Origins of a Catastrophe. Yugoslavia and its Destroyers. America’s Last Ambassador Tells What Happened and Why (New York: Time Books/Random House, 1996)

      In his introduction, America’s last ambassador to Yugoslavia says that he will tell the story of the “villains” who destroyed Yugoslavia those “nationalist leaders who coopted, intimidated, circumvented, or eliminated all opposition to their demagogic designs.” (vii) Instead, he weaves a disingenuous tale of anecdote and assertion that continually links Tudjman and Milosevic — the “Tweedledum and Tweedledee of destructive nationalism” — and inculpates them, as proponents of “communist” nationalism, for the slaughter that took place in the former Yugoslavia. (pp.40, 153). He exonerates the United States and NATO of all responsibility, noting that the mistakes he and his colleagues made “never seem(ed) like mistakes when we (made) them.”(viii) In effect, Zimmermann uses denial and demonology to preserve the myths of American innocence and Balkan perfidy. (p.142) In many ways, his is a classic example of what William Blanchard called “the cynical pretense of inadvertence,”(x) a tendency to self- deception that justifies unjustifiable actions by admitting their reality, but denying their significance and finding fault in the application of technique, not in its practitioners.

     Like Rebecca West, whose “beautifully written classic” he admires, Zimmermann approaches Yugoslavia as a tourist. Before 1991, rugs were a bargain and the atmosphere “enchanting.” (pp. 3-4, 9-10, 168) Yugoslavia “stood for civility and tolerance”and provided ex Soviet satellites a “model.” But it was “caught between the poles of Serbian and Croatian nationalist extremism,” so “dwarfs” could lead gullible masses “susceptible to ethnically based appeals” though “a landscape of monsters and midgets” into the slaughterhouse of ethnic cleansing. (pp.9-10, 42, 68-9, 78, 111) Zimmermann condemns the 1974 Constitution perhaps the most liberal in Yugoslavia’s sad history for having “stimulated nationalism.” (pp. 40-1) Zimmermann’s opinion of Yugoslavia’s leaders is low. (p.138) Kucan was “squat,” a “human AK-47 whose lack of responsibility triggered the crisis in 1991. (pp.30-32, 142) Janez Jansa was “ascetic” and “driven.”(p.144) Their party was an “extreme faction in a coalition that had itself won only 54 percent of the popular vote,” “provoked a war by stealth.” and then made a deal with Belgrade. (p.144-5)

     Sympathetic to Bosnians, Zimmermann was singularly unimpressed with their leaders. “Mild-mannered to a fault,” Izetbegovic, was overly deferential and perpetually anxious. Like Tudjman and Seselj, he was also a nationalist who had been “convicted of sowing ethnic hatred.” (pp.39, 114-115)

     Zimmermann disliked most Serbian leaders. Borislav Jovic was a “small man,” a “pit bull,” but better than Vojislav Seselj, a “psychopathic racist,” or Karadzic, a Serbian Himmler with a “friendly manner” who oversaw “the massacres in the Muslim villages.” (pp.97-9, 119, 175-6) The baby-faced Milosevic impressed Zimmermann with his “competent” English, forceful speech, “steady” eye contact, attentiveness, and “clubby” vices (small faults that would appeal to an Ivy Leaguer like Zimmermann). But despite his “cherubic” cheeks, the Serbian leader was a cold “master of media manipulation,” dominated by his “dark side” and vaguely “schizoid” — an opportunistic “bully on a grand scale,” but at least not an “ethnic exclusivist,” like Tudjman and Karadzic. (pp. 20-7)

     Yet Zimmermann’s book is essentially Serbo-centric. He was stationed in Belgrade, his driver was Serbian, and his circle of “Yugoslav” friends seems to have been largely Serbian. He was particularly fond of Serbian journalists Slobodan Pavlovic, “Borba’s first-rate DC correspondent”; the “western” Srdja Popovic, editor of Vreme, “the most distinguished” magazine in Yugoslavia; and Sasa Nenadovic of Politika (pp.18-19, 38, 108). His list of heroes and heroines included few Croats or Bosnians, but was replete with Serbians from Popovic and Vesna Pesic (a wise professor and peace activist) to Vuk Draskovic. (pp.105-6, 108)

