 168). Nevertheless
Kosovo is receiving NATO support to seal off the remaining Serb minority from
Serbia. The Serbian application for EU membership has been put on hold because of
the country’s ‘lack of progress’ in dealing with its breakaway province, meanwhile
the sovereign state of Kosovo.
IV. CONCLUSION
LIMITED SOVEREIGNTY AS A STRATEGIC CONCERN
The process of imperial global governance continues to be directed by the Lockean
West, or at least that is the intention. The West decides which states are ‘failing’ and
must be reordered. Stanford International Relations scholar (and policy planning
director at the Bush State Department from 2005 to 2007) Stephen D. Krasner briefly
after the invasion of Iraq actually drew up a list of countries liable to collapse in
conflict. As his collaborator in this project, former US ambassador to Ukraine Carlos
Pascual explained in a talk, it was envisaged to write “pre-completed contracts to
rebuild countries that are not yet broken”. The goal was “to create democratic and
market-oriented” states. This would not always be a matter of rebuilding states from
conflict, but could equally entail “tearing apart the old” (cited in Easterly, 2006: 238).
Krasner has most consistently argued the case for limiting the sovereign equality
of peripheral states under the global governance regime for which the West writes the
rules. In ‘Structural Conflict. The Third World against Global Liberalism’ of 1985
he criticised Third World states for challenging the liberal global economy through
a New International Economic Order. This NIEO in Krasner’s view was an attempt
by peripheral states to gain control of the elusive, transnational economic forces
undermining their power both domestically and internationally. Using the formal
structures of national sovereignty and international organisation to their advantage,
and against the liberal West, they in fact were able to advance because and as long as
the US were willing to uphold these same structures even though the forces ranged
against the West were much weaker (Krasner 1985: 81).
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Kees van der PIJL
Building on two further studies criticising sovereign equality, ‘Sovereignty:

Organized Hypocrisy’ of 1999 and ‘Problematic Sovereignty’ of 2001, Krasner in an
article of 2005 proposed to formalise the class compromise with a client governing class
into “shared sovereignty”, a “voluntary agreement between recognized national political
authorities and an external actor such as another state or a regional or international
organization”, if need be “limited to specific issue areas like monetary policy or the
management of oil revenues” (Krasner, 2005: 70). For post-conflict countries invaded
by the West such as Afghanistan and Iraq, shared sovereignty might help in overcoming
the limits of governance aid.
In a joint piece with Pascual, the aforementioned Coordinator for Reconstruction
and Stabilization at the State Department, Krasner argued that the US and other Western
states should monitor weak states (‘weakness’ including ethnic or religious divisions)
in order to intervene preventively when conflict would appear imminent—with the
CIA and the military, think tanks and universities providing information (Krasner
and Pascual, 2005: 156-157). If conflict nevertheless erupts the authors propose a
stabilization and reconstruction rulebook that allows intervention to establish the
required “market democracy” to evolve without the dislocations that followed the
Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Basically the authors propose that “US or other
military or peacekeeping operations” fit into a longer-term planning in which the causes
of internal conflict are well known in advance, so that over the longer term “the United
States will have enabled more people to enjoy the benefits of peace, democracy, and
market economies” (Krasner and Pascual, 2005: 162-163).
Following the granting of sovereignty to Kosovo by the West in 2008, Krasner
again specified his view of sovereignty, making the case (to be applied to Kosovo,
but also useful for Israel and a Palestinian state) for what he calls a “nested security
arrangement”, in which sovereignty is shared between a senior partner and a client
formation. Again he reiterates his point that “The international environment is too
complex for any set of rules, including those regarding sovereignty, to be applied
rigidly across all cases” (Krasner, 2009).
But then, the creation of client states under limited sovereignty at that point had
decades of nation-building experience behind it; Yugoslavia was only a late application
of a strategy that can be traced back to the 19th century. ‘Western intervention in the
Yugoslav crisis’, writes Susan Woodward,
“aimed at mediation and crisis management. Instead, it provided the irreversible
turning point in its escalation toward nationalist extremism and war. Having
ignored the mounting crisis during 1989-90, the international community took
actions in 1991 that redefined the origins and myriad aspects of this upheaval
as ethnic conflict and nationalist revolution. The result was self-fulfilling.”
(Woodward, 1995: 198)
This tragic demise has created a series of client governments, often with doubtful
credentials, and lacking the power to make even the smallest amendments to US,
NATO or EU instructions. Serbia on the other hand remains at the receiving end of
attempts to complete this process. Here as in so many other places, regime change
under Western auspices has removed international relations further away from a world
which as Diotima in Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften estimated, would “no sooner find
24 •
rest until the nations in it would live in an elevated unity as did the Austrian tribes
in her fatherland.”
REFERENCES
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• 27
STATE BORDERS, SYMBOLIC, BOUNDARIES AND CONTESTED
GEOGRAPHICAL SPACE: CITIZENSHIP STRUGGLES IN
Gëzim KRASNIQI
I. INTRODUCTION
Space, both in its physical and symbolic definition, has traditionally been a central
element of state and nation. Therefore, the concept of national citizenship merges space,
nation and state through the dual capacity to include or exclude individuals. While
looking at the process of symbolic modification of territory in Kosovo1 during the last
twenty years, the paper argues that the symbolic changes and landscape modifications
represent deliberate attempts of both Serb and Albanian elites for symbolic control
over their perceived national territory and (re)definition of hierarchical citizenship.2
The paper looks at the construction and replacement of identity markers and symbols
of territory – flags, sacred national sites, monuments, cultural objects, street names
and signs – in Kosovo in the context of symbolic exclusion of individuals or particular
groups from a political and geographic space.
Appropriation and modification of territory and space can be part of the strategies
of war and peace, mainly through the deliberate destruction and replacement of cultural
1 Kosovo is a landlocked territory of 10,887 sq. km and has a population of around 1.8 million.
In 1991 Kosovo’s population was estimated to be just under 2 million, with Albanians
comprising 82.2 per cent of the population and Serbs 9.9 per cent (See Judah, 2000: 313).
Although the ethnic composition of Kosovo changed as a result of the war and migration,
reliable and accurate data is still missing. In 2011, the Statistical Office of Kosovo organised
the first census in two decades, but it was boycotted by Serbs living in the northern part
of Kosovo. Nonetheless, the number of Serbs living in Kosovo is estimated to be around
130,000 or around 7 per cent. See http://esk.rks-gov.net/rekos2011/?cid=2,1.
2 According to Stephen Castles, the varying power (in political, military, economic and
cultural terms) of states has led to the emergence of a similar hierarchy of rights and
freedoms of their peoples, which he refers to as hierarchical citizenship. “Citizenship as
a global norm implies the possession of set of civil, political and social rights, but again
this legal principle masks a steep graduation in real rights and freedoms” (Castles 2005:
215). In many countries in the world, it is ethnic or religious minorities that experience
de facto exclusion from political, economic and social participation.
• 29
Gëzim KRASNIQI
objects and symbols of the ‘enemy’, as well as part of the struggle to define citizenship
and citizenry in a polity. Therefore, the modification of territory becomes an aim of
different conflicting parties because territory often holds deep symbolic meaning for
people and represents “a vital constituent of the definition and identification of the
group living within it” (Herb & Kaplan, 1999: 2). Whereas expansion of territory is
the goal, wars commonly serve as the means, for apart from killings, deportation,
population movements and ethno-demographic changes – to name but a few effects –
wars also bring about appropriation and cultural purification of territory. This process
of purification, mostly realised through the destruction of cultural objects and symbols
of the ‘enemy’, is rarely accidental.
Such was the case of the Yugoslav wars, which brought about large population
movements, ethno-demographic engineering, “ethnic unmixing” (Brubaker, 1996:
166), and the destruction of a huge number of cultural and religious sites in an attempt
to attack and eradicate social institutions and cultural heritage, as well as to reshape
space and modify territories in line with the political aims and territorial claims of the
colliding parties. The systematic targeting of the heritage of the ‘other’ in the former
Yugoslavia was widespread. The deliberate destruction of different national, cultural
and religious symbols had a twofold purpose; first, it erased any identification markers
that could act as proof of the longevity and historic presence of the opposing nation or
ethnic group in a disputed territory, and second, it paved the way for reconstruction
of the physical space to match the historical/cultural objectives of the opposing group.
II. THE MYTH OF TERRITORY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

Territory is a crucial element in the creation of national identity. Thus, “territorially
based identities are just some of the myriad identities possessed by people” (Herb &
Kaplan, 1999: 1). The notion of ‘homeland’ or ‘motherland’/’fatherland’ merges both
a particular territory and group identity. So, fatherland, or “the holy land in which the
people dwell, with its memories, heroic exploits, monuments, and the resting places of
ancestors” (Smith, 2003: ii) serves as one of the sacred sources and founding myths of
modern nations. Since state and national identity are tied to territory and space (the
latter are vital to national feeling), nationalists have for a long time used images of
place “to link people to the land” (Herb, 1999: 17). Territory in itself means nothing
more than mere geography; hence, what matters is the myth attached to a particular
territory – the idea that a certain land is the place where the nation began and that,
consequently, that territory is sacred (Schöpflin, 1997: 28-29) – that strengthens
attachment to a piece of land and reinforces group identities. Such myths of territory
can help elites to mobilise mass support, strengthen authority and engender legitimacy,
and above all, justify territorial claims over certain pieces of land. Once nationalism
is at work, landscape is politicised and modified in harmony with the prevailing
national narratives. This process is carried out mostly by symbolic appropriation
and modification of a territory, usually leading to the “territorialization of memory”
(Smith, 2003: 134) and the politicisation of space.
In addition to myths of territory, symbols and rituals are crucial in the process of
‘sacralisation of territory’. In the words of Schöpflin, “myth is the narrative, the set of
ideas, whereas ritual is the acting out, the articulation of myth; symbols are the building
30 •
State Borders, Symbolic, Boundaries and Contested Geographical Space: Citizenship Struggles In
blocks of myths and the acceptance or veneration of symbols is a significant aspect

of ritual” (Schöpflin, 1997: 20). Everyday commemorations of national and historical
days represent outstanding manifestations of the acting out of myths.
Various national elites have utilised myths and invoked them in order to mobilise
their own people, exclude others, screen out certain memories, as well as to establish a
sense of solidarity (Schöpflin, 1997:22). By the same token, everything that symbolises
and characterises territory – flags, maps, anniversaries, monuments, and cultural
objects – plays an immense role in reinforcing the myth of territory (Schöpflin, 1997:
29). The Serb myth of the “Battle of Kosovo” (Duijzings, 2003: 176-202) represents
such an example. In other words, an identity that is based on a territorial myth and
which is closely associated with it, is, as Kaplan named it, a “spatial identity” (Kaplan,
1999: 35).
1. Spaces, Politics and Identity
Spatial identities are only one kind of identity that connect people. “The spatial
identity of a national group is composed of land deemed essential to its security and
vitality” (Herb & Kaplan, 1999: 3). According to Herb and Kaplan, this particular piece
of land that is crucial to a national group, may consist of many parts: it may be the
actual space, a particular terrain that defines the group, the locational context vis-à-vis
other powers, the historic legacy of a particular area, or economic and military-strategic
importance (ibid). Although landscapes in general have much in common, nevertheless,
each nation treasures its own particular geographical features and elements; hence,
cultural heritage and geographical traits are integral parts of the national identity
(Lowenthal, 1994: 17). Häkli, on the other side, used the term “discursive landscape”
(Häkli, 1999: 124) to emphasise various ways in which geography is involved in the
evolution of national identities and to address the specific relation between national
identity, culture and space.
In reality, this kind of landscape is produced by a range of actions and activities
taken by elites in order to erect and build new symbols and signs of material culture in
a given territory through the process of territorialisation of memory and politicisation
of space. In return, the process of reifying territory creates conditions for “spatial
socialization” (Paasi cited in Herb, 1999: 17) as members of a given nation become
socialised within a geographically bounded space – their homeland. In this way, the
political attitudes and beliefs of people living in a certain territory are shaped by
symbols found on it.
As far as state space is concerned, Neil Brenner et al. (Neil Brenner et al., 2003: 7)
identify three dimensions of it. The first is state space in the narrow sense. It refers to
the state’s distinctive form of spatiality, comprising both the changing organisation of
state territoriality in the modern inter-state system and the evolving role of borders,
boundaries, and frontiers. The second dimension – state space in the integral sense –
refers to the specific ways and modes, both territorial and non-territorial, in which state
institutions are mobilised strategically to regulate and reorganise social and economic
relations. Finally, state space in the representational sense refers to competing spatial
imaginaries that represent state and political spaces in different ways. In addition, these
spatial imaginaries also represent an important source for political representation and
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Gëzim KRASNIQI
the mobilisation of territory-, scale-, and place- specific forms of state intervention
(Neil Brenner et al., 2003: 7).
2. SYMBOLS AND OTHER IDENTITY MARKERS

Symbols have an enormous potency in political processes and their
instrumentalisation is bound up with conflicts and may even lead to wars. According
to Schöpflin, “[t]he potency of symbols in the political process derives from the fact
that they are vehicles for conceptualization” (Schöpflin, 1997: 28). With regard to the
relationship between people and symbols, Cassirer and Langer argue that men live in a
symbolic world created by them and that symbolic thinking is the fundamental function
of human consciousness and constitutes the basis of any kind of human activity (Cassirer
and Langer, 1993: 22). Hence, symbols are essential identity markers. Territory, too, is
conceptualised through symbols. Likewise, according to Cohen, social relationships
develop through and are maintained by symbols; “We ‘see’ groups through their
symbols.” (Cohen, 1993: 39) This explains the fact why states aim at monopolisation
of symbolic life and symbolic control over particular territories.
As already mentioned, myths and symbols are utilised by elites to build legitimacy
and reinforce authority as well as control over people and territory. Mach argues that
symbols are utilised precisely because of their role as vehicles that convey values
(1993: 37). Everything that symbolises territory – flags, maps, anniversaries, houses,
streets, squares, and cemeteries, religious cites etc., – is part of the symbolic world
of a group of people and/or a nation. Even boundaries which people build to separate
themselves from the others are of a symbolic nature (ibid, 20). Since territories are crucial
elements in the development of national identity, everything that symbolises a territory
serves as an identity marker. Thus, political projects of the national and state elites set
up the ‘symbolic fabric’ that, by producing symbols, links “the self-understanding of a
people with a particular territory, concrete places, everyday practices and imagination”
(Häkli, 1999: 130). This way, the emerging symbols in a particular territory serve to
document the longevity of a nation’s life and to strengthen identity by linking it to a
certain territory. Likewise, they serve as links between people and polities.
Identity, territory and space are closely connected to each other. Mach argues that
territory conceptualized as homeland is the main component of ethnic identity (cited
in Duijzings, 2003: 62). A glorified and much-cherished territory and space is often
used by political and national elites to transform and reinforce ethnic and national
identities in line with nationalist projects and goals. So, symbolic appropriation and
modification of the territory is essential in ‘proving’ one’s longevity in a particular
territory and dominance over ‘the other’. Throughout the twentieth century, Serb and
Albanian elites have engaged in a struggle for political domination in the hierarchy
of citizenship, symbolic appropriation and modification of the territory and space of
Kosovo.
3. CITIZENSHIP, SPACE AND BOUNDARIES

Space in general, and public space in particular, has historically been an important
element for the emergence and development of citizenship. As Isin and Wood argue:
32 •
“If we consider the spaces within which citizenship rights were developed, it is
clear that they were centred in non-domestic and, in this way, public spaces. Or,
to look at it from the reverse view, citizenship rights were mapped in congruence
with access to public space.” (Isin and Wood, 1999: 78)
Likewise, borders and boundaries are essential in the process of state and citizenship
constitution. They are both physical and symbolic. Traditionally it is physical borders
that determine the scope and size of a polity. In addition, they determine who is ‘in’
and who is ‘out’. Nonetheless, a rigid view of citizenship that derives from its dual
capacity to include insiders and exclude outsiders seems to have started being exchanged
for a more flexible definition, one where state borders do not coincide with citizenry
and symbolic boundaries. As far as the latter are concerned, they cut across both the
would-be nation state and trans-border ethno-cultural communities.
Thus, even in those cases where states have put in place one tier and integrated
citizenship regimes, symbolic boundaries emerge within the state and its public and
urban space(s). According to Yuval-Davis (2003) bounded urban spaces play the role
of a daily theatre for the performance of (struggles over) citizenship. This performance
of political identity involves the intersection and (re)articulation of ethnic, class,
and gender differences, as well as continuing struggles over the socio-institutional
boundaries delimiting the exercise of citizenship. Therefore, different groups struggle
over the control of different spaces, thus leading to a process of spatial inclusion/
exclusion, which is not necessarily related to the central state level of citizenship
inclusion/exclusion. In other words, even in those cases when citizenship regimes are
open and inclusive towards all the residents of that territory without discrimination
over ethnicity, language or gender, exclusion can result from the continuing struggles
over the socio-institutional, symbolic and special boundaries delimiting the rights to
citizenship. Therefore, urban space in particular serves as the arena for new modes
of political action and for new forms of political identity.
In what follows, the paper looks at the role of geography and space as a daily
theatre in the process of continuous struggles over the socio-institutional, symbolic
and special boundaries delimiting the rights to citizenship in the case of Kosovo.
III. WARS AND CONTINUOUS MODIFICATION OF TERRITORY AND SPACE: THE

CASE OF KOSOVO
Albanian and Serb elites have had overlapping historical claims to the territory
of Kosovo for a long period of time, thus making Kosovo’s territory “[a] landscape
whose ownership is disputed” (Brown, 1994: 796). As a consequence, in the last one
hundred years the territory of Kosovo, a territory with disputed ownership, has been
modified many times and has known major symbolical changes. As in other similar
cases, Kosovo in certain historical moments, during or after wars, has experienced
phases of “the appropriation and ‘cultural’ purification of the landscape, the destruction
of churches and mosques, and the elimination of the cultural heritage of the ‘Other(s)’”
(Duijzings, 2003: 37). During and after the annexation of Kosovo by Serbia in 1913 as
a result of Serbia’s attempt to change the composition of the territory of Kosovo and
• 33
Gëzim KRASNIQI
establish full control over it, many old and traditional Albanian3 cultural objects and
traditional houses called kulla (tower) were destroyed; many places were renamed with
Slavic names. This kind of modification of territory represents a nationalist cleansing
of space with the purpose of legitimising territorial claims.
In the post Ottoman period, many Albanians and Muslims were expelled or killed
and most of the visible traces of their culture were erased, so that “[t]he ‘reality’ of
new landscape [becomes] powerful evidence for the rightfulness of territorial claims”
(Herb, 1999: 23) of Serbia. Nevertheless, the next step of the Serb government was to
repopulate the destroyed and emptied areas with Serb and Montenegrin inhabitants. The
first attempt was made in 1914 with the adoption of the ‘Law-decree on the settlement
of the newly liberated areas’, followed by the decree on ‘preliminary measures for
agrarian reform’ of February 1919, which aimed at offering many favours, advantages
and incentives (including land and exception from taxes for an initial period) for Serbian
and Montenegrin families willing to move to Kosovo (Malcolm, 1998: 279-280).
Those new villages and neighbourhoods that were built were given “suitably uplifting
names from Serbian mythology” (Malcolm, 1998: 281), such as Devet Jugovića (Nine
Jugovićs – the nine brothers of the Jugović family that died in the Battle of Kosovo),
General Janković (a commander of the Serb army in the First Balkan War), Srbica,
etc. Adopting Mach’s terminology (Mach, 1993: 196), it can be concluded that the
reconstruction of historic places in the territory of Kosovo after the annexation by
Serbia – a symbol of the continuation and rebirth of Serbs – was done at the expense
of Albanian and pre-existing Ottoman historic symbols and cultural heritage.
As far as formal citizenship of Albanians in the interwar Yugoslavia is concerned,
their status was downgraded to that of a religious minority and apart from being
generally treated as second-class citizens, various attempts were made by the state to
facilitate their migration to Turkey (Rava, 2010; Krasniqi, 2010). In the new state of
the South Slavs, Albanians, together with other non-Slavic minorities occupied the
bottom position in the hierarchical citizenship of the state.
However, the situation shifted somehow during World War II (WWII), when the
biggest part of Kosovo and parts of Western Macedonia joined Albania, which was
annexed by Italy in 1939. New Albanian symbols (symbols of the Kingdom of Albania)
became visible in Kosovo. At this time, many Albanians in Kosovo sought “to seize the
opportunity offered by the collapse of Yugoslavia to gain more power over their own
territory and reverse the colonizing and Slavicising policies of the previous decades”
(Malcolm, 1998: 296). As a result, many schools were opened, carrying the names of
renowned Albanian historical figures, poets and intellectuals.
1. ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ and The Socialist Vision Of Territory
At the end of WWII and after the communist takeover, Yugoslavia was constructed
on the principles of federalism and self-determination of free and equal nations. Under
the 1946 Yugoslav Constitution Kosovo became an ‘autonomous region’ (oblast) – a
3 By using the adjective ‘Albanian’ or ‘Serb’ to describe local populations, cultures or

identity markers, I do not wish to suggest that they are monoliths. Rather, it refers to
people, symbols and objects perceived as such.
34 •
lower status than that of an ‘autonomous province’ (pokrajina) given to Vojvodina

– of the People’s Republic of Serbia, and Albanians were not defined as people
(narod)4 but as a national minority (nacionalna manjina).5 In the early 1970s Kosovo
became a ‘socialist autonomous province’ (SAP) and obtained its own constitution,
parliament, government, central bank, constitutional court, as well as representation
in the federal institutions independent from the Republic of Serbia and thus was a
republic in everything but name. This implied that Kosovo’s institutions had the main
say on a range of issues, such as political, social, economic and spatial planning. This
meant a more balanced relationship between both Kosovo and Yugoslav authorities
and Serbs and Albanians on many issues, including control of and access to space
and territory in Kosovo.
Regarding territorial and modification politics, a major wave of territorial and
spatial modification occurred in Kosovo after the end of WWII. Though the post WWII
changes reflected the socialist spirit in general, elements of national identity of the
titular nations in Yugoslavia became omnipresent all around the country. These new
changes were manifold and were done under the pretense of ‘modern urbanisation’.
In the words of Andrew Herscher:
“Post WWII ‘urban modernization’ targeted other religious sites, along with
other examples of pre-modern architectural heritage for destruction. In Kosova,
urban modernization was more damaging to Islamic religious sites than to
Orthodox ones, a result of both the Ottoman-era urban morphology of Kosovar
cities and Orientalist ideology that posed Ottoman-era heritage as a product of a
primitive pre-modern culture. To the slogan of “Destroy the old, build the new!”,
brigades of ‘Popular Front’ volunteers in Kosova, as elsewhere in Yugoslavia,
destroyed mosques as well as Ottoman-era bazaars and other buildings as
part of modernist urban renewal projects in cities such as Prishtina, Peja and
Prizren. The significance of targeted religious sites as ethnic symbols was less
explicitly salient to the socialist state than their significance as symbols of the
pre-modernity the state was striving to overcome.” (Herscher, 2006: 39-40)
Such drastic changes imposed by the Yugoslav state and the newly emerging
architecture “can be regarded as a symbolic structuring of territory, as a manifestation
of the [new] cultural organization of the land, and of the process through which people
expressed and communicated their [new Yugoslav] identity and transformed the natural
land into cultural territory” (Mach, 1993: 198). Hence, the aim was to transform what
remained from old traditional Albanian and Ottoman style architecture into new
Yugoslav socialist cultural territory.
4 The category of the people (narod) was initially assigned only to Serbs, Croats, Slovenes,
Montenegrins, Macedonians and later in 1971 to Bosnian Muslims, under the term
“Muslims”.
5 In 1963, Yugoslavia dropped the term ‘national minority’ to substitute it with the politically
less sensitive term narodnost.
• 35
Gëzim KRASNIQI
On the other hand, in an attempt to territorialise the memory of the Battle of Kosovo6,
in 1953 Serbian authorities decided to build a monument to the Kosovo heroes close
to Sultan Murat’s turbeh (Gazimestan turbeh). This practice of sacralisation of land
was followed up by the practice of rituals of gathering people around the monument
on the day of the Battle of Kosovo, June 28, 1389.
Figure 1: The Monument of the Battle of Kosovo Heroes in Gazimestan,
close to Pristina
Source: Wikipedia.
Such rituals serve to perpetuate the myth of the Battle of Kosovo, and of Kosovo
in general as a sacred land, and thus represent what Durkheim called the elementary
forms of the religious life (Durkheim, 1964), meaning mechanisms by which a society
6 The Battle of Kosovo (1389), fought at the ‘Field of the Blackbirds’ (now Kosovo Polje/
Fushë Kosovë) between the Balkan armies and the Ottoman forces, takes a central place in
the modern Serbian nationalist discourse and narratives. For more see Duijzings (2003: 76-
202).
36 •
maintains or establishes a sense of collective activity in periods of apparent dispersal,

that is achieved by “the sacralization of particular places which derive their sacred
quality less by what is in them, than by illuminating the solidarity of those who view
them” (Brown, 1994: 787).
During the period from 1945 until the abolition of the autonomy of Kosovo in 1989,
the cultural landscape of Kosovo, including the architecture, was impregnated with
socialist aesthetics and the ideology of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ (Bratstvo i Jedinstvo).
Narratives and discourse about partisans7 were omnipresent in this period, as expressed
by symbols, signs, monuments, street and school names carrying the names of heroes
of the anti-fascist war. The legend of Boro and Ramiz (a Montenegrin and an Albanian
who died together fighting for the partisans in the WWII) after whom many schools,
sports and cultural centres (including the main one in Pristina), and various other
institutions were named, “was an especially important story to be told in Kosovo,
where the story of their fraternal sacrifice would provide the normative framework for
a new relationship between local Serbs and Albanians” (Kerenji, 2008: 118). Hence,
the socialist spirit was to dominate the territory and space in Kosovo for almost half a
century, until the late 1980s when the situation deteriorated, first in Kosovo and then
in the rest of Yugoslavia.
Thus, during socialism, the legal, political and social empowerment of Albanians
in Yugoslavia in the 1970s created conditions for a more equal8 access to public
space and symbolic representation. This led to a higher level of integration between
all the groups in Kosovo in terms of sharing public spaces and other socially owned
institutions. The principle of ‘equality of narodi and narodnosti’, which was central
in the definition of citizenship, translated into an increasing level of equality in terms
of access to public spaces and symbolic representations of peoples.
2. 1990s: The Period of Total Serbian Control and War
Following the abolition of Kosovo’s autonomy in 1989 and the fall of socialist
Yugoslavia, discriminatory and repressive practices aimed at ethnic Albanians in
Kosovo became common in the new state. From the outset of the creation of the new
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), the new citizenship regime de facto downgraded
the position of Albanians (from ‘nationality’ to ‘national minority’) and striped them
of their basic political and legal entitlements (Krasniqi, 2010: 7; Rava, 2010: 9-10). In
reaction to these repressive measures, Albanians in Kosovo, under the leadership of
the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), boycotted Serbian institutions in Kosovo
and set up their own parallel system of education and health. In turn, this created a new
harsh reality for the Albanian population and turned Kosovo into a segregated society.
7 Members of the antifascist and revolutionary movement in Yugoslavia during World War
II.
8 Yet, for many Albanians, the fact that Albanians were a narodnost and Kosovo an
autonomous province as opposed to the six south-Slavic narodi and republics respectively,
was an indication of their lesser status in Yugoslavia.
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Figure 2: The unfinished Orthodox cathedral “Christ The Saviour”

in the University Campus in Pristina.
After 1989, when Serbia abolished Kosovo’s autonomous institutions, a new

