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University Malaysia Perlis


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In
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Can we trust the government to do the right thing, are they really
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Dubravko Lovrenović
Univ. prof. Dubravko Lovrenović is one of the leading
European Medievalist specialized in the Balkans, pre-modern and
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Europe
Agonistes: A Divided Continent Plays Out a Greek Drama
Jamil Maidan Flores
Prof.
Anis H. Bajrektarevic recently launched a book titled, “Europe of
Sarajevo 100 Years Later: From WWI to www.” Only Prof. Anis, I
think, can write a book of that title, just as he’s the only
intellectual I know who argues passionately that Google is the Gulag
of our time, the prison of the free mind.
His editor tells us that in the book, Prof. Anis
makes the case that the history of Europe, perhaps of the world,
since World War I has been a history of geopolitical imperative. And
that, in the face of climate change, the crisis that grips all of us
is not really ecological, as it never was financial, but moral.
Prof. Anis is chairperson for international law and global political
studies at the University IMC-Krems, Austria. I’ve been reading some
of his recent writings. A native Sarajevan who now lives in Vienna,
he doesn’t see one seamless Europe but several.
There’s Atlantic Europe, a political powerhouse
that boasts two nuclear states. There’s Central Europe, an economic
powerhouse. Scandinavian Europe is a little of both. And Eastern
Europe that’s none of either. And beyond Eastern Europe, is a
Europe-stalking Russia.
“Although
seemingly unified,” he writes, “Europe is essentially composed of
several segments, each of them with its own dynamics, legacies and
political culture… Atlantic and Central Europe are confident and
secure at one end, while Eastern Europe as well as Russia on the
other end, (are) insecure and neuralgic, therefore in a permanent
quest for additional security guarantees.”
The underachiever of the lot is Eastern Europe,
and often the victim of Europe’s turmoil. It bore the brunt of World
War II in the 1940s, suffered even more during the Yugoslav
implosion of the 1990s, and again today in the Ukrainian civil war.
A fascinating part of Eastern Europe is its
southern flank, the Balkans, where the US-led West and Russia are
today engaged in a tug of war for influence. In here is the cradle
of Western civilization, Greece, which is now in deep financial and
economic trouble. If it’s not bailed out of its misery, it just
might leave the euro-zone.
I haven’t come across Prof. Anis’s views on the
consequences of a Grexit, or a Greek exit from the euro-zone and
possibly also from the European Union, but many other thoughtful
people have said a lot on this topic. Their views range from, “Oh,
nothing much,” to, “This will be Armageddon.”
I side with those who say that if Europe doesn’t
save Greece, it will itself be in need of saving. A Greek fall from
the euro-zone will have a domino effect, which can happen in slow
motion, over the years, but in the end will leave the EU a mere
ghost of what it is today. Meanwhile, in its agony Greece could
become Russia’s Orthodox altar boy, which would be anathema to the
West.
And then there’s the Asian connection: China is
already heavily invested in the port of Piraeus in Athens, the hub
of Greek shipping and the gateway to Europe for China’s ambitious
Maritime Silk Road project. Asean nations are stakeholders in that
endeavor.
Meanwhile negotiations between Greece and its
European creditors for a 7.2-billion-euro ($8-billion) bailout hang
in the balance. Creditors and financial institutions demand fiscal
reform measures that are bitter to Greece. We’ll know within days if
there’s a deal or not.
Indonesia went through a similar ordeal in 1998
and has since recovered very nicely. So it’s too early to write off
the Greek drama as unmitigated tragedy. And, in spite of Pope
Francis, Europe isn’t an old woman who has fallen and cannot rise.
It’s a grand old man walking a tightrope between
“cosmos” and “chaos,” two favorite Greek words of Prof. Anis.
Jamil Maidan Flores is a Jakarta-based literary
writer whose interests include philosophy and foreign policy. The
views expressed here are his own.
First published by Jakarta Post June 29, 2015
http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/opinion/jamil-maidan-flores-europe-agonistes-divided-continent-plays-greek-drama/
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/europe-agonistes-a-divided-continent-plays-out-a-greek-drama-jamil-maidan-f
Published on June 30, 2015 in the Web Magazine „ORBUS.be
Bosnian Myths[1]
Dubravko Lovrenović
The
continuing disasters in human history are largely conditioned by
man’s excessive capacity and his urge to identify with the tribe,
the nation, the church or a common goal, and to accept a certain
credo uncritically and enthusiastically although the postulates of
this credo are contrary to his ratio and his own interest, and may
even endanger his existence (A. Koestler, “Janus”, Erasmus 9,
Zagreb, 1994).
The Bosnia and Herzegovina war (1992-1995) was
preceded by a conflict which has been taking place on the
“battlefield” of South Slavic historiography for longer than a
century. The historiography war, along with the wider international
circumstances, led to an armed conflict transforming this country
into a Dayton assembly of ethnically homogenized entities and
corridors – the region of a blurred and relative truth, instead of
transforming it into a civil democratic country. The spirits should
have been sharpened before knives. This historiographical “grinding
wheel” for sharpening of nationalistic concepts has never stopped
revolving, indicating that, according to Ina Merdjanova, “national
ideology has remained the central part of the communism culture”, or
negating a frequently repeated opinion that the frenzy for
nationalistic movements and activities in Eastern Europe is a result
of repressed national feelings prevailing during the communist
regime.
Even a rough “reconnaissance” of Bosnian
historiography – along with its positive achievements especially
after World War II – reveals a mythomaniac consciousness and
sub-consciousness of numerous authors. The main ailment of these
pseudo-historiography projections reflects primarily in the fact
that they almost exclusively dealt with the history of their ethnos,
treading close upon the time rhythm of national integrations and
homogenization. Thus, historiographic myths sprang from a mental
base of a foreign-rules-burdened society without democratic
traditions, still not close to the horizon of modernity and entrance
to the civil society. This is the spring from which the torrent of
hegemonistic and genocidal programs, xenophobia and atavism was
unleashed.
Taking into account the fact that their
classification is not final, these historiography myths can still be
divided into seven thematic units, each of which could be sectioned
further on:
Bosnia and Herzegovina – Serbian land
Bosnia and Herzegovina – a historical part of the
Croatian ethnic and national space (Croatia to the Drina River)
The myth of the coronation of Tvrtko I Kotromanić at
the Serbian – Orthodox monastery Mileševo in 1377
The myth of Bogomilism
Bosnia silently fell in 1463
The myth of continuous one-thousand-year-old Bosnian
statehood
The myth of an ideal Bosnian coexistence
Bosnia and Herzegovina – Serbian Land
It is no purpose to try to prove that Serbian
historiography, medieval studies in particular, is a major
historiography. This major should be understood in the context of
the developmental curve of the South Slavic historiography which has
long remained chained by a narrative-positivist discourse and is
currently stepping forward in the field of other methodological
procedures. The works of I. Ruvarac, S. Stanojević, V. Ćorović, M.
Dinić, G. Ostrogorski, S. Ćirković, J. Kalić (Mijušković), M.
Spremić, I. Đurić, D. Kovačević-Kojić are works of permanent
scientific value and a solid base for further research. Shoulder to
them, there is a young generation of Serbian medievalists,
substantially and methodologically directed towards new research
topics and methodological procedures.
Serbian historiography, however, used to be and
is still followed today by a demon of Unitarianism, of which, taking
account of all the nuances and differences in the interpretations of
the respective authors, it has failed to free itself from. This has
also been emphasized in relation to the Bosnian medievalism, with
the proviso that Serbian historians, unlike the Croatian and Bosniak
ones, have never been so adventurous to try to prove within one
special study an exclusive ethno-cultural character of this country
and this historical epoch. This tendency, however – particularly
after creating Yugoslavia in 1918 – is present in the Serbian
medieval studies. Some studies of a recent date have not resisted
the ailment either, whose perfectly conducted research has been
overshadowed by the efforts to equalize the population of medieval
Bosnia with the population of Serbia, in which the relapse of the
earlier divergences is reflected.
One such position was elaborated in the early 20th
century by Stanoje Stanojević, the author of a respectable work in
the field of diplomacy. Using a joke on a conversation between the
Romans and the Gauls in front of the gate of the eternal city,
Stanojević replied in his overt letter to the lecture of Ferdo Šišić
Herzeg-Bosnia on the occasion of annexation –
geographic-ethnographic-historical and constitutional considerations
(published in 1909, in German, too): What is your
right to Rome? Our right is placed on the top of our swords, a
Gallic army leader replied. The very same answer will be given by
the Serbs to the Croats when the day of a major battle for Bosnia
and Herzegovina comes. The right of our national strength and the
right of our bayonets will be more important and more powerful than
your right, which can be weighed with a scale.
Yet, Stanojević has not laid the foundations of
the Serbian historiographic Unitarianism, as this thought, like a
red thread, has been running through the Serbian literature and
historiography since as early as Dositej Obradović (1742-1811).
After him, Ilija Garašanin, wrote in Načertanije in 1844 that a
brief and general national history of Bosnia should be
printed as a third degree (of the political program) in which
no family patron’s day and the names of some
Mohammedan-faith-transformed Bosniaks should be omitted. It is
assumed in itself that this history should be written in the spirit
of Slavic ethnicity and all in the spirit of the national unity of
the Serbs and the Bosniaks. By printing these and other patriotic
works alike, as well as through other necessary actions, which
should be reasonably chosen and adapted, Bosnia would be freed from
the Austrian influence and turn more to Serbia.
Garašanin’s working motto is the new
renaissance of the Serbian empire based on the sacred
historical right. Placing emphasis on the language issue, Vuk
Stefanović Karadžić (1787-1864) was guided by this idea in his study
The Serbs All and Everywhere, written in 1836, and printed in
Vienna in 1849. Referring to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, this is
how Karadžić marks the border between the Croats and the Serbs after
their settling in the Balkans: by the sea southwards the Cetina
River, towards Herzegovina Imoski (Imotski), towards Bosnia Lijevno
(Livno), the Vrbas River and the Town of Jajce. Somewhat
retouched, this image secured its place in the Serbian medieval
studies of the 20th
century. Roughly simplified and basically inaccurate, Karadžić
projects this image into his time writing this: In Dalmatia on
the dry land […] where the heart of the Croats was, today there is
no people who would be in language distinct from the Serbs. That
is why he cannot comprehend how at least these Serbs of the Roman
law won’t accept to be called the Serbs. Jovan Cvijić
(1865-1927), well-known for his antropogeographic research, did not
fail to emphasize each single trace of the Serbian national name out
of the original ethnic space, proving that the Serbs are the most
widespread people in the Balkans. Being a scholar of European
format, he would not evade some fundamental principles of his
profession, so he would record (falling into contradiction): As a
general rule of thumb, ethnographic maps and ethnographic
manuscripts are chauvinistic: those who designed or wrote them
instantly claimed the transition territory for the nation they
themselves belonged to. They are not trusted in the professional
circles, but there are so many ignorant folks confused by them.
What is more, chauvinists do not tend to take account of the
assimilation process carried out in the transition territories, and
going back to the past, they reconstruct, mainly at random, the old
ethnographic states favourable to them and enter them on the maps as
if they were valid today. They go a step further, referring
to history, the former conquests and historical rights, not
admitting the current ethnographic situation.
How the reasoning of scientists could be blurred
by an ideology was proved by the words of the same Cvijić in 1907,
the year when the crisis about Bosnia and Herzegovina started
erupting: we are a nationally-politically dangerous country.
The world must know and ascertain that Serbia can operate in a
unit much larger than its territory. Some massive territorial
transformations can be initiated by Serbia. We should not flinch
from putting fear into the World, should it be useful for our
national interests. As if two men were struggling within him,
Cvijić writes: We should particularly be cautious about the
chauvinist arrogance which looks down on the neighbouring peoples
with contempt and humiliation, and which does not even hesitate to
verbally dispossess the neighbouring peoples of their undeniable
territories.
Which of these two Cvijić’s should be trusted
today?
The national connection with the Bosnian Middle
Ages and its preparation for the purpose of the unitary state
concept, used to be developed by the Serbian medievalists based on
three constructs. The first refers to the ethnic image of Bosnia
after the arrival of the Slavs, which V. Ćorović wrote about and
recorded it in The History of Bosnia in 1940: The Serbian
tribes grouped in the mountainous regions from the Sava and the
Pliva rivers to the Lim and the West Morava and from the Cetina to
the Bojana, which means mainly in the region of the present-day
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Referring to Porphyrogenitus, Ćorović
considers that the Bosnia of the 10th
century when Porphyrogenitus was writing his work […] was in the
system of Serbia. The Serbian tribes, undisturbed by anyone under
the supreme power of the Serbian rulers, used to live in the central
and eastern parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as in the inland
counties all the way to the Neretva. Thus he could proclaim the
Bosnian Queen Jelena (1395-1398) the first woman on the throne in
the Serbian lands.
How he would slip out into a contradiction from
this artificially created position can be seen in the following
paragraph: The entire territory inherited and acquired by Tvrtko,
except in the littoral towns, used to have only our national
element. He was the first to start the activities on drawing the
neighbouring regions to the Bosnian land, the time when both other
tribal factors were prevented from working independently, like the
Croats, or busy with other issues, like the Serbs. Insisting on
our national element, Ćorović indirectly admitted the
ethno-political individuality of medieval Bosnia.
In his book, whose scientific value cannot be
denied even today, but which is imbued with the political beliefs of
a royalist diplomat, Ćorović's aberrations end up in assessing the
causes of the fall of the Bosnian state, which again take him into
contradiction with his thesis that this land represents a part of
the Serbian political and ethnic space: The Bosnian history has
never yielded a single Marica
battle, let alone the magnificent Kosovo!
No Balkan state fell so soon, so light-mindedly, nor so shamefully.
In a fierce state of religious quarrel; devoid of feelings of true
national independence due to a too strong Hungarian pressure and
religious Roman activity: in recent years even class-divided, with
discontent peasants; long being the scene of civil wars, where
people joined whoever they chose and where battles were conducted in
the way they wished and the way they could; with a shattered family
and any other moral; Bosnia fell almost as an exemplar of a state,
which neither had any conscious historical missions nor clear
governing ideas. There is an open question why it escaped
Ćorović's notice that it was the Serbian state that had fallen under
Ottoman Rule four years before the Bosnian state, and many others
even before it. And if Serbs were those who had actually inhabited
medieval Bosnia, how did such a rapid, light-minded and shameful
downfall happen?
There are few
Serbian historians dealing with the political history of the
medieval Bosnia, who failed to emphasize, as Ćorović himself does,
that Bosnia as a political entity separated from the Serbia of
Prince Časlav Klonimirović in the first half of the 10th
century: The borders of Časlav’s state have a very wide scope.
The Serbia of that time comprised Bosnia to the Pliva, the Cetina
and Lijevno in the West. Ever since, the Serbian national name has
become a permanent mark for the tribes of the same origin and the
same traits. The emperor of Constantinople groups the Serbs
respectively as follows: the Bosnians, the Rascians (the
Serbs of Rascia state), the Travunians, the Konavlians, the
Diocleans, the Chlumians and the Neretvians, the tribes, which
actually got their respective names after the geographic regions
they lived in. One example would show how some people from the
Croatian side, only using a different national prefix, tried to
Croatize medieval Bosnia in ethnic and political ways and thus
answer the question: Whose is Bosnia?
Apart from having read
non-existent content into
Porphyrogenitus’ work,
Ćorović
is one of the numerous Serbian historians who represented the thesis
of the coronation of the Bosnian King Tvrtko I Kotromanić at the
Serbian-Orthodox monastery Mileševa – meanwhile initially a disputed
and then by means of scientific evidence rejected structure, which
had nestled in historiography via the works of Mavro Orbini
(1563-1614). Thus, excluding Ilarion Ruvarac, a “scientific”
consensus was created with a view to stamping in an ethnic character
to Bosnian medievalism and providing Serbs with a claim to be the
most constituent people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. That the
historiographical devil never sleeps here was proved by the wartime
promotion of Bosniaks to the fundamental Bosnia-Herzegovina
people.
Once the day has come in Serbian historiography
and new Ruvaracs have appeared, when those like him have
started reshaping the state of the Serbian historical consciousness,
a revolution could happen here – no sign of him for the time being
yet. The resolutions reached at the international conference held at
the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences from 13 to 15 December 1994
(Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age)
are favourable to such a conviction. The conference was also an
occasion for the Serbian historians to discuss the topic: Bosnia
and Herzegovina and Other Serbian Lands.
Bosnia and Herzegovina – a historical part of
the Croatian ethnic and national space (Croatia to the Drina River)
This historiography myth started getting its
outlines with the emergence of the Party-of-Rights ideology of Dr.
Ante Starčević at the end of the 20th
century, the time of the post-Illyrian process of the Croatian
national integration. The historical circumstances of the time were
favourable to the emergence of the integral Croatian political
ideology, whose aim was a homogenous nation capable of creating a
unified national state outside the framework of the Habsburg
Monarchy. In order to mobilize the nation, the Party-of-Rights
doctrine insisted on an image of an ideal nation in the past, which
Starčević equalized with the ruling Croatian people in the early
Middle Ages. This ideology of Starčević (he himself having the
reputation of being a friend of the Turks) comprised within this
context Bosnia and Herzegovina, proclaiming the Bosnian class of
beys (begovat) as a flower of Croatian nobility.
Some historians in the 20th
century developed the thesis of medieval Bosnia belonging to the
Croatian state on the basis of their close medieval
ecclesiastical-political ties, equating the proclaimed national
unity of the 19th
century with the similarity of the medieval cultures, thus ignoring
the genesis – the essential element of historical flow. Like on the
Serbian side, too, these vague understandings have tangled up into
an obsessive search for evidence and proofs and sheer collecting
data on the “geographic spread of this or that nation today (and
their claiming this or that area).” At the same time, the analyses
of the local and personal names of that time exclusively served to
identify with the modern national communities and, in this spirit,
to exercise their true, or more frequently, their fictional
historical rights. The most important among the numerous oversights
which have been feeding these narrow, passionate points of view, is
actually equating the modern with medieval notions of nation and
state. The notion of a historical right, a political
people and a political nation have been mixed up
and equated in this case. The modern historical science has made the
notion of the historical right relative, and reduced the
stereotypical images of the political nation to the notion of
nobility nationalism as one kind of proto-nationalism.
The Croatianism of the Catholics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, nothing
less than Serbism and Bosniakism of the Orthodox and the Muslims, is
an ex post facto product. Croatia to the Drina and the
Croatian flags at mountain Romanija, which could be heard of on the
eve of the recently ended war, are the echo of a tune coming from
the stale ideological wells of history. Meanwhile, the
standard-bearers disappeared without trace, or are comfortably
sitting in the shade of their own sinecures.
The processes of ethno-genesis in the region of
Bosnia and Herzegovina since the early Middle Ages to this date
followed their own special course at the end of which, in the late
19th century,
the Catholic substrate of Bosnia and Herzegovina transformed into
the Croatian nation, which should imply the identity community,
including the scale of values within which individuals and groups
are identified primarily on the basis of upbringing. Thus, this
Croatian example manifests the truth of the principle that nations
are more frequently a result of establishing a state rather than
a basis on which a state is created, and that we are
constantly at risk of assessing a people on the basis of the
programs they have never followed and the exams they have never sat.
Within this framework, knowing that the medieval
notion of a nation largely differs from its modern meaning, it is
necessary to observe the processes of ethno-genesis and
political-genesis in the region of medieval Bosnia and establish how
the initial Slavic name, probably including the Croatian one, too,
transformed into Bosnian.
The Bosnian medieval ethno-genesis, like
elsewhere in Europe, has comprised different ethnic groups whose
mutual mixing throughout centuries brought about a new people,
as it was called by R. Martins, who saw the light of day when the
first form of stable political power appeared in the 10th
and 11th
century. At least four different ethnic groups participated in its
creation: Illyrian, Roman, Avar and Slavic. It is
understandable that the latter, Slavic, has the most prominent
position – the language being the best evidence – however, the role
of others, primarily Illyrian, is not negligible.
The Illyrian ethnic group had had an entire
millennium and a half of a continuous life in this region before the
Slavic started settling Bosnia and Hum (Herzegovina) in the 7th
century. During this long time the Illyrians succeeded in forming a
very strong tribal alliance
which successfully resisted the Roman
pacification attempts; they also managed to develop economics and
their distinct culture, enriched with Greek and later Roman cultural
achievements. During the four and a half centuries of Roman rule,
the upper stratum of the Illyrian society was largely Romanised, but
simultaneously, the majority of the local population kept their own
language and the established way of life.
On the arrival of the Slavs, this numerous, tough
and warlike people could not have disappeared overnight. On the
contrary, the results of ethno-genetic research of the Bosnian-Hum
region, acquired by combining historical sources, archaeological
finds, ethnology and linguistics, prove that the merging process
of rather numerous indigenous, never Romanized and semi-Romanized
Illyrian ethnos with the Slavic newcomers, especially in some remote
areas, was very intensive and that the Illyrian native element
played a significant role in forming of the cultural, somatic and
mental traits of the Slavic population who still live in these areas
today. This is evident in the remains and surviving elements of
the folk culture, architecture, urban planning, sepulchral practice,
mythology, religious and magic beliefs, ornamental motifs, national
costumes and footwear, jewellery, music, dance, language and
socio-political organization. This was certainly induced by the fact
that, either directly or indirectly, destruction mostly hit urban
and a lot less remote areas, where the native population remained
unaffected by the most severe consequences. It was this
never-Romanized, but also Romanized Illyrian ethnos that ensured the
continuity in the development of culture in the Bosnian-Hum region
by the late Middle Ages and beyond. The cultural influences and the