     Zimmermann sees Serbs as a “normal people” — “a product of their history, as we all are.”(p.10) He depicts the Serbs as “heirs to a great medieval civilization” and the “only people I know who celebrate a defeat.”(pp.11-14) Like the U.S. media, he sees Croats and Bosnians as blindly following their leaders, while “many Serbs” opposed Milosevic. (p.108) He claims that “Serbs in Bosnia had an understandable grievance” in Bosnia, and feared a “Muslim-dominated” state. (p.196) He laments human rights violations in Kosovo, but he considers the region “the heartland of Serbian statehood and culture,” its Jerusalem, delivered to the Albanians by the 1974 constitution. (pp.8, 11-14, 130) So he criticizes both Albanians and Slovenes for shattering the League of Communists in 1990 by their rigid insistence on human rights in the region. (pp.54-6)

     Zimmermann implies that all South Slavs — not merely a handful of prewar politicians — wanted a Yugoslav state in 1918, and he insists that the JNA had “won” territory for the Slovenes in 1945. (pp.5-6, 28) So he did not think the Slovenes, as “an original party to the voluntary compact creating Yugoslavia,” had a right to leave and “bring a firestorm of violence down on the rest of Yugoslavia.”(p.146) He claimed that Yugoslavia’s constitution was first rewritten in 1991 by the Croats and Slovenes, even though he knows that the Serbians had earlier destroyed the constitution by their takeovers of Kosovo and Vojvodina. (p.70) Zimmermann had little use for most Croats. Budimir Loncar was “a canny Croatian veteran of the Tito era” with a “catlike tread” and a “feline smile.”(pp.15-16) Josip Manolic had links to the secret police, Gojko Susak (“a Darth- Vader-like individual”) to the Ustase, and Martin Spegelj to arms dealers. (pp.154, 181) Glavas was a Croatian Arkan.(p.152) Tudjman was intolerant, impulsive, and dim — an authoritarian “martinet” with the characteristics of “an inflexible schoolteacher” who could manage only “a nervous chuckle or a mirthless laugh.”(pp.71-5) Zimmermann chides Tudjman for ignoring his advice to apologize to the Serbs at Jasenovac, and he blames the war on the Croatian leader’s rejection of “any gesture that smacked of reconciliation, cooperation, or healing,” his “precipitate declaration of independence,” and his failure to “assure Croatia’s Serbian citizens that they would be safe in an independent Croatia.”(pp.71-7, 151-2)

     Zimmermann also dislikes Croatia “a republic of lackluster politicians” run by the “emigrant-financed HDZ.”(pp.44, 71-5) Listing firings, personal attacks, and an oath of loyalty, he concluded that in “Croatia, unlike Bosnia, Serbs were in fact being abused.” (pp.75, 139-40) By creating an army and defending itself from the JNA, Croatia had become a “national security state” with an armed force “larger than the armies of Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, or Sweden.” (pp.132,151, 154)

     Zimmermann uses the passive voice to describe the Serbian assault on Croatia, and ignores events before 1991, “a time of growing violence” in Croatia until 7 July, when “fighting broke out” in the Krajina, “a rebellion within a rebellion.” (pp.94-5,122, 148-9) Of course, he knows that the JNA and Milosevic had armed and incited the Serb “militants”there, but he focused on Tudjman’s efforts to “install Croatian police” as triggering the war. Yet he claims that it was “nearly impossible” to assign responsibility “for each instance of violence” in Croatia, because reports from Zagreb and Belgrade were diametrically opposed But “it didn’t matter,” becaus
e Tudjman and Milosevic wanted violence. (p.120)

     For Zimmermann, the war in Croatia was a tawdry affair, “a throwback to the ancient bandit tradition of the Balkans.” While the JNA “secured all areas in Croatia that had significant Serbian populations,” the “dregs of society…rose from the slime to become…national heroes, exalted by their respective propaganda machines.” (pp.160,152) Even-handed and fair — unlike the pro- Serbian UN commanders, Rose and MacKenzie — Zimmermann was careful to note that both Serbs and Croats suffered in Vukovar, and if the Serbs shelled Dubrovnik “both sides” “breached the rules of war.” (pp.154-8)

     Zimmermann disapproves of Croatia’s “blitzkrieg” in the Krajina, although it preceded NATO air strikes and effectively ended the war, because it was illegal and ruthless (pp.231-2), not comparable to the “master stroke” mounted in Bosnia by the JNA in 1992. (p.196) It says a good deal about Zimmermann that he criticized the JNA’s leaders, Veljko Kadijevic and Blagoje Adzic, but saw the Yugoslav army as a conflicted institution with a “proud” and “heroic military tradition that Croatians and Slovenes had tried to “humiliate” by adopting a “not very heroic tactic” of besieging the army in its barracks. (pp.85-9, 100-102, 142, 158- 60,186)