wave of territorial and spatial modification in Kosovo and Pristina was initiated by
the Serbian regime. The cultural landscape changed too: a process of ‘Serbisation’
of the region began. All the schools were supposed to serve Serbs exclusively –
especially secondary schools and university – while street names and other signs
became exclusively Serbian. Many Albanian cultural institutions were closed down
or destroyed. This wave of attacks on cultural sphere was an attempt to reduce both
‘socialism’ and ‘Albanianism’. For example, in the mid 1990s, in the city of Gjakova
(Serbian Đakovica), which had a 97 per cent Albanian population, all the Albanian
street-names were changed into Serbian, commemorating heroes and saints; one of
the main streets, which was called ‘The League of Prizren’ later was named ‘King
Peter the Liberator’ (Malcolm, 1998: 352). New monuments of Serbian heroes were
erected in squares, in front of public building etc, and churches were built. Serbian
authorities started erecting a new Orthodox Cathedral even in the University Campus
in Pristina, but due to the eruption of the conflict in 1998 it remained unfinished.
Archives from libraries and institutions, as well as many materials from museums
were taken to Serbia. Even the name of Kosovo was officially changed to ‘Kosovo
and Metohija’9 or ‘Kosmet’.
9 Metohija (meaning ‘monastic estates’) is the Serbian name for the south-western part of
Kosovo, which in Albanian is called Rrafshi i Dukagjinit.
38 •
The axe of division and separation fell on the education system as well. Kostovicova
(Kostovicova, 2005) has analysed in detail the process of spatial separation between
Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo in the 1990s and the way in which these spatial
arrangements affected the symbolic coordinates of both communities. A mental map
of separation was thus created through the education system. While focusing on the
education system in Kosovo, Kostovicova illustrates the reconfiguration of national
identity through the interplay between two different understandings of the space –
space as a symbolic and physical resource. She argues that:
“In post-autonomy Kosovo, educational space became closely linked to
political space. Therefore, nationalism had turned education into a battleground
and created new spaces that became a source of new identity. The symbolic
redefinition of homeland was a part of that identity.” (Kostovicova, 2005: 3)
Things deteriorated further during the war, when hundreds of cultural objects,
mainly religious ones, were destroyed during the fighting. The eruption of the armed
conflict in Kosovo in early 1998 between the Yugoslav military and paramilitary forces
and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) paved the way for the military intervention of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in the territory of the FRY. In response
to this, the FRY authorities carried out a large-scale action of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo
which resulted in more than 850,000 Kosovar Albanian refugees being deported into
neighbouring countries; hundreds of thousands of others became internally displaced
persons (UNHCR, 1999). Apart from private Albanian houses, according to the Islamic
Community of Kosovo, approximately 200 (of the more than 600 mosques in Kosovo)
were damaged or destroyed during the 1998-1999 war, along with other Sufi lodges
and Islamic schools (Medrese), archives and libraries (Herscher, 2006: 41). Likewise,
the Museum of the League of Prizren, which is located in the Ottoman quarter of the
historic town of Prizren, in the 1990s first had its exhibits taken away and was used
as a hostel for Serbian refugees from Croatia (Malcolm, 1998: 352) and finally was
burned and destroyed completely by Serbian forces on March 29, 1999.
Likewise, architecture, as “a symbolic form through which a community creates
its identity” (Mach, 1993: 194) was targeted. Old symbols of Peja (Serbian Peč) and
Gjakova – Old Turkish Bazaars (Çarshia) were burned too. In short, everything that
could manifest the symbolic world of Albanians, their cultural organisation of the
land and identity, was seriously endangered during the war. Undoubtedly, deliberate
targeting of the Albanian cultural heritage in Kosovo was one of the main goals of
the Serbian state in the 1998-1999 war.
3. Changing Faces: Replacing Serbian Identity Markers And Symbols In Post-1999
Kosovo
Both Albanian and Serbian cultural objects were targeted in the years of conflict
(1998-99). The Serbian army and paramilitary forces destroyed the former during the
conflict, whereas the latter were mainly attacked and destroyed by Albanian groups
after the withdrawal of the Serbian machinery from Kosovo and establishment of the
international presence in the country in June 1999, in a deliberate attempt to eradicate
symbols of ‘the other’. According to estimates made by the Serbian Orthodox Church
• 39
Gëzim KRASNIQI
in Kosovo, approximately 140 Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries have been
damaged or destroyed since June 1999 (Herscher, 2006: 42). After 1999, everything that
represented Serbian culture – churches, monasteries, houses, cemeteries, monuments
– inspired hostility from many Albanians. As a result, many Serbian settlements10
were burned, churches attacked and destroyed, in what was considered as revenge by
the Albanians for the crimes and destructions committed by the Serbian state in the
earlier period. In addition to revenge, this campaign served as a means of Albanian
nationalists to reconfigure space and territory in the post-war reality in Kosovo.
Meanwhile, at this period started what Di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers have
called, “construction of a Pan-Albanian master narrative in post-war Kosovo” (2006:
513). At the centre of this narrative was the myth of the war heroes of the KLA –
Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK – Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës) and, especially,
one of the founding commanders of the KLA, Adem Jashari, who died in early
1998 together with his extended family and some of his cousins under siege at his
home while fighting with the Serbian forces. After the war, “social reproduction of
the Jashari legend became ubiquitous, and is evident in the many schools, barracks,
squares and streets all over Kosovo that are named after him…[and]…there are many
representations of Adem Jashari as a brave warrior – in popular songs, postcards,
calendars, medals, posters, copper plates, watches, notebooks and other souvenirs” (Di
Lellio & Schwandner-Sievers, 2006: 517). His sacrifice became an undisputed symbol
of the Albanian struggle for national liberation. The meaning of the KLA war became
as strong as to symbolically substitute almost completely the myth of the anti-fascist
struggle of the partisans in WWII; many monuments that were built in Kosovo to
commemorate dead soldiers are almost identical with monuments of socialism built
in socialist Yugoslavia. Many of these representations, and especially those of Adem
Jashari, represent “modernist aesthetic rooted in socialist memorial iconography” (Di
Lellio & Schwandner-Sievers, 2006: 521). Indeed, a mushrooming of the monuments
of the KLA soldiers and Albanian heroes as well as rituals, which “revolve around
three fundamental constants: struggle, sacrifice, victory” (Ingmundarson, 2007: 104)
can be witnessed today all around the country.
However, a particular site symbolising both Albanian sacrifice and struggle for
freedom stood out in post-war Kosovo – Prekaz. The place where Jashari was killed was
soon turned into a sacred space or territory by Albanian myth-making and “memory
entrepreneurs” (Jelin cited in Di Lellio & Schwandner-Sievers, 2006: 514). In that
place, in the village of Prekaz, a memorial complex ‘Adem Jashari’ was built and
today is a “popular destination for an Albanian political tourism that has acquired the
character of a pilgrimage” (Di Lellio & Schwandner-Sievers, 2006: 514). The myth of
Jashari family and other Albanian national heroes represent a par excellence example
of the territorialisation of memory. In this case, myth is the narrative of the sublime
sacrifice and glories of war, which is being acted out by the rituals – political tourism
and pilgrimage. In addition, the remaining members of the Jashari family are reserved
10 The UNHCR estimated that the total number of non-Albanian refugees that left Kosovo
after the international intervention in June 1999 is 200,000. For more detailed analysis of
the number of refugees from Kosovo see UNHCR (2000; 2009) and ESI (2004).
40 •
a special moral status in Kosovar society. Their opinions often carry great weight in
society and among political elites. All these are attempts to elevate the Jashari family
to the level of a moral institution of Albanians.
i. Between The Lines: Unmik’s Agenda In Kosovo

On 10 June 1999 Kosovo was placed under direct international (interim)
administration, under the authority of the United Nations and its Resolution 1244. In
terms of the legislation, the new UN-drafted legislation was informed by principles
of multi-culturalism and equality of all the ethnic, linguistic and religious groups in
Kosovo – recognised under the category of ‘communities’ – the aim of which was to
overcome past grievances and cleavages. This meant that for the first time in the 20th
century both Albanians and Serbs would be treated equally in terms of the constitutional
category. As regards citizenship, the UN created a separate civil register (Central Civil
Register of Kosovo)11 for the residents of Kosovo, which in a way became a substitute
for citizenship regulations, and issued UN Travel Documents to habitual residents in
Kosovo. Hence, in certain aspects, the interim international administration in Kosovo,
which was mandated to administer Kosovo until the final status settlement, set up the
foundations of a new quasi citizenship regime, quite similar to the one that existed in
the period between 1974 and 1989 (Krasniqi, 2010: 8).
UN administration was also involved in the post-war competition for symbols
in Kosovo. Its campaign in post-war Kosovo of restoring the destroyed heritage had
become a way of recreating the past that is able to promote a future of peaceful existence
(Wolferstan, 2006: 105). However, the international community’s mantra of ‘multi-
ethnicity’ never translated into a clearly defined vision of managing Kosovo’s post-war
space. As argued by Blumi, UNMIK took a position of institutional management based
on the rigid reconstructing of the political life in Kosovo along the lines of ethnic
division between ‘Albanian’ and ‘Serb’ communities, which aimed at delegitimising all
the pre-existing structures as archaic symbols of a violent past (Blumi, 2003: 216). As
a result, the pre-existing local social practices and common sites and spaces, including
the ones originating from socialism, were abandoned. On the other hand, UNMIK and
KFOR (which claimed exclusive responsibility for security in Kosovo, including the
control of air space) attempted to establish legitimacy through their centralised control
from Pristina, as well as through the use of billboards, media ads, UN ID cards etc.
The exclusive approach of the international mission in Kosovo and its incompatibility
with the desires and political ambitions of the majority of the population led to conflict
and resistance from the local population. Territorial and symbolic modifications that
were performed by Albanian individuals or local institutions were in line with the
need to resist any attempts by UNMIK to “institutionalize its own reconstruction
agenda [by defining Kosovo’s identity in terms of multi-ethnicity] by forgetting the
past and by omitting the future status of Kosovo” (Ingmundarson, 2007: 114). As
observed by Wolferstan:
11 UNMIK/REG/2000/13.
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“The existence of commemorative sites including statues […], monumental

graves, a museum exhibition dedicated to KLA soldiers, posters of fleeing
refugees marking [the anniversary of] the flight of Kosovo’s Albanians, anti-
UNMIK material culture and acts of resistance all betrayed the international
community’s inability to bring the less savoury aspects of memory and its
materiality out i nto the open for public debate.” (Wolferstan, 2006: 106)
When it comes to the Albanian resistance towards UNMIK’s multi-cultural
vision, it is important to note that there is an inter-Albanian strife as well that plays
an important role in the creation of the modern Kosovar Albanian identity. According
to Ingmundarson, the inter-Albanian strife is mainly a political power contest over
memories of the struggle against Serbian rule in Kosovo between the non-violent legacy
of the late President the dominant political party in the 1990s (the Democratic League
of Kosovo – LDK) and the armed resistance of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army
as represented, in the post-war period by two political parties – the Democratic Party
of Kosovo (PDK) and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) (Ingmundarson,
2007: 97). These two camps have appropriated figures of Ibrahim Rugova and Adem
Jashari respectively and utilise them as symbols in their quest for political power in
Kosovo. This struggle often seems to be suspended due to the daily political needs
and party interests. Such were the 2004 government coalition between the LDK and
AAK and the 2007 coalition between LDK and PDK. Compromises were made also
at the time of negotiations on the final status of Kosovo when all parties were united
in their positions on Kosovo’s future as an independent state.
Therefore, after the war in Kosovo ended in 1999, Albanians had almost a total
monopoly of symbolic life in the territory of Kosovo. The territorial and symbolic
modifications that were made during this period were in line with the post-war
liberation narrative (which was also filled with the myth of the national purity of the
rural population) and the myth of the glorious war; they are symbolically represented
through local heroic figures, above all Adem Jashari, as “the perfect embodiment of
the ‘authentic Albanian patriot’ in opposition to the ‘putative Yugoslav corruption’ of
the urban population” (Di Lellio & Schwandner-Sievers, 2006: 518). Streets, squares,
buildings and even cities were renamed in an attempt to cleanse Kosovo’s territory
of Serbian cultural elements. Notwithstanding these changes, the Ahtisaari Plan12 for
the final status settlement in Kosovo, which constituted the basis for the declaration
of independence of Kosovo, foresaw that all the cities should revert to the names by
12 In 2005, the Security Council authorised the beginning of the status process, mediated by
the former Finnish President, Martti Ahtisaari, in the capacity of the Special Envoy of the
Secretary-General of the United Nations for the future status process for Kosovo. With
15 rounds of negotiations organised, and with no compromise between leaders of Serbia
and Kosovo on the horizon, on 26 March 2007, Ahtisaari presented his final version of
the Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement (known as the Ahtisaari
Plan) to the Security Council and the Secretary General. It served as the legal and political
basis for the declaration of independence of Kosovo and, according to the Constitution of
Kosovo (art. 143.2), it shall take precedence over all other legal provisions in Kosovo. See
The Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement, 26 March 2007. http://
www.unosek.org/unosek/en/statusproposal.html.
42 •
which they were known before the war. Therefore, it is a common practice in today’s
Kosovo that streets, villages and cities have two or three different names, depending
on who (Albanians, Serbs, or foreigners) uses them and in what context.
Hence, despite the adoption of non-discriminatory legislation that aimed at
providing equality between various populations in Kosovo, UNMIK’s approach of
seeing individuals through a reductionist, essentialist and ethnicising frame, failed
to create a functional integrated territory and political space in Kosovo. The most
visible dividing symbol is the bridge over river Ibër (Serbian Ibar) that divides the city
of Mitrovica in a Serbian dominated north and Albanian dominated south. Serbian
dominated areas in Kosovo, particularly northern Kosovo (where Russian president
Vladimir Putin’s image – whose staunch opposition against Kosovo’s independence is
deemed essential by the Serbs – decorates posters and billboards), represent ‘pieces of
Serbia in Kosovo’ as everything is written in the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet and Serbian
flags and inscriptions ‘Republic of Serbia’ decorate the landscape.
The logic of seeing various populations through their membership in homogenous
ethnic groups, combined with the policies of creating new municipalities based on the
principle of ethno-majoritarianism (Dahlam & Williams, 2010), facilitated the process
of symbolic and special division, which eventually led to the creation of ethnically
homogenous municipalities and areas.
4. Citizenship Struggles in ‘Newborn’ Kosovo
Having already endorsed the Ahtisaari Plan in March 2007, Kosovo declared
independence on 17 February 2008. Kosovo was declared ‘to be a democratic, secular
and multi-ethnic republic, guided by the principles of non-discrimination and protection
under the law’ (Kosovo Declaration of Independence, 17 February 2008). According
to Ahtisaari’s proposal, Kosovo should be a multi-ethnic society based upon the
equality of all citizens and the highest level of internationally recognised human rights
and fundamental freedoms, as well as the promotion and protection of the rights and
contributions of all its communities and their members. The newly adopted legislation
set up the contours of an all-inclusive citizenship, both at the micro and macro level.
As far as citizenship, understood as a link between the individual and the state, is
concerned, the boundaries of the new polity were to be established not according to
the principle of origin, but according to territory (Krasniqi 2010: 10).
Nonetheless, in a situation where recognition of group rights seems to perpetuate
group differences, the state of Kosovo lacks the necessary integrative ideology. Insistence
on ‘multi-ethnicity’ and ‘multiculturalism’ in a society deeply divided on an ethnic
basis and without a common link, risks rendering these concepts meaningless. As far
as ordinary people are concerned in Kosovo, they seem to be divided based on ethno-
national belonging and pledge loyalty to their ethnic nations or their kin-states. They
remain divided both physically (in the northern part of Kosovo), as well by mostly
mutually exclusive symbols, which in turn have created various special boundaries
between different communities. As a result, urban and public spaces have been used as
arenas for new forms of exclusive political identities. In what follows, the paper looks
in more detail at the symbolic changes that have taken place in the city of Pristina
since 1999 and the struggles for domination and appropriation of the public space.
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Gëzim KRASNIQI
IV. POST-WAR PRISTINA: DEMOGRAPHIC AND SYMBOLIC CHANGES

For most of the 1990s, Serbian symbols and the Cyrillic script dominated Pristina.
Despite the fact that more than 85 per cent – the exact percentage is not known since
the last general census in Kosovo was in 1981 – of the population of the capital city
was Albanian, the landscape was almost completely Serbian. However, a drastic change
happened after 1999. Just as in other parts of the country, new Albanian inscriptions
and symbols suddenly replaced the Serbian ones. Similar to the case of eradication of
German symbolic culture in Poland after WWII, adopting the terminology used by
Mach (Mach, 1993: 197), almost all symbolic aspects of Serbian culture were removed
and the Albanian symbolic world was to (re)emerge; thus pre-existing emblems and
inscriptions were removed from buildings and streets acquired new names which
were supposed to indicate the Albanian character of the land and most of the Serbian
monuments and memorials were removed and new Albanian ones were created to
‘remember’ a mythical past or the recent liberation war.
In this way, what was previously JNA – Jugoslavenska Narodna Armija (YPA
– Yugoslav People’s Army) street, became UÇK (KLA). The main street in Pristina
that before was called Marshal Tito street was renamed ‘Mother Teresa’ and a statue
of her was built there with the intention of both promoting her Albanian origin and
the pro-Western orientation of Albanians. In the same street, two other Albanian
national symbols have found a place; the first is a monument of the Albanian national
hero from the Middle ages, Gjergj Kastrioti – Skënderbeu, which was built in front
of the governmental building and opposite the national theatre; the second is a statue
of one of the founders of the KLA – Zahir Pajaziti, erected opposite the once-famous
five star hotel in Pristina, ‘Grand Hotel’, which in the 1990s was controlled by the
notorious Serbian warlord, Željko Ražnatović – Arkan. Actually, the majority of the
streets13 and monuments in Pristina today commemorate and glorify the liberation
war of the KLA, as most of them carry names of warriors or other Albanian political
and cultural figures. This Albanian post-war ‘master narrative’ also includes foreign
politicians who were involved in the international intervention in Kosovo in 1999; a
major street in the entrance of Pristina is named after the former U.S. President Bill
Clinton; a statute of him was erected in 2009. The former President Bill Clinton –
welcomed by thousands of Albanians who celebrate him as a hero for launching NATO’s
bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 that stopped the Serb forces’ terror
against ethnic Albanians –attended the unveiling of a 3.5 meter statue of himself on a
key boulevard in Pristina that also bears his name (AP, 1 November 2009). Moreover,
in December 2008 the Government of Kosovo decided to name a street in Pristina
after the outgoing U.S. President, George W. Bush as a sign of appreciation for his
commitment and support of Kosovo.
13 Looking at the updated street index of Pristina, it turns out that out of almost 500 streets
and squares, less than 10 of them carry the names of Serbian cultural and historical
figures. See http://kk.rks-gov.net/prishtina/getattachment/City-guide/Strrets-of-the-city/
lista_e_emertimeve_te_rrugeve_te_prishtines.pdf.aspx
44 •
Figure 3: UÇK (KLA) street.
Figure 4: Skënderbeu monument.
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Gëzim KRASNIQI
Figure 5: Bill Clinton’s statue in Pristina.
Further, close to the unfinished Orthodox cathedral, in front of the Philology Faculty
in Pristina where before was standing a statue of the famous Serbian philologist &
language reformer of the 19th century Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, today stands the statue
of the academician Fehmi Agani, a distinguished Albanian sociologist and political
activist from the 1990s, who was killed in 1999 by Serbian forces, in an wide-ranging
campaign that targeted the Kosovar-Albanian political and cultural elite. Though no
official decision has been taken yet with regard to the fate of the Orthodox cathedral
in the university campus – there have been voices asking for it to be moved to another
location since this area is intended for students, but due to its sensitivity, no decision
has been taken yet.
With regard to communism, one of the few monuments that survived until now is
the ‘The Triangle’ that symbolised ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ in Kosovo, that stands in
a square between the parliament building and Pristina’s City Hall. In the aftermath of
the war there was an unsuccessful attempt (using dynamite) to destroy it. Nevertheless,
the Municipality of Pristina recently announced that it plans to bring it down and build
a new square dedicated to Adem Jashari. While some people from the civil society in
46 •
Pristina see this act as an attack on Pristina’s urban identity, the municipal officials
have justified the decision claiming that the monument does not represent any cultural,
political or historical value for the city and its people (Koha Ditore, 16 August 2010).
This is a clear tendency of the local authorities in Pristina to distance themselves
both from the socialist past of the city and the Yugoslav and Serbian rule in Kosovo.
Figure 6: Triangle – the symbol of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’.
Therefore, both the number of Serb inhabitants (there are only few of them living
in the city now) and their symbolic world that dominated Pristina prior to 1999 are
drastically reduced. New Albanian symbols have been placed in the meantime all
around the city. The architecture is much different today; the old grey communist
apartment blocks in the centre of the city are painted and renovated and hundreds
(mostly illegal) new modern style buildings have emerged. In the months after June
1999, most elements of the Serbian symbolic culture and in Kosovo were deliberately
destroyed and a new Albanian-dominated landscape emerged, representing and
commemorating people and events that signify Albanian nationalism and nationhood.
Thus, the political activities of the emerging Albanian-dominated institutions in
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Gëzim KRASNIQI
Kosovo brought about the emergence of the new ‘discursive landscape’ and produced
the ‘symbolic fabric’ that linked the self-understanding of Albanians with the territory
of Pristina and Kosovo in general. So, a more hybrid and socialist past was suppressed
in order to create some kind of ethnic uniformity in post-war Kosovo.
Although post-2008 Kosovo has put in place a civic and all-inclusive citizenship
regime, the new country faces serious problems in the process of establishing its
internal and external legitimacy and creating a political space accessible by all its
citizens. As a result, territory, space, symbols and institutions remain contested, with
Kosovar Albanian, Kosovar Serb and Serbian elites being engaged in a struggle for
domination and control of the territory of Kosovo, its resources, people and landscape.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper I have shown how space and territory have been central to citizenship
struggles in Kosovo. As a constitutive object of group struggle (Isin & Wood, 1999: 99),
space has continuously been contested in Kosovo. As a result, the territory of Kosovo and
its public space has experienced many phases of territorial modification and symbolic
changes throughout the twentieth century, with changes always reflecting the balance of
power. Street names, inscriptions, monuments as well as other markers and architecture
to a certain extent, constitute those aspects of the landscape and geography that were
permanently subject to modification and rearrangement. A physical (administrative
or military) control over the country by one or the other nation also meant symbolic
control of the territory and space. Continuing struggles over the socio-cultural and
political boundaries delimiting the exercise of citizenship have resulted in segregated
and mono-ethnic public spaces. In turn, this proves that inequalities in distribution of
space and spatial capital can persist irrespective of the attempts to provide for central
legal and political equality for different groups within a polity.
As a result, irrespective of the fact that at a political and legal level Kosovo
has put in place an all-inclusive citizenship regime, the ‘newborn’ country remains
both politically and symbolically divided. While Kosovo is still an unfinished and
unconsolidated state where Serb and Kosovan jurisdictions and sovereignties overlap
(Krasniqi, 2012), internal symbolic and spatial divisions persist and even widen.
Although all the official inscriptions (streets, schools and other institutions) are written
in Albanian, Serbian and English, still most of their names commemorate Albanian
national history and people. On the other hand, in Serbian dominated areas, especially
in the north, no Albanian or Kosovar symbol can be found.
To conclude, national groups, and above all, nationalist elites seek monopolies and
control over the symbolic culture and geography, because “geographical indicators scan
the physical space for evidence that supports a nation’s claim to a specific territory…
[and because] … placing markers of national culture along the perimeters of a region
make national boundaries appear real” (Herb, 1999: 22). And, undoubtedly, regions
of overlapping historical claims such as Kosovo are the ideal battlefield of such a ‘war
for symbols’ where erection of symbolic boundaries and appropriation of public space
by one group or the other threatens the very existence of democratic and all-inclusive
citizenship.
48 •
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Ingmundarson, V. (2007). The Politics of Memory and the Reconstruction of Albanian

National Identity in Postwar Kosovo. History & Memory, 19 (1), 95-123.
Isin, E. F. & Wood, P. K. (1999). Citizenship and identity. London: Sage Publications.
Judah, T. (2000). Kosovo: War and Revenge. New Haven & London: Yale University
Press.
Kaplan, D. H. (1999). Territorial Identities and Geographical Scale, in G. H. Herb &
D. H. Kaplan (eds.), Nested Identities: Nationalism, Territory, Scale, 31-52. Lanham
& Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Kerenji, E. (2008). Jewish Citizens of Socialist Yugoslavia: Politics of Jewish Identity
in a Socialist State, 1944-1974. University of Michigan, PhD Thesis.
Koha, Ditore. (2010). Komuna e Prishtinës cakton afatin e rrënimit të
“Vëllazërim-bashkimit. Koha Ditore, 16 August 2010. Available at:
http://www.koha.net/index.php?cid=1,8,31347
Kosovo Declaration of Independence, 17 February 2008. Available at: http://www.
assembly-kosova.org/?cid=2,128,1635
Kostovicova, D. (2005). Kosovo: the politics of identity and space. Oxon: Routledge.
Krasniqi, G. (2012). Overlapping jurisdictions, disputed territory, unsettled state:
the perplexing case of citizenship in Kosovo. Citizenship Studies, 16 (3-4), 353-366.
Krasniqi, G. (2010). Citizenship as a tool of state-building in Kosovo: status, rights,
and identity in the new state. CITSEE Working Paper Series, 2010/10.
Lowenthal, D. (1994). European and English Landscapes as National Symbols, in
D. Hooson (ed.), Geography and National Identity, (15-38). Oxford and Cambridge:
Blackwell.
Mach, Z. (1993). Symbols, Conflict, and Identity: Essays in Political Anthropology.
New York: State University of New York Press.
Malcolm, N. (1998). Kosovo: A Short History. London: Macmillan.
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& G. Schöpflin (eds.), Myths and Nationhood, 19-35. London: Hurst & Company.
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• 51
LINGUISTIC POLITICS IN EX-YUGOSLAVIA: THE CAS OF PURISM IN CROATIA
Tea PRŠIR
I. INTRODUCTION
Linguistic purification existed in Croatia before its political independence in 1991, as
will be discussed in §2. In the 19th century, purification was focused against non-Slavic
languages such as German, Hungarian, Latin and Italian. After the Yugoslav wars
it focused against “Serbianisms”. By this term, Croatian purists designate the words
that entered the Croatian language during the years of common state history with the
Serbian people. Serbianisms were the main preoccupation for some Croatian linguists
from 1990 until 2000. They proposed (and sometimes even imposed) discarding these
and replacing them with neologisms. This paper addresses the delicate question of
what happens when words commonly used by a majority of the population suddenly
become “foreign” words.
1. What is purism?
There are two levels of purism. The first level is one of an ordinary, spontaneous
purist tendency. It is about wanting to take care of language by knowing its rules, by
being able to choose the most appropriate word when expressing oneself. Not many
speakers do this consciously, except if they need it in their job, such as teaching or
journalism. I call this level “from bottom to top” purism, in the sense that it emerges
from cultural and social heritage.
The second level of purism is “from top to bottom”. It is a more or less violent
dictate by institutional political bodies prescribing norms that are quite often far
remote from current use of language. Violent linguistic purism is related to political
and social attitudes such as nationalism, xenophobia or conservatism, all of them being
amplified by war or other sources of political insecurity. During the 1990s, purism was
welcomed as a facet of the explosion of hatred against Serbs, but also because of the
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feeling that the Croatian language was not on an equal par with the Serbian language
in ex-Yugoslavia, as explained under 2.4.1.
2. How do foreign words enter language?
They do so by contact, when two linguistic communities (whether on the level of
nation or of ethnic group or of region) exchange on a cultural, economic and media
basis. This happens to an even greater extent if two or more communities live in the
same country, as was the case in ex-Yugoslavia. Quite often, communities are not
in an equal socio-economic-political position and quite often language is the first
instance to reflect these differences, as will be shown in an overview of the historical
background of the Croatian language.
Language contact can lead to a wide range of situations. Some foreign words are
introduced because they depict a new reality, such as 'internet' for example. Others
are difficult to translate because of their stratified semantics, such as 'cool'1, often
used in Croatian.
I claim that language contact is not sufficient for transition of words/expressions
from one language to another. There must be a motivation for users in terms of need
or affect. Users need a foreign word if there is no appropriate term in their vocabulary
or if loanwords have a different connotation than the ones already existing. Sometimes
taking in a new word depends on fashion, as within the young generation of speakers.
Many of these words drop out of use by the time they become adult. But if the fashion
persists, it means that users invested it affectively. So they will use it more and more
regularly and this practice will possibly push aside a dominant word. This kind of
process is common and it occurs all the time in all languages, without endangering
them. Croatian is a language that was in more or less close contact with other languages
(Latin, Italian, German, Hungarian, Turkish, Slovene) during centuries, but still
succeeded in preserving itself. Many regional languages disappeared in Europe.
France, for example, succeeded perfectly in undertaking, since the 17th century, the
extermination of any idiom but French, and obtained a strong linguistic unification of
different ethnic groups. In contrast, in Spain, one regional language, Catalan – that
was considered an inferior idiom for centuries – became the major argument of a local
nationalism that is threatening state unity. Perhaps Spain would not have this problem
if Catalan had been “killed” earlier.
On one hand, ethnic groups in ex-Yugoslavia resisted the assaults on their language
once they entered in union with surrounding countries, or were conquered by them. On
the other hand, it seems that drastic measures against languages were not undertaken
(or at least not on the long-term) since all countries of ex-Yugoslavia have their own
language today! A closer look at the historical background will explain some of the
processes involved in linguistic issues of keeping and defending language.
1 Cool glides through its original semantics of cold, fresh to express among Croatian youth
satisfaction (“Cool! I won the lottery!” Cool! Dobila sam na lotu!) or to describe someone
favourably (“He/she is cool!” On/ona je cool!).
54 •
Linguistic Politics In Ex-Yugoslavia: The Cas of Purism In Croatia
II. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Linguistic politics after war and in today’s Croatia still reflect historical and
political events that took place over the last 160 years. The relationship with Serbia
takes a particular place in these events. The common, and/or parallel, linguistic history
of Croats and Serbs starts within the European trend of the 19th century to standardise
national languages. Some educated representatives of the Slavic people living in the
region of future Yugoslavia made proposals for a common language, though the idea
of a common nation was much less developed. The Yugoslavian peoples always lived
in a federation acknowledging their mutual differences.
1. National Movements, Standardisation of Language and Identity
The 19th century was a period of national movements rising all over Europe.
Southern Slavic people founded movements to promote their identity based on language
and culture: the Slovenian national movement, the Illyrian movement or the Croatian
national revival, the Matica Srpska Society. At that time they felt threatened by the
Hungarian and German cultures and languages, since Croatia and Serbian Vojvodina
were in personal union with the Kingdom of Hungary that was part of the Austrian
Empire2. This threat, plus the one of the Ottoman Empire on the southern borders, was
at the origin of the idea of their unification, which would be achieved only in 1918. Their
common Slavic identity mainly reflected in language since their common heritage grew
up into different ethnicities under the influence of surrounding civilizations: Catholic
Austria, Hungary and Italy for Croatia and Slovenia, and the Muslim Ottoman Empire
for Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia & Herzegovina. In spite of the Ottoman domination
for 500 years, Serbia managed to keep the Cyrillic alphabet and Orthodox religion.
From the genetic linguistic viewpoint, the dialects spoken by Southern Slavic people have
common features since they belong to the same family of Western South Slavic languages.
The very first basis of a common language was put up back in 1850, in Vienna. The Slovenian
Franc Miklošič, head of chair of Slavic Philology at Vienna University, invited Croatian3
and Serbian4 writers and linguists to discuss a common basis for the terminology
used in Austrian administration concerning South Slavic people. They
signed a document known as 'the Vienna Literary Agreement', which is
often referred to as the first framework for the standard Serbo-Croatian5
language mostly established on suggestions by Vuk Karadžić. Following
the German and Italian model, they agreed to choose one of the existing
dialects: the NeoŠtokavian dialect spoken in Eastern Herzegovina. Under the
2 That became the dual Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. (Since 1102, Croatia joined
Hungary in personal union. Since 1527, Croatia, as well as Hungary, became autonomous
parts of the Austrian Empire under different forms until 1918.)
3 Ivan Mažuranić, Dimirije Demeter, Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski, Vinko Pacel, Stefan
Pejaković.
4 Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Đuro Daničić.
5 The term Serbo-Croatian first appeared in 1836 in the writings of Jernej Kopitar, a Slovenian
philologist.
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Tea PRŠIR
influence of Western and Northern Slavic languages, a morpho-phonological6