role of Illyrians in the ethno-genesis of neighbouring countries are
also not negligible. In all likelihood, they were crucial in
Albania, while leaving visible traces in the region of medieval
Croatia.
The fact that old authors give prefix Illyrian
to the Bosnian medieval language and the population west of the
Drina far in the Middle Ages, reliving the Illyrian name in the
language, heraldry, the name for a political program in the period
of awaken national movements in the 19th
century, the Illyrian custom of tattooing, so-called tattoo,
preserved by the Bosnian Croats-Catholics to the present day,
surviving elements in folk art are some indications which emphasize
the role of the Illyrians in the medieval Bosnian ethno-genesis. It
is assumed that the very name of the Bosna River represents a
Slavicized form of the Illyrian name Bathinus (Basanius).
This thesis has been arguably disputed recently by M. Vego and M.
Hadžijahić, and new arguments have been stated to prove the
connection between Bosnia, the country and the Slavic tribe of the
same or similar name. A recently published Venetian document dated
12th April
1421 in Bosnia, naming the Bosnia River by its ancient name:
Batan, illustrates in words how inveterate the Illyrian-Slavic
terminology in this region is.
The role of the Avars was not negligible either,
especially in the process of establishing the first forms of a
state-political organization in the initial migratory period, when,
as we know, they gave leadership to a more numerous Slavic group. As
early as the first half of the 10th
century, Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus testified about the
significant remains of the Avar ethnos in Croatia (there are
still Avar descendants in Croatia and by their physical appearance,
you can tell they are Avars). The ruler’s title ban and
the administrative-territorial title župan (prefect), very
early rooted with the Slavs having arrived in the region where a
Bosnian state developed later, are most likely of Avar origin.
Relatively well preserved pre-Roman and Roman
toponomastics
and language expressions permanently
established in the vocabulary of the settled Slavic ethnos, among
other things testify to the Roman-Slavic symbiosis. There were, of
course, antagonisms, too, primarily on a religious basis, but with
time, as Christianity spread, they were eventually overcome. The
Romanized Illyrian stratum played a key role in this process.
What can be least likely spoken about is the role
of the Celtic and German component. The Celtic ethnos was limited
mostly to the northern and north-eastern parts of Bosnia and their
role in the overall cultural creation in the pre-Slavic period is
incomparable with the Illyrian. The Germanic (East-Gothic) authority
in Bosnia and Hum lasted too short (about 40 years) to leave deeper
traces behind, but it is not excluded that a part of this ethnic
group, after the restoration of the Byzantine authority in the mid 6th
century, permanently stayed in their old habitats and eventually
merged with the natives and Slavic newcomers.
After some time, the domestic toponymy pushed
back the Slavic names and remained in use, giving the group name to
the peoples included in the ethno-genesis process, primarily in the
region of the so called Ban (central) Bosnia. The population
of medieval Bosnia appear in the source material of the domestic,
eastern and western origin exclusively under the name of Bošnjani
(Bosnenses), which became familiar even in the regions which
relatively late (14th
century) came out of the Serbian state and became a part of Bosnia.
This, of course, was not a Bosnian specificity as the ethno-genesis
in the wider part of the South-Slav territory, where the Croatian or
Serbian name was not familiar
after certain time shot off to the surface the
local toponyms, which 'baptized' the new Slavic tribes. The examples
are the names of the inhabitants of Hum (Chlumians), Konavli (Konavlians),
Travunia (Travunians), Carinthia (Carantanians), Dioclea (Diocleans).
Even more educative name is for the Rascians, which has been
preserved for the Serbs up to the present day.
On top of this, the Slavs, just like other
barbarians, who built new social structures on the ruins of the
Roman empire, were not connected with an idea of the national unity,
as they, like other peoples, in terms of ethno-genesis, mutually
differed a lot (one Armenian source mentions 25 different peoples
being comprised under one common name the Slavs). Various
tribes and peoples managed to impose themselves as masters upon
other ethnic groups, who would after a shorter or a longer period
also adopt a new name, becoming one with the new masters. Mixed
marriages, especially between the members of the social elite,
unravelled these minorities, but did not cause them to vanish into
thin air.
Apart from an intermediary, somewhat safe
narration of Porphyrogenitus, there is not a single modern
historical source on the basis of which it would be possible to find
out to which extent the Croatian tribes settled the region of the
so-called Ban Bosnia. If the Croats did really settle the area,
which is not excluded, they must have presented a distinct minority
in the Slavic and Illyrian-Roman majority, which they eventually
became assimilated into. After all, it is common knowledge that the
process of developing the first forms of the political power with
the Croats, situated in the immediate hinterland of the Byzantine
towns at the Adriatic coast, happened faster than with the Serbs,
but, according to previous knowledge, even in these circumstances,
it was necessary to wait for the Croatian name to appear in
documents until 825 AD, the year when it was recorded in the famous
Trpimir’s Deed of Gift that the Croatian name would definitely be
affirmed at the Councils of Split (925 AD - 928 AD). The territory
in question was a region relatively densely populated by Croats; the
region where the nucleus of the Croatian early-medieval state was
formed.
Assuming that the Croats really did settle in
Bosnia, we should wonder, as I. Goldstein does, whether there is
a person today who would be able to identify in their family tree
the Croats who settled here in the 7th
century, after all the numerous emigrations and immigrations,
christenings and re-christenings, Islamization and de-Islamization,
which have occurred over the last few centuries on the ground of
Bosnia and Herzegovina. As they write, it seems that some would.
The reliance of the modern national sentiment on
the Middle Ages is not instructive in the first place because of the
fact that in the understanding of the nation at that time, as
evidenced by canonist Regino of Prüm in around 900 AD, the primacy
over pure racial categories was given to the sociological ones (customs,
language and law). To correctly understand this issue, it is
important to know that until as late as the end of the 18th
century the nation was not formed by so-called national unity, but
by the dominant, representative political class; it is out of the
question that we, until that time, could speak about a national
but exclusively about so-called noble nation.
Following the division of H. Schulze into
state and cultural nations, the BH Croats seem to find it
more appropriate to use the cultural nation as a term of
reference. Its present transformation into the concept of
exclusively state-political nature, along with the scientifically
improvable theory about so-called state register and spare
homeland, shows all the malignancy of the utopia that it is
possible to consciously influence the historical course which has
its own deeply rooted heritage. Thus it becomes crystal clear that
an artificial opposition between terms Bosnian and Croatian
could have been created as one of the war products. Among other
things, the euphoric converting the last Bosnian King, the ill-fated
Stjepan Tomašević, to the king of the Croatian name, language
and origin bears witness to this. The kind of self-oblivion
and their own historical self-denial which is being produced by the
CDU (Croatian Democratic Union) policy through a systematic
destruction of the Bosnian domiciliation as an essential component
of Croatianism today, threatens to completely extirpate the
authentic Croatian (which means Bosnian) culture in Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
Since the formation of nations on the European
continent has a thousand-year-old pre-history, each competent
analysis of ethnic relationships in medieval Bosnia will have to
take into account the spirit of that epoch and the actual state of
facts. If either ethnos – the Croats or Serbs – participated in the
process of ethno-genesis on the Bosnian ground, they were eventually
assimilated by the people named Bosnians (Bošnjani) which, after
all, was not an exception but rather the rule in the spirit of which
similar processes took place all over Europe.
“For actually a very long time,” as noted by Ž.
Ivanković, “in the course of the Bosnian history the national ethnic
awareness is out of the question for, the only way to show complete
awareness was through what was more dominant, which was developed in
the believer-unbeliever opposition.” The same author,
watching the modern nations being constituted within the entirety of
the South Slavic space, observes an essential component of the BH
Croatianism: giving a political meaning to it through the Franciscan
phenomenon and Illyrism as a romantic, but a no-less-important
form. The political concept of Bosnia and Herzegovina Croatianism
was formulated in this first phase: “constituting the nation in the
modern meaning of the term, the integration of the national space,
bridging the class gap, the democratization of public life, economy,
phrasing the national interests through an ideology, a political
program, a cultural metamorphosis, etc, and all this on the basis of
the obtained freedoms and the degree of the experience reached in
the West.” Since then “we have been able to officially speak about
the Croats in Bosnia or at least about the Bosnian specificity of
Croatianism.” Transforming Bosnian Catholics into the national
Croats – transforming a people into a nation – was a
time-consuming and a long-term process, viscerally connected not
only with the political and cultural affairs in Bosnia but also in
neighbouring Croatia and wider, as shown by P. Korunić.
Profiling the Bosnian type of Croatianism has
been summarized by I. Lovrenović:
An individual and collective,
psychological and historical, cultural and political habits
and profile are created over centuries of major negative
impact of particular circumstances relating to the political
boundaries between the worlds […] Culturally (within an
imagined entirety of the western culture), organizationally
(within the entirety of the Franciscan Order and Catholic
Church), nationally (within the Croatian national and
cultural totality) – this profile gains the status of a
variety. This variety, of course, corresponds with the
entirety, but is significantly differentiated in regard to
it. The features of this differentiation are not so striking
to convert a variety into an entity, but are striking enough
to be quickly and easily stopped from being a constant
obstacle to a total correspondence, that is – to merge into
a unique identity.
Reducing the process to its most reasonable
dimension, to the language and culture, the phenomenon of
Croatianism today can be properly illuminated only in its
three-kind manifestation […] in three striking
cultural-civilizing subtypes: Mediterranean-Roman, Pannonian-Middle-European,
Balkan-Oriental.
It only shows that in such a complicated cultural
manifestation, in this unique case in the European culture, whose
destiny is to be “a participant and an heir to everything this
circle has created and touched, his entire register of shapes and
touches”, the concept of metropolitan paradigm, the model of
centre and periphery cannot operate successfully. In its
historical default polycentrism and polymorphism, the
Bosnian-Croatian component cannot be observed superficially, like a
“supplement of a lower rank”.
In the light of this three-kind paradigm,
we can speak only about its harmonious and productive dominance
but not in the manner which would do away with one component for
the sake of fictitious crippling purity, but in the manner of
its full affirmation which can only set the Croatian culture in the
place which it objectively deserves: in the planetary cultural
unity.
That the Bosnian Croatianism is impossible to
reduce to an ethnic pendant of so-called main history is
illustrated in probably the most controversial book of
Bosnia-Herzegovina/Croatian historiography: Etnička povijest
Bosne i Hercegovine (Ethnic History of Bosnia and Herzegovina)
by Fra Dominik Mandić, published in Rome in 1967. This voluminous
book with 554 pages, a result of extensive research which included
references and sources in various languages, lived for a long time
in a scientific “semi-hiding”, which additionally contributed to the
creation of mythically-conspiratorial atmosphere around it and its
author. Back to my student days, I remember that each lobby talk
about Mandić and his book was as a rule carried out in a low voice.
I also remember this book being one of the first “forbidden” books I
encountered after having completed my studies and that reading it
confronted me with my university knowledge. Mandić’s theses on the
eminently Croatian character of the ethno-political history of
Bosnia and Herzegovina (especially the Bosnian Middle Ages) used to
feed the myth of Croatia to the Drina River, Mandić not being
its creator though.
The thesis on the Croatian ethnic root of the BH
Muslims (Bosniaks) used to be developed by Franjo Tuđman, who, in as
early as 1965 wrote the following: As it has been considered in
Croatia that Bosnia and Herzegovina have been Croatian lands since
time immemorial on the basis of the historical and ethnic right, for
they were mainly the part of the old Croatian state, for the Muslim
population in the great majority was of the Croatian origin, which
used to be proved by their ikavian dialect, it was this issue that
caused most fierce confrontations of the two nationalisms {Serbian
and Croatian}. In his book Nacionalno pitanje u suvremenoj
Europi (National Issue in Modern Europe) printed in Zagreb in
1990, Tuđman further developed this idea: When objectively
considering the numerical composition of the Bosnia and Herzegovina
population, we must not ignore the fact that the Muslim population
in their vast majority, by their ethnic composition and their
speech, undoubtedly has Croatian descent, and that, in spite of
historically created cultural-religious particularities, always,
whenever they had a chance, they voted by the vast majority as an
integral part of the Croatian nation. Starting from these facts,
there is a Croatian majority in the population of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, and their economic connection with other Croatian parts
is of such a nature that neither Croatia within the present borders,
nor separated Bosnia and Herzegovina have conditions for individual,
normal development. Founded on the mythical images of Muslims as
Croats, the counterpart to Greater-Serbian arrogation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Tuđman’s political program, along with other factors,
pushed the BH Croats in the recent war into an abyss measurable with
Bleiburg’s.
How Tuđman’s conclusions correspond with Mandić’s
is clearly explained in the final consideration in Ethnic History
of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Etnička povijest BiH): The native
Croatian population in Bosnia and Herzegovina changed their state
rules and their religion, but it was always the total number of
Croat Catholics, Bogomils and Muslims that made the majority in the
state. Therefore, despite all the historical hardships and changes,
Bosnia and Herzegovina ethnically remained permanently Croatian
lands. During the Turkish occupation in 1463, Bosnia and Herzegovina
had: Croat Catholics about 83%, Croat Bogomils about 10%, the Croats
converted to Orthodox creed about 2%, non-Slavic Vlachs, mostly
Catholic, about 2%, and genuine ethnic Serbs about 3%. So, in 1463,
there were about 95% of Croats in present-day Bosnia and
Herzegovina. These impossible to prove conclusions, especially
when it comes to percentages, were possible to reach by Mandić only
in the course of systematic inputting of non-existent data into
historic sources.
In the year of publishing his Ethnic History
(Etnička povijest), and criticizing some views of Nada
Klaić, whose work he rated as inaccurate and harmful for the
Croatian people, Mandić wrote in Hrvatska revija (Croatian Review):
The national history, treated truthfully and faithfully, in its
entire breadth, is one of the most powerful means for supporting the
national awareness, strengthening the people’s power and making
people capable of sacrifices and efforts for cultural, social and
national achievements. He elaborated on it saying that it was his
scientific and patriotic duty to warn the Croatian public both at
home and abroad against the faulty views and harmful effects of the
stated pieces of writing to raising the young Croatian historians
and for the Croatian people in general.
In the Preface Ethnic History (Etnička
povijest), Mandić elaborated on it more explicitly: The
fundamental question in the history of Herzeg-Bosnia and in reality
today is the question of people. A special attention has been given
to studying religious development in these lands, for nowhere else
did faith change so much and affect the people’s affiliation than in
Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the span of less than a thousand years,
the ancestors of most natives living in Bosnia and Herzegovina today
have radically changed their religious affiliation five times, which
left consequences in the people. What we are talking about here
is a correct observation, however, not followed by correct
conclusions.
The Mandić’s statements comprise the paradox of
ethno-confessional nationalism: Throughout history the world has
thoroughly changed several times – if the dead stood up, they would
wonder where they were – but the fictions in people’s minds resist
all the changes by building a world of imaginary images. As evidence
to this stands the statement of a recently arrested General of the
Croatian Army Ivan Andabak: We have been betrayed by the {Bosniaks}.
I had the highest opinion about them, we cooperated in emigration,
there were many of them in my formation, but then they betrayed us,
stabbed a knife in our back. They turned away from Croatianism,
having given up their roots.
Such views are a relapse of so-called national
renaissance rooted in the 19th
century, which S.M.Džaja, evaluated as a re-conquest of the
entire national history, both cultural and political,
the Middle Ages being the orientation epoch, the language and South
Slavic ethnic relations having been accepted as the criteria.
It is the works of younger generation of the
Croatian medievalists I. Goldstein and N. Budak who, together with
the book by S. M. Džaja (Nationalism and Denominationalism of
Bosnia and Herzegovina) do show that none of these pruned
history images have stood serious scientific criticism. In his book
Croatian Medievalism (Zagreb, 1995) – one of the best
syntheses of the Croatian medieval studies – eminent Zagreb
professor Tomislav Raukar places medieval Bosnia where it really
belongs: in the peripheral area of Croatian history. It is
also in this book of Braudel-like inspiration that he emphasized
that the social individuality of medieval Bosnia was shaped at the
junction of eastern and western actions, and that the social and
state individualization were also the basis upon which its
ethno-culture was established. Raukar’s inventive observations
emerged on the trace of the modern historical science free of
ideological foreign elements. Last but not least: he held the same
sources in his hands as Mandić. Along with this purified scientific
approach live with the younger generations of the Croatian
historians the old pseudo-scientific viruses about medieval
Bosnia being a territory.
Once the history of the Bosnia and Herzegovina
historiography has been written sine ira et studio, it will
be of utmost importance to establish how the political views of
authors affected their scientific conclusions. Dominik Mandić with
his Ethnic History of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a
meritorious historian will take his prominent place in this history.
For the time being, this book can be understood as evidence of one
unfortunate controversy: Mandić, a respected historian, erudite,
paleographer, philologist, and theologian facing the Mandić who
allowed ideological contamination to lead him astray.
In one of his recent works (The Drina Border –
Meaning and Development of the Mythologem, in: Historical Myths
in the Balkans, Collection of Works, The History Institute in
Sarajevo, Sarajevo, 2003), using strong scientific argumentation,
Ivo Goldstein buried The Croatia to the Drina myth. Sooner or
later, the authentically Croatian understanding of Bosnia and
Herzegovina will have to take this path. This will primarily require
a deep transformation as viewed by the Catholic Church hierarchy in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, which, back in the communist regime, was a
synonym of the political opposition, but in the new circumstances,
(even if with kid gloves) adhering to ethno-nationalism, has often
become a bearer of the sub-culture of the political religion with
the sacral notions of nation and state. The statement uttered by
Khristofor Sabev immediately after 1989, referring to the Bulgarian
Orthodox Church is applicable to this hierarchy today. On that
occasion, he said: “The church has been used for political ends so
far but it will be used for ecclesiastical ends from now on.”
The myth of the coronation of Tvrtko I Kotromanić
at the Serbian – Orthodox monastery Mileševo in 1377
The scientifically-impossible-to-prove thesis on
the Serbian origin of the Bosnian crown as a classic
historiographical myth has nestled in historical science through the
work of an author from Dubrovnik, an ideologist and historian Mavro
Orbini, published under title Il Regno degli Slavi (The Kingdom
of the Slavs) in 1601 in Pesaro. Several generations of national
and foreign historians carried this myth over, until in the
seventies and the eighties of the 20th
century, Đ. Basler, P. Anđelić and S. M. Džaja came up with
counter-arguments which made it scientifically irrelevant. This is
not the right place to retell this interesting detail from Bosnian
medieval history; it is enough to draw attention to some facts which
offer a solution to the entire issue:
Orbini himself, who in his compendium on the
South Slav history identified the locality Mili from Central
Bosnia as Mileševo (which did not mean equating it with the
Serbian Mileševa at all), pointed out that ban Stjepan II Kotromanić
“in Mileševo in Bosnia erected during his life [...] and was
buried there, the church of Friars Minor of St Nicholas”. Judging by
this crystal clear fact alone, no controversy about the coronation
venue of the first Bosnian king was possible, especially because the
Serbian kings used to be crowned at Peter's Church, or in Žiča or
Peć, which excludes the Serbian-Orthodox Mileševa from all the
combinations. In addition, the metropolitan of Mileševa,
authenticated only in the later time of Stjepan Vukčić Kosača
(1434-1466), besides the archbishop, or patriarch after 1346, was
not empowered to conduct a royal coronation.
Equating Mili and Mileševa can be found
in Franciscan Martirologij (Martyrology) from 1369, as well
as with national chroniclers of the 17th
and 18th
century, among others with Pavle Ritter Vitezović and Fra Bernardin
Nagnanović.
In his solemn charter issued on 10th
April, 1378 addressing the inhabitants of Dubrovnik, Tvrtko himself
says that he went to the Serbian land and that having gone there
he was crowned.
By the end of 1408, Hungarian king Sigismund of
Luxemburg (1387 – 1437) imposed on the Bosnian nobility an
obligation to be adorned with the crown of the said Bosnian
kingdom, as solemnly and honorably as late king Tvrtko ruled. He
was obviously well versed in the details of the coronation of Tvrtko
I, who, not being Orthodox could not be crowned at a
Serbian-Orthodox monastery.
The Bosnian crown is of an endogenous origin, and the
person who, in the spirit of the bishopric competences prevailing
all over Europe, crowned the first Bosnian king could only be the
djed (‘grandfather’) of the Bosnian Church – its real bishop,
as he used to title himself in the beginning of 1404. Both
practically and theoretically, this event defined the content of
the Hungarian-Bosnian relations until 1463, and later, when by
appointing the puppet kings in Bosnia until 1477, the Ottomans and
Hungarians continued the age-old conflict in this area.[2]
The Myth of Bogomilism
The so-called Bogomils had their place in
historiography reserved in the second part of the 19th
century by no one else but one such scientific authority as in his
time was (and still is) Franjo Rački. In its basis, as claimed by A.
Vaillant, Bogomilism of the Bosnian Church is the deed of Franjo
Rački and Croatian Romanticism. This is, he notes, the
beautiful national heresy, which the Croats used to be proud of, and
which competed with the Czech Hussitism.
The focus of the Bogomil myth is in the statement
that medieval Bosnia was the centre of a neo-manichean-dualistic
doctrine that stood in opposition to the official teachings of the
Catholic and Orthodox Church. Moreover, it also stood in the thesis
that the elitist doctrine in Bosnia had mass supporters.
In the last 50 years there have been a number of
critical studies which shed light on the ecclesiastical
circumstances in medieval Bosnia in a new way. Their research, with
some of my own observations, I would summarize in the following
conclusions:
Safvet-bey-Bašagić-Redžepašić (1870-1934), the
author and orientalist, first introduced in 1892 the Bogomil
ideology and the idea of an uninterrupted continuity between
medieval and Ottoman Bosnia in all relevant biological and
governmental segments, as indicated by S. M. Džaja, into the Muslim-Bosniak