     Yet Zimmermann notes that the “Serbian strategy” in Croatia was repeated in Bosnia first the creation of Serbian “autonomous regions,” then the arming of local Serbs by the JNA, and finally JNA military action to “protect” the Serbs and secure their hold on towns throughout Croatia and Bosnia. (p.174) He also cites Izetbegovic on the Serbian strategy in Bosnia, “They’re creating a new situation by force, then they’re trying to negotiate on the basis of that situation.” (p.197) He even saw “a Croatian pattern emerging” in Bosnia. (p.198) But he ties none of this together, so his treatment of the war in Croatia is accusatory the Croats had it coming while his depiction of the war in Bosnia is sympathetic the Serbs were to blame. Zimmermann’s dislikes extend beyond Yugoslav leaders. He is not fond of intellectuals and their “crackpot” ideas, and censures Dobrisa Cosic for “a frequent failing of intellectuals” self-confident messianism. (pp.17, 93-4) He disliked TV, which, like Tito, was to blame for everything. (pp.120, 138) He dismissed EC monitors in 1991 as too “timid” and “pro-Croatian.” (pp.158-9) He disliked the CIA’s fatalist, 1990 report, and he was dismayed with ignorant US Congressmen, swayed by a “strong and active Croatian lobby” and oblivious to “the fate of the Serbian minority,” despite his efforts to convince them to pursue a “rational” policy. (pp.84,126-7, 130-1)

     Zimmermann also dislikes democratic elections that do not elect candidates he favors. He was particularly distressed at the lack of “curbs on the potentially nondemocratic behavior of those elected” in the 1990 elections, which swept nationalists to power. (pp.68, 130) In general, Zimmermann finds nationalism, self- determination, and sovereignty dangerous concepts. (pp.277-78) Not even “bestial crimes” justify secessions for Chechnyans or Kurds, because that would break up existing states. So Zimmermann insists that self-determination be allowed only when it “won’t adversely affect the interests of other states [sic] or peoples.” (p.278) He praises Spain, whose confederal system he confuses with democracy, the US, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Austria, and Malaysia as models of ethnic “power- sharing.”.(p.240)

     Although he seemed to embrace sovereignty in his rejection of self-determination, Zimmermann dismisses it as “the last refuge of dictators.”(pp.238- 9) He ridicules Yugoslavia’s successor states as “unstable ministates”and advocates using human rights “more intrusively” to promote democracy, preferably by an “international enforcer” that can only be the United States, because we are a repository of virtue, owing to our optimistic striving toward the future and our ability to put the past behind us. (pp.4, 241-2, 229) Zimmermann does have heroes. Ante Markovic the most ineffectual of all Yugoslav politicians struck the ambassador as “admirable,” if “too liberal and Western” for his undeserving countrymen, who gave him high approval ratings, but hated his policies and dumped him in 1991. (pp.42-4, 66, 112- 113) He also liked Markovic’s economic adviser, Kilo Gligorov, “a wise old communist.”(p.116) Milovan Djilas impressed him as a saint, and Vuk Draskovic as “an electrifying speaker” whose comments were “perceptive and interesting.”(pp.104-105, 119, 171) Stipe Mesic and Janez Drnovsek were good tennis partners (pp.33, 123-4), and Vasil Tupurkovski and Ibrahim Rugova “came through the Yugoslav crisis with honor.”(pp.81, 126) Zimmermann even liked Croatia’s Chief of Staff, Antun Tus, “an outstanding officer with democratic views.”(p.141) In short, Zimmermann liked those “courtly, articulate, generous, and wise” Yugoslavs who represented “the best of the Central European tradition.” (p.33) Zimmermann insists that the U.S. made honest mistakes, but its goals were noble “unity, independence, and territorial integrity,” with “progress toward democracy” and “a straight line toward capitalism.” (pp.8, 51) But peace, unity, and democracy were merely instrumental the real goal was a “straight line toward capitalism.” Markovic’s economic reforms, not the man, counted, and Zimmermann favored “shock therapy” that would force the spoiled Yugoslavs to take that “straight line to capitalism.” (pp.17, 50-51) Unity and democracy were tactics to avoid violence during a tricky transition. What really counted was converting the dinar and finding “reasonable solutions short of war.” (pp.41-2, 46-9, 62, 64-5, 111) Washington was indifferent to the form a Yugoslav state might adopt (centralized or confederated), although it insisted that Serbia maintain control of Kosovo. (pp.64-5, 78-81).