orthography was proposed, as well as diacritic signs for letters that evolved and stabilised
over time to č, ć, đ, dž, š, ž, lj, nj for Croatian. Yet, this agreement had no immediate
application and it was not accepted completely. In fact, Croatia preferred the orthography
of the linguistic reform of Ljudevit Gaj7, introduced in schools in 1862.
Popović (2004) describes similarities and divergences between Serbian and Croatian
programs of language reform. They were both guided by the idea that the people
cannot access education if teaching is not performed in their everyday language. This
care for people’s knowledge expanded to become the basis of nation and its identity.
2. Name of the language
It seems that it was a problematic task for the Croatian parliament to name the
language in its standardised form. In 1861, it was decided to call it “Yugoslavian”.
In 1867, the denomination of “Croatian or Serbian” was adopted. This indicates
the important presence of Serbs on the territory of Croatia. In fact, they migrated8
from Serbia in the 15th – 16th century, fleeing the Turks, and were stationed as paid
soldiers on the borders between the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian Empires
(regions called Military Frontier, situated at the Northern and Western borders with
Bosnia of present-day Croatia). Migration and mixing of populations resulted naturally
in linguistic change as well: distinctive features of the East and West Štokavian
variants melted into a new NeoŠtokavian dialect, called afterwards the 'Serbo-Croatian'
language, and also called the 'Middle South Slavic Diasystem' by linguists who wish
to avoid any national flavour for this idiom spoken by four nations (Bosnians, Croats,
Montenegrins and Serbs).
NeoŠtokavian pushed aside Kajkavian and Čakavian, the other two dialects spoken
in Croatia to the present day. The capital of Croatia, Zagreb, is traditionally Kajkavian,
but its population adopted NeoŠtokavian: in the beginning at an institutional level, and
later on at other levels. Linguistically, there are more differences between Kajkavian,
Čakavian and Štokavian within the complex Croatian language system, than between
Croatian and Serbian standard languages that share Štokavian as a common basis.
NeoŠtokavian has its variants or accents depending on the reflex of the common Slavic
6 Morpho-phonological orthography keeps track of the underlying form of the word, most
frequently of the nominative case (zadatak – zadatci). Phonological orthography is based
on phonological rules inherent to every language, which determine its pronunciation
(zadatak – zadaci). The latter was prevalent throughout the history of Croatian.
7 Gaj was a journalist, writer, linguist and politician. He published the first newspaper in
Croatian, Novine Horvatske (“The Croatian News”) and was a central figure of national
movement.
8 I failed to find the exact number of Serbs who moved to Croatia in this period. When
Serbia started to gain independence from the Ottomans, Serbs migrated back to Serbia.
According to Lampe and Jackson (1982:116), between 1834 and 1874, 666,000 immigrants
came to Serbia, most of them Serbs.
56 •
grapheme yat (*/ě/) that can have at least three pronunciations. Here is an example
for the word “beautiful”:
Ekavian (lepo */ě/ > /e/), Ikavian (lipo */ě/ > /i/) and Ijekavian (lijepo */ě/ > /je/, /ije/).
This aspect of accent varies from region to region in ex-Yugoslavia, independently
of country borders. Ekavian is used mainly in Serbia, but also in Croatian East Slavonia
and Northern Istria. Ijekavian is used mainly in Croatia and Montenegro. Ikavian is
spoken in Croatia’s regions of Dalmatia and Istria. The accent can even change from
one island to another, so we will not go further into detail.
Fluctuation in language denomination continued for years, reflecting the complexity
of political unification of South Slavs that was strongly marked by their specific national
and linguistic identity.
3. Purism in the 19th century
Since language purification comes along with national and identity awakening,
Croatian linguists and philologists, active in the Illyrian movement, published a
number of works defending the Croatian language. Together with Gaj, Bogoslav Šulek
was particularly engaged in purifying the language from German, Hungarian and
Italian influence, but also from much more ancient words with Greek or Latin roots.
For example, “termometar” (thermometer) becomes “toplomjer”. Šulek was inspired
by other Slavic languages that he was familiar with (himself being of Slovak origin).
When he could not find a Slavic word for some recent and scientific terms, he would
create neologisms. Some of Šulek’s new words survived; for others there were two
attempts for their rehabilitation. The first one during the Independent State of Croatia,
1941-1945 (cf. 2.4). The second one with the latest big wave of purism starting with
Croatian independence in the 1990s (cf. 3).
Some Croatian philologists were openly against Vuk Karadžić’s proposal with
regard to NeoŠtokavian dialect. In 1856, Šulek published the article 'Serbs and Croats',
where he presented historical, philological and literary reasons why the denomination
Serbo-Croatian was not appropriate. He argued that Croatian coastal writers (particularly
in Dubrovnik) had used Štokavian for centuries as literary language and it was never
called Serbian.
During this period, two streams developed in Croatia: Vukovci, who followed the
ideas of Vuk Karadžić; and those close to the Illyrian ideas of Gaj and Šulek. In other
words, opposition persisted between those with a tendency for a common language
for Serbs and Croats and those without. This did not always depend on nationality. For
example, the Croatian poet Antun Branko Šimić (1898-1925) was a fervent follower of
the idea of a common language. In his writings, he changed his childhood Ijekavian
accent for the Ekavian. At the beginning of the 1900s, for a short period, many young
Croatian writers followed his example. In this way they expressed their support for
the proposal that the common variant of the Štokavian dialect (i.e. Serbo-Croatian)
should be the Ekavian accent used by Serbs and the Latin script used by Croats. The
basis of this halfway proposal was a survey about common language realised among
South Slavic intellectuals, in 1912, by Jovan Skerlić, a Serbian historian of literature
and politician.
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In 1892, Ivan Broz published 'Croatian Orthography', based on phonological rules.

Although it evolved, its skeleton has been used ever since. Whether this orthography
is based on Vukovian, or on Gaj’s school, or on something in between is complex to
determine. Regardless, Broz’s orthography – later on published under Broz-Boranić
and finally under Boranić – was the one used in Croatia for the longest period, with
some breaks due to historical events described in the next paragraph.
4. Status of Languages in Yugoslavia
At the end of World War I, Southern Slavs had to provide some historical legitimacy
for their demand to create a new and independent state. Their argument was pan-Slavic
brotherhood9, and a common language, or at least, resemblance between languages.
The name of the kingdom included three nations: 'Kingdom of Serbs, Slovenes and
Croats', and the official language was 'Serbo-Croato-Slovene'. This situation changed
in 1928, when Croatian political leaders were killed in the Belgrade parliament and
King Alexander installed a dictatorship. In 1929 the kingdom changed its name to 'The
Kingdom of Yugoslavia', and linguistic politics renamed the language 'Yugoslavian'10,
and imposed the Serbian norm (Ekavian accent) in schools and institutions throughout
the country. It implied that the national movement in Croatia to maintain the particularity
of Croatian standard language and orthography was endangered. Croats resisted
these policies, but changes came only in 1939 with the announcement of World War
II. Croatia gained autonomy as Banovina within the Kingdom and the Croatian
orthography manual by Broz-Boranić came into force again. Shortly after, in 1941,
the new 'Independent State of Croatia' (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska – NDH) formed
as the result of a political agreement with the German invader. The territory of NDH
encompassed today’s Bosnia and some parts of Serbia. Lexical purism, as initiated
by Šulek, took a central place in the linguistic politics of NDH, despite its multiethnic
composition. Morpho-phonological orthography came back into force, which Brozović
(1998) describes as a step back from Croatian achievements in linguistic standardisation
since the 1890s. By the end of World War II, in 1945, the NDH had ceased to exist,
and Croatia became one of the six federal republics of new communist Yugoslavia.
9 “Brotherhood”, with “Unity” of people were central concepts throughout Yugoslavian

history.
10 By observing inscriptions on the banknotes of the Yugoslav dinar, one can follow the
language change in its official use. The first banknotes printed in 1920 contained Serbian,
Croatian and Slovene. Those printed in 1929 contained only Serbian Ekavian norm, recto
with Cyrillic script and verso with Latin. The 1944 series has Croatian, Serbian, Slovene
and Macedonian with a clear distinction between the Croatian and Serbians variant at the
level of lexicon and script: krivotvorenje vs фалсификовање ( falsifikovanje) (falsification),
tisuća vs хиљада (hiljada) (thousand). This remained unchanged until the Yugoslav wars.
58 •
i. Yugoslavia 1945-1991
From its very beginning – at the Second AVNOJ11 conference in 1943 – Yugoslavia
recognised different nations and their particularities. Four languages had official status:
Macedonian, Slovene, Serbian and Croatian; they figured on all federal state documents.
Each Republic determined the language to be used in schools and institutions. Croatia
continued its standardisation following once again Boranić’s orthography. The 'Croatian
philologist society' was founded and the journal for Croatian literary language Jezik
has been published since 1952.
Because of the fascist, nationalist context of NDH, purism was observed with
scepticism and animosity in communist Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, the Croatian variant
kept its purist words. For example, glazba (“music”) or ljekarna (“pharmacy”) coexisted
with muzika and apoteka, more international words, considered Serbian. In today’s
Croatia, the same speaker can use two variants depending on context.
Contrary to Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin were, and remain, open
to loan-words from different languages. This can be understood as one among many
other consequences of their dispersed historical, political and cultural development.
The issue of a common language for Croats and Serbs resuscitated with a survey
(inspired by Skerlić’s 1912) that preceded the “Novi Sad Agreement” Novosadski
dogovor in 1954. Thus, 104 years after the 'Vienna Literary Agreement', linguists
and writers from Serbia and Croatia, but also from Bosnia and Herzegovina and
Montenegro, gathered in Novi Sad to discuss the basis of Serbo-Croatian. The idea
of sacrificing Croatian Ijekavian accent and Serbian Cyrillic script was refused. They
agreed that the name of the common language would be double: Serbo-Croatian with
Ekavica and Cyrillic script in Serbia (ex. млеко “milk”), and Croato-Serbian with
Ijekavica and Latin script in Croatia (mlijeko). By this, they underlined differences,
instead of blurring them. Common Croatian and Serbian commissions elaborated a
common orthography and a dictionary to be printed in two versions, in Zagreb and Novi
Sad. The orthography was published in 196012, but the dictionary with homogenised
terminology stopped at letter K13.
Until 1960, most of the time Croats called their language Croatian; for 10 years
it was called Croato-Serbian, and from the 1970s until the end of Yugoslavia it was
called “Croatian or Serbian”, or only Croatian.
In Serbia, the name Serbo-Croatian appeared at the end of the 19th century, and
persisted unofficially until 1997 – when a dictionary containing the denomination
11 Antifašističko Vijeće Narodnog Oslobođenja Jugoslavije, “Anti-Fascist Council of the

People's Liberation of Yugoslavia”.
12 Pravopis hrvatskosrpskoga književnog jezika s pravopisnim rječnikom (izradila Pravopisna
komisija), Matica hrvatska – Matica srpska, Zagreb-Novi Sad, 1960.
13 Rječnik hrvatskosrpskoga književnog jezika (knj. I. A-F, knj. II. G-K), Matica hrvatska-
Matica srpska, 1967.
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“Serbian Language and Literature14” (Srpski jezik i književnost) was first published
– and officially until 2006 when the new constitution changed the name into Serbian
and allowed only Cyrillic script in official documents, giving up the Latin one.
The culmination of Croatian disagreement about linguistic politics was expressed by
the “Declaration on the name and status of the Croatian literary language” (Deklaracija
o nazivu i položaju hrvatskog književnog jezika), published in March 1967. Croatian
scholars demanded a more transparent legislation for language use, pointing out that
the Croatian standard should be used wherever there is a Croatian population. In spite
of strong disagreement and the annoyance of the Yugoslavian government in reaction
to the Declaration, the political movement “Croatian spring” Hrvatsko proljeće took
place. This movement was seen as a nationalistic awakening of Croats, whereby
Croats pointed out the centralisation of political power and demanded greater civil
rights, as well as economic and democratic reforms. During the movement, in 1971,
Babić, Finka and Moguš published the “Croatian orthography” Hrvatski pravopis,
from which they deliberately omitted “Serbian“. It was banned and did not appear in
libraries until 1990. Together with the Declaration, this orthography is perceived as
one of the symbols of the fight for language independence and it will take an important
place in the latest wave of purism in Croatia.
The constitution of Yugoslavia from 1974, preceded by the amendments of 1971,
calmed down protests all over the federation by assuring greater autonomy to the
republics. Articles 170, 171, 214, 243, 246, 247 and 271 guaranteed greater freedom in
the use of national languages. Article 134 of the constitution of the Socialist Republic
of Croatia15 stated: “In the Socialist Republic of Croatia, the language in public use is
Croatian literary language – the standard form of people’s language of Croats and Serbs
in Croatia, its name is Croatian or Serbian.” And Article 293 stated that all federal texts
of Yugoslavia were to be published in Croatian literary language, with Latin script.
Nevertheless, this period was the strictest period of communist Yugoslavia. Many
newspapers and books were banned; many people ended up in prison or lost their jobs,
sometimes just for having a different point of view.
III. PURIFYING ATTITUDE IN INDEPENDENT CROATIA

In the 1990s, Croatia experienced rapid changes of the dominant ideology, as the
country switched from a social-communistic mono-party system to a liberal-capitalist
multi-party system.
14 Đukić, Borivoje G., 1997, Rečnik gramatičkih književnih pojmova, pravopisnih oblika reči,
izraza i fraza srpskog jezika i književnosti: za učenike V, VI, VII i VIII razreda osnovne
škole: podsetnik – odgovori za redovnu nastavu i prijemne ispite, Zemun.
15 Članak 138. U Socijalističkoj Republici Hrvatskoj u javnoj je upotrebi hrvatski književni
jezik – standardni oblik narodnog jezika Hrvata i Srba u Hrvatskoj, koji se naziva hrvatski
ili srpski. Članak 293. Autentični tekstovi saveznih zakona i drugih saveznih propisa i
općih akata donose se i objavljuju u službenom listu Socijalističke Federativne Republike
Jugoslavije na hrvatskom književnom jeziku, latinicom.
60 •
The falling apart of ex-Yugoslavia resulted in an even stronger politicisation of

language that become one of the means of national expression. The old question of
independence of Croatian from Serbian became topical and allowed a rapidly expanding
purism. Moreover, the idea that these were two distinctive languages spread, provoking
linguistic secessionism. In the linguistic and identity representations of Southern Slavic
people (as of many others) there is the belief that a nation must have its own language16
(cf. Kremnitz 2008).
In the 1990s, it was common to hear in the media that Croats would not know their
own language, that they forgot the meaning of the words they were using, and so on.
The underlying argument can be sketched as follows: “If you are a ‘true’ Croat, you
will speak ‘pure’ Croatian.” But what is “pure” Croatian? Croats were just as confused
about it as they were about the statement of some linguists that Serbian had become
a foreign language. Croats know the differences between the two variants and can
recognise after a few words whether the speaker is from Zagreb or from Belgrade, and
still they understand both. However, whoever tried to object was considered as enemy
of the Croatian nation and, by the same logic, was suspected of being pro-Serbian.
And who is a “true” Croat? 1 million of the 4,785,000 inhabitants declared themselves
not to be Croats in 1991. 10 years later, there are 460,000 non-Croats, not to mention
an important number of mixed marriages.
The general idea about linguists – since the 1990s, and still today to a lesser extent
– is that they are prescribing how to write and speak correctly (Kapović, 2011, p.11).
This is, of course, wrong, since linguistics is about describing languages (although
this fact can be easily put aside in the chaotic times of war). In nationalistic terms,
the linguist’s job would be to protect the national language, furthermore the national
identity. Yet, not all Croatian linguists devoted their time and energy to this task. The
purist hysteria concerned particularly those close to the political scene and who got
an important place in the media to express their politico-linguistic positions. Many
newspapers (Vjesnik, Vijenac, Telegram, Školske novine, Nastavni vjesnik, etc.) had
columns reserved for linguistic advice. On television, a special program (Navrh jezika
“On the tip of your tongue”) and talk shows regularly address linguistic education
and discussions.
The language purification “fight” can be divided into two major periods: in
the 1990s against Serbianisms, and since 2000 against Anglicisms. The decline of
Serbianism-hunting coincides with the death of Croatian president Franjo Tuđman
at the end of 1999. Even if nationalism persisted after his death, at least it was not
growing any more and the opposition could express freely without being accused of
being pro-Serbian. Like in any autocratic system, during the presidency of Tuđman
there was only pro and contra: “If you are not with us, you are against us.”
16 This is not the case for some Western nations (Austria, Belgium, Switzerland), which are
able to define themselves on a basis other than a linguistic one.
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1. Institutions and events

By which means did the purifying attitude take place since the very beginning
of the war? A number of institutions and events were created to honour the Croatian
language and to contribute to its preservation and pureness.
a) In order to commemorate the Declaration, shortly after Croatian independence
the “Days of the Croatian language” (Dani hrvatskoga jezika) were created, taking
place on 11-17 March every year. Besides institutional and media manifestations,
the main events take place in schools, where pupils learn about the Declaration and
develop the “spirit” of pure Croatian language. Still, some of those who signed the
Declaration – Brozović 1997, p.88 – complained that the events were formal but not
effective. Babić (Babić, 2002, p.39) deplored the lack of enthusiasm and blamed
politicians for not providing more efficient measures for remembering the historical
fight for Croatian language, and for not promoting its continuation.
b) In 1995, a proposition of law about the Croatian language contained the following
clauses: elimination of 30,000 foreign words, most of them Serbianisms; regulation of
the language in all public domains; return to the linguistic propositions of the NDH
period; fines, and even prison terms for not respecting the language. This proposition
was not adopted and the government of Tuđman received severe criticism.
c) The Croatian Academy of Science and Arts, HAZU, provoked strong comments
by publishing the “Declaration on the Status of the Croatian language” Izjava o položaju
hrvatskoga jezika. Immediately, this 2005 Declaration recalled the one of 1967. But
Croatia had been independent for 15 years and Croats were using their language
freely. So, what is the interest of this Declaration? Academics do actually believe that
Croatian is in danger. The danger is that Europe would not understand that Croatian
is different from Serbian and would put them in a sort of common “yugo-language”.
Therefore, HAZU declared the fight for the separation of Croatian language studies
form Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin across the world. They further declared to
keep monitoring the status of Croatian in the EU, for fear that it would disappear in the
middle of much bigger Europian languages. Just as with the 1995 Law proposition, this
Declaration was not well received by the Croatian public and experts. Since the direct
strategy failed, language purists proceeded with their goal by softer, indirect means.
d) On Babić’s initiative, the journal Jezik has organised since 1993 the contest
for the best new pure Croatian word. Since 2006, the 'Foundation Dr. Ivan Šreter'
has sponsored the contest. The foundation is named after a Croatian doctor who was
discriminated in the 1980s for using the Croatian language.
e) A Council for standard Croatian language norm Vijeće za normu hrvatskoga
standardnog jezika was first founded in 1998 and dismissed three years later. This
coincided with political changes at the beginning of the 21st century: the Croatian
Democratic Union (HDZ), Tuđman’s party, lost the elections for the first time. The
Social Democratic Party (SDP) won the elections. This change influenced linguistic
politics in a certain way. Soon, HDZ regained its political majority in the following
parliament elections in 2003. The Council was created again in 2005 and dismissed
again in 2012 by the new Croatian government “Kukuriku coalition”, close to SDP
62 •
values. The ups and downs of the Council reflect by and large political changes, and
thus the relationship between politics and linguistics.
f) The Council was hosted by the Institute of Croatian language and linguistics.
Their goals:
“Temeljna je zadaća Instituta znanstveno proučavanje hrvatskoga jezika,
njegovanje hrvatske jezikoslovne tradicije i očuvanje hrvatskoga jezičnog
identiteta”
“The main task of the Institute is the scientific study of the Croatian language,
its Croatian linguistic tradition and the protection of Croatian language identity.”
In other words, the Croatian linguistic tradition is the one of purification that comes
along with Croatian language identity. The Institute makes an effort to stay “close
to people” by answering questions about frequent errors. If they require linguistic
advice, citizens can call the Institute for a price ranging from 6.88 to 8.28kn per minute
(about 1€ per minute, cf. http://www.ihjj.hr/index.html). But citizens should trust them
unconditionally, since there are not always scientific explanations for the proposed
language changes. One version of the word is “wrong” and another is “right”, simple
as that! Most of the “wrong” words are considered Serbianisms.
Serbianisms
In fact, some Serbianisms are etymologically Turkish words, but a rough
classification made them Serbianisms. The others actually belong to the Serbian
lexicon and were commonly used in ex-Yugoslavia, such as pasoš (passport) that was
successfully replaced by Croatian putovnica. But many others alleged Serbianisms are
difficult, if not impossible, to kick out of Croatian. For example, words učešće (part),
saučešće (condolences) are still going strong in spite of many recommendations for
using the Croatian words udio, sućut. Here is an example of how the Institute explains
the difference between pakovanje and pakiranje, two words commonly used in Croatia:
Figure 1: Linguistic advie about words pakovanje/pakiranje (pack1:pack2).

Retrieved from Institute web page, 14/11/2011.
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Tea PRŠIR
My translation: *Pack1 > pack2 (there is no difference in English for the two words)
The noun *pack1 does not belong to the Croatian standard language, neither does
the verb that forms it *to pack1. Instead of them, one should use the noun pack2
and the verb to pack2. Bringing into the Croatian standard language the meaning
differentiation with the explanation that pack2 means “process of packing”, and
pack1 “result of process of packing” is not justified because the noun pack2 has both
meanings. Therefore wrong are: *big pack1 of sweets, *small pack1 of medicine and
right are: big pack2 of sweets, small pack2 of medicine.
Even if there is exceptionally an explanation about the difference between two
words, this difference is prescribed by the Institute who says that pakiranje has two
meanings. Regardless, speakers use the two words in their everyday speech with
the apparently wrong “meaning difference”. Thus, a large majority of Croats misuse
the word pakovanje (pack1) since they use it for describing the “result of process of
packing” (according to an empirical survey, cf. 3.5.). Moreover, pakovanje is absent
from the Dictionary of the Croatian language (2000:796). There is only pakiranje with
meaning of “process of packing”, there is nothing for “result of process of packing”.
Nevertheless, one can still find it on a big poster publicly displayed during the electoral
campaign in 2011 (cf. image 2).
Figure 2: Electoral campaign poster with the colours of the Croatian flag:
on the red, the question What is the difference?;
on the white, the logos of different political parties;
on the blue, the answer The same shit – different pack1!
Even if, already in 1995 (the end of the war in Croatia), the “historical fighters” for
independence of the Croatian language, Katičić and Brozović, signalled the ridicule and
abusive practice of some linguists tracking Serbianisms (Greenberg, 2004, p.117), this
practice has persisted until today, in a more silent way. The current linguistic politics
emphasise differences and minimise common features of Croatian and Serbian. These
questions, which word is Croatian and which one is Serbian, caused plenty of conflicts
64 •
between linguists. For example, one can read in the foreword of the Dictionary of the
Croatian language (Rječnik hrvatskoga jezika) that the authors split up after 4 years
of work, and before finishing the dictionary. A new work team was formed in order
to complete the work started. In this dictionary, there is no abbreviation for Serbian
among the languages from which Croatian has borrowed words. This implies that
there are no words that have come from Serbian to Croatian, contrary to the claims
of linguistic discussions prior to its publication in 2000.
2. Standardisation
Croatist17 – standardologists are linguistic experts in purifying Croatian and in
supervising its norms and usage. They are proud of their tradition since faced with
“new” attacks by Anglicisms, Croatian is ready, as it has “developed a self-defence
system” (Badurina, 20/2/2005, in Novi List). When purism is pushed to its extreme, it
compares to xenophobia in language: fear of other words, fear of the words of others.
And yet, language borrowing is common to all languages. English, for example, has
30% of its words of French origin, and has many other foreign words taken from Latin,
German and other languages. The fear of a language dying because of a growing number
of foreign words is not justified from historical linguistic viewpoint. A language is
dying only if its speakers disappear18.
Kapović (2011: 12-34) criticises the intricate relationship between purism and
standard. When purists are prescribing orthographical and grammatical rules they fail
to specify that these rules refer to a standard variant of language and not to language
in general. In other words, they forget that a standard is primarily a pragmatic tool
for mutual understanding between members of one community at an institutional
level. If a standard language becomes too normative and starts to marginalise the
other speech variations, the speakers feel attacked and linguistic insecurity grows.
Linguistic politics in the last 20 years enlarged the gap between spoken and standard
language. Moreover, some of the new words are rare or do not even exist in spoken
language, as if standard language should be distinguished as much as possible from
the spoken one. The Council for standard Croatian language norm had this task, but
had no major influence. The real influence comes from lektori: proof-readers of public
writings (newspapers, literature or scientific books, articles, etc.) whose job is, in the first
place, to correct orthographical and grammatical errors. In Croatia, they do however
much more than that; they “serve quite often, with some honourable exceptions, to
conduct lexical censure and serve as ‘neo-croatistic infantry’19” (Kapović, 2012: 124).
A lektor applies purist correction, substituting the “foreign” word with the “Croatian”
one, and participating actively in linguistic nationalism. The violence of linguistic
17 Croatists are linguists specialised in Croatian studies.