historical consciousness, and then, in his historic compendium
Kratka uputa u prošlost Bosne i Hercegovine od 1463 do 1850 (Brief
Instructions on the Past of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1463 to 1850),
Sarajevo, 1900. Through the project of integral Bosniakism, the
Austro-Hungarian governor in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Benjamin Kálay
(1882-1903), confronting it with Serbian and Croatian pretentions to
Bosnia and Herzegovina, supported this national concept for
political reasons.
By the time the first accusations on account of
heresy occurred at the turn of the 12th
to the 13th
century, medieval Bosnia had already had a half-millennium-long
tradition of Catholic Slavic-Glagolitic ritual practice, which is
visible in documents and archeological artifacts. Compared to
Hungary, where Catholicism spread in its Latin variety, medieval
Bosnia had had a much longer Christian tradition by the time the
first accusations occurred.
The first denunciations which brought Bosnia in
connection with heresy were started by Vukan, the Grand Prince of
Dioclea (Duklja), who, having seen that he was losing the political
battle for power, in this way tried to get closer to Pope Innocent
III (1198-1216) and ensure the promotion of the Bar diocese to the
rank of metropolitan. At the same time, we should not lose sight of
the fact that the first Serbian King Stefan the First-Crowned was
crowned with the papal crown in 1217, in the era of redefining the
relations between the Eastern and Western Church in South-East
Europe after the collapse of Byzantium in the Fourth Crusade in
1204. Later, this mechanical, ideological and clichéd vocabulary was
taken over by the Hungarian rulers who, in the service of the
universal program of papacy from the 13th
century tried to Latinize the Bosnian Slavic diocese and spread the
influence of the Hungarian ecclesiastical structures. It is
indicative that the Hungarian rulers in their subsequent relations
with Bosnia activated the accusation vocabulary only when it was
necessary to achieve their political goals. On the contrary, in the
era of the steady relations with Bosnian rulers, the majority of
whom were included in the Hungarian feudal system, there is no trace
of such accusations.
The Bosnian Church, which appears in domestic
sources for the first time in 1326/29, for the entire duration of
its activity until 1459, was neither numerically strong nor was it
ever focused on working in masses (it was not without reason that
Guest Radin and a group of his followers, who sought asylum at their
region in 1466, were called a sect by the Venetians) due to
the absence of a territorial-pastoral network, on which the Catholic
Church based its actions with the people. Due to its rather rigorous
rules, with the Spartan classification of sins in which each
deviation from the regulations was treated as a mortal
(unpardonable) sin, from the very start, the Church could not be
attractive to an ordinary man of conformist nature. The Bosnian
Church started losing this original ascetic feature from the early
15th century,
if not even earlier, laicizing itself and acquiring the living code
of the noble feudal environment. On the other side, the Catholic
Church of the mid 14th
century through Franciscans, but also through the secular clergy,
developed diversified pastoral activities which comprised within its
scope a substantial part of the Bosnian population; its pastoral
achievements in the years before the fall of the Bosnian state in
1463 were evidenced by the Patriarch of Constantinople Genadius
Scholarius.
The doctrine of the Bosnian Church was not
primarily focused on the negation of the Christological principles,
but on the criticism of the universal Church.
Medieval Bosnia did not know internal religious
tensions on a larger scale, which were recorded in France in the
early 13th
century and in Bohemia of the first half of the 15th
century. Franciscan monasteries and the hiže (houses) of the
Bosnian Church, concentrated in the area of central Bosnia, in
the king’s land, all the time coexisting quietly and without
disputing.
As a rule, the historical sources written in the
Latin language speak about the “heresy” of the Bosnian Church,
whereas, conversely, historiography has proved that the appearance
of the Bosnian Church cannot be associated with the tradition and
the background of the Western-European mystical-dualistic movements
from the latter half of the 12th
and early 13th
century. The illuminated liturgical books (Biblical manuscripts),
which arose from the lap of the Bosnian Church, were written in the
spirit of the Christian doctrine and loyalty to the traditional
Slavic-Cyril-Methodius linguistic standards. A paleographic-artistic
analysis of the Biblical texts of the Bosnian Church speaks about
their reliance on the older Dalmatian-Croatian Glagolitic models and
the eminently European dimension being reflected in the presence of
the both prevailing Western-European artistic styles, first
Romanesque and then Gothic. Both the Western-European “modernism”
and the Bosnian “traditionalism” have been imbued in the Biblical
manuscripts in the most artistically authentic manner, Hval’s
Miscellany (Codex) and Hrvoje’s Missal, liturgical books especially
made for Herzeg Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić in the early 15th
century. A fruitful cooperation of the national scribes and foreign
(Dalmatian-Italian) illuminators resulted in artistic creations
recognizable by their Western-European gothic style, but also by the
regional Bosnian “handwriting”. Symbolically stated: Bosnia brought
into this relationship a patron (Maecenas), a scribe and the
national scripts (Glagolitic and Cyrillic), and Western Europe
“donated” the artistic style and illuminators. This model actually
illustrates the mechanism on which the international culture of the
medieval Europe rested, marked by global art trends and local
varieties.
In harmony with their public views but
frequently, also with actual political interests, the established
Churches of that time used to decide whether a kind of teaching was
heretical or not. How rigid observance of this principle in its
essence proves to be unsustainable is illustrated by the following
case of St Methodius, who was proclaimed a heretic by the German
prelates, which provided the reason for sending him to the dungeon.
It would be more instructive to speak about the types of piety,
as done by J. Huizinga, rather than about heresy. J. Burckhardt
noted how intensively religious old heretics had been compared to
the present-day Christians.
Being a state church (J. Šidak), the
Bosnian Church filled the gap in the social tissue of the medieval
Bosnian state which had been caused by dislocating the seat of the
Catholic Diocese in Đakovo in the mid 13th
century. In the ecclesiastical vacuum which lasted until the
establishment of the Franciscan Vicariate in 1339/1340, a special
Christian denomination developed being precisely defined by the
well-informed people of Dubrovnik who marked it as the Bosnian
faith. The same people of Dubrovnik used term the Roman
faith as its antipode. Based on this division between the
Bosnian and Roman faith – in whose background there were political
motives – there developed with the Bosnian landed gentry a special
denominational sensibility, which, as in the case of Hrvoje Vukčić,
found its exact expression in adherence to one and (or) the other
church organization.
An accompanying part of the myth of Bogomilism
represents the Myth of the Bogomil character of the medieval
tombstones, stećak tombstones, which spread out over the last
decades of the 19th
century. After an entire century of dealing with this phenomenon,
historical science abandoned this position and is today approaching
it from a different point of view. The historical path of this
demythologization I outline in my monograph on stećak tombstones.
Bosnia silently fell in 1463
The myth of the rapid fall of the medieval Bosnian
state was created under the impression of events from the spring and
summer of 1463, when the Turkish sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror
trampled over Bosnia. This myth seasoned with so-called Bogomil
treason, was fabricated from the pen of the then papal legate in
Bosnia, Bishop Nikola of Modruš and created as an attempt to justify
their own wrong policy (cancelling the usual tribute to the sultan
and the concessions made for the Hungarian king Mathias Corvinus,
suggested to Stjepan Tomašević from Rome) which accelerated this
already inevitable collapse.
All other sources only mention the sudden
breakthrough of the Ottoman troops to Bosnia, battles at Bobovac and
other Bosnian towns, defenders’ resistance, destruction and mass
exodus of the population, widespread panic and chaotic fleeing
towards the Adriatic Sea and islands.
The fall of the Bosnian state under the rule of
the Ottoman Empire is a result of a number of mutually conditioned
factors, both internal and external. The 1463 collapse was just the
finale of the process commenced long ago, the time when the Bosnian
and Turkish armies first clashed at Bileća at the end of the 14th
century. Simple calculation itself says that Bosnia “was falling”
under Ottoman rule for almost 80 years.
The myth of continuous Bosnian statehood
This myth has a wartime date and is related to the
act of the international recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 6
April, 1992 and is intended to be presented as a crucial piece of
evidence for the recognition of this statehood. Treading close upon
are the ideas such as proclaiming year 1387 the year of the
establishment of the alleged Bosnian University as well as the idea
of erecting a mausoleum in the centre of Sarajevo where the bones of
the members of the Kotromanić dynasty would be laid. They are
harmonized with the claim, stated for the first time, that Bosnian
Queen Katarina (Catherine) herself took her children Sigismund and
Katarina (Catherine) in 1463 and gave them over to the conqueror of
Bosnia, sultan Mehmed II.
The medieval Bosnian state as a historical fact
can be traced in continuity in the sources since the 10/11th
century until the Turkish invasion in 1463. This state organization
(it would be more appropriate to call it a form of political
power) went through different development stages from the
initial establishment of the early feudal forms of the political
power in so-called Banate of Bosnia, over the zenith during the
reign of Tvrtko I Kotromanić in the latter part of the 14th
century to its collapse in 1463. According to its feudal-legal
nomenclature the Bosnian state belonged to the type of a medieval
monarchy developed in east-central Europe.
Notched by the internal frictions,
undermined by destructive demeanor of the
Hungarian rulers who, keeping the Bosnian Bishop in the sphere of
their own influence, interfered with its political stabilization and
permanent Turkish military and economic ruination, finally
insufficiently unsupported by the Catholic West, Bosnia succumbed to
the indisputably stronger Ottomans. The last Bosnian King Stjepan
Tomašević, as the bearer of state-dynasty legitimacy, was captured
and beheaded following the orders of Sultan Fatih in Jajce in the
summer of 1463.
According to the feudal-legitimist understanding,
it was only Matija, the son of the former anti-king Radivoj,
otherwise the brother of King Stjepan Tomaš (Tomash), who at that
time could have claimed right on the Bosnian crown. The Turkish
Sultan himself was aware of this, so, in his further invasion of
Bosnia – after the Hungarian counter-attack in the fall of 1463 – he
appointed him the Bosnian king in 1465 wanting to create the
illusion of the royal power continuity. The Hungarian King Mathias
Corvinus decided to take a similar step including in this game a
Slavonian noble Nikola Iločki, who bore the title of the King of
Bosnia for a period (1471-1477). These deceptive attempts of
restoring the kingdom of Bosnia are the best illustration of how
conquerors themselves had to take account of the state and adapt
their plans to it. It was only for political reasons that the
Turkish sultan ignored the requests of Queen Katarina (Catherine)
Kosača to free
her children Sigismund and Katarina
(Catherine), who had been captured by the Turks in the days of the
Bosnian catastrophe, which is understandable regarding the fact they
were legitimate successors to the Bosnian crown. Thus, King Tomaš’s
widow, alongside Queen Mara, wife of Stjepan Tomašević, became the
last legitimate successor to the Bosnian crown.
Five days before her death, in her will composed
on 20 October 1478 in Rome, where she took shelter in 1464, Queen
Katarina (Catherine) Kosača left the claim on the Bosnian crown and
the Kingdom – should her children, who had been converted to Islam,
not return to the Christian faith – to the Holy See and the Roman
Curia.
The subsequent course of the events did not make
it possible to implement the will of the penultimate Bosnian Queen.
The area of the former Bosnian kingdom was fully incorporated within
the Bosnian Pashaluk by the Ottoman Empire after the fall of the
Hungarian Banate of Jajce in 1527.
Hence, using scientific vocabulary we cannot
speak about a thousand-year continuity of the Bosnian statehood
today, since there is no legal continuity between the Bosnian
Kingdom and the Bosnian Pashaluk. However, it is possible to speak
about one kind of continuity, namely the continuity of tradition
which was preserved within the Province of the Franciscan Order of
Bosna Srebrena (Bosnia Argentina) as well as in the emigrant circles
of the Bosnian Catholic population and clergy in West Europe of that
time.
Insisting on this myth today serves only daily
political interests of establishing ownership rights over the state
of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its further destruction.
The myth of the ideal Bosnian coexistence
Simultaneously with the pseudo-scientific thesis
on the continuous Bosnian statehood from the Muslim-Bosniak side,
the myth of ideal Bosnian coexistence is being placed. How harmful
and dangerous these theses are is, among other things, illustrated
by a recent statement of one municipal leader from Vareš, who in a
dispute with the local friars emphasized the alleged mercy of Sultan
Mehmed El-Fatih in treating the Bosnian Catholics in 1463, to which,
well, their descendants today return ingratitude. The real picture
of Bosnian coexistence as a historical category created in the
centuries-long contact of different cultural-civilizing and
religious values is far from ideal and cannot be used as a model for
solving of its current problems which arose after the collapse of
the communist system, the war destruction and post war brokering.
The phenomenon of Bosnian coexistence was formed
during the four-century-long Ottoman occupation in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, when denominational circumstances in this area became
more complicated and exacerbated. It was then that Bosnia and
Herzegovina became a meeting point and crossroads of four
civilizations: Western-European-Catholic, Byzantine-Orthodox,
Oriental-Islamic and Jewish, and all this in the state-political
framework of the Ottoman-theocratic Empire. The four denominational
groups remained mostly within their ossified psychosocial
frameworks, in a kind of latent antagonism which grew parallel with
the crisis of the Ottoman administrative and economic system. This
phenomenon can be located primarily in the world of so-called “high
culture”, which Ivo Andrić wrote about in his both glorified and
disputed Letter from 1920:
But there have always been
a lot of false bourgeois courtesy in the Bosnian civil
circles, wisely deceiving themselves and others using sound
words and an empty ceremonial. This somehow hides the
hatred, but does not do away with it and does not stop it
from growing. I fear that even under the cover of all the
contemporary maxims, the old instincts and Cainitic plans
may be napping in these circles, and that they will live on
until the bases of the material and spiritual life in Bosnia
have been changed.
On the other hand, in
the domain of the so-called folk culture, there are processes
of coalescing and mutual grafting of cultural events – creating a
whole new cultural quality. In fact, “just coming down into the
world of everyday life and folk culture, we can observe a
complementary dimension of the isolated life of the three high
cultures, and assemble a complete picture of life in Bosnia.” It is
best evident in the folk art (craft), vocabulary, diet, clothing,
housing and dwelling, which means, in all vital manifestations of
life. This is the ambivalence in which the life and co-life of the
denominational groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina went on with their
heavy mental burden resulting from their reliance on out-of-Bosnia
cultural and political centers respectively – the habit which even
today makes them “extrapolated peoples” (S. M. Džaja).
The state of the Bosnian spirit between a latent
hatred and a true idyll was defined by the author of book
Labirint i pamćenje (Maze and Memory) (later titled Unutarnja
zemlja/Internal Land) in his interview to Zagreb’s Erasmus
in the spring of 1993:
The spiritual state in
Bosnia could be at the same time defined as the state of
both latent hatred and a true idyll, being completely right
in both cases […]. The shape this ambivalent state would
take at one moment depended solely on the specific political
constellation. It is evident that the state we are
witnessing today is a result of a dreadfully negative
political constellation. It has just unearthed and taken
advantage of the existing hatred-shaped substratum of the
Bosnian living. In other words, the way Bosnia would take in
history depended solely on a political life input, and if it
is so, and I am certain it is, then it, unfortunately means
that Bosnia had not had a chance to build its own
sustainable political subjectivity, which essentially is its
historical tragedy.
What it is all about, according to S. M. Džaja, is
the fact that the three culture systems and three mutually distinct
societies […] occurred during Ottoman Empire, which have been
increasingly mutually interwoven by modern history since the
Austro-Hungarian invasion, however, neither having touched their
distinctions nor having succeeded in taking them into a contemporary
authentic political consensus. The way out of this state the same
author finds in the following:
The key to the future of
Bosnia is not, actually in the restitution of its model,
which, according to some fantasts, had been completed in as
early as 1609 and which could serve as an organization
pattern of modern Europe, rather than in an accurate
diagnosis of all its cultural values; in search of a new
model in the spirit of a growing mutual respect and
recognition, in practicing a free political discourse […].
What the true future of Bosnia will be will not depend only
on the activities of international political factors, but
perhaps even more in true readiness of the political elite
for an authentic consensus or, again, on their further
insistence on reconquista, strife and anarchy.
Continuation of a historiographical war
Intoxication with history and unconditioned tendency
to always present arguments for anything relating to history, among
all other reasons, has paved the way for the most recent tragedy of
Bosnia and Herzegovina. And what is actually history? Is it possible
to comprise it in its entirety or does it just entrust us with what
it wants itself? On the pages of the preface to Löwith’s book,
World History and Occurrence of Salvation, the Goethe’s reply to
this question has been written down:
Even if you could illuminate
and study all the sources: what would you find? Nothing but
one big long-known truth whose confirmation does not require
going far away: namely, the truth that everything was
miserable at all times and in all states. People have always
feared and suffered; tortured and abused one another; made
this short life of other people miserable, not being able to
appreciate nor enjoy the beauty of the world and the
sweetness of existence, given to them by this wonderful
world. Just few merrily enjoyed it. After experiencing life
throughout a certain period of time, the majority most
probably wanted to abandon it, rather than to start from
scratch. What used to make them or what still makes them
attached to life was and still is the fear of dying. This is
what it is, this is what it was; this is what it will
probably be. This is a man’s destiny. Do we really need
further evidence?
In exactly so far as we are today from the mere
possibility to reach a just and lasting peace, after the Dayton
peace improvisation, we are as far from a scientific consensus on
the contentious issues of the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It
is indicative how the solving of these issues is conditioned by one
another and how closely they have been connected with each other.
If it is not out of place to predict, then it
will be necessary to say that there is little hope, better to say,
there is not a single reason for being optimistic for these issues
to be positively resolved in the foreseeable future. Another option
is more likely, i.e. that a violent division of Bosnia and
Herzegovina on an ethnic basis will follow the continuation of a
long-initiated and never declared historiographical war, now also
intensified by mutually committed crimes. The indications of this
process have already been present in history and historiography
textbooks, in which, as if by command, the old myths have been
reached out for. So, each people, along with a part of the territory
won, will also have the sad privilege of their own historiography
colored with legends and myths. They themselves will do their best
never to allow these hatreds and atavisms to be extinguished;
naturally, new ones will blaze up, too.
What will remain for those who do not succumb to
this “messianic” call, is a painstaking but an appreciated way of
dealing with the ossified stereotypes of
positivistic-romantic-autistic reflection of history. One of the
possible approaches is offered by the history of culture; having
ample materials, they could write the survival history in the past
of Bosnia and Herzegovina starting from proto-Illyrian time to
present day, catch an artist or craftsman’s movement, tattoos and
wood carving, vocabulary and clothing, sepulchral architecture and
folk embroidery, diet and housing and dwelling. They could recognize
life in all of its numerous and magnificent forms.
This turning-point in historiography should be
founded on the premise that history here has never happened but just
reflected, guided by the Löwith’s thought:
Although intending to
modernize the opinion of other periods and other people,
historical awareness must start from itself alone. The
generations living today should acquire, reflect and study
history all over again. We may or may not understand the old
authors in light of our contemporary prejudices, as we read
the book of history backwards starting from the last to the
first page.
Adhering to these principles, a Bosnian historian
would have this tremendous privilege to present to his fellow
countrymen this sensitive speech of different cultures and
civilizations which, independent of their ideological barriers, have
been conducting this substantial dialogue on this ground for
centuries. In this way, it would become crystal clear that a
civilization is at the same time both an existence and a movement,
and that civilizations or cultures in all their abundant
manifestation of oceans of customs, forcing situations, consents,
decisions, confirmations, which are all sheer realities to all of us
appearing to be personal and spontaneous in spite of frequently
coming from afar (F. Braudel).
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Univ. prof. Dubravko Lovrenović is one of the leading
European Medievalist specialized in the Balkans, pre-modern and
modern political history
[1] This work was initially
published in the journal Erazmus (Zagreb, 1996), and after
that its extended version also appeared in the author’s book
Bosanska kvadratura kruga [Squaring the
Bosnian circle] (Dobra knjiga, Sarajevo, 2012).
[2] I should mention that
in the first version of this paper published in 1996, I supported
the thesis – which, later turned out to be wrong – that the first
Bosnian king was crowned by the Vicar of the Bosnian Franciscan
vicarage.
01.06.2015
Bosnia and Herzegovina:
The final phase of genocide?
Director IFIMES: Bakhtyar Aljaf
Recent
events in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) have once again reminded how
fragile peace and stability remain in this country. Although the
European Union (EU) has announced it would pursue a more active
policy on Bosnia and Herzegovina after the formation of new state
government, other events may prevent the realisation of that
promise. The Ukraine conflict, the situation in the Middle East and
North Africa, an alarming increase in the number of refugees from
Africa and the fact that EU still has to devote much of its
attention to Greece as one of its Member States – all these elements
represent a real threat that the West Balkans will again be pushed
down on the list of priorities of European politics.
The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina has culminated after latest
actions taken by the Ministry of the Interior of Republika
Srpska(MUP RS) to apprehend the members of marginalised Bosniak
ethnic minority living in the territory of Republika Srpska (RS), an
entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Those are the citizens who had
been expelled from their homes during the 1992-1995 war in BH. This
operation has been long prepared and represents the continuity of
activities of RS authorities led by President of Republika Srpska
Milorad Dodik. Almost 2000 attacks have been carried out and
recorded against non-Serb returnees and their property in the
territory of RS since the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement,
without the offenders having been sanctioned.
Ljubljana, 15 May 2015
Read more on the next page:
May 15, 2015
Media-clip: At the
occasion of a book launch