     But Washington did not act, ostensibly because policymakers feared repeating the mistakes of Vietnam and Lebanon and were paralyzed by Powell’s cautious doctrine. (pp.214-215, 219) Instead, Americans talked. Bush twice told Markovic he wanted democracy and reforms, Zimmermann told Kadijevic not to use of force, and Eagleburger promoted “reconciliation,” as Washington took a “clear public line” blaming the JNA for events in Croatia and urging the JNA and Tudjman “to settle their differences.” (pp.164, 122-3) Baker’s mistake was not to “deal with the irascible and complex protagonists of the Yugoslav drama” before 21 June 1991. But only Izetbegovic and Gligorov were “sensible” then, and the American’s warnings to Milosevic in March 1992 were ineffectual. So, at worst, Baker was six months too late. (pp.133-7, 193)

     A year later, Washington informed Belgrade that it would only work for Serbia’s “political and economic isolation,” urged Karadzic to be democratic, and warned both Milosevic and Tudjman not to interfere in Bosnia. (pp.174-6, 194, 198) But Clinton lacked resolve, determination, and consistency, so Washington merely recalled Zimmermann after Serbia’s attack on Bosnia, a “modest” action, but “the right thing to do.”(pp.204, 223)

     While generally exonerating American diplomacy, Zimmermann condemns European diplomacy as “cynical theater, a pretense of useful activity…disguising a lack of will.” He thought the Germans rushed recognition and the EC encouraged partition, and he regretted the arms embargo in Bosnia. But he praises Cyrus Vance for his success in securing a cease-fire in Croatia, even though it benefitted the Serbs, and he thought the Vance-Owen plan “acceptable,” even though it gave 43% of Bosnia to the Serbs. He credits NATO with ending the war; and he effectively exonerates the West of all blame, because Yugoslavia’s “congenital effects” (it was a state, not a nation), its Orthodox and Catholic churches, its selfis
h Slovenes, insensitive Croats, greedy Serbs, ideologically rigid army, and nationalists condemned it to death. (pp.xii, 155, 161-2, 177, 181, 184, 189-90, 192, 209-212, 222, 231-3)

     Unhappy with Rose and MacKenzie for not condemning all sides for the atrocities they committed, Zimmermann admires Carrington’s defense of Serbian rights. (pp.161-2, 224) He considers humanitarian relief a “triumph,” especially since lifting the arms embargo and Western military intervention were not options. (pp.140, 219-20,225) He defends Eagleburger against charges of conflict of interest, and blames the Slovenes for misunderstanding him when he said that Washington could live with a fragmented Yugoslavia. (pp.5, 58, 219). He praises all Foreign Service Officers, especially Charles Redman, who created the Croat-Bosnian federation in 1994 (pp.49,165-6, 231).

     Zimmermann is a bit upset with Dayton, not because the Serbs in Bosnia, who made up 30% of the population, got 49% of the territory, but because Tudjman was the “big winner.” He saw the inequitable distribution of territory as a Western success, because the Serbs did not get the 64% they had demanded. (pp.232- 3) He claims, rather disingenuously, that sanctions on Serbia were intended to “Saddamize” Milosevic and serve as a bargaining chip at Dayton. (pp.213-4) Zimmermann’s views reflect his reading and his admiration for George Kennan, the father of containment. (p.53) His list of basic sources includes West’s travelogue; the journalistic, Serbo-centric account by Laura Silber and Allen Little (and its BBC adaptation); the book by the Serbian diplomat, Mihailo Crnobrnja; the tendentious work by Susan Woodward, one-time adviser to Akashi, dubbed the Mitsubishi Chetnik by the Bosnians; and the outdated and poorly researched study by Lenard J. Cohen. (pp.255-7) Zimmermann completed his memoirs at RAND, with help from Dennison Rusinow, whose writing is marked by sympathy for Serbia and hostility to Croatia, and David Calleo of Johns Hopkins. So this is not an insider’s memoir; it is a work by an insider whose circle has repeatedly rationalized the West’s failures, excused Serbian excesses, condemned Croat and Slovene actions, and preferred humanitarian aid to military action. Perhaps it is not surprising that so many people in Yugoslavia hated Zimmermann. What is surprising is that this made him proud. (p.110) JAMES SADKOVICH

     NOTES

¹ William H. Blanchard, Aggression American Style (Santa Monica, CA: Goodyear Publishing Cpy., 1978), pp. x, 1-11, dubbed this tendency “aggression American style” and saw a trend toward the use of such methods of coercion and persuasion in Europe and the USSR.