18 In 2010, the Croatian fertility rate was of 1.45 children born/woman, one of the lowest in
the world. Additionally, since 1991 Croatia lost 328,000 of its population, according to a
survey of the Croatian Bureau of Statistics in 2011.
19 [lektori] nerijetko služe, uz časne iznimke, kao provoditelji jezične cenzure i “neokroatistička
pješadija”.
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Tea PRŠIR
politics in the 1990s reflects nowadays in the confusion about grammar, orthographic
rules and vocabulary.
3. Orthography
After the first free edition of Babić’s, Finka’s and Moguš’ Croatian orthography in
1990, the others followed rapidly: in 1994, 1995 and 1996. At each new edition there were
new rules introduced, first as an option (ex. zadaci or zadatci “assignment, task”) and
then as a rule (zadatci). In this way orthographical changes were gradually introduced
in Croatian. Its fourth edition from 1996 is today’s official orthography in Croatia.
Even if there is one official orthography, the situation is complicated, as illustrated
by the demand of the Society of professors of the Croatian language for a unique
orthography, addressed to the Minister of Education in October 2009. Six thousand
professors signed this petition; they expressed their discontentment and frustration
that in Croatian schools there are currently five different orthographies20. In one school
pupils learn to write, e.g. grješka, ne ću, brjegovi, and in another greška, neću, bregovi.
What will happen when they meet in high school or at University? With another teacher,
will they use a different orthography? Well, they will have to switch from one rule to
another. Fortunately, litigious rules are few, and orthographies resemble each other
for most of their content. A side effect is that the image of Croatian linguists became
somewhat negative. Their insisting on some details was perceived as oppressive.
4. Publishing Boom
In the period from 1990-2010 a publishing boom occurred in the domain of Croatian
language advice (savjetnici), instructions and dictionaries (and of orthographies, as
mentioned above). The purpose of Dictionaries of differences between Croatian and
Serbian was to promote the idea of two distinctive languages: eight dictionaries were
published between 1991 and 1995. In the space of twenty years, nearly 40 books
dedicated to linguistic advice were published. The most prolific authors published 3
(Stjepan Babić), 4 (Stjepko Težak) or 6 books (Nives Opačić) on more or less the same
topic. The book most in demand had 4 editions (Ilija Protuđer). Some old books of
linguistic advice first published at the end of the 19th century (Broz), or before WWII
(Stojković, Dujmušić), were revived. The previously mentioned linguistic journal Jezik
regularly publishes linguistic advice and purist discussions.
This publishing boom relates to an important gain for publishers and for authors.
Economic reasons interfere with patriotic ones. Little by little from linguistic heroes,
“fighters” for language identity in the beginning of Croatia independence, they turn
out to be “conflict profiteers” trying to publish as many books as possible with more or
less scientific content. Some of these books were even sold at kiosks with newspapers.
So how did Croats survive all this “bombing” by books and media discussions about
their language? As usually, humour helps to evacuate some tensions. Together with
other ex-Yugoslavians, Croats started to invent funny, but most of all, ridiculous new
words following the logic of purists. For example, the tie kravata became okolovratni
20 A similar problem exists in Montenegro. Two new letters were introduced in 2009 at:
http://www.gov.me/files/1248442673.pdf and this led to chaos in orthographical norms.
66 •
dopupnik, “round neck till umbilicus”. Aside from jokes, how did Croats receive
the new and pure words? An empirical study provides insight of how some of these
words have spread in everyday use, since, as pointed out, standard and private use of
language can differ significantly.
5. Empirical Study
For a survey, I concentrated on two points:
i) Reception of purism by Croatian speakers. Do they have conscience of the
presence of purisms, i.e. the new words proposed by the institutions mentioned above
(3.1.-3.4.)? Yes, they do. Do they agree with the new lexical norm? Most of them do not.
ii) What is the effective use of purisms? Which version do speakers use: the one
prescribed or the one of usage, both, or none?
The study is rather small, 32 informers, so it should be considered as a pilot study.
A more important survey should confirm these preliminary results. A spreadsheet
of 26 words was available through Google Docs. Words are presented in pairs: the
first one is the purism and the second one is the corresponding loan word that took
its roots in language and is commonly used. The informers had to provide following
data: how old they are, what their job is and where they live in Croatia (a majority
was from Zagreb and Šibenik).
According to the answers, the twenty-six word pairs are classified as follows:
a) All of the informers use the second variant. It means that the following purisms
did not enter Croatian: brzoglas-telefon (phone), izostavnik-apostrof (apos-
trophe), putničarstvo-turizam (tourism), izvikivač/pretragač-broker, velez-
goditak-jackpot. The last two words still keep their foreign orthography; it
indicates that they entered Croatian recently. The following two words belong
also to this group since only a couple of informers use also the first variant:
nadnevak-datum (date) and sklonidba-deklinacija (flexion). Most of the words
are international, even if some have English orthography.
The words under a) are purisms refused by speakers. Even though the list contains
only words with nonzero occurrence in Croatian language, informers do not use them.
b) A majority uses the second variant; about a quarter of the informers use both
variants:
b.1) Internationalisms: jezikoslovac-lingvist (linguist), zračna luka-aerodrom
(airport), zaporka-password/šifra/pin, prijenosno računalo-laptop,
elektronska pošta-mail.
b.2) Serbianisms: poglavito-naročito (particularly), prijam-prijem
(reception), sućut-saučešće (condolence).
c) A majority uses both variants:
c.1.) Internationalisms: tipkovnica-tastatura (keyboard), ljekarna-apoteka
(pharmacy), računalo-kompjutor (computer), nadzor-kontrola (control),
popis-lista (list).
c.2.) Serbianisms: izvješće-izvještaj (rapport), pakiranje-pakovanje (pack),
udio-učešće (part). The separation into Serbianisms and Internationalisms
under b) and c) is based on whether the prescribed word is Slavic or not.
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Tea PRŠIR
For b) and c) the survey indicates that both variants cohabit, with loan
word dominating for couples of words in b).
d) A majority uses the first variant. It supposes that these words entered Croa-
tian: prosvjednik-demonstrant (demonstrator), zemljopis-geografija (geogra-
phy), doigravanje-play off. Prosvjednik and zemljopis have existed since Šulek
(1990 [1874-1875]: 884, 1339), but doigravanje is a much younger word that
achieved acceptance because of its exposure in sport media.
Some purisms are accepted and others not. As I proposed in the introduction, one
of the reasons is probably affective, (but this should be checked by further tests on
linguistic representations). Even if some speakers do like purisms, these must conquer a
majority in order to enter Croatian language. Words can enter by habit, when speakers
are exposed to them whether they like it or not (for example, sport comments). Another
example: one informer (working in a lawyer’s office) said that she prefers izvještaj but
all official documents mention izvješće so she got used to it. In general, office workers or
scholars (about 60% of the informers) use more purisms than service or hand workers.
Some informers told that their use of a given word is not correct, even though they
use it. Almost half of the asked informers from the working class refused the survey
without much explanation. Those who answered told that they did not know the new
lexicon and grammatical rules. They insisted that I should consider their answers with
precaution. Linguistic insecurity is common in the working class, even without the
policy of language purification, so it is difficult to know which part is due to a social
factor and which one is a result of recent linguistic policies.
Problematic of foreign words and linguistic insecurity is completed by some
internal linguistic tensions between speakers of different dialects within Croatia.
IV. INTERNAL LINGUISTIC TENSION IN CROATIA

The war caused important migrations within Croatia. Speakers of different dialects
moved to bigger cities – especially to Zagreb – increasing variation and influencing local
speaking. Native speakers from Zagreb speak the Kajkavian dialect and they complain
about “language contamination” as a consequence of newly arrived speakers of the
Štokavian dialect (not only from Croatia, but above all from Bosnia and Herzegovina)21.
Speakers would largely discuss purism on the level of correct pronunciation and of
vocabulary by saying: “Before the war, we didn’t speak this way.”
Recently, there have been debates in the media about the language of cartoons. An
association from Split – with spokesman Robert Pauletić – is blaming cartoon distributors
in Croatia for favouring the Kajkavian dialect (particularly Zagreb’s version), to the
detriment of the Croatian Standard Language. The argument is that it is easier for
the speakers of others Croatian varieties to understand the Standard Language. They
blame cartoon translators for discrimination and underline that the policy of using
dialects in public speech would be acceptable if the proportion of different Croatian
dialects was respected. In Serbia, there is also debate about cartoons: the majority of
21 It is the same phenomena that one can observe in Zurich, for example, where Swiss German
speakers feel threatened by German German speakers, whose number increases steadily.
68 •
cartoons are sold with Croatian translation, so Serbian children use some Croatian
words in their everyday speech, as reported by “shocked” parents.
In January 2012, Croatian channel RTL Television received a warning from the
Council for electronic media because they broadcast a Serbian movie without subtitles.
This reanimated the question of whether Serbian and Croatian are two distinct languages
or not. Other television channels said that they have also broadcast without subtitles, and
that they will continue this practice since “translation would be ridiculous” (Večernji
list, 23/01/2012). The main argument is that the audience better understands Serbian
standard than Croatian movies in Kajkavian and Čakavian dialect. The Council for
electronic media took measures concerning the Serbian and Bosnian languages only in
2012, but the broadcasting has been taking place for years. According to one survey22,
72% of Croats are against the sub-titling of Serbian movies, 20% are for and 6% do
not care about it. 3650 persons answered the survey.
V. DISCUSSION
What happened in Croatia in the last 20 years is a contemporary example of
different ways of politics interfering with language and identity. The purism issue
relates to the complex question of denominating the languages spoken in the region
of ex-Yugoslavia. Therefore, it is quite impossible to avoid the discussion about Serbo-
Croatian and its political and identity homologues: Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin
and Serbian. We have four nations with their political and identity independence. Their
standard languages are variations of what used to be called standard Serbo-Croatian
and whose official denomination is not used in any of the four countries. From a more
nationalistic point of view, their standard languages rather resemble one another, but
are unique standard languages. From the Bosnian and Montenegrin point of view, the
denomination ‘Serbo-Croatian’ is not convenient first of all because their identity is
left out. From the Croatian point of view, the denomination ‘Serbo-Croatian’ is not
convenient because of historical reasons punctuated with conflicts. As it was said
before, centuries of separation of the peoples and their different foreign influences
resulted in some differences in style, vocabulary, grammar, morphology, orthography,
phonetics and the stress system, syntax and scripts. So, even if speakers from Croatia
and Serbia understand each other, they cannot speak fluently each other’s variant.
We saw that divergence and disagreement about what should be the common
language of Croats and Serbs have persisted since the 19th century. Understanding
Yugoslav languages’ history and their political context helped to clear the ground
for understanding how the extremist linguistic politics described here are possible.
The complexity of the linguistic situation can be inferred from titles such as
“Croatian linguistic swamp” Hrvatska jezična močvara (Raguž, 2010)23. This recent
book describes the main streams in Croatian linguistics, their disputes, and the problems
22 http://www.monitor.hr/anketa/?page=vote,results,1231
23 Or “Confrontations, polemic duels about Croatian language and orthography”,
Sučeljavanja: Polemički dueli oko hrvatskoga jezika i pravopisa (Pranjković
2008).
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Tea PRŠIR
growing out of it. To enter this “swamp” of Croatian linguistics would take too much
time, space and energy. After a closer look, it seems that in post-war Croatia, the main
enemies of the Croatian language are the Croats themselves—more precisely, just a
very small part of them, passionate about pure and unique Croatian language. We saw
that their power is directly correlated with politics. And they continue their fight even
though the linguistic threat that first came from Austria, Italy and Germany, and then
from Serbia, ceased to exist.
What is the nature of language issues after the war, once nations gained their
independence? What is the fight about, once the Croats can speak freely their language?
Is there still need for a fight? Apparently, yes. The ideological motivations persist, but
they are nowadays internal: about dialects, about religion, and of course, about politics.
REFERENCES
Babić, S. (2002). O danima hrvatskoga i njemačkoga jezika, Jezik, 49 (1), 39-40.
Brozović, D. (1997). Tri desetljeća poslije, Jezik, 44 (3), 85-89.
Brozović, D. (1998). Povijesna podloga i jezičnopolitičke i sociolingvističke okolnosti,
in Lončarić, M. (ed.) Hrvatski jezik. Opole: Uniwersytet Opolski, IFP, 3-34.
Greenberg, R. (2004). Language and identity in the Balkans. Oxford, New York:
Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-925815-5.
Kapović, M. (2011). Čiji je jezik? Zagreb: Algoritam.
Kremnitz, G. (2008). “Sur la délimitation et l’individuation des langues”, Estudis
Romànics (Barcelona) XXX, 7-38.
Lampe, J. and Marvin J. (1982). Balkan economic history, 1550-1950: from imperial
borderlands to developing nations. Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press.
Поповић, Љ. (2004).“Формирањe националног стандардног језика и национална
идеологија (на примеру формирања српског и хрватског стандардног језика)”,
Књижевност и језик 3-4, Београд, 315-328.
Pranjković, I. (2008). Sučeljavanja. Polemički dueli oko hrvatskoga jezika i pravopisa.
Zagreb: Disput.
Pravopis hrvatskosrpskoga književnog jezika s pravopisnim rječnikom (1960). (izradila
Pravopisna komisija), Matica hrvatska – Matica srpska. Zagreb: Novi Sad.
Rječnik hrvatskosrpskoga književnog jezika (1967). (knj. I. A-F, knj. II. G-K), Matica
hrvatska – Matica srpska. Zagreb: Novi Sad.
Rječnik hrvatskoga jezika (2000). Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krleža – Školska
Knjiga, Zagreb.
Raguž, D. (2010). Hrvatska jezična močvara. Zagreb: OPAC.
Šimić, A. (1960) [1918]. Sabrana djela, Knjiga III, Proza II, Rani napisi. Zagreb: Znanje.
Šulek, B. (1990) [1874-1875]. Hrvatsko-njemačko-talijanski rječnik znanstvenog
nazivlja. Zagreb: Glob.
70 •
ECONOMIC WHEELS OF TRANSITION: YUGOSLAV SPACE 20 YEARS ON
Miroslava FILIPOVIĆ
After the conclusion of hostilities, the ex-Yugoslav space has embarked the transition
wave through separate and very different entities. Their starting points were not the
same because evidence of inherent differences was difficult to ignore years before the
country’s break-up. Politically independent states designed new economic policies but
the implementation was laborious due to divergent and dynamic local and international
circumstances, both on the political and economic scenes. The first aim of the paper is
to present and compare the position of new economies in the period of the country’s
dissolution, in order to test a hypothesis that starting positions are crucial for any
transition. Secondly, the paper aims at surveying the economic paths taken by the
states since 1991 for the purpose of qualifying another hypothesis about criticalness
of transition reforms. Regardless of the speed of liberalization and privatization, the
analysis concludes that varying transition results have in the short run been influenced
by the initial conditions, but in the long run they have been mostly affected by other
factors, such as proper macroeconomic policy and reforms of institutions and regulation.
I. INTRODUCTION
The Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, with this official name, came
into being in 1963, following two decades of political, economic and cultural struggles
to form a multiethnic state of socialist orientation. Two decades after, in 1981, more
than 22 million people of 15 different nationalities inhabited the area of a quarter of a
million km2, comparable to today’s population of Australia and slightly less than the
land area of the United Kingdom. The country was enjoying progressive economic
development, with an average domestic product growth rate of 8.3% in the period
1953-1980, at constant 1994 prices. Just for comparison, the European area as a whole
recorded different growth rates in the same period, ranking from 6.6% in 1961 to
2.2% annual real GDP growth rate in 1980. During the same period, Hungary, for
example, also recorded a high annual growth rate but with an average of around 5.5%
(The World Bank, 2009). In the period 1952-1990, the contribution of industry to GDP
rose from less than 20% to 43% (Latifić, 1997: 6). In that period, the share of urban
• 71
population rose to more than one half while the rate of agricultural population came
down to about 17% from over 60% three decades before (Jugoslavija 1945-1985: 201-
207). The living standard was rising (for example, the total accommodation space/flats
and private houses, doubled in the period), and social services of various kinds were
diversifying. Life expectancy in the period 1948 to 1989 rose from 51 to 71 years while
the population illiteracy was reduced 5 times (Latifić, 1997: 100). The country was
enjoying relatively good international standing, particularly within the Non-Aligned
Movement, but also with regard to major Western countries.
Twenty years after its dissolution in 1991, the Yugoslav space does not resemble
Yugoslavia as it once was. The picture has changed from numerous (almost all)
political, economic and social aspects, in many dimensions for the better. Although the
transition from the Yugoslav self-management economy towards the market-oriented
one had started even before the country’s break-up, today’s economic picture of the
Yugoslav space has been shaped by the new countries’ transition paths, policies and
outcomes. Nevertheless, in order to understand the basis from which the transition
of new countries has started, initial conditions and the economic state of Yugoslavia
in the years before its demise have to be outlined. After that, the paper focuses on a
few aspects from which this new economic scenery can be presented, including the
macroeconomic aspect, creation of a business friendly environment and the level of
government intervention, as well as a brief overview of values and attitudes of people
inhabiting the space today.
II. TRANSITION PATHS AND OUTCOMES

There is vast literature on the economic transition of South-Eastern Europe and the
Balkans, with authors (and institutions) taking different bases and different approaches
to the notion of transition itself, as well as to its outcomes and accomplishments. While
there is no need to go into deeper discussions here about the notion itself, we will assume
that the transition is a process of moving from a centrally/politically planned (usually
socialist-oriented) economy with dominant state/social ownership towards a newly
structured and institutionalized market economy with dominant private ownership.
Recently, more emphasis is being put on an adequate institutional development of
transition systems and the role of the state therein if the goal is to enhance the delivery
of a broader social good. “Effective market systems require: a functioning legal system
to enforce contractual obligations; regulation to deal with external effects and concerns
about social cohesion; property rights – for both physical and intellectual property;
and competition policy.” (Besley et al., 2010:  8)
From such an aspect, political decisions to embark on the transition wave are
necessary but far from sufficient steps in building a functioning and sustainable market
economy. In addition to proper legal environment and competition policy, further policy
measures are needed to strengthen the credibility of state and regulators (especially
when corruption is a threat), protect consumers, workers and investors, allow adequate
access to financial resources and balance the fiscal burden.
Among many surveys of economic performances of transition economies, one
must emphasize the work of Campos and Coricelli (Campos & Corricelli, 2002) who
helpfully summarize methodologies and findings of dozens of researchers and built
72 •
Economic Wheels of Transition: Yugoslav Space 20 Years On
their own approach to measuring growth rates and its determinants, focusing on
how macroeconomic policies and market reforms (including institutional changes)
influence changes in the output. Also, the work of Fisher and Sahay (Fisher & Sahay,
2000) presents their own approach to measuring transition growth, especially from
the aspect of macroeconomic and structural policies. Another more recent research
of transition countries was done by Coricelli and Maurel (Coricelli & Maurel, 2010),
pointing out to different abilities of transition countries to resume/revive growth after
the initial transition recession and after an economic crisis, in addition to the depth and
length of the crisis as other components of transition growth. Sanfey (Sanfey, 2010)
also analyzes adverse effects the current crisis has had on South-Eastern Europe and
concludes that one good outcome can be identified: despite the severity of the crisis,
it seems that market-oriented reforms are almost an irreversible process in the region
and the transition has already produced relatively solid grounds (except regarding
fiscal policy) for the economies to sustain the crisis impact. The European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development’s Transition Reports have for many years now been the
source of a variety of data on transition. The transition indicators, originally developed
in 1994, focus on five dimensions of transition: privatization, restructuring, markets
and trade, financial institutions, and infrastructure. The finding will be presented in
the following chapters.
As for the obvious differences in the level of transition success and economic
development of ex-Yugoslav republics, most of the authors in this field emphasize unequal
starting bases at the time of dissolution. Nevertheless, it might not be academically
justified or sufficient to focus only on the economic parameters. In that sense, Alsund
(Alsund, 2002: 4-6) explains that there are three basic alternative paths during the
transition, primarily from the aspect of the role of state: ‘real reformers’ undertake to
build a democratic state with more social justice; dictator-like ‘despots’ pursue only
their own personal gains and power aims, while ‘rent-seeking’ is the third alternative
wherein the state is being used by politically-linked ‘tycoons’, primarily during
privatization for their own economic gains. For the author, transition is a process of
constant struggle between, on one side, powerful officials and business actors pursuing
their own commercial interests, and actors pressing for ‘real’ changes that would
bring a new democratic state and market economy into being. So, the differences in
outcomes result from a dual base: deliberately taken policy coupled with the outcomes
of the power struggle.
Contrary to widely held opinion, Allcock (Allcock, 2000: 8-14) emphasizes that
history cannot be defined as the only source of many differences among the Yugoslav
republics. He admits that although certain developmental lines can be drawn between
the Habsburg and the Ottoman legacy, the whole process of building Yugoslavia was
marked by contradictions between needs for modernization (capital accumulation, rise
in productivity, centralization of political power, political participation) and the inherent
anti-modern characteristics of socialist Yugoslavia. The political processes and the
whole political context actually brought these inherited differences to irreconcilable
levels. Furthermore, the Yugoslav economic scene at the time and the inherent regional
disparities must be viewed “…both within the context of economic rationality and in
the light of conceptual political orientation. i.e. main national strategies that treated
• 73
Yugoslavia as a transition or as a permanent solution to ethnic (state-related) issue.”

(Ocić, 2005: 16)
Bićanić (Bićanić, 1996) adds another dimension to discusssing the paths and
outcomes of the transition in general, and particularly the one which occurred in
Yugoslav space. Namely, he stresses that in a heterogeneous economic environment,
as Yugoslavia was, transition might take the role of a significant destabilizing factor,
leading to strong subnational policies that support the striving for independence
moves. Regional pro-active policies and regional reflexive policies are both designed
and implemented to gain more benefits and to reduce harmful effects from uniform
‘national’ policies implemented in different regional settings. Thus, even before the
Yugoslav break up (starting at 1988), a certain level of transition (monetary and fiscal
stabilization packages 1989-1990, privatization, trade liberalization) was already in
place but at various levels across the republics and that exacerbated the economic
discrepancies. Once they became independent, new states have pursued different
transition roads on which they varied in “… designing, implementing, sidestepping,
backpedaling and modifying transitional economic policies.” (Bićanić, 1996: 131)
This approach is compatible with the one of Campos and Coricelli, who define, among
other factors, initial conditions that determine the transition options and later growth
performances: “policy-induced distortions, natural characteristics, weight of the
inheritance from the previous regime, and the degree of the development of a market
mechanism, albeit primitive” (Campos and Coricelli, 2002: 21).
Two papers are of a particular importance for our research. Godoy and Stiglitz
(Godoy & Stiglitz, 2006) explore the influence of privatization speed, initial conditions
and policies on transition countries’ growth and conclude that the gradualist approach
to privatization, coupled with adequate legal and regulatory infrastructure, has proven
to yield more sustainable economic growth. In the long run, initial conditions seem
to loose their significance, in comparison to privatization models, regulation and
macroeconomic policies. Another paper is the work of De Melo et al. (De Melo et al.,
1997), interesting especially for their selection and assessment of initial conditions
in a country that embarks on transition. Initial conditions and policy measures have
proved to be critical determinants for transition success, the first group affecting
macroeconomic stability and the second influencing growth rates. Among initial
conditions to be taken into account, De Melo includes: location, previous economic
growth, resource endowment, achieved level of GDP per capita, inflation, trade with
industrialized economies, etc.
So, in order to be able to properly picture today’s economic scene in the Yugoslav
space, one must turn back and look into the basis, initial conditions and macroeconomics,
from which the new countries have started their transition.
III. YUGOSLAVIA’S ECONOMIC RISE AND DEMISE