Geopolitics -
Europe of Sarajevo 100 years later by Anis
Bajrektarević
For his previous book Geopolitics of Technology – Is There
Life after Facebook, published by the New York’s Addleton,
former Austrian Foreign Minister Peter Jankowitsch has said: “Insightful,
compelling and original, this book is an exciting journey through
the rocky field of geopolitics. It is also a big-thinking
exploration of the least researched aspects of the discipline, which
will leave no one indifferent. This book, written by an experienced
lawyer and a former career diplomat, cleverly questions how we see
the world, and acts as an eye opener.”
Anis H. Bajrektarević, professor and
chairperson for international law and global political studies, Uni-
versity IMC-Krems, Austria. This native Sarajevan, besides this very
title, authors the book FB – Geo- politics of Technology (Addleton,
New York 2013), and the forthcoming No Asian century. He is both
teaching and research professor on subjects such as the Geopolitics;
International and EU Law; Sustainable Development (institutions and
instruments). On the subject Geopolitical Affairs alone, professor
has over 1,000 teaching hours at his university as well as in many
countries on all meridians. His writings are frequently published in
over 50 countries in all five continents, and translated in some 20
languages worldwide. He lives in Vienna, Austria.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B61JRDWKmSE (play from: 0.35.44)
https://vimeo.com/112013062 (play from: 0.57.00)
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BOSANSKA VERZIJA UDARITE OVDJE
May 11, 2015
Promocija
knjige prof. dr. Anisa Bajraktarevića
13.05.2015. (utorak) u 19
sati u Umjetničkoj galeriji BiH, Zelenih beretki 8,
Sarajevo, BiH
07.05.2015.
Berlin Congress of 1878
still in force in the Balkans
Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarević

Aegean theatre of the Antique Greece was the place of
astonishing revelations and intellectual excellence – a remarkable
density and proximity, not surpassed up to our age. All we know
about science, philosophy, sports, arts, culture and entertainment,
stars and earth has been postulated, explored and examined then and
there. Simply, it was a time and place of triumph of human
consciousness, pure reasoning and sparkling thought.
However,
neither Euclid, Anaximander, Heraclites, Hippocrates (both of Chios,
and of Cos), Socrates, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Democritus, Plato,
Pythagoras, Diogenes, Aristotle, Empedocles, Conon, Eratosthenes nor
any of dozens of other brilliant ancient Greek minds did ever refer
by a word, by a single sentence to something which was their
everyday life, something they saw literally on every corner along
their entire lives.
It was an immoral, unjust, notoriously brutal
and oppressive slavery system that powered the Antique state.
(Slaves have not been even attributed as humans, but rather as the
‘phonic tools/tools able to speak’.) This myopia, this absence of
critical reference on the obvious and omnipresent is a historic
message – highly disturbing, self-telling and quite a warning.
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April 26, 2015
Can we trust the government to do the
right thing?
Belmir Selimovic
Can
we trust the government to do the right thing, are they really care
about essential things such as environmental conditions and
education in our life?
First issue here is, should businesses naturally be doing good? In
the case if they have more industry agency, answer would be yes.
However, when it comes to this case, we can't trust the government
because the drilling is taking place with minimal oversight from the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Of course I would like to
emphasize that fracking is process of drilling and injecting fluid
into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks
to release natural gas inside. For example, Mr. Wasner lives in
Milanville but he moved away for six weeks last year while an
exploratory well was drilled nearby.
˝The noise, muddy water pouring from his taps, and chemicals that
turned up in a neighbor's well drove him off.˝ The U.S Environmental
Protection Agency did not do anything when it comes to this problem.
But, President Barack Obama enthusiastically backs gas drilling and
these days 90 percent of it is done by fracking. According to the
dangersoffracking.com ˝Along with wind, solar, and nuclear power,
natural gas is crucial to Obama's goal of producing 80 percent of
electricity from clean energy sources by 2035.˝ Thus, each gas well
requires an average of 400 tanker trucks to carry water. ˝It takes
1-8 million gallons of water to complete each fracturing job.˝
Fracking has a serious impact on environmental, safety, and health
hazards. Also, fracking has a positive side because it is creating
thousands of jobs and reviving the economy in state such as Wyoming,
Texas, and Louisiana. According to the businessweek.com ˝In
Pennsylvania, where 2,516 wells have been drilled in the last three
years, $ 389 million in tax revenue and 44,000 jobs came from gas
drilling in 2009, according to a Penn State report.˝
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April 25, 2015
Is it time for the rise of
local currencies?
Prof. dr. Murray Hunter
It's
an almost long forgotten historical fact that most trade was
undertaken by local based currencies right into the 20th Century.
Australia had a number of colonial currencies before federation in
1901. The United States of America had a number of currencies issued
by private banks before the Federal Reserve Bank was formed in 1913,
and individual states of the European Union had their own national
currencies before the mega-currency, the Euro was launched in 1999.
However given the trend to larger and "stronger"
currencies, the hype of the Euro, the protection of the US Dollar as
the major trading currency, a very quiet trend has been going the
other way. In contrast, more than 2,000 local currencies in some
form or the other have been launched in communities around the
world.
The phenomenon of the local currency almost doesn't
exist in contemporary economic literature. Therefore the purpose of
this article is to have a look at local currencies, and try and
answer the questions; Why do communities launch them? Do local
currencies have any benefit to these communities?, and What
is the real potential of these currencies?
A local currency, sometimes referred to as a
community currency, is a means of exchange used by members of a
community that have some common bonds. Any local currency is usually
not backed by a national government, nor is officially a legal
tender within the region it is circulated. A local currency is
usually intended for trade within a limited geographical area.
Money is essentially an agreement to use something as
a means of exchange. Any local currency can be denominated by the
prevailing national currency, or measured in any commodity, or even
labor units to provide create unit value, so people know how to use
it as a medium of exchange. This redemption measure is usually a
major factor giving users confidence in its present and future
value.
A local currency is a potential tool of monetarism,
where it helps to define an economic boundary which accepts it as a
medium of exchange by certain groups within that location.
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April 14, 2015
Eastern Europe –
The World’s Last Underachiever
Prof. Anis H.
Bajrektarević