Pastoral Letters, Statements and Appeals of the Catholic Bishops of Bosnia and Herzegovina 1990-1997. Edited by Msgr. Dr. Mato Zovkic, assisted by Andrew Michaels III. Translated by Dr. Ante Cuvalo, assisted by Theresa Zdunic-Conway, Ivana Cuvalo, John Prcela and Dusko Condic. Sarajevo: Biskupska konferencija Bosne i Hercegovine, 1998. (186 pages)

     This is a compilation of Pastoral Letters and Statements made by the Catholic Bishops of Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1990 and 1997. These Messages were addressed to both the Catholic faithful of our Dioceses and to the larger world audience from the eve of first democratic elections in 1990 to the visit of Pope John Paul II to Sarajevo in April 1997. These Letters echo the turbulent events which occurred before and during the war in Bosnia between 1991 and 1995 which followed the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. We felt that a summary of these significant events would be useful to the reader unfamiliar with the history of our region.

     For thirteen centuries the Catholic Church has lived and flourished in the hearts of our Croatian ethnic community in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Through these many centuries, empires, kingdoms, democracies and socialist systems of government rose and fell. This region witnessed first hand the painful and future consequences of the Christian church’s division of the east from the west. This is a country where neighbors of the Muslim and Orthodox traditions lived side by side with Catholic neighbors and fellow citizens. Our region is the cross-roads of cultures, beliefs, ancient pathways and philosophies. Following the independence and international recognition of Slovenia and Croatia in January 1992, the democratically elected Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina organized a referendum on March 1, 1992 which gave citizens a choice between a continued life within a truncated Yugoslavia or within a fully independent country. The choice was for independence. Soon the sovereignty of our country was acknowledged by the United Nations and other international institutions. In the previous October, armed forces of Bosnian-Serbs, assisted by the professional army of Yugoslavia had destroyed several Croatian localities in eastern Herzegovina and in one month after the March 1992 referendum they started the war for their ethnic territories in this country. In the time from October 1991 to November 1995 one half of the Catholic population, about 400,000 faithful were evicted from their homes and parishes and forced to flee to the safety of other lands. Hundreds of churches and other ecclesiastical buildings were damaged or destroyed and lie in rubble awaiting the return of parishioners. In the Banja Luka Diocese, for example, only one quarter of the original 120,000 parishioners remain. This is “ethnic cleansing”, this is the tragedy.

     The war ended in November 1995 by the Dayton Accords. By that time Serbian forces had occupied 72 percent of Bosnia and Herzegovina while the Accords granted this ethnic community political control of 49 percent of our country’s territory despite the fact that it comprised only 31 percent of the total population according to the census of April 1991. Bosnia was divided into two entities, the Federation of Bosniaks and Croats at one side and on the other, the Serbian Republic. While the Dayton Accords have split the country into two entities the ecclesiastical administration remains a united whole as it was established in 1881, after 400 years of Turkish rule in Bosnia. The Archdiocese of Sarajevo stretches within the territory of the Federation and of the Serbian Republic, the Mostar-Duvno Diocese is primarily in the territory controlled by ethnic Croats within the Federation, the Trebinje-Mrkan Diocese is under the control of the Serbian Republic, Banja Luka Diocese in its largest part is in the Serbian Republic with a small territory of the Livno Deanery in the Federation. In spite of these divisions of control in Bosnia and Herzegovina by the three ethnic communities and two political entities, the Church in this territory remains as one unified structure giving the clearest example of the advantages of a unified homeland. This unity was strengthened when in December 1995, the Holy See established an independent Bishops’ Conference of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We Catholics traveled not alone on this painful period of our history, for our Shepherd in Rome walked with us. He knew our pains and heard our hearts crying for help. He supported us constantly with his prayers, his encouragement and finally with his presence. He reminded all of us “to forgive and ask forgiveness”, the true act of charity.