As in the majority of socialist economies, market rules and institutions had been
pushed backwards as much as possible in the early days of the Yugoslav economy. The
economic reforms of the self-management system, implemented in 1965 and in the
1970s, reduced even more the market impact on economic activities and introduced
the concept of ‘negotiated’ trade, prices, etc. From the ideological point of view, this
74 •
was an improvement of ‘economic democracy’ but from today’s point of view, this was
probably the seed of future discrepancies, uneven development, investment decline,
rising debt, etc.
The beginning of the 1980s coincided with the beginning of progressive economic
divergence among the Yugoslav republics. According to Kelly (Kelly, 1989), the period
1980-1989 was the time at which the differences in economic structures and progress
(as well as other political and social factors) started to show significantly. Not only
has the overall GDP per capita declined substantially (a drop of 5.3% in 1972 US$),
but the decline was not even: Serbia (and the province of Vojvodina) economic growth
remained the same, while that of the province of Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro
seriously decreased. Bicanic points out that Yugoslavia had been a uniform economic
space until 1988, when economic ‘segmentation’ began, internal trade barriers were set
up, central monetary authority was seriously questioned and fiscal federalism started to
break up. This resulted in further economic discrepancies: in 1989, per capita income
in Yugoslavia was $2.158, while in Slovenia it was $5.675, Croatia $3.182 and Bosnia
and Herzegovina $1.609 (Bićanić, 1996: 138). Dramatic slowing down of economic
activities, caused also by the recession on the international scene, has also induced a
major rise of unemployment (up to 15% in 1985).
[See figure 1, page 85]
That was, according to Woodward (Woodward, 1995), the first sign of defeat of
self-management policy which had the full employment, job-for-life and guaranteed
standard of living as main priorities. As Woodward (xii) puts it, “…economic democracy
gave workers the right to manage their firms, and they chose to maximize their incomes
at the expense of new investments. Yugoslavs had made the syndicalist dilemma into
an organizing principle of society.”
Using standard macroeconomic tools, this can be further illustrated by a declining
trend of gross capital formation (new and used fixed assets, acquired by enterprises,
government and households) in the country, after the second half of the 1970s. During
the 1980s, the value of capital employed in the country was actually declining thus
reducing (in absolute terms) and finally disintegrating the real sector of the economy.
The same conclusion is reached when gross investments and fixed assets are
presented as a share of GDP: up to 1975, around 30% of GDP was spent on investments
and fixed assets, while after that it slowly started to decline, reaching only 15% in
1989 (Latifić, 1997: 20).
Yugoslavia was a relatively open socialist economy, with substantial cross-border
economic activities. According to Lampe (Lampe, 2000: 278), impressive economic
growth was partly based on developing a more balanced distribution of foreign trade:
on average, in the period 1954 to 1980, more than half of Yugoslav exports, primarily
machinery and equipment, went to Western Europe and the US, but over the time,
the exports to the USSR also grew considerably. Cross-border trade was particularly
intensive in the 1970s and mid-1980s, presented in the table below.
• 75
The export had grown substantially in the second half of the 1980s which in turn,
combined with a rising trend of remittances from workers abroad, led to a significant
improvement of its balance of payments (current account) in 1988/89, which are usually
considered to be the last ‘good’ economic years for Yugoslavia.
However, as Petak (Petak, 2003: 59) emphasizes, Yugoslavia was an economy
wherein federal units were trading more among themselves rather than with other
countries. For some of the federal units (e.g. Montenegro, Serbia and Macedonia),
the trade with other republics accounted for 37-52% of the overall trade, while the
others recorded a relatively lower level of Yu-interdependence. This would probably
explain why some of the republics, later as independent states, found their position in
international economic space with more ease while some still struggle today to build
their competitive advantages.
Despite its relatively stable international political position, Yugoslavia was not a
very desirable destination for foreign direct investment (FDI). In comparison to the
average percentage of GDP of all developing economies, Yugoslavia attracted several
times less FDI in the period 1980 to 1991.
Although data is very scarce for other socialist countries at the time, Yugoslavia’s
FDI was, in terms of percentage of GDP, comparable to the ones of Poland and India
(the latter being obviously much larger in absolute terms). Again, the year 1989 was
a turning point for the rise of FDI, especially that related to the Republic of Slovenia.
Despite the overall increasing trend towards globalization in the late 1980s, the
country’s economic policy failed to recognize the needs for adjustments to the world
market’s demand, as well the needs to reconsider its foreign economic policy and strategic
relations. Neither had it implemented measures to attract significant investments from
abroad (in the meantime, they have gone to other developing destinations around the
world), which coupled with the lack of internal accumulation / savings and extensive
welfare-like-state spending, led to extensive borrowing from abroad.
Additional factors in this development could be found in a peculiar tax system
wherein major budget-contributing lines were social insurance contributions (1/3
larger than in the EU/OECD countries), personal income tax (1/3 smaller than in the
EU/OECD) and commercial tax (now VAT) and other budget income lines. But, the
greatest difference was extremely low level of corporate tax contribution to the budget:
in 1994, only corporate tax was 0.4%, of the budget income, in comparison to 7-8%
in the EU/OECD (Raičević, 1995: 127). Furthermore, the fiscal system was gradually
decentralized to a serious degree where the federal government was reduced mainly
to its own and military expenses, the latter being quite significant in the mid-1980s
(Petak, 2003: 64).
Yugoslavia’s external debt rose particularly during the 1970s, which was probably
related to seriously diminishing domestic investments and increasing unemployment,
as well as due to the rising prices of significant oil imports. During the 1980s, the debt
level remained stable but high; for example, Hungary and Bulgaria had experienced
much less – foreign accumulation in the period. At the end of 1987, the outstanding
76 •
Yugoslav debt amounted to nearly $22 billion, which was almost 8 times higher than
in 1970 and was equivalent to ¼ of the country’s GDP (Latifić, 1997: 34-36).
In sum, during the last decade of the Yugoslav economy, major economic differences
surfaced and selected indicators of that heterogenous space are shown in Figure 6.
The most obvious (and critical) disparities are present when relative GDP of
republics is compared: Slovenia left the country with a GDP almost double the size
of Yugoslavia as a whole, while Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were at the
60% level. The same level of differences were related to unemployment rate in the
republic economies, less regarding energy consumption and personal incomes, and
even lesser when fixed assests per worker were compared (the latter being probably due
to heavy investments and funds transfers to the less developed regions of Yugoslavia).
IV. NEW ECONOMIC LANDSCAPE

1. Macroeconomics
In 2004, thirteen years after gaining independence from Yugoslavia, Slovenia
joined the European Union, and in 2007 has entered the Euro zone – thus becoming the
first transition country to be accepted in this ‘exclusive’ financial/economic zone. It is
estimated that in 2010, Slovenia had just over US$ 24.000 GDP per capita. In contrast,
for example, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia have managed to produce GDP
per capita at the level of between ¼ and 1/3 that of Slovenia in 2010. Macedonia has
acquired the EU-candidate status back in 2005, while Montenegro achieved that in
2010. Serbia’s 2010 GDP per capita is estimated to around US$ 5.200, the Stabilization
and Association Agreement with the EU has been been ratified by 26 EU members,
and the country has received an EU candidate status in March 2012. Unemployed
persons in Macedonia make 32% of the labor force while that ratio in Slovenia was
7.8% in 2010. The disparities in the Yugoslav space have been increasingly developing
with the progress of transition, particularly after 2001, when Slovenia and partly
Croatia, which will join the EU in 2013, have recorded substantial intensification of
development. Although all the countries did experience a typical economic slowdown
in the first years of transition, the speed and the extent of recovery was very different:
in the period 1990 to 2009, Croatia quadrupled its GDP per capita, while the increase
in Serbia was only 40%.
As for the monetary stability of the new states (inflation rate as annual percentage
change in consumer price), in 2010, Serbia held the 27th place in the world, surrounded
by countries such as Liberia, Ghana, Ukraine and Burma. The next ex-Yugoslav republic
on the same list is Montenegro, holding 127th place with the inflation rate of 3.4%, while
Croatia is the best ranked at 193rd place with just 1.3% inflation rate (Index Mundi).
Keeping in mind different economic starting positions, but also varying transition
strategies with regard to economic development and privatization (foreign accumulation),
• 77
it is very illustrative to compare the level of foreign direct investments and external
debt among the former Yugoslav republics.
With regard to attractiveness to foreign direct investments, Croatia has recorded
a steep rise in the period 2004-2008 and even with a decline afterwards, it is the
most desired destination for foreign investors among the ex-Yugoslav republics. In
2009, Croatia’s FDIs were 2.5 higher than the ones in Slovenia, but have been highly
concentrated in the banking and retail trade sectors with dominant investors form a
few countries (Austria and Germany) (Croatian National Bank). Serbia has attracted
significant FDIs in 2006 and 2008/2009, primarily in the food and banking industries,
but also in telecommunications, retail trade, as well as in the oil and textile industries
(Siepa, 2011). Macedonia has also attracted investments mainly in the banking and
retail sectors, but also in mining, electricity, leather production, etc (National Bank
of Macedonia). As for Bosnia and Herzegovina, foreign investors have been primarily
interested in the banking and wholesale sectors, then metal and wood industry, as well
as real estate (Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina). Similarly to other former
Yugoslav republics, Slovenia has also attracted the majority of its inward FDIs into
financial intermediation and wholesale/retail trade, but has managed to diversify the
inflow of foreign capital to develop other industries as well, for example, the chemical
industry, paper and pulp, rubber and plastics, machinery and equipment, etc. What is
also of interest is that Slovenian enterprises, when investing abroad (banking, trade),
mostly invest in the Yugoslav space: by far the largest investments have been made
into Serbia, but also into Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bank of Slovenia 2010).
FDIs in Montenegro have been focused on the energy sector, tourism and infrastructure
(Central Bank of Montenegro 2011).
So, despite crucial differences with regard to the starting base and countries’
profiles, significant similarities can be found in the FDIs origins and sectoral distribution
in the region.
Nevertheless, that is not the case when ‘official’ credit ratings of the countries are
compared, assessing their economic, political and institutional risks, the real sector,
monetary, financial and fiscal sectors, etc. In 2011, Montenegro and Slovenia received
AAA Standard and Poor’s rating, Croatia has BBB+ rating, Macedonia BB+ (all three
in the investment grade, ‘secure range’), while Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia
have the same rating BB (speculative grade rating, ‘vulnerable range’) (Standard &
Poors, 2011). For the latter group, it is explained, there is a capacity and willingness
for timely repayment of financial obligations but the maintenance of both qualities in
the long run may be affected by adverse changes in economic, financial or political
environments.
As for external debt, one must keep in mind that in the first half of 2000s, the
successor states managed to divide the Yugoslav debt: Serbia was allocated 38% of the
previous country’s debt, Croatia 23%, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina 16% each
and the remaining debt was taken by Macedonia. In 2010, there is a varying degree of
indebtedness. Croatia seems to be the most heavily indebted in the Yugoslav space:
behind each US$1.000 of GDP it has US$ 795 of debt, thus ranked 43rd in the world in
2006 (CIA Worldfact Book 2007). Most of the new governments (no data for Croatia)
78 •
managed to reduce or at least ‘return’ to the level of debt in the early days of transition,
except for Slovenia which doubled its government gross debt in the period 1995 to
2010, from 17% to 34% of GDP but it is not considered to be heavily indebted due to
healthy export revenues (IMF, 2010). As for Croatia, according to some estimates,
its overall external debt (government plus private minus FDIs) in 2010 is about US$
47 billion (EUR33 billion) and its GDP is estimated at about US$60 billion (Croatian
National Bank, IMF 2010).
Regardless of the level of economic development, former Yugoslav republics do
not differ that much with respect to their governments’ debt and expenditures relative
to GDP.
Except for Macedonia, whose government revenues/expenditures are around 30%
of GDP, other governments are more burdening to the GDP, with the range between
45 and 50%. Again except for Macedonia, the government spending showed similar
trends in the period 2003 to 2010.
With different levels and trends only in the period 2006-2009, similar developments
with regard to government revenues are recorded for all ex-Yugoslav republics.
Real interest rate, as it presents lending rate adjusted for inflation as the GDP
deflator, is probably one of the best indicators of a country’s development potential, i.e.
the type of monetary policy conducted with respect to pricing of capital. A significant
level of real interest rate convergence among the former Yugoslav republics is evident
since 2004/2005. In 2010, real interest rate in the majority of countries was around
7% annually, except for Serbia (1.6%) and Slovenia (3.9%) due to the high inflation,
and low supply/high credit demand respectively.
2. Business and economic freedom

Changes in the real economy that mostly affect every day business might prove
to be quite proper signals where the countries are currently on their way toward
a full-fledged market economy. As there are no universally accepted measures or
indicators that would properly illustrate the stage and/or effects of transition, we will
use two well known (but sometimes contested) approaches. The one is used by the
World Bank (Doing Business) and the other is Heritage Index of Economic Freedom.
In some aspects those two approaches overlap but they essentially portray somewhat
contradicting economic reasoning. On the one hand, an active government policy in
facilitating business (easing the business environment) is assessed while on the other
freedom from intervention in the business sector is evaluated.
The World Bank approach includes nine indicators: starting a business, construction
permit issuance, registering property, access to credit, investors protection, tax
system, cross-border trade, contract enforcement and procedures to close business
(IBRD/TheWorld Bank, 2011). Ranks are on the scale from 1 – the best environment
(Singapore, 2011) to 183 (Chad, 2011).
• 79
It has to be mentioned that, in comparison to other transition or post-transition

countries, former Yugoslav republics (except for Macedonia) have not been highly
ranked with regard to the level of developing a business-friendly environment. For
example, the majority of ex-socialist countries (e.g. Slovakia, Czech Republic) are
rated better, while ex-Soviet republics (e.g. Georgia, rank 12, Estonia, rank 17) have
received ranks in the top 15% in the world, except for the Russian Federation which
ranks lower than the lowest rank of ex-Yugoslav countries, in this respect.
Most of regulatory differences are present in the area of starting business (wherein
Macedonia keeps the 5th position in the world), investors protection and fiscal burden.
Figures 12 and 13 both show that in Bosnia and Herzegovina regulatory reforms
are lagging behind, probably due to rather complicated governing and regulatory
structures (with many layers and actors) and a lack of consensus on the role of small
entrepreneurship. The worst scores former Yugoslav republics receive in the area of
construction permits but unfortunately there is very much convergence of these ranks
(except for Serbia holding the rank of 176 in 2011) and the situation also similar in the
area of registering property. This is due to strong administrative apparati all over the
Yugoslav space which might be considered as an inheritance from Yugoslavia which,
despite the transition differences, still flourish. The best scores ex-Yugoslav republics
receive when access to credit is assessed and regarding easiness to conduct cross-border
trade (except, surprisingly, for Slovenia, where the situation in this respect is worse
than in the rest). As for the finance access, the good scores are probably based on their
largely privatized and transformed banking sectors and the resulting competition,
which is a characteristic all the countries share. Another common feature of their
transition is certainly liberalization of foreign trade and in this area all the countries
have made progress in 2010-2011.
From another perspective, the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom is used (Gigot
et al., 2011) to assess the results of the governments in terms of economic openness and
economic success of 183 countries. The idea behind the index is that in economically
‘free’ societies, governments allow labour, capital and goods to move freely, and
refrain from coercion or constraint of liberty beyond the extent necessary to protect
and maintain liberty itself and the system in general. The ten components of economic
freedom are: business freedom (starting/closing businesses, licenses, costs), trade
freedom (absence of barriers for exports and imports), fiscal freedom (level of taxes
and tax revenue as a percentage of GDP), government spending, monetary freedom
(inflation and price controls), investment freedom, financial freedom (banking security
and independence from government), property rights, freedom from corruption and
labour freedom (minimal wages and regulation of labour relations).
Despite all the disparities pointed out earlier, one cannot detect significant
discrepancies in the overall rating (average on all indicators) of the former Yugoslav
republics. Those previously assessed as less market-oriented have intensified their
reforms, particularly since 2006, so the original gap has started to narrow. It has to be
pointed out that Macedonia and Montenegro have been especially focused on reducing
80 •
the overall government intervention in the economy, the first being rated higher than
Slovenia. But, overall, Bosnia and Herzegovina has recorded the highest rise of its
ranks of more than 20 places in the period 2002-2011.
The best scores, similar to the findings of the World Bank analyzed above, the ex-
Yugoslav republics receive in the areas of fiscal (level of individual and corporate taxes,
and overall tax revenue as a % of GDP) and monetary freedom (average inflation rate
and price controls). The most significant problem, according to the research data), is
still a relatively high level of corruption and that is the area where all (except Slovenia)
the countries have ranked very poorly. Discrepancies in the assessment of particular
indicators of economic freedom are most obvious in the areas of labour freedom (where
Montenegro has introduced significantly relaxed labour regulation) and government
spending: the countries rank from 24th to 64th place regarding the government total
expenditures, including consumption and transfers, relative to the GDP.
It has to be pointed out that all the countries have almost the same rank when
financial freedom (government intervention in the financial sector and financial
market development) is analyzed. As argued before, this is probably the result of the
same transition policy with regard to the financial sectors. The areas wherein the most
progress in developing market economies has been achieved are labour freedom and
trade freedom, the latter being assessed significantly more ‘free’ than the world average
(except Serbia which is in line with the world average freedom in trade).
As already mentioned, the Yugoslav space has always been ‘fertile soil’ for growing
administrative structures. When privatization, as the main component of transition is
added to the picture, it is not surprising that there is a higher probability for corrupt
practices to be developed, including bribery of public officials, misappropriation
of public funds, engineered public procurement, etc. According to the Corruption
Perception Index (CPI) 2010 (Transparency International, 2010), which measures
perception of corruption as the abuse of entrusted power in the public sector for private
gains, the former Yugoslav republics are not ranked very high: the best position (27th
of 178) is held by Slovenia, with the CPI 6.4. The rest have CPI’s between 3.2 (Bosnia
and Herzegovina) and 4.1 (Croatia), with no major changes during last years. From
the national surveys conducted by Transparency International, privatization and
management of construction land are the two areas where most of the corruption is
perceived.
In line with its original purpose of establishment, the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development has been analyzing the progress achieved in transition
countries, measurement of which was introduced in 1994. The transition indicators
serve to assess a transition country’s progress in comparison to the standards of
industrialized economies, on the scale from 1 (no progress) to 4+ (standards of an
industrialized market economy).
Bearing in mind different transition starting points, duration and paths, the
assessment of the transition success of the former Yugoslav republics does not vary
as it could be expected. However, if a general assessment of individual countries is
• 81
done, Slovenia is ahead in meeting the standards of industrialized economies, closely

followed by Croatia in a number of fields (in some actually doing better, e.g. banking
sector reforms) while the transition in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina evolves
less dynamically.
Much similarity, and sometimes even the same indicators or the level achieved, can
be found in comparing the transition progress in the following areas: price liberalization,
large and small scale privatization (up to 25% of large enterprises in private ownership,
complete privatisation of small enterprises) and private sector share of GDP (60 to
70%). Unfortunately, there is also a high level of similarity, but at a much lower level
of success, in the field of competition policy: none of the countries (except Slovenia
to a certain extent) have succeeded in implementing an effective competition policy,
in terms of free entry to most of the markets. All of them have created legal and
institutional conditions for competition policy but entry restrictions are still present,
as well as monopoly-like dominant firms. Similar situation with regard to competition
policy is found in the majority of transition countries under the EBRD survey.
Financial sectors of all former Yugoslav republics have undergone substantial
changes, with almost the same level of transition indicators in the field. Significant
progress has been achieved in the banking supervision and regulation, lending to private
sector and private ownership in the banking sector, along with full liberalization of
interest rates. In the case of Croatia, it has moved even further towards BIS standards
and has created a more favourable environment for banking competition.
Overall infrastructure reform shows progress in the sectors of electricity, railways,
roads, telecommunications, water and wastewater. Predominantly, the countries’
infrastructure is assessed as being fairly decentralized and commercialized (minimum
subsidies), considerably liberalized (mobile telecommunications), with a certain degree
of private sector involvement. The only exception in this respect is Serbia whose
infrastructure is much less commercialized (political interference in tariff set-up),
with minimal participation of the private sector.
In addition to other similarities in the transition progress, the time dynamic is another
all former Yugoslav republic share. When time series of various transition indicators
are analyzed, one can conclude that considerable progress towards industrialized
economies standards was achieved in the periods 1995-1998 and 2000-2004, with certain
exceptions related to Slovenia and partly Croatia which had started reforms earlier.
V. LIVING IN THE YUGOSLAV SPACE

If transition is a process towards creating and developing a new, more efficient
economic system, the question remains when and to what extent the new system becomes
more effective in terms delivering what has been promised: a better life and brighter
future. So, in assessing the transition success of the Yugoslav space, in addition to
analyzing the macroeconomic scenery, one must not disregard other aspects of how
people live and perceive this ‘new, better life’.
82 •
According to the two EBRD surveys (Steves, 2011) of 30 countries in transition

in 2006 and 2010, the current crisis has seriously affected them – almost every other
respondent felt significant adverse effects. Despite that, over two-fifths of those
surveyed were satisfied with their lives (in contrast to 72% of respondents from five
European industrialized economies) and there has been a rise in satisfaction regarding
public service delivery (primarily in the areas of social benefits and tertiary education).
Although the optimism about the life of future generations is more than double the
level in Western Europe, the support to market economy and democracy has fallen
between the two surveys.
As for the former Yugoslav republics, twenty years of transition have induced
mixed feelings and perceptions about the process itself and the prospect for the
future. Macedonians and Montenegrins are the most optimistic when the life of future
generations is concerned. Among the Slovenians, with the longest experience in transition
of the countries, as well as with the highest living standard and satisfaction, only every
fifth respondent is optimistic about the future. Respondents from Serbia and Bosnia and
Herzegovina are the least satisfied (around 30%), and the same proportion is optimistic
about the future. When it comes to support to market economy and democracy, the
results vary but not to that extent: 37% of Montenegrins and only 20% of Serbs are
in favour of market economy as opposed to the planned economy. However, these
results must not be taken negatively, bearing in mind that the majority of respondents
from industrialized European economies does not favour market economy and are
much more concerned about their future than any of the former Yugoslav republics
(except Slovenia). It seems that quick-pace reforms (as in Macedonia and partially
Montenegro) have induced more positive perceptions among the people, despite the
undeniable improvement in the material well being achieved in Slovenia and Croatia.
The Human Development Indicator (HDI), developed by UNDP in 1990, is another
commonly used set of measures to assess and compare well-being of people beyond
pure economic/financial indicators. Though criticized since its inception as being
too simple (see, for example, a good proposal for the HDI extension by Ranis et al.,
2005), the HDI is still of a considerable practical use. The HDI focuses on assessing
three major groups of socio-economic indicators: longevity (e.g. life expectancy),
education/knowledge (e.g. literacy rates and school enrolment) and standards of
living (e.g. income per capita). The indicators are calculated on the scale from 0 to 1,
representing a theoretical lower limit and upper limit of a country’s capabilities in the
area. In recent years, the HDI has been widened in the sense of including other aspects
of development, such as political freedom, empowerment, sustainability, security,
inequality, deprivation, etc. Since its creation in 1990, the world average HDI has
increased 18%, representing a significant overall improvement in health, income and
mostly in education. At the same time, data show substantial discrepancies among,
for example poor development achieved in the Sub-Saharan countries and the Eastern
economic growth drivers (China, Indonesia) and non-economic fast development
(Tunisia, Nepal) (UNDP, 2010: 3).
In 2010, only Slovenia of all former Yugoslav republics was ranked among the
countries with ‘very high human development’ (rank 29 in the world), while the
• 83
rest were placed in the group of ‘high human development’ with ranks between 49th
(Montenegro) and 71st (Macedonia).
Similarly to other comparisons and despite different levels of income achieved,
there are not significant discrepancies in other HDI indicators among the former
Yugoslav republics, excluding Slovenia which ranks far better from almost all aspects
(except expenditures on public health). For example, expected years of schooling are
between 13 and 14.4 years on average, except Slovenia which has moved further in
this respect with over 16 years of expected schooling during the last five years. In
2010, the expenditure on public health was between 4.7% (Macedonia) and 6.6% of
GDP (Croatia), while the number of internet users per 100 people was between 34.7
(Bosnia and Herzegovina) and 55.7 (Slovenia).
Finally, as to the level of achieving the underlying transition goals, it is perhaps
illustrative to conclude with a few indicators on “better life and brighter future”
accomplished in former Yugoslav republics.
Although these indicators might give a rather pessimistic view of the transition
achievements and prospects, one must keep in mind that, for example, youth
unemployment in the EU27 is estimated between 15-21%, and that share of population
at poverty risk varies from less than 10% (Czech Republic, the Netherlands) to over
25% (Bulgaria, Romania) (Atkinson and Marlier, 2010). Nevertheless, except the
case of Macedonia, there might be some positive evidence, at least in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, concerning the declining share of the population
below the poverty lines.
84 •
Figure 1
Unemployment rate, selected countries, 1980-1990.
25
20 Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Germany
FR Germany
15 Belgium
Belgium
France
10 Greece
Greece
Portugal
5 Greece
Spain
0
1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990
Source: ILO.
Figure 2
Yugoslavia – Gross Capital Formation, 1970-1990.
-80
-80 -60
-60 -40
-40 -20
-20 00 20
20 40
40
1971
4<: 4
1973
4<: 6
1975
4<: 8
1977
4<: :
1979
4<: <
1981
4<; 4
1983
4<; 6
1985
4<; 8
1987
4<; :
1989
4<; <
Source: UNCTADstat.
• 85
Figure 3
Yugoslavia – Exports and imports, 1971-1990, US$ mil.
60
50
40
30
20 Exports
10 Imports
0
-10
-20
71
72
73
19 4
75
19 6
77
19 8
19 9
80
19 1
19 2
83
19 4
19 5
19 6
87
19 8
19 9
90
7
7
7
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
-30
Source: UNCTADstat.
Figure 4
Yugoslavia – Balance of payments, current account net, annual, 1980-1991, US$ mil.
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
-500
-1,000
-1,500
-2,000
-2,500
1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991
Source: UNCTADstat.
86 •
Figure 5
Foreign Direct Investments, as % of GDP, annual flows, 1980-1991.
Source: UNCTADstat.
Figure 6
Yugoslavia – Total oustanding long term debt, annual, US$ mil.
25,000
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
0
1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990
Source: UNCTADstat.
• 87
Figure 7
88 •
Yugoslav republics 1989 – uneven development.
Trade % Yu=100
Energy consumption 1983
Pers. income 1983 Yugoslavia

Serbia
Export to rep. GDP % Slovenia
Macedonia
Unemployment rate Croatia

Montenegro
Fixed assets per worker BiH
GDP index Yu=100
0 50 100 150 200
Sources: Petak, Jugoslavija 1945-1985, Latifić.