25 years ago, the Russian historical empire melted
down. Although often underreported, this also marked the end of
alternative society in Europe. Collapse of the II world, made the 3rd
way (of Yugoslavia and further, beyond Europe – globally, of the
Nonaligned Movement) obsolete.
That 9/11 was a moment when the end of history
rested upon all of us, the day when the world became flat.
The EU entered East, but only as a ‘stalking horse’ of NATO. No
surprise that Eastern Europe –following the slaughter of its pivot,
Yugoslavia – has soon after abandoned its identity quest, and
capitulated. Its final civilizational defeat came along: the Eastern
Europe’s peoples, primarily Slavs, have silently handed over their
most important debates – that of Slavism, anti-fascism and of own
identity – solely to the recuperating Russophone Europe.
Read more on the next page:
Prof. Anis H.
Bajrektarević
Vienna, 26 MAR 2015
Contact:
anis@bajrektarevic.eu
Author is chairperson and
professor in international law and global political studies, IMC
Krems University of Austria. His previous book FB – Geopolitics
of Technology was published by the New York’s Addleton Academic
Publishers. His forthcoming book Geopolitics – Europe
100 years later is coming soon.
All displayed maps
per the author’s idea made by Anneliese Gattringer.
Vienna, March 26, 2015
Yemenisation or Confederalisation of Saudi Arabia?
By Brian Whitaker

Click on Picture
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March 27, 2015
Bosnia as Wunderkind –
Corruption from Kosovo to Germany
Gerald Knaus
Ugly ducklings,
fairy tales and Bosnia in 2015
ESI newsletter 3/2015 - If corruption is
serious business, its assessment should be as well.
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March
19, 2015
Imperative
of an EU-Russia strategic reset
Eirini Patsea
Russia vs. the European Union. It is relationship
based and built upon a long history of protracted political
conflict. Lately, with the crisis in Ukraine and the subsequent
sanctions imposed to Russia, the diplomatic relations between the
two sides have reached a new historical low. But more importantly,
the mistrust among the peoples residing in both sides has reached a
new high. Unavoidably so. Since the Western and Russian media
started to be viciously launching campaign-like news reports, there
is nothing but confusion and loss of perspective by both the peoples
and their representatives. The big question is whether this would be
the case if the US politics were not involved in the game. Would
still Russia and the EU have so many excuses to be driven apart;
politically, culturally and ideologically?
After the warmhearted welcome by Peter Haider, UPF
Austria President, Prof. Bajrektarevic made more than a challenging
opening:
“The lonely superpower (US) vs. the bear of
the permafrost (Russia), with the world’s last cosmopolite
(EU) in between. Is the ongoing calamity at the eastern flank of
the EU a conflict, recalibration, imperialism in hurry,
exaggerated anti-Russian xenophobia or last gasp of
confrontational nostalgia?
Eirini Patsea is a
Guest Editor in ModernDiplomacy, and specialist in Cultural
Diplomacy and Faith-based Mediation.
First published by
www.moderndiplomacy.eu
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March 3, 2015
All European shades
of ISIL colour black: Neonazism of Europe and Fascism in the Arab
World
By Allan Bogle

How did Europe manage to drag Arabs to the wrong side
of history – a confusion, pride, shame and denial – all which
resurfaces again, 75 years after. How is this possible that the
‘never-again’ takes place today? Do we fake our surprise? How
expensive is our European denial, and Monarchist Arabs claim of
innocence?
Read more on the next page:
March 4, 2015
Greed is good…but
only for cancer
Amna Whiston
Amna Whiston is a London-based writer specialising in moral
philosophy. As a PhD candidate at Reading University, UK, her main
research interests are in ethics, rationality, and moral psychology.
Don’t be bad with 1%, don’t accuse them for having it all
and doing nothing to earn it. 99% firmly believes that a greed is
good… Spoiling mood, but being good for your food, as it should?
**
** ** **
Amidst the many maladies of today’s global
society, a tide of optimism brought by the latest cancer research
news reflects a defiant response to one of the biggest challenges
facing humanity. But although massive investments that involve
venture capital companies and funds may be necessary for the pursuit
of current and future large-scale scientific projects and ambitions,
it is still sensible to ask the following questions: To what extent
should capitalism be credited for rapid progress in cancer research
and treatment? Moreover, can the profit motive, being an essential
feature of capitalism, justify future investments in bioscience and
related fields?
Read more on the next page:
14.02.2015
70 years after
Auschwitz – deliberate attempts to rewrite history
MD Editorial Board
The
last week’s Auschwitz ceremony marking 70 years since the notorious
death camp’s liberation had a huge turnout. Three hundred survivors
of the camp attended. Given the age of Holocaust survivors, the
importance of passing their story on to new generations has never
been greater. Comparing politicians to Hitler or countries to nazi
Germany has become a commonplace insult. But the unspeakable horrors
unleashed by history’s most vicious regime bear no comparison.
The Holocaust marked a systematic effort to exterminate entire
ethnic groups — most prominently the Jews but also the Roma and
Sinti — alongside the slaughter of homosexuals and the disabled.
Millions of prisoners of war from the Soviet Union, Polish civilians
and political and religious opponents of the nazis including
communists, trade unionists, Freemasons and Jehovah’s Witnesses were
also exterminated.
The world anti-fascist war which defeated the nazis resulted in
efforts to ensure such atrocities would never happen again. But the
collapse of the Soviet Union — which played by far the greatest part
in defeating the fascist menace, as well as being the liberator of
Auschwitz — has seen a deliberate attempt to rewrite history.
The European Parliament sponsors a Day of Remembrance for Victims of
Stalinism and Nazism, a pernicious attempt to equate communism with
fascism. As Russian communist Il Melnikov said yesterday, virulently
anti-Russian regimes in the Baltic states openly celebrate Waffen SS
veterans.
Read more on the next page:
11.02.2015
Géométrie variable
of a love triangle – India, Russia and the US
Written by the MD’s Board Member Rakesh Krishnan Simha
The Modi-Obama romance
won’t last as India’s relationship with the US does not have the
kind of strategic dimension and weight that marks New Delhi’s ties
with Moscow.
**** *****
******
Russia
is a country with which India has had a strategic relationship for
decades. America is a place where Indians migrate to for a better
lifestyle. That is how Indians view the world’s two leading powers.
It’s as simple as that. US President Barrack Obama’s recent visit to
India will not change that reality, and those speculating about
dramatic changes in India's foreign policy are either fools or
amateurs – or both.
“Good relations with the US reflect aspiration, ties with Russia are
hard reality,” says Bharat Karnad, professor of national security
studies at the Centre for Policy Research. “No substantive shift in
policy is on the anvil, certainly nothing at the expense of India's
relations with Moscow, especially because, unlike the US, Russia has
partnered, and continues to partner, India in strategically
sensitive technology projects ranging from missiles, ship
submersibles, ballistic, nuclear submarines to the Fifth Generation
Fighter Aircraft,” he told Defense News.
Over the decades a clutch of US presidents has visited India.
Likewise, Indian prime ministers have been to America. But the
dynamics of the India-US relationship hasn’t changed much. And why
would it? The US is the leader of the western world whose prosperity
largely rests on the domination of the rest of the world. India, on
the other hand, is a member of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India,
China and South Africa) grouping that aims to end the American-led
bloc’s dominance.
Modi’s operandi
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11.02.2015
Europe of the human
face… with a little help from Greece
by Dimitra Karantzeni
Days
after the last parliamentary elections, something is eventually
moving in Greece. People are hesitant and restrained, do not want to
get too excited. However, one can see that a humble smile, between
hope and faith, is on faces of Greeks. For the first time in the
post-dictatorship period, a leftist government took over the
leadership of the country, insisting on its pre-election commitments
to overthrow the corrupt political system and reverse the economic
disaster.
During the pre-election campaign, voters were bombarded with
terrifying messages concerning the day after Syriza’s victory,
describing more or less a socio-economic chaos, with banks with no
liquidity, a paralyzed public sector and markets out of stock.
However, the overall propaganda of terror and intimidation of
citizens by the predominant political Parties not only failed to
limit the social impact of SYRIZA’s actions, but it also seems that
the will of determination of the new government somehow managed to
positively affect the rest of Europe.
The negotiation process is still ongoing but what Syriza has
achieved so far is that its well prepared anti-austerity plan today
gives the impression not of just a grand-standing utopic program but
of a specific project built on realistic bases.
What is of high importance though is that this political change in
Greece has stimulated a great wave of active support from various
European leftist political parties, helping Syriza to immediately
avoid the risk of diplomatic isolation. Furthermore, for different
reasons of geopolitical importance both the US and Russia have a
very positive attitude towards the new Greek government,
strengthening its negotiating power against EU lenders. On the one
hand, a closer cooperation between the two orthodox countries would
benefit the development of Greek energy sector, even set Greece as a
major strategic player in the international negotiations field about
energy and at the same time provide Putin with a valuable European
ally. Besides, Greek refusal to approve an EU statement aiming to
expand sanctions against Moscow is a first good step in that
direction. On the other hand, Washington couldn’t but respond to
this diplomatic game by supporting the end of austerity, recalling
US bad fiscal experiences and expressing its concerns about EU,
which is currently lacking a tangible plan for growth in Europe.
Read more on the next page:
11.02.2015
The International Institute for Middle-East and Balkan Studies
(IFIMES) in Ljubljana, Slovenia, regularly analyses events in the
Middle East and the Balkans. IFIMES has analysed the current
situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina in view of the delayed process
of setting up the government following the general election that
took place on 12 October 2014. The most interesting sections from
the analysis entitled “Bosnia and Herzegovina: German-British
initiative overshadowed by party political games” are published
below.
Bosnia and
Herzegovina:
German-British initiative overshadowed by
party political games
JOINT ACTION BY SNSD AND SBB
A delay in setting up the government in Bosnia and Herzegovina
following the general election that took place on 12 October 2014 is
mostly the result of obstructions caused by Milorad Dodik's Alliance
of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) from Republika Srpska (RS)
and Fahrudin Radončić's Union for a Better Future (SBB) and the
Social Democratic Party (SDP) from the Federation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina (FBiH). While SNSD is aguishly trying to enter the
government at the state level, SBB – being excluded from the
post-election coalition forming – is concocting plans to get hold of
power, even using its Avaz daily newspaper to create a negative
political atmosphere in Bosnia and Herzegovina, inciting riot among
the citizens and preparing last year's February protests scenario.
Clearly SNSD and SBB are making a joint action - their delegates
carried out a joint attempt to overthrow the President of the House
of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and
Herzegovina Šefik Džaferović (SDA). Moreover, analysts have related
the activities of the outgoing Vice President of the Federation of
Bosnia and Herzegovina Mirsad Kebe with attempted obstructions aimed
at slowing down or preventing the formation of government by SDA-HDZ-DF-Alliance for Changes, thus promoting the formation of
another parliamentary coalition composed of SNSD, SBB and even SDP.
Read more on the next page:
January 31, 2015
On history and humility: What students need to know ?
Rattana Lao
Rattana
Lao holds a doctorate in Comparative and International Education
from Teachers College, Columbia University and is currently teaching
in Bangkok.
BANGKOK – Not so long ago, some Thai university students used
Hitler image as the poster child for superhero and just recently,
the Thai state used Nazi symbol in their propaganda for education.
This short documentary intends to promote the 12 values of
education. These values include respect seniority, desire for
knowledge and understand democracy.
Democracy and Hitler?
To make things worse, the director of the film gave public interview
seeing nothing wrong with it.
Kulp Kaljaruek, the director, said to Khaosod, one of the Thai
newspapers that “ I didn't think it would be an issue. As for
Hitler's portrait, I have seen so many people using it on T-Shirts
everywhere. It's even considered a fashion. It doesn't mean I agree
with it, but I didn't expect it to be an issue at all."
Seriously?
The Ambassador of Israel to Thailand, His Excellency Simon Roded,
issued a public statement on the 10th
of December 2014. It read:
“I was surprised that throughout the screening
process this movie must have gone through to be approved for public
broadcast, none of the smart, well educated people checking it had
identified it as being problematic and offensive.”
In an interview with Thailand's renown historian, professor Thanet
Aphornsuwan, the problem that has happened reflects an endemic
problem in Thailand.
Read more on the next page:
January 24, 2015.
GLOBAL MARKETS OF MISERY
Marján Attila[1]
– Szuhai Ilona[2]
Is our
The global humanitarian system in
transition? If so, what are the key issues b – Before the 2016 World
Humanitarian Summit
"Today's needs are at unprecedented levels and without more support there simply
is no way to respond to the humanitarian situations we're seeing in region after
region and in conflict after conflict."
António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
Abstract
The international community is preparing for the World
Humanitarian Summit. The United Nations will host the event in Istanbul, in
2016. Before the meeting, regional consultations are held in several parts of
the world. Expectations are high since the historical moment of changing the
twenty-five-year-old humanitarian system is approaching. Growing conflicts
demand growing funds for humanitarian action. The change in the trends of
conflicts demands more effective humanitarian solutions. 2014 was a dramatic
year in the number of people affected by conflict and of being forced to flee.
Unprecedentedly, more than 100 million people became dependent on humanitarian
aid for their survival. This rise is reflected in the inter-agency strategic
response and regional response plans as global financial requirements to cover
humanitarian needs rose to the highest amount ever requested in a single year.
The study forecasts how the EU can continue the donor activities in the future.
Read more on the next page:
January 24, 2015.
Human rights violations inside EU
What is the Ostrich Protocol?
H.E. Dr. Walter Schwimmer