Figure 8
GDP per capita, 1990-2009, US$.
30,000
25,000
20,000 Bosnia and Herzegovina

Croatia
15,000 Montenegro
Serbia
10,000 Slovenia
5,000
0
1990 1992 1995 1997 2001 2005 2007 2009
Source: The World Bank.
Figure 9
Foreign Direct Investments, inward and outward, annual stock, US$ mil.
50,000
Bosnia and Herzegovina
45,000
40,000 Croatia
35,000
Montenegro
30,000
25,000 Serbia
20,000 Serbia and Montenegro

15,000
Slovenia
10,000
5,000 Macedonia
0
-5,000
1997 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
• 89
Figure 10
General Government Debt, as % of GDP, 2000-2010.
General Government Debt as % of GDP
250
Bosnia and Herzegovina

200
Former Yugoslav
150 Republic of Macedonia
Montenegro
100 Serbia
50 Slovenia
0
00 01 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010
20 20 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 !
Source: IMF.
Figure 11
Government Total Expenditure, as % of GDP, 2000-2010.
70
60
50 Slovenia
Serbia
40 Montenegro
30 BiH
Macedonia
20
Croatia
10
0
07
00
01
02
03
04
05
06
08
09
10
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
Source: IMF.
90 •
Figure 12
Real Interst Rates, 1998-2009.
75
55
BiH
35 Croatia
Montenegro
15 Macedonia
Serbia
-5 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
2008 2009 VoryhSloveniaqld
-25
-45
Figure 13
Ease of Doing Business Rank, 2010-2011.
Slovenia
Serbia
Montenegro
2011
Macedonia 2010
Croatia
BiH
0 20 40 60 80 100 1230
• 91
Figure 14
Major Regulatory Differences – Doing Business Rank.
150
120
90
60
30
0
BiH Croatia Macedonia Montenegro Serbia Slovenia
Starting business Investors protection Fiscal burden
Figure 15
Heritage Index of Economic Freedom 2011 Ranks*, selected countries.
80 75.2
70 66 64.6 64.9 64.7
61.1 62.5
57.5 58 55.7
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
ia
ia
a
o
tia
a
H
ia
a
ni
ni
gr
ov
ar
an
rb
Bi
en
oa
to
ne
lg
d
Se
m
ed
ov
Cr
Es
ol
Bu
te
Ro
ac
Sl
M
on
M
Source: The Heritage Foundation

* Ranks 59.9-50 = mostly unfree; 69.9-60 = moderately free, world average around 60.
92 •
Figure 16
Heritage Index of Economic Freedom Ranks 2003-2011.
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
2003 2005 2009 2011
BiH Croatia Macedonia Montenegro Serbie Slovenia
Source: The Heritage Foundation.
Figure 17
Major Regulatory Divergences – Heritage Index 2011.
Government Spending Labor Freedom
100
80
60
40
20
0
BiH Croatia Macedonia Montenegro Serbia Slovenia World
Average
Source: The Heritage Foundation.
• 93
Figure 18
Large Scale Privatization, 1991-2010.
3.5
2.8
2.1
1.4
0.7
:
91
92
93
94
95
07
08
09
10
96
97
98
99
00
01
02
03
04
05
06
19
19
19
19
19
19
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
19
19
19
Source: EBRD.
Figure 19
Banking reform and interest rate liberalization, 1991-2010.
4.5
3.6
2.7
1.8
0.9
0
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
00
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
Source: EBRD.
94 •
Figure 20
Overall infrastructure reform, 1991-2010.
3.5
2.5
1.5
0.5
0
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
00
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
Source: EBRD.
Figure 21
Life satisfatction, attitudes and values, 2010.
80
70
Satisfied with life
60
% of surveyed
50
Support both market economy and
40
and democracy|
30
20 Optimism about future
10
0
es
pe
ia
o
tia
ia
H
ia
tri
gr
ro
on
rb
Bi
en
oa
ne
un
Eu
Se
ed
ov
Cr
te
co
ac
Sl
rn
on
M
on
te
M
es
iti
W
ns
ra
v.
t
A
v.
A
Source: EBRD.
• 95
Figure 22
Human Development Index, 2010.
World
Europe and Central Asia
Slovenia
Serbia
Montenegro
Macedonia
Croatia
BiH
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.1
Source: UNDP.
Figure 23
Poverty and youth unemployment.
Youth unemployment % to total unemployment 2008
Population % bellow nat. poverty line 2007
Population % bellow nat. poverty line 2004/05
Poorest 20% population share in NI, 2007/08
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Source: United Nations Statistics Database, Millennium Goals Database.
96 •
VI. CONCLUSION
One would expect very significant discrepancies among the former Yugoslav
republics in the transition paths chosen and outcomes achieved, after twenty years of
pursuing independent development policies. That is certainly true when the overall
level of economic development (measured by e.g. GDP per capita, household final
consumption) is compared. Besides delivering substantially higher income than the
rest, Slovenia is a member of the Euro area, which by itself signifies its achievements
in managing the economy. Nevertheless, Croatia has recorded the largest advancement:
its GDP is four times higher than in 1991. Serbia, on the other end, has managed to
increase its GDP 40% since 1991. Inflation has been, to a lesser (Croatia) or higher
degree (Serbia) a companion throughout the transition process so far, but indicators in
the area of monetary stability vary to the highest extent among the former Yugoslav
republics. As for the need for foreign accumulation to forward the transition, Croatia
has proved to be the most attractive for foreign direct investments, while foreign
investors are less keen to invest in Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. All of the
former Yugoslav republics, except Slovenia, have encountered significant foreign debt
in relation to their GDP. Although trends in reducing debt have been quite similar, it
might be the case that Croatia has taken the largest foreign debt among all of them.
The governments have maintained similar expenditure/revenues shares, with the
exception of Macedonia whose government takes the lowest (30%) share of the GDP.
The efforts to create a market-based economy have produced different outcomes
and have been assessed with contrasting scores and ranks. It seems that Macedonia
has, overall, received the best scores for creating a business-friendly environment,
wherein it is easy to start a business, investors are adequately protected and the fiscal
burden is bearable. Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the other hand, has received the
lowest scores in easening the business environment, and together with Serbia, has
been classified as ‘mostly economically unfree’ by Heritage Foundation. From the
EBRD’s point of view, the scores transition in former Yugoslav republics receives do
not vary as expected, except Slovenia which has moved much further in approaching
standards of European industrialized economies. All of the republics have advanced
in the areas of price and interest rate liberalizations, as well as banking sector reforms
(best scores overall for the Yugoslav region), but all except Slovenia have failed in the
area of competition policy. Regulatory framework has been developed in all of them
but the implementation of effective competition policy is still far from industrialized
economies’ standards. In the EBRD’s view, this might be one of the crucial impediments
in the transition towards an effective market economy.
In addition o other similarities in the transition progress and despite separate
transition policies, striking similarities are found with regard to the timeframe of
major reform steps and outcomes. Except Slovenia and Croatia, which have embarked
on the transition wave somewhat earlier, other former Yugoslav republics achieved
considerable progress towards industrialized economies standards in the periods
1995-1998 and 2000-2004.
Finally, from the aspect of ordinary people, values and attitudes vary significantly
and interestingly. Citizens of Slovenia, followed by Croats, are most satisfied with their
lives, at the level approaching that in the Western Europe. But, on the other hand, there
• 97
is a declining level of support for a market economy in those countries and a low level
of optimism for future generations’ well-being. It stands out that Macedonians and
Montenegrins are most optimistic about the future and share a high level of support
for market economy.
Even before the Yugoslavia’s break-up, distinct regional policies had started to
disintegrate the already heterogeneous economy and could be seen as particular,
historical introductions to new economies to be created. This finding supports the
argument of De Melo et al. (De Melo et al., 1997) that initial conditions play certain
role in the beginning of transition. Burdened with its own heritage, each of the former
Yugoslav republics has tried to build its own transition path. Nevertheless, it seems
that the majority of them still share certain common burdens, regardless of so many
differences before and during the economic transition. When a general economic
picture is drawn, the majority – those previously oriented to economic activities within
Yugoslavia – have produced similar transition outputs. Two of the former republics,
Slovenia and partially Croatia, that had been more exposed to international economic
influence and later pursued vigorous economic reforms, saw more rewarding transition
consequences. In support of the argument of Godoy and Stiglitz (Godoy & Stiglitz,
2006), it seems that the speed of privatization and liberalization was not the critical
element in the transition success. It was the comprehensiveness of institutional reforms,
development of legal framework, creation of a business-conducive environment
and proper macroeconomic policy (especially monetary policy) that account for the
discrepancies in the economic scenery twenty years after the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
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100 •
POST-YUGOSLAV SOVEREIGNTIES, RENTIER CAPITALISM, AND THE
EUROPEAN ECONOMIC CRISIS
Klaus-Gerd GIESEN
The explosion of Yugoslavia led to seven weak successor states. If sovereignty

could somehow be quantitatively measured it is not sure that nowadays the sum of the
seven national sovereignties would exceed the strength of the Yugoslav sovereignty.
At first sight the process of continuous and mostly violent secessions, which may not
have ended yet, seems to confirm Charles Tilly’s theory that, at least in Europe, war
makes states. In his seminal 'The Formation of the National States in Western Europe1,
the author goes one step further: the process requires the extraction of resources from
society for the war-making of the state, especially through accrued tax revenues. Taxes
seem to be the best quantitative indicators for governmental presence in society as
they depend on popular support and fear of punishment. As a counterpart the citizen
will require representation.
The present text aims to demonstrate – by focusing on the dialectics between the
economy and politics – that rentierism in the post-Yugoslav states until now stalled
the Tillian process of state formation. The transition process supposed to lead from
authoritarian Yugoslavia to a liberal state with a largely autonomous civil society,
similar to what Kees van der Pijl has labeled the Lockean heartland 2, in other words
from a Rousseauian concept of sovereignty of the people to a Lockean concept which
defines sovereignty as ultimately being rooted in the individual rather than in the
state, has in my view been hampered by internal rent-seeking structures in the post-
Yugoslav space.
I will, secondly, argue that the recent shift in capitalism on the European scale to
a rent-dominated structure will potentially have enormous repercussions for the post-
Yugoslav states, and open a window of opportunity for political change. It is, thus, the
contradiction between two spheres and forms of rentier capitalism which may unblock
the situation and lead to political instability and to a bifurcation.
1 (1975). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

2 van der Pijl, Kees (1998). Transnational Classes and International Relations.
London-New York: Routledge, 65-67.
• 101
Klaus-Gerd GIESEN
I will try to make my point by first analyzing internal rent-seeking, then switch
to the political consequences of international rentierism for these countries, and
finally by concluding with a few foresight scenarios. Two countries will be left out:
Slovenia (because its integration to the EU makes it structurally impossible to fully
compare the country to the other states) and Kosovo (because its formal sovereignty
is internationally not yet fully recognized).
I. RENT-SEEKING IN POST-YUGOSLAV STATES

To be sure, rent-seeking is nothing new. It occurred systematically in Yugoslavia
at the top level of the state. Mainly through the violent end of socialism, i.e. through a
temporary war economy, it was more deeply diffused into society (unlike Central and
Eastern European states where other channels of diffusion occurred). The emergence
of rent is almost inevitable in the process of transition to capitalism. It serves as a basis
for political and social actions and structures being shaped according to the needs of
rent-seeking actors.
The post-Yugoslav states are not rentier states, such as the oil producing states,
but rent-seeking societies. Rent-seeking refers to investing resources in order to
redistribute outcomes that favor the investor. Rent is in this case mainly the misuse of
public power for private gain. It is a privately rational behavior: the investor expects to
profit at other’s expense. Thus, the profit-seeking entrepreneur and the seeker of rents
share the same basic motivation. The difference between the two forms of economic
entrepreneurship is that in capitalism the profit-seeking activity generates positively-
valued social product, while rent-seeking is socially unproductive. In Mancur Olson’s
model of the rise and decline of nations, rent-seeking activity may eventually paralyze
a nation’s economy.3
It makes the state also politically and socially weaker. Indeed, even the best
macroeconomic conditions must fail to kick-off economic development unless there
is a domestic middle class of bourgeois profit-seeking small entrepreneurs willing to
make long-term investments in the local economy, throwing in their own fate with
that of their country. Foreign direct investments are not enough as there are always
opportunities elsewhere for footloose capital to make faster and more money.
Since almost all decision-making is largely the result of, or at least heavily
influenced by, those seeking rents that arise as a consequence of state intervention, or
absence of state intervention (sanctions of illegal behaviour).4 There are many forms
of rent-seeking in a domestic market: corruption, smuggling, shadow economy, drug
dealing, woman trafficking, etc. They all lead to a considerable welfare loss and a
competition for rent by the “local fat cats”, as rent-seeking may become more attractive
relative to productive activity. Public rent-seeking by government officials is likely to
hurt any innovative activity actually more than everyday production. Thus, it hampers
productivity and growth.
3 Olson, Mancur (1982). The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation
and Social Rigidities. New Haven: Yale University Press.
4 Graf Lambsdorff, Johan (2002). “Corruption and Rent-Seeking”, Public Choice, 13, 101.
102 •
Post-Yugoslav Sovereignties, Rentier Capitalism, and The European Economic Crisis
On the political level a rent-seeking society tends to lead to social demobilization

and even apathy. The structural reason behind this lies in the informal “rentier social
contract” in which “the state provides goods and services […] while society provides
state officials with a degree of autonomy in decision-making”.5 Civil society is, thus,
not really autonomous vis-à-vis state intervention, and the relationship between labor
and capital is strongly distorted in favor of the rent-seeking capitalists.6
While formally the political system appears perfectly in harmony with the liberal idea
of pluralistic democracy and in part even with the rule of law, the rent-seeking society
produces actually patron-client relations as officials use their political or administrative
mandate to generate illegal income. It creates forms of neopatrimonialism and hybrid
political regimes.7 Behind the democracy facade, including election rituals, constitutional
reforms and government changes, there is, indeed, only a marginal competitive struggle
for political power among would-be leaders for the vote of the electorate. As Joseph
Schumpeter formulated it, “modern democracy is a product of the capitalist process”.8
One would even say that the free competition in liberal democracy is the mirror of
profit-seeking capitalism: “the bourgeoisie has a solution that is peculiar to it for the
problem of how the sphere of political decision can be reduced to those proportions
which are manageable by means of the method of competitive leadership.”9
The rent-seeking class has no dominant interest in economic welfare of the whole
nation, as the profit-seeking bourgeois entrepreneur does because it leads to long-term
growth. The rent-seeker is interested in the state apparatus redistributing available
resources through its budget and through regulation – for example for privatization –
to enrich the few privileged in a short-term perspective. The rent-seeking successor
states of former Yugoslavia are – to varying degrees – semi-democratic and semi-
market structures. Intense feuding may arise among oligarchic groups, as recently
demonstrated in Montenegro where Svetozar Marovic – the unofficial “king” of the
former boomtown Budva – was marginalized within the overall “Primus Kartel”, as
Milan Popović has nicely labeled the system.10 The case of former Croatian prime
minister and HDZ leader Ivo Sanader, who was arrested in Austria (for an alleged
bribe of 3.6 million kuna) seems to be similar. Other examples exist.
5 Wiktorowicz, Quintan (1999). “The Limits of Democracy in the Middle East: The Case
of Jordan”, Middle East Journal, 53 (4), Autumn 1999, 608.
6 Elsenhans, Hartmut (2001). Das internationale System zwischen Zivilgesellschaft und
Rente. Münster: LIT Verlag, 29-33.
7 Bayard, Jean-François (2006). L'Etat en Afrique: La politique du ventre. Paris: Fayard.
8 Schumpeter, Joseph A. (2003) [original: 1943]. Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy,
London-New York: Routledge: 297.
9 Ibid. See also: Downs, Anthony (1957). An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York:
Harper; Tullock, Gordon (2005). The Rent-Seeking Society. Indianopolis: Liberty Fund.
10 Popović, Milan (2008). Protiv struje. Zagreb: Nacionalnaza za jednica Crnogoroca Hrvatske/
Disput, 234-236.
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Klaus-Gerd GIESEN
Figure 1: Corruption Perceptions Index 2011 (Rank 1-182).
Source: Transparency International.
The system of kleptocracy, in which corruption is systematically organized

from the top of the state down to the lowest levels of administration, means that an
independent bourgeoisie in the Schumpeterian sense cannot emerge and that, therefore,
the path to liberal democracy is blocked. In many cases the old Nomenclatura of the
late 1980s continued its enrichment with actually fewer constraints than under the
Yugoslav system. Regulations, subsidies, prices, public jobs, privatizations and even
hyperinflation have been used by the kleptocratic rentiers to enrich themselves. Political
votes could and can still be bought (in rural areas often for less than 100 €, or the
equivalent in “services”). Economically, the real victims are the new entrepreneurs
entering the market and facing administrative persecution by unscrupulous inspectors,
while new political entrepreneurs in the state formation process, i.e. new political
parties or NGOs, may face difficulties to reach a larger audience through manipulated
media, or are immediately corrupted.
The system is, therefore, not patrimonialistic in the Weberian sense, i.e. with
one single dominant “ruler” personally constituting the state administration and the
army, and in which the public and private spheres are not separated.11 The common
post-Yugoslav model seems rather to be neopatrimonialistic. Here two sub-systems
coexist: the patrimonialistic one relying on private patron-client relations, and the
legal-rational state bureaucracy.12 Such a process is called straddling: the first sphere
frequently invades large parts of the second, deeply perverts its functioning, and
hampers democratization. Taken together we can label it a de facto hybrid political
11 Weber, Max (1972) [original: 1922]. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tübingen: Mohr, 580-
582.
12 Erdmann, Ero, Engel, Ulf (2006). Neopatrimonialism Revisited – Beyond a Catch-All
Concept. Hamburg: German Institute of Global and Area Studies, GIGA Working papers, 16,
February 2006.
104 •
system.13 Liberal reformers – intellectuals, politicians, NGO leaders, journalists – exist

in all such systems and are tolerated as long as they don’t threaten neither the informal
rentier social contract as such, nor personally vested interests. If they do, they may be
either co-opted, corrupted, systematically threatened, their property damaged, pushed
into exile, or even get killed, as it has been the case for instance with Zoran Djindic
in Belgrade on March 12, 2003, Dusko Jovanovic in Podgorica on May 27, 2004, and
Ivo Pukanic in Zagreb on October 23, 2008.
Social demobilization in such a hybrid system may be overcome in two ways. First
by strong incentives from the outside world (from foreign NGOs and networks such
as the Soros Foundation, foreign media and states, or international or supranational
organisations such as the EU) combined with a strong collective trauma, as it seems
to have been the case in Serbia after the NATO attack, and which led to the fall of the
Milosevic regime. The opposite example is Montenegro where all reforms and major
decisions since 1990 (war in Dalmatia, unilateral adoption of the DM, secession from
Serbia, etc.) came from “the top” and were in the interest of the rent-seeking Djukanovic
regime.14 In Bosnia-Herzegovina civil society seems still to be anaesthetized by the
war and the Dayton agreement15, while in Macedonia the fear of a new outbreak of
civil war blocks all attempts to create a truly autonomous civil society.
The recent evolution in Croatia (and Slovenia) shows a second way to stronger
social mobilization and, possibly, out of rent-seeking, through the establishment of
a free political market. There seems to be, indeed, a strong correlation between tax
collection by the state and social mobilization. Based on the notion of “no taxation
without representation” the diminished need of the state to levy taxes from its citizens
impedes the emergence of a strong state that legitimately represents its citizens. State
strength and the level of social mobilization can, thus, best be empirically measured
through the level of income revenues accrued by the state. Income taxes are indicators
for popular support and state-building: the higher the level of income taxation the more
the citizens claim accountability and may form a coalition with the profit-seeking
bourgeois to change the system into a free and competitive political market of truly
representative democracy.
The rentier state-class does not need to extract resources from society since it is
not the chief means that the post-Yugoslav state has of gaining resources that can be
used to barter for minimal acceptance of the informal rentier social contract. In most
cases these resources come from abroad, for instance as FDI 16, or in the form of foreign
aid and loans. The donor agencies include the World Bank, the IMF, the European
13 Croissant, Aurel, Merkel, Wolfgang (2004). “Introduction: Democratization in the Early

Twenty-First Century”, Democratization, XI (5), December 2004, 1-10.
14 Giesen, Klaus-Gerd (2011). “Monténégro: capitalisme, économie rentière et État de droit”,
Le Courrier des Balkans, 31 janvier 2011 (http://balkans.courriers.info/article16682.html).
15 Godinjak, Elma (2012). “La corruption, ce féau qui ronge toujours la Bosnie-Herzégovine”,
Le Courier des Balkans, 2 novembre 2012 (http://balkans.courriers.info/article21043.html).
16 See: Bitzenis, Aristide (2009). The Balkans: Foreign Direct Investment and EU Accession.
Farnham: Ashgate, 276.
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Klaus-Gerd GIESEN
Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD),
the EU Instrument of Pre-accession (IPA), the Council of Europe Development Bank
(CEDB), the European Agency for Reconstruction, the UNDP as well as bilateral
donor states such as the USA, Sweden, Switzerland and… Greece.
Figure 2: Foreign Direct Investment in 2010 (in % of GDP).
Source: DGA Panalyse Kompak Nr 6, August 2010.
In long chains of principals and agents, donors and recipients have different
interests. For the latter it is of outmost importance that the money inflow will substitute
at least partly state intervention. This will make possible low personal income tax
levels, which in turn strengthen the social acceptance of the informal rentier social
contract between the state-class and the population. Bosnia-Herzegovina received the
largest amount of foreign assistance in the second half of the 1990s, while assistance
to Serbia, and Montenegro grew substantially after the NATO war in 1999. Total
official development assistance peaked in 2002 at 3.2 billion $US and has since then
been declining, but remains nevertheless on a high level.17
Structurally, FDI and foreign aid and loans are a political trap, at least if it is not
forwarded directly to local business without passing through any state control (which
is rarely the case): channeled into infrastructure and indirectly into consumption, the
donor conditionalities may aim at favoring a more competitive economic market, but
objectively also protect the interests of the rentier state class by allowing very low
income taxes, since the social welfare and infrastructure is partly generated by revenues
from the outside world. It shows a remarkable different political dynamic than for not
assisted states: on the external side it means the primacy of foreign policy and on the
domestic side, the lack of representation. Externally, the state becomes an external
rent-seeker in the international system (either for foreign tycoons investing large
amounts of FDI, such as Peter Munk and Oleg Deripaska in Montenegro, or for loans
17 Bartlett, William (2008). Europe’s Troubled Region. Economic Development, Institutional

Reform and Social Welfare in the Western Balkans. London-New York: Routledge, 182-212.
106 •
and grants from international institutions). Internally, the citizens stay passive – even
with a 43% unemployment rate in Bosnia-Herzogovina and 31% in Macedonia – as
long as their taxation is not too high and the very basic needs are covered by the state.
Figure 3: Unemployment Rates in 2010 (in %).
Source: EBRD Office of the Chief Economist, October 2011.
Figure 4: Income Taxes 2011 (%).
Source: Business New Europe, November 23, 2011.
Such a configuration may explain why personal income taxes in Serbia, Macedonia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro are among the lowest in the world – a flat income
• 107
Klaus-Gerd GIESEN
tax of between 9% and 12%. No representation without taxation – low representation

with low taxation… However, when the foreign sources of revenues (grants, loans,
FDI, but actually also smuggling, drug import-export, women trafficking, etc.) decline,
the chances for political change increase, as the state may either fail to fulfill its part
of the informal rentier social contract welfare function, or raise taxes (as Bosnia-
Herzegovina recently decided). In both cases it opens a window of opportunity for
fundamental political change.
This underlines the importance of analyzing the revenue structure of the state
and its allocation of resources. Croatia and Slovenia are the counter-examples as both
countries adopted among very high top levels of personal income taxes (in Croatia
progressively up to 40%). Corruption and other rent-seeking behaviors are of course not
eliminated immediately, but the chances to slowly move towards a more competitive
political market are definitely much higher. As the recent election results demonstrate,
political alternation becomes possible through higher social mobilization against
corruption (as well as against frequent austerity programs). The electoral success
of the Kukuriku coalition, defeating post-Tudjman/Senader HDZ, will not be able to
fulfill all its promises. It may nevertheless implement a further liberalization of the
economic system in favor of profit-seeking bourgeois who in turn will structurally
reinforce the liberalization of the political market. Croatia may therefore experience a
positive spiral out of rent-seeking sovereignty. Indirectly high income taxes contribute
to such a change. Yet, it should not be forgotten that such a process out of rent-seeking
is linked to high political risks as the rentier elite, which is neither used nor actually
able to compete in any free market, may try by all means to hamper and to reverse
the situation, or at least not to worsen it.
II. THE JEOPARDIZING OF THE NATIONAL RENTIER SOCIAL CONTRACT BY

INTERNATIONAL RENTIERS
So far we have seen that rent-seeking is the predominant feature of the five examined
post-Yugoslav states. The systems as such are rather stable, i.e. without large-scale
contestation (even where the unemployment rates skyrocket), as long as the income
taxes are low and the state provides minimal social and economic welfare and general
infrastructure. My hypothesis is that the stability may sooner or later be threatened
by a recent fundamental structural change in world capitalism towards what may be
called “international rentierism”.
Because of excessive financialization18 the American subprime crisis of 2008 was
transformed into a world-wide banking crisis. The banks – “too big to fail”, except
Lehman Brothers in September 2008 – were bailed out or nationalized by the Western
states. It actually transformed a huge amount of private debt into public debt; the latter
rose also drastically as a consequence of the spill-over effect to the real economy,
i.e. lower fiscal revenues and higher social security expenditures. Ultimately, the
18 Cf. Cerny, Philip G. (2009). “Introduction: Financial Crisis and Renewal? Diversity and
Convergence in Emerging Markets”, Review of International Political Economy, 13 (3),
August 2009, 371-381; Nölke, Andreas (2012). “Financialization”, Academic Foresights, 4,
April-June 2012 (www.academic-foresights.com/Financialization.html).
108 •
quantum leap in public indebtedness is the manifestation of an accumulation crisis in

late capitalism, the outbreak of which was delayed for several years because of low
interest rates and quickly rising private indebtedness of households, especially in the
USA, temporarily compensating a decline of purchase power induced by declining
real wages in the USA and in Germany. The crash of the international credit pyramid
ended the neoliberal phase of Western capitalism from Volcker to Greenspan.19 It is
a crisis within capitalism, not of capitalism, and its solution will likely be reached
by the adoption of a post-toyotist/post-neoliberal production and regulation regime.
However that may be, the post-Yugoslav states resisted comparatively rather well
to the shock. The recessions in the semi-periphery were milder than in the European
core countries (except for Montenegro and Croatia), while the state debts remain even
now substantially below the West European average level. The danger lurks from the
outside.
Figure 5: Real GDP Growth (%).
Figure 6: Public Dept of Post-Yugoslav States (in % of GDP).
In Western Europe the crises hit first the countries with the largest exposure to
financialization (Iceland, Ireland) and then even more severely the EU periphery (Greece,
19 Harvey, David (2007). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
chapters 3 and 4.
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Klaus-Gerd GIESEN
Portugal, Spain, Italy). The structural reason behind this lies in the architecture of
the eurozone: without any fiscal harmonization and minimal common legislation the
competitiveness of any given member state of a monetary union will increase, ceteris
paribus, if the productivity/wages relation comparatively decreases. That has been
the case in Germany where the unit labor costs declined since 2000, while in most
other member states they grew by at least by 25%. Since monetary depreciation is not
possible, it will sooner or later lead to a severe recession. The result is again higher public
indebtedness and possibly total or partial default, as it happened recently in Greece.
Figure 7: Unit Labour costs in the EMU.
Now, interest payments from debt are another form of rent.20 It is non-productive
capital. The world public debt increased by 33% in the last three years (2008-2011) to
a total amount of almost 44 trillion $US. And that’s not yet the end. Such an absolutely
incredible amount signals a structural change in Western capitalism towards an
international rent-seeking pattern.
The owners of government bonds are mainly either private pension funds –
workers are almost everywhere compelled to heavily invest in supplementary pension
funds – or middle classes of the advanced capitalist core countries, or Asian and Arab
sovereign funds. Even from states which still preserve an AAA or AA rating by the
three oligarchic rating agencies, the main disciplinary agents of the international rentier
class, they are able to extract 15% and more from the annual government budget as
a yearly rent (in the case of France: 42,5 billion €, which is the second position of the
French government budget).
20 That is by the way why in the German language the bond market is called Rentenmarkt.
An overview of the different forms of rent can be found here: Henni, Ahmed (2012) Le
capitalisme de rente. Paris: L’Harmattan.
110 •
Figure 8: Increase in World Government Debt 2008-2011 (in trillions $US).
With the new era of continuous, pro-cyclical austerity programs adopted by

European neoliberal or technocratic governments to please the rating agencies, which
protect the interests of the international rentiers, the capacity of national states to
mediate between the rights of citizens and the requirements of rent extraction has
been severely affected, and liberal democracy in Western Europe is as much at risk
as the economy, if not more.21 The more austerity the safer the capital extraction from
the state by the international rentier class, and the less there is demand for goods and
services, leading to additional recession or low growth.
Keynes’ strategy of the “euthanasia of the rentier”, partly adopted by the Federal
Reserve and the Bank of England, is still opposed in Continental Europe by Germany
and its dependent territories within the euro zone (the Netherlands, Austria, Luxemburg
and Finland): the ECB is not allowed to be the lender of last resort and obliged by its
statutes to fight inflation rather than unemployment or debt. One consequence could
be that the euro zone will sooner or later shrink, because the less competitive member
states will have to drop out while at the same time possibly declaring default and
devaluating their new national currencies. The only alternative is that the population
of, say, Greece accepts the total loss of economic sovereignty to the EU and IMF for
at least 10 years, plus an absolutely disastrous and long-term drop in real wages and
rise of unemployment which could actually deepen the crisis and further lower the
fiscal revenues.
It is true that German chancellor Angela Merkel recently (in March 2012) gave up
her opposition to the EU plans for an increase in the eurozone’s financial “firewall” to
700 billion euros.22 And it is also true that after the biggest sovereign-debt restructuring
21 On the risk for democracy in the present crisis see: Streeck, Wolfgang (2011). “The Crisis
of Democratic Capitalism”, New Left Review, 71, September-October, 24-28.
22 Financial Times, March 26, 2012.
• 111
Klaus-Gerd GIESEN
in history (forgiving Greece more than half of the 206 billion euros in debt held by
private investors23) the European Central bank has created, ex nihilo, in December
2011 and February 2012 1020 billion euros through LTRO (Long-Term Refinanciang
Operations), i.e. lending that enormous sum for three years to the European banks
at the very low interest rate of 1%24, which allowed the latter to buy risky European
government bonds (and make huge profits). But such an extraordinary measure just buys
some time. The fundamental problem of lesser competitiveness in Southern Europe
within the eurozone is not solved, despite a sudden decrease of the average wage in
Greece (-25% in the last two years). After Greece, countries such as Portugal, Spain
and Italy may experience considerable difficulties to finance their rising public debt.
The situation is explosive for all post-Yugoslav states which adopted the euro
(Slovenia, Montenegro, Kosovo) or a fixed peg or managed floating of their national
currencies with the euro. For the time being Serbia is here more flexible than its neighbors
since it can extend the managed floating margin and thus adapt the dinar towards
the euro. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Macedonia have no interest whatsoever
to maintain a more or less fixed peg, while long-term leader Milo Djukanovic of
Montenegro should consider to give up the euro.
However, the major threat for the post-Yugoslav states is not a monetary one,
neither the recession in the EU, reducing their exports and tourist revenues. It comes
from a possible financial collateral damage. The big West European banks hold a large
part of Greek, Italian, Spanish, Irish and Portuguese government bonds: BNP Paribas,
Deutsche Bank, Société Générale, Commerzbank, The Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC,
Erste Bank, etc.25 This fact will likely incite them to raise capital 26, and to drastically
reduce exposure to private credit risk. Since that is politically highly controversial in
their respective home countries (France, Germany, Austria, UK, etc.) such a measure
will likely be applied first in the semi-periphery, i.e. in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
In the post-Yugoslav states domestic credit has surged over the last ten years until
2009. Especially Montenegro’s households and enterprises got heavily indebted, the
year-to-year growth having been at one point close to 200%. The ratio domestic credit/
GDP was 78,5% in 2010. It is perfectly clear that the bank credits – many of them being
actually rotten – allowed the Balkan countries to better overcome the crisis since 2008.
23 Bloomberg, March 27, 2012.