How the EU member states play ostrich when it comes to
human rights violations inside EU?
H.E. Dr. Walter Schwimmer -
Vice Chair of the Modern
Diplomacy Advisory Board, Former Secretary General of the Council of
Europe -
Chairman of the International Coordinating Committee of the World
Public Forum – Dialogue of Civilizations
The
Treaty on the European Union, in its current format also known as
the Lisbon Treaty, as well as the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights
claim to establish an area of freedom, security and justice, founded
on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy,
equality, the rule of law and the respect for human rights[1].
That sounds perfect. After centuries of inhuman treatment of people
very often by their own governments, culminating in the tyrannies of
communism and Nazism in the 20th century, EU citizens should be able
to feel safe from brutal attacks and illegal operations of a violent
state, if not ....If they are not refugees from another EU member
state and they do not try to look for protection because they were
subject in their own state to political persecution, inhuman
treatment or even torture.
The Geneva Convention about status of and asylum for
refugees, persons subject to political persecution, is one of the
great international achievements in the field of human rights. The
European Union as a successful project of peace, freedom and justice
promises in Art.18 of its Charter that "the right to asylum shall be
guaranteed with due respect for the rules of the Geneva Convention..[2]"
But why is this guarantee denied when the asylum seeker comes from
an EU country?
Read more on the next page:
January 19, 2015
FUTURE OF DAVOS IS IN
KYRGYZSTAN
Francesco Brunello
Zanitti
Francesco Brunello Zanitti,
Southern Asia Research Program’s Director, and one of the Scientific
Directors of the Italian Institute for Advanced Studies in
Geopolitics and Auxiliary Sciences (Istituto di Alti Studi in
Geopolitica e Scienze Ausiliarie – IsAG, Rome). Member of Editorial
Committee of “Geopolitica” (IsAG’s journal) Rome.
Is the new Russian
approach towards China and India, vector for a multipolar world
order? Will the new Davos – gathering between vanity fair and summit
of the mightiest – in future take place in Kyrgyzstan – Central
Asian country surrounded by the most prosperous and promising
powers?
The last months of 2014
were marked by a series of significant bilateral agreements and
summits involving Russia, India and China. According to many
international analysts, the research of better relations with the
two Asian giants by Moscow represents another further step towards
global transformation from an unipolar order ruled by United States
to a multipolar one.
A key point in order to
analyze the fundamental reasons of Moscow’s approach towards China
and India is connected to difficulties emerged in the last year with
European Union and United States. Complications in Russia-West
relations are clearly exemplified by the Ukrainian imbroglio.
However, it’s also
necessary to dwell on long-term strategic interests of the countries
involved. Despite the current shaky situation of Eastern Europe and
Middle East, generally speaking Beijing and New Delhi look at Russia
as a reliable partner with whom it’s fundamental continue to
dialogue, cooperate and trade. China-Russia dialogue is growing from
mid-nineties, while Indian strategic relationship with Moscow is
heir of the one established during Cold War with Soviet Union.
Moreover, it should not to be underestimate the fact that Russia,
India and China are already actively cooperating in other
multilateral organizations, such as BRICS forum (Brazil, Russia,
India, China, South Africa), and have the opportunity to develop new
platforms for political, economic and military cooperation, for
example within the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
(SCO). The strategic triangle Russia-India-China (RIC), taken into
account difficulties of relations especially considering
Indo-Chinese bond characterized at the same time by cooperation and
competition, could therefore be an interesting model of dialogue in
the new multipolar world order.
Read more on the next page:
January 14, 2015
The Paris Killings: Who
Are the Real Heroes of Press Freedom?
By
Jamil Maidan Flores
 |

By
Jamil Maidan Flores |
Placards are seen placed amongst other tributes to the satirical
magazine Charlie Hebdo on the statues at the Place de la Republique
in Paris on Saturday. (Reuters Photo/Youssef Boudlal)
In the wake of the terrorist assault last week on the
offices of the French magazine “Charlie Hebdo,” in which 12 persons
were killed, many people all over the world were moved to say, in an
outpouring of anger at the perpetrators and sympathy for the
victims, “I am Charlie.”
Apart from two police officers, who were slain as
they responded to the attack, the victims were cartoonists and
editors marked for death by Muslim extremists because of their
slanderous depiction of the Prophet of Islam in past issues of the
magazine.
Read more on the next page:
January 12, 2015
Denazification – urgently
needed in Europe
Anis H. Bajrektarevic,
There
is a claim constantly circulating the EU: ‘multiculturalism is
dead in Europe’. Dead or maybe d(r)ead?... That much comes from
a cluster of European nation-states that love to romanticize their
appearance thought the solid Union, as if they themselves lived a
long, cordial and credible history of multiculturalism. Hence, this
claim is of course false. It is also cynical because it is purposely
misleading. No wonder, as the conglomerate of nation-states/EU has
silently handed over one of its most important debates – that of
European anti-fascistic identity, or otherness – to the
wing-parties, repeatedly followed by the selective and
contra-productive foreign policy actions.
The Paris shooting, terrible beyond comprehension,
will reload and overheat those debates. However, these debates are
ill conceived, resting from the start on completely wrong and
misleading premises. Assassins in the Parisian Satirical Magazine
are Islamofascists. The fact that these individuals are
allegedly of the Arab-Muslim origins does not make them less
fascists, less European, nor does it abolish Europe from the main
responsibility in this case.
Fascism and its evil twin, Nazism are 100% European
ideologies. Neo-Nazism also originates from and lately unchecked
blossoms, primarily in Europe. (Some would say, über-economy
in the center of continent, surrounded from all sides by the
recuperating neo-fascism.) The Old continent tried to amortize its
deepening economic and demographic contraction by a constant
interference on its peripheries, especially meddling on the Balkans,
Black Sea/Caucasus and MENA (Middle East–North Africa). What is now
an epilogue? A severe democratic recession. Whom to blame for
this structural, lasting civilizational retreat that Europe suffers?
Is it accurate or only convenient to blame a bench of useful idiots
for returning home with the combating behavior?
Read more on the next page:
http://moderndiplomacy.eu/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=481:den&Itemid=569
January 8, 2015
Paris Massacre and Islamic Terror
World Security Network reporting from Paris in France, January 7, 2015
Dear Friends of the World
Security Network,
What should we do, after three heavily armed and
professional gunmen killed twelve and wounded seven in the office of the French
satire magazine Chalie Hebdo today as „revenge for the Prophet“?
I. The silent majority of 1.6 billion Muslims must stand up against the tiny, but
active and dangerous minority of the radicals of maybe five percent openly and
defend the true, peaceful Islam, their Prophet and the Holy Qur’an.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi did so on New Year’s Day at the
famous Al Azhar University in Cairo, demanding „a religious revolution in
Islam“. „It is inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should
cause the entire Islamic World (umma) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing
and destruction for the rest oft he world. Impossible!“
Without fear Jordans beautiful and wise Queen
Rania told the Abu Dhabi Media Summit 2014, November 18th:
Read more on the next page:
Dr Hubertus Hoffmann President and Founder
World Security Netw
January 7, 2015
PUBLICATIONS:
Bosnian Myths[1] - Dubravko Lovrenović
Bosnia and Herzegovina: The final phase of genocide? - Director
IFIMES: Bakhtyar Aljaf
Geopolitics -
Europe of Sarajevo 100 years later by Anis
Bajrektarević
Berlin Congress of 1878 still in force in the Balkans - Prof.
Anis H. Bajrektarevic
Can
we trust the government to do the right thing? - Belmir
Selimovic
Is it
time for the rise of local currencies? - Prof. dr. Murray Hunter
Eastern Europe – The World’s Last Underachiever - Prof. Anis H.
Bajrektarević
Yemenisation or Confederalisation of Saudi Arabia? - By Brian
Whitaker
Bosnia as Wunderkind –
Corruption from Kosovo to Germany - Gerald Knaus
Imperative of an EU-Russia strategic reset - Eirini Patsea
All
European shades of ISIL colour black: Neonazism of Europe and
Fascism in the Arab World - By Allan Bogle
Greed
is good…but only for cancer - Amna Whiston
70
years after Auschwitz – deliberate attempts to rewrite history -
MD Editorial Board
Géométrie variable of a love triangle – India, Russia and the US
- Rakesh Krishnan Simha
Europe of the human face… with a little help from Greece - by
Dimitra Karantzeni
Bosnia and Herzegovina: German-British initiative overshadowed
by party political games - Bakhtyar Aljaf
On
history and humility: What students need to know? - Rattana Lao
GLOBAL MARKETS OF MISERY - Marján Attila – Szuhai Ilona
Human rights violations inside EU - H.E. Dr. Walter Schwimmer
FUTURE OF DAVOS IS IN KYRGYZSTAN - Francesco Brunello Zanitti
The
Paris Killings: Who Are the Real Heroes of Press Freedom? - By
Jamil Maidan Flores
Denazification – urgently needed in Europe - Anis H.
Bajrektarevic
Paris Massacre and Islamic Terror
- Dr Hubertus Hoffmann
COLOR REVOLUTIONS: TECHNIQUES IN BREAKING DOWN MODERN POLITICAL
REGIMES - ANDREI MANOILO[1], OLEG KARPOVICH[2]
Lima
2014: Climate Change – Humans Remain the Same - Anis H.
Bajrektarevic
THE ASIAN
SQUARE DANCE – PART IV - By Michael Akerib
NEW AGE
DIPLOMACY - Samantha Brletich
Nuclear Commerce –
essentials - Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic and Petra Posega
THE ASIAN
SQUARE DANCE – THIRD PART - By Michael Akerib
Vietnamese Australians’ Community: Realities and Prospect - By Prof.
Dr. Nguyen Anh Tuan

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Maasmechelen Village

Maasmechelen Village


Adria


BALKAN AREA


prof. dr. Anis Bajrektarevic
Editor - Geopolitics, History, International Relations (GHIR) Addleton Academic
Publishers - New YorK
Senior Advisory board member, geopolitics of energy Canadian energy research
institute - ceri, Ottawa/Calgary
Advisory Board Chairman Modern Diplomacy & the md Tomorrow's people platform
originator
Head of mission and department head - strategic studies on Asia
Professor and Chairperson Intl. law & global pol. studies

Critical Similarities and Differences in SS of Asia and Europe - Prof.
Anis H. Bajrektarevic

MENA Saga and Lady Gaga - (Same dilemma from the MENA) - Anis H. Bajrektarevic

![Dr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, Assos. Prof.[1] Nguyen Linh[2]](images/Prof_Dr._Nguyen_Anh_Tuan_140.jpg)
HE ONGOING PUBLIC DEBT CRISIS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: IMPACTS ON AND
LESSONS FOR VIETNAM - Dr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, Assos. Prof.[1]
Nguyen Linh[2]


Carla BAUMER
Climate
Change and Re Insurance: The Human Security Issue SC-SEA Prof. Anis
Bajrektarevic & Carla Baumer

Igor Dirgantara
(Researcher and Lecturer at the Faculty of Social and Politics,
University of Jayabaya)


Peny Sotiropoulou
Is the ‘crisis of secularism’ in Western Europe the result of
multiculturalism?


Dr. Emanuel L. Paparella
A Modest “Australian”
Proposal to Resolve our Geo-Political Problems
Were the Crusades Justified? A Revisiting - Dr. Emanuel L. Paparella


Alisa Fazleeva earned an MA in International Relations from
the University of East Anglia in Norwich, United Kingdom in 2013. Her
research interests include foreign policy decision-making, realism and
constructivism, and social psychology and constructivism.


Corinna Metz
is an independent researcher specialized in International Politics and Peace
& Conflict Studies with a regional focus on the Balkans and the Middle East.

Patricia
Galves Derolle
Founder of Internacionalista
Săo Paulo, Brazil
Brazil – New Age


Dimitra Karantzeni
The political character of Social Media: How do Greek Internet users perceive
and use social networks?


Michael Akerib
Vice-Rector
SWISS UMEF UNIVERSITY


Petra Posega
is a master`s
degree student on the University for Criminal justice and
Security in Ljubljana. She obtained her bachelor`s degree in
Political Science- Defense studies.
Contact:
posegap@live.com


Samantha Brletich, George Mason University School of Policy,
Government, and Intl. Relations She focuses on Russia and Central
Asia. Ms. Brletich is an employee of the US Department of Defense.

Prof. dr. Anis Bajrektarević

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