24 Le Figaro, 26 mars 2012, 28.
25 In November 2011 the 12 biggest West European banks cumulated an exposure of
7,4 billion € to Greek government bonds, and 114,4 billion € to Italian government bonds.
Source: La Tribune, 14 novembre 2011.
26 Financial Times, November 8, 2011.
112 •
Figure 9: Foreign Ownershop of Financial Institutions (in % of assets total).
The point is that most of the established banks are foreign, between 75% in Serbia
and 94% in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The banks are subsidiaries of mainly Austrian,
French, Hungarian, and… Greek banks. If the present crisis persists, the headquarters
in Vienna, Paris, Budapest or Athens will sooner or later decide to lower their exposure
to credit risk in ex-Yugoslavia, even before they apply similar measures in their home
country. In October 2012 the IMF issued a warning that West European banks may
have to sell assets worth up to 4.5 trillion $US!27 The ensuing credit crunch will thus
possibly hit the post-Yugoslav states before the European core countries. In other words,
the worldwide rise of the international rentier will produce the collateral damage of
a possibly severe economic crisis in the semi-periphery as a result of a credit crunch
decided in the European core by banks preferring to sacrifice the Balkans rather than
to put into danger the core economies.28 In Slovenia, the Nova Llubljanska Banka
(NLB) and the Nova Kreditna Banka Maribor (NKBM) are – in September 2012 –
already close to bankruptcy.29
This may happen despite the “Vienna Initiative” of 2009 – a public-private
coordination forum involving all major financial stakeholders – through which
foreign banks have pledged support to their subsidiaries. A credit crunch, and even
a bank collapse following a bank run, may happen despite the steps taken by several
governments to increase the level of deposit insurance and shore up confidence in the
banking system: Croatia and Serbia raised the limit to 50'000 € already in October
27 The Nation, October 10, 2012.

28 The central banks have not enough means to rescue the national banking system in
case of emergency. For instance, in March 2011 Nicola Fabris, Chief Economist of the
Montenegrin Central Bank, declared that it holds a capital of not more than 50 million €.
Source: Interview with Wirtschaftsblatt, 26. März 2011.
29 Slovenia Times, September 13, 2012.
• 113
Klaus-Gerd GIESEN
2008, and Bosnia-Herzegovina to 10 000€. Montenegro went furthest of all, by issuing

the same month a 100% guarantee on all deposits.30
For almost two years now credit growth has already turned negative. In order
to defend the country’s AAA rating Austrian banks, which are with Greek banks
the most involved in post-Yugoslavia, have been instructed in November by the
Austrian bank supervisor to limit future lending in their Eastern and South-Eastern
subsidiaries, as reported by the ‘Financial Times’.31 That’s definitely very bad news.
As Karl Marx formulated the dilemma: “In a system where the entire interconnection
of the reproduction process rests on credit, a crisis must evidently break out if credit is
suddenly withdrawn and only cash payment is accepted…”32 Erste Bank, Raiffeisen
Bank International, Volksbank and Bank Austria may thus lead the move towards a
regional credit crunch, which could happen at a slow or fast pace, depending on the
evolution of the West European debt crisis.
III. WE HAVE THE QUESTIONABLE PRIVILEGE TO LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES

Caught in between, on the one hand, internal rent-seeking structures which prevent
competitive market democracy as much as a return to popular sovereignty, and, on the
other hand, the risk of a collateral damage of the rise of the international rentierism
through a sharp increase in world public debt, the five examined post-Yugoslav states
may sooner or later face major political changes: a decrease in FDI and foreign aid and
loans and a possible bank rescue may cause a much higher state debt. Personal income
taxes may considerably rise (except in Croatia and Slovenia) and social welfare be
lowered. As a result political contestation and claims for representation could spread
significantly. The informal rentier social contract may explode.
One possible foresight is that since any economic recession – due to a possible
credit crunch as well as to lesser exports to the EU (or imports of tourists) – will
inevitably destabilize social and political cohesion, some people will substantially
lower their (already rather low) loyalty to the state and turn instead towards what
Immanuel Wallerstein has called “status groups”33: radical religious groups such as
the Wahabites in Bosnia and the Sandjak region, or Serbian Orthodox nationalism in
Northern Kosovo; or extreme nationalism based on linguistic communities could again
receive more support, especially Albanian-speaking separatists in Macedonia and
Montenegro. Ensuing status-group struggles may become violent or not, depending
on the specific situation in each country and the ability of the government to smooth
30 Sanfey, Peter (2010). South-East Europe, Lessons from the Global Economic Crisis.
London: EBRD, February 2010: 11 and 15.
31 Financial Times, November 21, 2011. Montenegrin new Central Bank Chief Economist
Zorica Kalesic stated already in June 2010: “There are currently only 59 companies that
Montenegrin banks will provide credit support to.” SETimes, June 6, 2010 (www.setimes.
com).
32 Marx, Karl (1867). Das Kapital, III, 1867. Berlin: MEW 25, 507.
33 Wallerstein, Immanuel (1979). The Capitalist World-Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, part II.
114 •
them or to manipulate and instrumentalize them for the sake of the survival of the
rentier state-class.
Secondly, overcoming social demobilization class struggle may be back on
the agenda and anti-systemic movements could get a wider audience outside the
parliamentary arena. It is through mass actions – strikes, demonstrations, student
revolts, occupying movements, etc. – that the rentier elites may get under pressure
and therefore tend to adopt more authoritarian methods to counter the contestation,
while within the rentier state-class a struggle for the appropriation of the shrinking
rent will necessarily become more and more tense and conflictual.
Third, the rent-based informal and criminal sector of the economy could get
strengthened as common people as much as small entrepreneurs may have no other
choice but to turn towards much more profitable – and at the same time much riskier
– business, such as money laundering, smuggling, drug import-export and women
trafficking. Paradoxically, the crisis of the informal rentier social contract could thus
trigger even more rent-seeking.
In any case the combinations of the three types of political consequences will be
specific to each of the post-Yugoslav state, depending on the historical path of each
society, its sociological patterns (class structure, state-religion relations, size and
autonomy of status-groups, etc.), the dependency on West European core capital, and
the interference from the outside world (especially by the EU, Russia and the USA).
In the most optimistic scenario, which is most likely the case of a state with high
taxation, such as Croatia and Slovenia, liberal reformers may be able to transform
the state through parliamentary means. An the other end of the scale we find a violent
revolution or even a return to civil war on nationalistic grounds and instrumentalized
by the rentier elite to perpetuate its domination and privileges. Unfortunately, this
cannot be completely excluded in Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina or Northern Kosovo.
After all it is easy to mobilize from the top an economically impoverished and fearful
population for nationalistic purposes.
• 115
‘TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION’: A NEW POLITICAL SUBJECTIVITY FOR POST-
YUGOSLAVS?
Slobodan KARAMANIĆ
I. INTRODUCTION1
In recent decades one could notice a proliferation of literature on “transitional
justice” as well as numerous practical attempts to establish specific institutional
mechanisms aiming at “coming to terms with the past” in post-conflict societies
worldwide. Among them, the concept of “truth and reconciliation” (T&R) has been
predominantly seen as the most appropriate model for such “facing the past” in societies
that underwent a period of authoritarian rule or civil war. As it is often argued, in
order to secure lasting peace and prosperity in societies after a period of brutality, it
is necessary to “to close the book of the past” (Elster, 2004), to embark on the process
of “truth recovery” and arrive at a basic consensus on “what really has happened.” By
its insistence on revealing the historical facts (of state organized crimes, systematic
discrimination or genocide), the concept of T&R functions as a critical reminder of
the historical “real” of a nation, a real of violence, brutality and atrocities committed
in the nation’s name.
As such, the concept of T&R represents an important element within a broader
framework of “transitional justice.” Namely, transitional justice, conventionally defined
as the transition “from one criminal regime to democracy,” does not include only the
establishment of a political and legal set of democratic institutions, but as well a process
of moral dealing with “evil past” and responsibility for crimes done in the name of a
nation. A new beginning, building a liberal democratic society anew, thus embrace
also cognitive and emotional dimensions, often depicted with notions such as “moral
repair” (Walker, 2006), “making sense of atrocities” (Osiel, 2009), “the wounds of
the past must be confronted” (Long & Brecke, 2003). To that end, T&R tends to be
1 This work was supported by funding from the CITSEE project (The Europeanisation of
Citizenship in the Successor States of the Former Yugoslavia), based at the University of
Edinburgh, UK. CITSEE is funded by the European Research Council under the European
Union's Seventh Framework Programme, ERC Grant no. 230239, and the support of the
ERC is acknowledged with thanks.
• 117
Slobodan KARAMANIĆ
a principal organizer of a new political subjectivity based on the process of raising

moral awareness and responsibility for the past abuses.
Although within the vast literature on T&R and transitional justice we encounter
diverse and sometimes even contradictory propositions, most of the authors would share
the following presumptions: 1) against forgetting, ignorance and denial, T&R means
exposing to the public the objective truth of the past, the historical facts of wars, violence
and abuses of human rights. As it is presumed, if citizens want to create their present
and future, they must once and for all pose the question of individual and collective
responsibility for the past; 2) this implies another task: creating a normative rupture
(in the legal, ideological and moral sense) with the old regime of violence; 3) finally,
only through this process a new democratic regime can attain its own legitimacy and
secure the proper functioning of the rule of law.
In this paper, I would like to address some basic problems and contradictions lurking
behind the concept of T&R, especially in regard to its theoretical and practical uses
in the post-Yugoslav context. My central question is: does T&R provide an adequate
framework for the emergence of a new political subjectivity after the Yugoslav disaster?
At first glance, a call for T&R in former Yugoslavia might sound noble and inevitable.
What can be more urgent than bringing peace, stability and reconciliation to the post-
Yugoslav region? As a result of wars and systematic violations of human rights in the last
decades, this region suffered enormous devastation of human, material and economic
resources. The destruction of the Yugoslav multinational federation “resulted in a
widespread exclusion and deprivation of both citizens’ and human rights, and a very
large number of de facto or de jure stateless individuals” (Shaw & Štiks, 2012: 216).
Effectively, more than 3 million former Yugoslavs fled and more than 100 thousand
lost their lives in military actions and crimes against humanity. Economy in most of
the successors states of former Yugoslavia still hasn’t reached the level of pre-war
economic productivity, and there is still no good prognosis that it will in near future.
However, as I intend to show, the concept of T&R bears several fundamental
antinomies and structural limitations, particularly when confronted with the complexity
of the post-Yugoslav situation. As it will become clearer in the pages to come, this is not
simply to claim that the problem lies in the difficulties to employ some of the universally
valid presuppositions of T&R in the concrete post-Yugoslav context. The problem is
more fundamental and it concerns the very universality of the T&R propositions.
II. ANTINOMY NO. 1:

LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AND ‘ORGANIZED MEMORY’
As already noted, T&R aims to produce a new collective memory and to build
up a moral framework that is supposed to reinforce social consensus among citizens
after the period of brutality. Directed against the normative and ideological framework
inherited from the previous criminal period (intolerance, stereotypes, nationalist myths,
etc), T&R serves to supplement the institution of liberal democracy, by constructing
a discourse of responsibility and “liberal memory” (Osiel, 2000).
Here arises, however, an essential antinomy: how liberal democracy can be
compatible with any sort of collective memory or collective narrative? How some
collective memory can be liberal at all? Liberalism, as is well known, holds on to the
118 •
principle of formal equality of citizens before the law, and, consequently on political
and private autonomy of individuals, emancipated from “organized memory”, i.e.
from the state codified moral. The liberal constitutional state is by definition a non-
ideological, neutral framework that provides universal rights for all, regardless of
the (ideological, religious, economic, etc.) differences.2 How then one can engage
in creating a collective memory, which, again by definition, necessarily requires the
strategic support of state institutions? Does not any effort at creating a consensus,
of “organising memory,” contradict the very neutrality of the liberal state, and thus
undermine the autonomy of its citizens?
Some transitional justice theoreticians, who are aware of this antinomy, usually
justify the need for the production of organised memory by the fact that certain post-
conflict societies have faced the scales of crimes and atrocities incomparable to the
dimensions of “ordinary crime”. As Mariam Aukerman (Aukerman, 2002) suggests,
transitional justice represents special forms of justice for societies that underwent a
period of “extraordinary evil.” In these cases, the standard legal package of retributive
justice falls short to address the exceptional character of crimes to be dealt with in
transformational periods. Ruti G. Teitel conceives the function of the criminal justice in
transitional phase in the following manner: “Criminal justice in some form, transitional
practices suggest, is a ritual of liberalizing states, as it is through these practices that
norms are publicly instantiated. Through known, fixed processes, a line is drawn,
liberating a past, that allows the society to move forward. Though punishment is
conventionally considered largely retributive, in transition, its purposes are corrective,
going beyond the individual perpetrator to the broader society” (Teitel, 2000: 67). In
a similar vein, Mark Osiel (Osiel, 2000) argues that the regular means of legal justice
could be transformed into “liberal show trials,” serving as pedagogical and emotional
enterprises for the creation of the “liberal morality”.3
In a word, transitional justice represents a specific form of justice designed for
exceptional cases. If the “normal order of law” acknowledges exceptions only to
certain categories of individuals (delinquents, mad, incapacitated to judge, etc.), who
2 On this issue, Jürgen Habermas writes: “Insofar as the modern state makes use of positive
law as a means of organization and implementation, it binds itself to a medium that
instantiates, through the concept of law and the derivative concepts of subjective right
and of the legal person (as the bearer of rights), a new principle made explicit by Hobbes:
within an order of modern law that is set free from immediate moral expectations (though
only in certain respects), the citizens are permitted to do anything that is not prohibited.
[…] With the separation of private from public law, the individual citizen, in her role as
‘subject’ (‘Unertan’ in Kant’s terminology), first acquires at least a core of private autonomy”
(Habermas, 2003: 14).
3 “Principles of liberal morality can be most effectively inculcated in a society traumatized
by recent fratricide if the proceedings are conducted in this fashion. To maximize their
pedagogic impact, such trials should be unabashedly designed as monumental spectacles.
Though rarely acknowledged, considerations of dramaturgy have proven quite valuable
to this end. This is because these are ‘liberal show trials,’ conducted by what have been
called ‘moral entrepreneurs’ and ‘activists of memory.’” (Osiel 2000: 3)
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lose their autonomy and rights as citizens, the transitional justice allows employing
special pedagogical and moral measures to a whole population.
It is against the background of this antinomy that one should comprehend the impact
of the ‘moral entrepreneurs’ and ‘activists of memory’ in post-Milošević’s Serbia. They
typically point out that the Serbian people, as a whole, should be exposed to a special
sort of collective pedagogic treatment. For instance, Drinka Gojković claims that the
principal task of facing the past in Serbia today is to confront the “cognitive block,”
a mental closure supported by “obsessive national phantasms” and the fundamental
inability to be open to the world. As she argues, the key words of such confrontations
should be truth and guilt:
“Truth, and also guilt, is the question of all questions for Serbia today. Truth
and guilt constitute the only ground that Serbia can possibly be founded on
in order to emerge as a truly transformed country […] It requires a special
kind, and a special level of social and personal energy, and it would have to
go on parallel with a series of other, more obviously strengthening processes”
(Gojković, 2000a: 75).
Relying on Gojković’s notion of the Serbian “cognitive block,” Dejan Ilić calls
for the establishment of a T&R Commission, which would facilitate the process of
“dismantling the collectivist ideology veiled in national phantasms still strong in
Serbia today” (Ilić, 2004: 19). Likewise, the human rights activist Nataša Kandić
expressed the hopes “to witness sober-mindedness in post-Milošević Serbia, a general
consensus that the priority of government and people should be for us all to assume
our share of responsibility for the past. This would lay the groundwork for a process
of reconciliation” (Kandić, 2002).4
As a model of this type of reasoning, let me concentrate on one theoretical
endeavour to formulate a concept of Serbian “collective responsibility”, brought about
by the lawyer and political scientist Nenad Dimitrijević (Dimitrijević, 2000, 2006).5
4 See also: Robert M. Hayden, 1996. “Schindler’s Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and
Population Transfers.” Slavic Review, 55 (4); Janine Natalya Clark, “Collective Guilt,
Collective Responsibility and the Serbs.” East European Politics and Societies, 22 (3),
2008.
5 See also, from the same author: “Suočavanje s lošom prošlošću: treba li Srbiji i Crnoj Gori
komisija za istinu?” (Facing the Evil Past: Does Serbia and Montenegro Need a Truth
Commission?), Reč, 71, 2003; “Kad padne režim: zašto je prošlost važna” (After the Regime
Change: Why the Past Matters), Reč, 73, 2005; “Justice Beyond Blame: Moral Justification
of (the Idea of) a Truth Commission”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 3, 2006; “Serbia After
the Criminal Past: What Went Wrong and What Should be Done”, International Journal
of Transitional Justice, 2 (3), 2008; “Zločinački režim, njegovi podanici i masovni zločin”
(Criminal Regime, Its Subjects, and Mass Crime), Reč, 79, 2009; “Moral Knowledge and
Mass Crime: Critical Reading of Moral Relativism”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 36 (2),
2010; “Values for a Valueless Society: Constitutional Morality After Collective Crime”,
in Andras Sajo and Renata Uitz (eds.), Constitutional Topography. The Hague: Eleven
Publishing, 2010; Duty To Respond: Mass Crime, Denial, and Collective Responsibility
Budapest. Budapest: CEU Press, 2011.
120 •
While sketching the specific parameters of transitional justice for Serbia, Dimitrijević
departs from the general premise
“that organized moral reflection on the true character and consequences of the
past is indispensable in order to explain the normative disassociation of the
society from ideology and criminal practices of the former regime, and in order
to affirm a value system appropriate to democracy.” (Dimitrijević, 2006: 3)
He indicates that concentrating merely on the criminal and political responsibility
for crimes committed during the rule of Milošević do not suffice in achieving a
genuine rupture with the old regime. This comes from the fact that the “Serbian
criminal policies” directed against other national groups in Yugoslavia included “a
high level of ideological and practical agreement about crime” (Dimitrijević, 2006: 3).
Hence we should rather speak about ‘collective crime,’ that is, about a crime in which
“any individual of Serbian nationality may be considered responsible for the crimes
perpetrated in the name of the Serbian nation.” (Dimitrijević, 2000: 51).
In other words, what binds together the members of one community in their collective
responsibility is not only a causal relation between the crimes and perpetrators, but
their belonging to the group in whose name the crime has been committed. For this
reason, claims Dimitrijević, we should deal with a national group’s identity:
“[W]e must take up the question of a group’s identity and the character of crime
from the perspective of that identity […] If a nation is a group that, among other
things, relies on certain common values, then a crime committed in the name
of this nation is a violation of such values. The values in question do not belong
simply to the nation as a collectivity. These are, at the same time, the values
of each and every member of the nation: this is precisely why we talk about
common values.” (Dimitrijević, 2006: 12)
Accordingly, the category of collective responsibility incorporates not just those
who actively participated in or sustained criminal activities, but also “‘bystanders’ and
‘fellow travellers’ of the old regime, that particular ‘silent majority’ that during the
period of crime preferred strategies of support, silence or denial, rationalizing them
as a preference for ‘normal life’” (Dimitrijević, 2006: 15). All of them “must realize
the immorality of their behaviour and its consequences” (Dimitrijević, 2006: 15).
Let me note that from these premises immediately follows the foreclosure of the
national identity. First of all, we should notice that the category of ‘the Serbs’ in this
case does not represent the category of the political citizens of a particular state, but of
involuntary members of a broadly conceived national/cultural group. As Dimitrijević
explicitly says, in contrast to the legal voluntary membership, in the case of national
responsibility we are dealing with ‘involuntary membership’: “nations and races are
pre-political and pre-legal groups, membership of which is involuntary” (Dimitrijević,
2006: 11).
To close this section, we can conclude that the concept of collective responsibility
contradicts the liberal principle of autonomy of individuals, by imposing a certain
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‘pre-political’ common cultural substance upon them.6 More precisely, the initial,
supposedly political, thesis of the “high level of ideological and practical agreement
about crime” has been replaced by the cultural ‘common values.’ This inconsistency
brings us to the next problem: identification
III. ANTINOMY NO. 2:

IDENTIFICATION (WITH THE PERPETRATOR)
Postulating the collective morality in terms of the common cultural substance implies
further moral requirements for individuals. If we follow Dimitrijević’s argumentation,
he advances that any individual of Serbian nationality must have a sense of duty (‘duty
to respond’), and accept responsibility for crimes directed against the victims and their
community: “It is our duty to address the victims and their community. In doing so,
we publicly admit and accept a fact which we privately know very well: that the killing
was carried out in our name” (Dimitrijević, 2006: 15).
Again, when looked from the liberal perspective, such concept bears a notorious
paradox: while belonging to a nation as a cultural group is unavoidable, the only way for
a national member to become a political subject, i.e. to become a citizen and regain its
autonomy, is to identify with the collective/national responsibility. Or, in other words,
the subject has to retroactively objectify itself, by accepting the crime committed in
its own (national) name. Hence we confront a circular structure:
“This normative view does not lead to the idea of a modified, ‘soft’ collective
responsibility which would be understood as the sum of individual self-
reflection, but rather to the radical individualisation of responsibility based on
national belonging. I am a Serb by chance, but the crime was consciously and
systematically carried out in my name.” (Dimitrijević, 2000: 58)
In other words, the given concept of collective responsibility is based on an
abstractly conceived process of naming: the ‘subject’ is fixed to the generality of its
(national) name/being; simply attached to the ontology of the nation. In such way
the subject becomes both passive and self-reflexive. It must passively recognize it’s
own part in the national shame, but also accept to be self-reflexive, to identify with
the perpetrator. As we know from psychoanalysis, identification and recognition are
the principal mechanisms of the narcissist mirror-stage; the first formative subjective
6 Interestingly, it is exactly Nenad Dimitrijević, who, on another occasion, saw the concept
of community based on common cultural substance as a main obstacle to establishment
of a liberal constitutional state. Namely, in his text “Ethno-nationalized States of Eastern
Europe: Is there a Constitutional Alternative?,” he describes the newly established states in
the European East as ‘privatised ethnic states,’ incapable of securing the neutral political
framework for all its citizens, due to the constitutional definitions which furnish primacy
to ethnically codified majority. Instead of being based on liberal principles of universal
citizenship, these states “are expressly centered around an illiberal ethical preference
for the particular collective good of a particular (majority) group, which in consequence
divides people along the lines of their ethnic affiliation.” (Dimitrijević, 2002: 252)
122 •
stage, in which the infant identifies itself with its own image.7 And, just like a child
who does not have any other choice but to identify with its own body, in the concept of
collective responsibility we meet the axiom of choice without a choice: an obligation
to identify with the already existing imaginary order (created by the perpetrator). In
other words, this discourse transforms the subject into the passive ‘spectator of the
circumstances,’ whose only freedom is the “‘freedom of opinion’, which, in the ethical
version, is first and foremost the freedom to designate Evil” (Badiou, 2001: 9). This is
perhaps the main reason why the concept of collective responsibility proves incapable
to facilitate any emergence of a new political subjectivity: it just confirms one facticity,
leading us to anything other than the unfolding of the facticity of the nation.
For, even if we accept the principle that Nomen est Omen, this opens a whole set
of questions: what is the origin of the name? From where does it come from? What is
the historical background in which one name appears?
It seems that the main risk behind any T&R project applied in the post-Yugoslav
context rests in falling into the trap of what Rogers Brubaker calls “commonsense
groupism” and consequently “groupist ontologies” (Brubaker, 2004). This implies a
leaning towards “conflating a system of identification or categorization with its presumed
result, identity” (Brubaker 2004: 53).8 The main problem of such approaches lies
exactly in the routine to accept certain categories as they are, just because they appear
as such in everyday-life communication. As Brubaker points out, temptations to take
for granted some group as a ‘collective individual’ risk strengthening the process of
essentialisation and naturalisation. This is exactly where ‘ethnopolitical entrepreneurs’
are striving to. One should thus be careful not to use ‘categorical group denominations’
as indicators of real groups or stable identities. For this reason, Brubaker suggests that
we should rather concentrate on analysing the processes of codification, discursive
frames, organisational routines, political projects and different ways how certain
categories have been constructed and employed in particular historical situations.
7 See, for example: Sigmund Freud, 2001. Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Groups Psychology
and Other Works. London: Vintage, 105-111; Jacques Lacan, 2005. Ecrits: A Selection.
London & New York: Routlege, 1-7.; the entry ‘Identification’ in J. Laplanche & J.-B
Pontalis, 1973. The Language of Psychooanalysis. New York & London: W.W. Norton &
Company, 205-208.
8 Explaining his use of the notion of ‘commonsense groupism,’ Brubaker writes against “the
tendency to take groups for granted in the study of ethnicity, race and nationhood, and in
the study of ethnic, racial, and national conflict in particular. This is what I call ‘groupism,’
by which I mean the tendency to take discrete, bounded groups as basic constituents of
social life, chief protagonists of social conflicts, and fundamental units of social analysis. I
mean the tendency to treat ethnic groups, nations, and races as substantial entities to which
interests and agency can be attributed. I mean the tendency to reify such groups, speaking
of Serbs, Croats, Muslims, and Albanians in the former Yugoslavia, […] as if they were
internally homogeneous, externally bounded groups, even unitary collective actors with
common purposes. I mean the tendency to represent the social and cultural worlds as a
multichrome mosaic of monochrome ethnic, racial, or cultural blocs” (Brubaker, 2004: 8).
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In the post-Yugoslav context, such kind of analysis would necessarily guide us

to question the categorical universe of the perpetrator and victim. Is it adequate, or
even moral, to treat victims as members of a certain community? Does not such
conduct reproduce the form of identification, imposed on victims by the perpetrator?
Is it appropriate to designate the victims with the perpetrator’s categorical apparatus?
We should remember that an ultimate mechanism of exclusion and extermination of
‘the other’ during the wars in Yugoslavia was the transformation of certain subjects,
citizens and civilians into cultural subjects. Only through the process of culturalisation
and certain fictive historisation of a victim’s belonging, the perpetrator could have
framed the exterior within his own identity interior.9
Elissa Helms has recently drawn attention to a phenomenon that might be interpreted
as the inverted identification with the perpetrator. Namely, she has shown how certain
artistic and cultural practices in Bosnia today contribute to the reproduction of the
image of ‘Srebrenica’s Mothers’ (Srebreničke majke) as culturalised victims. Most
notably, Helms concludes that such discourses in fact “overlap with discourses of
Bosniac nationalism, and in a way with all nationalisms of the region that interpret
wars and politics through collective ethnic categories” (Helms, 2012: 217).
Any failure to create a distance from the perpetrator’s register of signification, to
frame the perpetrator’s frame, in turn reproduces the continuation of cultural separation
or, better to say, the continuation of war by other means, cementing exactly the same
lines of division constructed in the course of war. But also, this leads us back to the
simplistic reiterations of the return of the Balkan Ghosts, of the clash of civilisations
and the orientalist myths of ethnic war.10
9 Here we could be reminded of Ratko Mladić’s words immediately before the mass crime
in Srebrenica was committed: “Here we are, on July 11th 1995, in Serbian Srebrenica. Just
before a great Serbian Holy day, we give this town to the Serbian Nation. Remembering
the uprising against the Turks (‘Buna protiv Dahija’), the time has finally come
to take revenge on the Turks.” “Ratko Mladic in Srebrenica”: Available at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edFQTZpf8yM
10 This typically journalist simplification of the Yugoslav wars can be captured in only one
headline: “Religious and ethnic differences combined with a history of oppression created
enemies for generations” (Ricciuti, 1993: 13). In contrast, numerous serious studies, from
different disciplinary perspectives, demonstrated the falsity of interpretations that searched
for the root causes of the violence in Yugoslavia in some ethnic substance. See, for example:
Branka Magaš, The Destruction of Yugoslavia – Tracking the Break-Up 1980-92. London
& New York, 1993; Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy – Chaos and Dissolution after and
Dissolution after the Cold War. Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1995; Catherine
Samary, Yugoslavia Dismembered. New York: Monthly Review Press 1995; Andrew
Baruch Wachtel, Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics
in Yugoslavia. Stanford: Standford University Press, 1998; Robert M. Heyden, Blueprints
for a House Divided – The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav conflict. Ann Arbor: The
University of Michigan Press, 1999; V.P Gagnon Jr., The Myth of Ethnic War – Serbia and
Croatia in the 1990s. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 2004.
124 •
IV. ANTINOMY NO. 3:

TRUTH BETWEEN THE EMPIRICAL AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL
Our discussion on the T&R enterprise can hardly go on without problematising
another difficulty: the fundamental relationship between the terms truth and
reconciliation themselves. What binds these two terms? What is the nature of this
relation?
Undoubtedly, it is an uneasy relation that oscillates between two apparently
opposite aspirations. The first aspiration finds its stronghold in historical facticity: in
the reference to the empirical truth, in the reference to some real and unconditional,
non-partitioned, disinterested neutrality, that is to say, objective truth. This is what
we could call the moment of positivism, the moment of researching, discovering,
counting and measuring — this truth depends on the field of expertise (forensic or
DNA analysis) and juridical profession. 11
Problems, however, arise when it comes to the second aspect of T&R: the aspect that
perceives the objective truth as an essential element in the processes of reconciliation.
This very truth is supposed to induce an effect of reconciliation, to induce a subjective
rupture with the previous order of conflicting and violent subjectivities. The truth
that reconciles is supposed to have transformative potentials: to transform the logic
of the war subjectivity into a peaceful one, to transform violence and cruelty into
non-violence and respect of differences, to change the logic of ethnic exclusion to
the logic of cooperation, etc. This might be called the moment of catharsis, creative
transformation, moral alteration, that is, the ultimate transcendental or religious
moment of the T&R.
But, who is then to be reconciled? Who is the agent or subject of reconciliation?
And, why is it expected that some objective facts could have such a decisive impact in
the process of the transformation of political subjectivity? What lends consistency in
conjoining these two aspirations? What can guarantee that knowledge of the objective
will induce transformation in the subjective?
If we further analyse Dimitrijević’s conception of collective responsibility, we could
notice the following complication: translating the question of criminal and political
responsibility into the moral and cultural domain entirely diffuses the boundaries of
responsibility itself. Dimitrijević’s proposition: “any individual of Serbian nationality
may be considered responsible for the crimes perpetrated in the name of the Serbian
nation.” Why? Because the crime is an effect of the common value system which has
fallen under the ‘minimum of civilisational norms’: “This fall below the civilizational
minimum directly targets the moral integrity of each member of the group, independently
11 For instance, Dan Bar-On emphasises “that the term ‘reconciliation’ needs empirical
verification and precision in order to fulfill an important role in the future discourse of
conflict transformation and social healing. In order to move from the somewhat theoretical
and quasi-religious discourse into a more pragmatic and testable discourse, it must be
specified how reconciliation differs from lack of reconciliation, and how different levels
of reconciliation can be observed or measured. Empirical categories should be developed
and tested, both in the laboratory and in real life situations” (Bar-On, 2005: 182).
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of her or his personal attitude towards the crime. The foundation of my responsibility
becomes simply the identity I share with the perpetrators” (Dimitrijević, 2006: 12).
Note the wavering between the ‘empirically’ understood members of community
(‘groupist ontology’) and transcendentally defined ‘civilisational minimum.’ Both of
these dimensions lack fundamental coordinates of space and time. On the one side, if
the criterion of belonging to a group is the criterion of taking responsibility, does this
equally concern, for example, Serbs from Serbia, Bosnian Serbs, Macedonian Serbs,
Serbs from Chicago or Sydney, etc.? Where are the boundaries of this ‘community’? On
the other side, the value system of empirically defined national subjects is contrasted
with abstractly understood ‘civilisational values:’ an ultimate indication of collective
crime is a “fall beyond civilisational minimum.” Hence, at this point, we encounter
the transcendental oppositions between ‘Evil’ and ‘Good’, ‘Nature’ and ‘Civilization’,
‘Catastrophe’ and ‘Normality.’12 However, we never learn on what this ‘civilisational
minimum’ consists of. Where has this minimum been written? In the Bill of Rights,
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, in the Constitution of the
Republic of Serbia, or in the Holy Bible? From where does it come from? Who is the
subject, agent or legislator of this norm of civilization? Some People, Humanity as
such, Nation, or even God?13 Against which historical or normative background we
can judge the particular values system and from it supposedly derived criminal acts?
All in all, this conception unbearably reminds on Michel Foucault’s classical
assessment of a figure of ‘man,’ as he names it, an ‘empirico-transcendental doublet’
embodied in a peculiar order of discourse:
“it sketches it out in advance and foments it from a distance, so that one has a
discourse of the eschatological type (the truth of the philosophical discourse
12 “[T]his may imply that as a result of the collective crime, each member of the nation falls
into some kind of the ‘state of nature’: this reference to the Hobbesian condition may not
be entirely meaningless, at least to the extent that it implies a situation in which every
individual would have to reconstruct her or his own normative standards of behaviour.
(Dimitrijević: 12).
13 Indeed, the motives of responsibility based on metaphysical visions of transcendent God
conceived as necessary supplement to the liberal responsibility of individuals, might be
found in the works of Emmanuel Levinas and Karl Jaspers – both authors being frequently
cited in the literature on transitional justice. For example, Emmanuel Levinas writes: “We
must ask ourselves if liberalism is all we need to achieve an authentic dignity for the human
subject. Does the subject arrive at the human condition prior to assuming responsibility
for the other man in the act of election that raises him up to this height? This election
comes from a god – or God – who beholds him in the face of the other man, his neighbor,
the original ‘site’ of the Revelation” (Levinas, 1990: 63). Karl Jaspers: “That somewhere
among men the unconditioned prevails the capacity to live only together or not at all, if
crimes are committed against the one or the other, or if physical living requirements have
to be shared therein consists the substance of their being. But that this does not extend
to the solidarity of all men, nor to that of fellow-citizens or even of smaller groups, but
remains confined to the closest human ties-therein lies this guilt of us all. Jurisdiction
rests with God alone” (Jaspers, 2001: 26).
126 •
constitutes the truth in formation). In fact, it is a question not so much of an

alternative as of a fluctuation inherent in all analysis, which brings out the value
of the empirical at the transcendental level.” (Foucault, 2005: 349)
The above-described empirico-transcendental construction of ‘the Serbs’ is indeed
devoid of any precise spatial and temporal coordinates. But also, it is a construction laid
on the naïve theory of aggressive nationalism, being entrapped in the national phantasm
incapable of communication. What is entirely naïve in this theory is the presumption
that the mental or ‘cognitive block’ can be simply transformed by confronting it with
some objective information and pedagogical programs. In fact, this is to miss the point
that even extremely aggressive nationalisms are quite capable to communicate and
generate its own contextualisation and rationalisation. As Nebojša Jovanović pointed
out with reference to Serbian street fascist’s slogan:
“The slogan ‘Nož, žica, Srebrenica’ (Knife, Wire, Srebrenica) is not a signal
of denial or negation, but rather an indication of a triumphal enjoyment in the
well-known crime. Looked from the shadow of the Serbian Thing, in order
to enjoy in the genocide committed in your name, it is enough to situate that
genocide in the historical perspective, to ‘contextualise’ it, that is, to compare
it with Jasenovac” (Jovanović 2009: 5)14
In short, the very block that any T&R project in the post-Yugoslav context
encounters is not simply the block of the national consciousness, but rather the very
form of this consciousness: the nation form, as Etienne Balibar (Balibar, 1991) names
it. Here lies the structural limitation of T&R, its own impossibility to think beyond
the national boundaries. For, its ‘subjective disposition’ is caught within the same
symbolic coordinates of ‘groupist ontology’ and ‘fictive ethnicity’ as those shared
by the perpetrators. Instead, its primary aim consists in providing readjustment of
the national subject to the new normalising circumstances. This brings an extremely
paradoxical outcome of T&R: reconciliation of humanitarianism and nationalism.15
Its forms of retrospection and retroaction, although posited in negative terms, in fact,
re-affirm the very frontiers of the nation. To be more precise, what T&R cannot think
is the very singular historical moment of the return to the nation-form in Yugoslavia
in the late 1980s, ultimately causing the separation among its peoples.
14 Jasenovac was the largest extermination camp in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH)
and occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. The camp was established by the Ustaše
(Ustasha) regime in August 1941 and dismantled in April 1945. In Jasenovac, the largest
number of victims were ethnic Serbs, whom Ante Pavelić considered the main racial
opponents of the NDH, alongside the Jews and Roma peoples.
15 In her study on the process of ‘facing the past’ in Serbia, Margaret Darin Hagan concludes:
“The nationalists and the humanists are not inherently arch-enemies, and more points
of compromise, as suggested by Ignatieff, can be found without seriously disturbing the
fundamental beliefs of either side. One can be a loyal Serbian citizen and still respect the
basic rights and dignity of non-Serbs, and criticize one’s co-nationals and national leaders
for violating such rights. Human rights activists need not aim for the complete annihilation
of nationalism, nor must they avoid any compromise with nationalists” (Hagan, 2004: 109).
• 127
Slobodan KARAMANIĆ
V. STRUCTURAL LIMITATION: ‘OFFICIAL TRUTH SEEKING’

In their balance sheet on the achievements and failures of different institutional
forms of transitional justice in former Yugoslav states, Jasna Dragović-Soso and
Eric Gordy (Dragović-Soso & Gordy, 2011) detect three central obstacles presented
in the process of confronting the past: 1) the lack of political will; 2) the problem of
overlapping jurisdiction; 3) fragmented and divided visions of the past. To shed some
light on the structural limitations of the “official truth seeking” (Hayner, 2001) in
the post-Yugoslav context, let me just briefly mention two instances of the practical
endeavours to establish the T&R Commissions in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In March 2001, Vojislav Koštunica, then the Yugoslav president and self-declared
Serbian democratic nationalist, appointed the ‘The Yugoslav Truth and Reconciliation
Commission’, comprising also two Serbian Orthodox priests and several conservative
historians and intellectuals. Just two weeks after the Commission had been established,
two of its prominent members, Vojin Dimitrijević and Latinka Perović, resigned. The
ultimate reason for their resignation was the program of the Commission, which “aimed
to reconcile the newly formed state with the international community, simultaneously
trying to deny, relativize, and justify war crimes perpetrated by Serbian forces by
underlying the long history of Serbian suffering.” (Ilić, 2004: 15) Reflecting upon
this program, Vojin Dimitrijević publicly proclaimed: “I fear Great Historical Truths
because great violence has been committed in their name and for their spread” (cited
in Dragović-Soso & Gordy, 2011: 208).16
In the same year, 2001, there was an attempt at establishing a T&R Commission in
Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, the problem of jurisdiction immediately emerged:
the representatives of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
expressed worries that the work of an independent Commission could endanger the
Tribunal’s program of witness protection and secret indictments (Dragović-Soso &
Gordy, 2011: 202). The president of the Tribunal Claude Jorda proclaimed that the
Bosnian Commission could only deal with “pedagogical and historical perspective
of reconstructing the national identity” (Dragović-Soso & Gordy, 2011: 202). In this
respect, Jakob Finci, the president of the Commission, explained its function and nature:
“Our work would be a certain psychotherapy for all people of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, who feel bitterness and burden either because of what they have
done, or what has happened to them. Such a catharsis will bring a certain
relaxation. You know, the category of confession exists only in the Catholic
Church and it has functioned well for almost two thousand years. Today, this
confession has been replaced by psychotherapy. There is no big difference. I think
that with a such form of confessing, man will free himself from the discomfort
which burdens him, which he cannot communicate to anybody.” (Finci, 2001)
As we may observe, the main task of the Bosnian T&R Commission supposed to
be medicalisations of political matters, or, better to say, a crude depoliticisation and
dehistoricisation. The Commission supposed to depoliticise by translating the whole
16 See also: Jelena Pejic, “The Yugoslav Truth and Reconciliation Commission: A Shaky
Start”. Fordham International Law Journal, 25(1), 2001, 1-22.
128 •
problem of historical and political facticity, into the regime of the psychic order and
disorder, where even the difference between the perpetrators and the victims became
entirely blurred. The problem for perpetrators and victims turn out to be the same
problem: the psychological problem.17
This tendency of depoliticisation and dehistorisation can also be detected at the
general plane of the T&R paradigm, most notably, in a series of formulations that
traverse the literature on transitional justice and handbooks on “why does one make
a truth commission”: ‘national reconciliation,’ ‘uniting a nation,’ ‘the healing of the
nation,’ “an effort to refound the nation on new principles by retelling the story” (cited
in Osiel, 2000: 4); the “need (for) a massive living re-creation of this national and
human disaster” (citied in Osiel, 2000: 16), etc. In short, we obtain a T&R narrative,
as a transendental historical narrative which usually goes as follows: in ‘History,’ no
matter of what is happening and what has happened, every historic event confirms
the existence of the national identity, either in its good or bad episodes. Every single
historical fact just confirms the existence of the form of national identity. There are
ruptures, moral disasters and failures, but this is something from which ‘national
subjects’ should take their lessons, to learn from their own history. National identity
can be cured from its own phantasms, schizophrenic black outs, and other forms of
psychic disturbances.
Ironically, it is Jacob Finci himself, who from his function of the benevolent High
Priest of the Bosnian Reconciliation has been degraded to the position of a persona
non-grata in the high level Bosnian politics. Namely, it is Jakob Finci, the president
of Bosnian’s Jewish Community and executive director of the Bosnian Open Society
Fund, together with Dervo Sejdić, another human rights activist from Bosnia’s Roma
Council, who were forced to launch an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights
on the basis that the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina violates the European
Convention of Human Rights. The 2009 judgment reads:
“The applicants, two citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, were prevented
from being candidates for the Presidency and the House of Peoples of the
Parliamentary Assembly allegedly solely on ground of their ethnic origins (as
they were respectively of Roma and Jewish origin). In order to be eligible to
stand for election to the House of Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian
law imposes an obligation to declare affiliation with one of the ‘constituent
17 Priscilla Hayner, one of the leading theorists of T&R concept, argues in the following
way: “When a period of authoritarian rule or civil war ends, a state and its people stand
at a crossroads. What should be done with a recent history full of victims, perpetrators,
secretly buried bodies, pervasive fear, and official denial? Should this past be exhumed,
preserved, acknowledged, apologized for? How can a nation of enemies be reunited, former
opponents reconciled, in the context of such violent history and often bitter, festering
wounds? What should be done with hundreds or thousands of perpetrators still walking
free? While individual survivors struggle to rebuild shattered lives, to easy the burning
memory of torture suffered or massacres witnesses, society as a whole must find a way to
move on, to recreate a livable space of national peace, build some form of reconciliation
between former enemies, and secure event in the past” (Hayner, 2001: 4).
• 129
Slobodan KARAMANIĆ
peoples’ of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which the applicants had not done due
to their Roma and Jewish origins respectively. The Court concluded that the
applicants’ ineligibility to stand for elections had no reasonable and objective
justification and therefore violated Article 14 and Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 of
the Convention.” (European Court of Human Rights – Grand Chamber, 2009)
This trial, indeed, was not a typical ‘liberal show trial’. It did not bring any
pedagogical lesson to the Bosnian public. Besides a moral and financial retribution to
‘the applicants’, the trial has changed nothing, leaving untouched the internationally
recognised Dayton citizenship, together with its own categorical interior and exterior.
But the trial has shown that the crucial problem of today’s Bosnia — as well as of any
other new state of ex-Yugoslavia in the present constellation — is a political rather
then psychic, moral or cultural problem. The problem has a strategic, that is, subjective
dimension: how to strategically delink the category of ethnicity from the figure of
citizen, imposed by the state? This problem cannot be downgraded to the trouble of
reconciliation and healing of the collective and individual traumas. Because, as it can
be clearly seen in Bosnia today, the problem partly lies in the notion of reconciliation
itself. More precisely, this notion supports already entrenched and “institutionalised
ethnicities” (Bieber, 2004). It reinforces reconciliation only and exclusively for the
sake of the existing state affairs.
To put it bluntly, what produces the current political impasse and continuing
discrimination in Bosnia and other post-Yugoslav republics is not a phenomenon of
mentally blocked or emotionally traumatised people, but the very boundaries of the
state and its categorical apparatuses, in a word, the universally recognised model of the
nation-state. In Bosnia, and Yugoslavia, this model of politics has proven to be and still
proves entirely impossible to be installed without conflict and discrimination.18 This
is the symptom of the political truth, the symptom from where any serious analysis
of the Yugoslav wars and the post-Yugoslav situation must start.
VI. CONCLUSION
To sum up the implications of the T&R paradigm discussed above, I will first turn
to analysis of one public statement given by Drinka Gojković:
“It is essential to create a public space through which information can pass, through
which the widest possible number of people could be included in that emotional
18 Eldar Sarajlić depicts the current impossibility to establish Bosnia and Herzegovina according
to the European model of unique citizenship in the following manner: “More political
and social centralization with efforts at building a unified citizenship model will produce
opposition from those in Bosnia who perceive it as a threat to their identities and political
interest. Likewise, further fragmentation of citizenship and its incorporation in broader
(regional) frameworks will generate unrest by those unwilling to succumb to cross-border
ethnicity based homelands project. The point is it that if Bosnia and Herzegovina follows
any of the European experience state-building models, conflicts and controversies will
continue to arise and no viable solution will be possible. Europeanisation of the country is
thus a double-edged sword, an ambiguous process with no clear outcome, as beneficial as
it is detrimental for establishment of a liberal and democratic system” (Sarajlić, 2011: 26).
130 •
world of the interiorized guilt. I think that all facts should be presented to the public:
from the war in Croatia, to Bosnia and Kosovo […] Of course that we are guilty! We
Serbs are guilty; let others solve their guiltiness for themselves alone. I recognize my
Serbian identification, primarily as Serbian guiltiness. It would be good that people
in Serbia come alone to this sense of guiltiness. I do not think that anybody needs to
suffer. I think that it is good when one himself, in his own private space, understands
that it is possible to be guilty for something that he is not going to be punished […]
Through this sense of indirect guilt, collective guilt, he becomes more politically
aware.” (Gojković, 2000b)
If we judge this statement exclusively from the perspective of the transitional justice
premises, sketched in the introduction of this paper, we would get the following result:
1) Securing the rule of law? Quite the contrary, what we have here is a destruction of
the liberal distinction between the public and the private autonomy of citizens. The
distortion appears immediately after the specific group identity has been inscribed
into the formally understood public — as public of abstractly equal citizens — by
fulfilling the emptiness of the public with the reference to a national history. Namely,
the historical materiality counted from within the space of the public is at the same
time the material existence of a particular national identity. That is why here public
responsibility suddenly appears in the register of the national responsibility; public space
reflects upon the “emotional world of the interiorized guilt”; national identification is
there as a function of a political awareness. Responsibility is at the same time public
and private, collective and individual, ethnic and civic. As a result, one can barely
distinguish, formally and substantially, liberal from ethnic memory. Thus, we can
conclude that this concept undermines the presupposed neutrality of the community
of citizens. 2) Rupture with the previous criminal regime? From Gojković’s statement
we could rather speak about self-reconciliation, or, better to say, reconciliation of
humanitarianism and nationalism. Rather than having an effective normative rupture
with the previous criminal regime, we have recognition of its very form: the nation-
form. What is more, this moral recognition of the nationalist political framework can
pass without sanctions: “it is possible to be guilty for something that he is not going to
be punished.” Meaning, to paraphrase Hanna Arendt, “Where all are guilty, nobody
in the last analysis can be judged.”; 3) Against the denial of truth? The offered truth
is partial, separate truth: “We Serbs are guilty; let others solve their guiltiness for
themselves alone.” The most elementary political consequence: cementing ‘ethnic’
differences produced by the criminal war politics.
To this list of failures and inconsistencies, we should add a crucial one: it is not
only a problem that the concept of T&R in former Yugoslavia cannot generate new
subjectivities, it effectively blocks the process of disidentification and the rejection of
politics based on (national) identity. It disorganises any attempt of creating a subjective
position beyond the given political categories. What is more, the central function
of any T&R project is not to produce knowledge, but to induce normalising effects,
to pacify the existing order of things. Besides pointing to the ‘self-evident’ Balkan
ethnic problems, T&R brings nothing to our knowledge of the war causes and today’s
situation. By contrast, such concept assists in the denial of the current situation and
help forgetting the past. It does not offer any genuine knowledge of the situation but,
• 131
Slobodan KARAMANIĆ
instead, depoliticise and culturalise the present problems, translating them into the
abstract domains of individual and collective ‘transcendental responsibility.’
For all these reasons, we can conclude that a genuine question on how to confront
the criminal past in the post-Yugoslav situation can be only posed in political terms.
This would be a question on how to contradict the contradictions of the dominant
form of universality, the nation-state. Or, at least, how to make these contradictions
visible, in order to pave the way for the emergence of new forms of subjectivity, for
new projects of emancipation. This is the crucial question that stands in front of the
post-Yugoslavs today.
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134 •
Notes sur les auteurs
Barbara Delcourt is professor of political science at the Université libre de

Bruxelles, Belgium. Her PhD was dedicated to the European Policy regarding
the disintegration of Yugoslavia; she has authored many articles about
external intervention in the region and the political uses of international law
in international politics.
Miroslava Filipović is Professor of International Economics and

Macroeconomics at the EDUCONS University in Sremska Kamenica, Serbia.
She has got her PhD in International Relations from the City University,
London. She conducts research and publishes in the area of International
Relations, global politics and banking, international regulation and transition.
Klaus-Gerd Giesen is professor of political science at the Université

d'Auvergne in Clermont-Ferrand, France. He has widely published on the theory
and philosophy of international relations, on bioethics and on the international
political economy, and edits the online journal Academic Foresights. Further
information can be gathered at his website: www.giesen.fr
Slobodan Karamanić is currently completing his doctoral thesis at the

Ljubljana Graduate School of the Humanities. He has also studied and worked
at universities in Belgrade, Tromso, New York, Konstanz, Munich and
Edinburgh. His research interests include social and political theory, theories
of subjectivity, visual studies, political and cultural history of Yugoslavia and
the Balkans.
Gëzim Krasniqi is undertaking his PhD in Sociology at the University

ofEdinburgh. He also holds an MA in Human Rights and Democracy in South
EastEurope from the Universities of Sarajevo and Bologna and another MA
in Nationalism Studies with distinction from the Central European University
(Budapest, Hungary). In addition, he works as a part-time research ssistant on
the CITSEE research project at the University of Edinburgh. Previously he has
held the position of research fellow on the CITSEE projectand was engaged
in preparing national case studies on citizenship in Kosovoand Albania. His
main research interests are nationalism, nationalistmovements and citizenship
issues.
Tea Pršir was born in 1975 in Zagreb. She studied cybernetic psychotherapy
in Croatia and psychology in France. She is currently preparing a Ph.D.
in linguistics in Geneva and Louvain-la-Neuve. She is a research assistant
in the field of prosody and phonostyle. Furthermore, her research covers
sociolinguistics, iconicity and the experiential approach in discourse analysis.
Kees van der Pijl is emeritus professor of International Relations and Global
Political Economy in the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex (UK).
He is currently finishing a trilogy on 'modes of foreign relations' of which
two volumes have been published, Nomads, Empires, States (2007, Deutscher
Memorial Prize 2008) and The Foreign Encounter in Myth and Religion (2010).

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TRANSITIONS

The Post-Yugoslav Space: Politics and Economics

Yugoslavia In Western Nation-Building Strategy – A Historical

State Borders, Symbolic, Boundaries and Contested Geographical Space

Linguistic Politics In Ex-Yugoslavia: The Cas Of Purism In Croatia

Economic Wheels Of Transition: Yugoslav Space 20 Years On

Post-Yugoslav Sovereignties, Rentier Capitalism, and The European

‘Truth And Reconciliation’: A New Political Subjectivity For Post-Yugoslavs?

Barbara DELCOURT and Klaus-Gerd GIESEN

In December 2011, an international conference held in Brussels gathered twenty-five

2 Žižek, Slavoy (2000). The Fragile Absolute. London: Verso, 3-4.

including self-defeating, form of resistance to therapeutic domination (...). Analogous

Kees VAN DER PIJL

I. ATLANTIC EXCEPTIONALISM IN MATTERS OF NATIONALITY

1. Sponsored nation building against the Ottoman empire

Prince Mavrokordatos, the Greek independence leader in whom he finally thought he

II. RIVAL NATIONALITY POLICIES FOR THE BALKANS

III. SOCIALIST YUGOSLAVIA IN THE CROSSHAIRS OF RIVAL WESTERN STRATEGIES

1. The Final Onslaught. Creating Client States in the Balkans

Building on two further studies criticising sovereign equality, ‘Sovereignty:

II. THE MYTH OF TERRITORY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

blocks of myths and the acceptance or veneration of symbols is a significant aspect

2. SYMBOLS AND OTHER IDENTITY MARKERS

3. CITIZENSHIP, SPACE AND BOUNDARIES

III. WARS AND CONTINUOUS MODIFICATION OF TERRITORY AND SPACE: THE

3 By using the adjective ‘Albanian’ or ‘Serb’ to describe local populations, cultures or

lower status than that of an ‘autonomous province’ (pokrajina) given to Vojvodina

maintains or establishes a sense of collective activity in periods of apparent dispersal,

Figure 2: The unfinished Orthodox cathedral “Christ The Saviour”

After 1989, when Serbia abolished Kosovo’s autonomous institutions, a new

i. Between The Lines: Unmik’s Agenda In Kosovo

“The existence of commemorative sites including statues […], monumental

IV. POST-WAR PRISTINA: DEMOGRAPHIC AND SYMBOLIC CHANGES

Figure 3: UÇK (KLA) street.

Figure 4: Skënderbeu monument.

Figure 5: Bill Clinton’s statue in Pristina.

Figure 6: Triangle – the symbol of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’.

Ingmundarson, V. (2007). The Politics of Memory and the Reconstruction of Albanian

UNHCR. (2009). Statistical Overview: Update as at end of August 2009. Pristina.

II. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

influence of Western and Northern Slavic languages, a morpho-phonological6

In 1892, Ivan Broz published 'Croatian Orthography', based on phonological rules.

9 “Brotherhood”, with “Unity” of people were central concepts throughout Yugoslavian

11 Antifašističko Vijeće Narodnog Oslobođenja Jugoslavije, “Anti-Fascist Council of the

III. PURIFYING ATTITUDE IN INDEPENDENT CROATIA

The falling apart of ex-Yugoslavia resulted in an even stronger politicisation of

1. Institutions and events

Figure 1: Linguistic advie about words pakovanje/pakiranje (pack1:pack2).

17 Croatists are linguists specialised in Croatian studies.

IV. INTERNAL LINGUISTIC TENSION IN CROATIA

II. TRANSITION PATHS AND OUTCOMES

Yugoslavia as a transition or as a permanent solution to ethnic (state-related) issue.”

III. YUGOSLAVIA’S ECONOMIC RISE AND DEMISE

IV. NEW ECONOMIC LANDSCAPE

2. Business and economic freedom

It has to be mentioned that, in comparison to other transition or post-transition

done, Slovenia is ahead in meeting the standards of industrialized economies, closely

V. LIVING IN THE YUGOSLAV SPACE

According to the two EBRD surveys (Steves, 2011) of 30 countries in transition

Energy consumption 1983

Pers. income 1983 Yugoslavia

Unemployment rate Croatia

GDP index Yu=100