     Bosnia is a proof case for a multi-ethnic, pluralistic and tolerant Europe. If we fail, Europe fails. Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot rebuild on its own. But Bosnia and Herzegovina can fail on its own. After two years of more a cease fire than a real peace, we begin to see healing, rebuilding and a limited return of exiles and refugees. We call upon all people of good will to become involved in our work of love, in our mission of service and in our country’s destiny. You can make a difference, you do make a difference.

     As Europeans, we are tied together by culture, commerce and history. And so, we look first to Europe for help. As members of the human family we also call upon the friends of Bosnia in the United States and Canada to contribute towards re-making this country profoundly multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi- religious. May God, “whose power now at work in us do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine,” (Eph 3:20), grant us all His Peace and Blessing.

     Sarajevo, March 1, 1998

     Cardinal Vinko Puljic, Archbishop of Sarajevo and President of the Bishops Conference of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Peljeski rodovi (Family Names of the Peljesac Peninsula). Dubrovnik: Zavod za povijesne znanosti HAZU, Vol I (A-K) 1995, and Vol. II (L-Zh) 1996.

     The first part of the book deals with the first names of the inhabitants of the Peljesac peninsula from the 13th to the 20th centuries. The author explains changes in the assortment of first names after the incorporation of Peljesac into the Republic of Dubrovnik. The clash of the old folk Slavonic and the new Catholic-Dubrovnik onomastic systems resulted in the formation of a new system with the predominance of the Dubrovnik and Christian tradition, but with an element of Slavonic evident. Despite the fact that the base for the variety of first names consisted of Christian saints’ names, quite a few Slav names remained in use, though less frequently. The impossibility of a total takeover by one of the systems resulted in the formation of defense mechanisms on both sides. In Dubrovnik, the remains of folk names were adapted to Christian forms by the formation of equivalents (Djivan-Ivan (John), Vuk-Luka (Luke), etc.), while the new Christian names were adapted to folk forms (Miho (Michael)-Mihoje, Vlaho (Blaise)-Vlahusa, etc.). Until the mid-15th century, folk Slavonic names generally predominated in the Peljesac peninsula. From the middle until the end of the 15th century, folk and Christina names were approximately equally represented. But from the 16th century onwards, Christian names predominated so that 90 percent of the inhabitants were named in accordance with the Christian tradition. New changes in the onomastic system took place in the second half of the 19th century. New names appeared in a wide range from foreign folk names to new foreign names. This process started in the seafaring areas of Trstenice, while in the inland of the peninsula it appeared as late as the 20th century, with much less intensity. Family names began to stabilize on the Peljesac peninsula in the 14th century, after it became a part of the Dubrovnik Republic. At that time Dubrovnik’s already diversified and detailed administration required a precise identification of the people who were summoned or those who were engaged in any kind of legal activity. However, family names in the Dubrovnik Republic were not created suddenly or by decree. They have been formed over centuries, determined not only by administrative requirements (especially in legal matters such as inheritance, which required both the identity of the claimer and the proofs of his blood relations), but also by the needs of the people who, looking for a successful and appropriate means of communications, created an entire onomastic system. This process lasted until the late 18th century, when the last family on the Peljesac peninsula acquired its family name.

     The author also deals with certain specific features of the Peljesac family name system, with the Italianization of Croatian names and the Croatization of Italian family names, with the formation of folk-founded names, and specifically with the adoption of foreign family names. According to a Dubrovnik custom, a family name was given to a household, not to an individual. Newcomers would accept the name of their new household. This custom was frequent in villages, but less so in the seafaring towns and settlements. It was specifically widespread in regions with strong elements of a communal way of life.

     The third and the longest part of the book contains a lexicographic survey of the history of particular lineage names of families of Peljesac. Along with the basic genealogical data (origin, family tradition, time of immigration, first mention in the archives, migration, emigration, extinction, changes of family names and nicknames), the author quotes different legal cases, testaments and data from other sources deemed interesting from the point of view of language, customs, environment, life-style, outstanding people, and so on. Each family has its own number under which it can be found in the graph representing the duration of Peljesac lineages in an earlier Vekaric’s book, The Inhabitants of the Peljesac Peninsula. Dubrovnik: Zavod za povijesne znanosti HAZU, 1993.

     Stjepan Cosic – Dubrovnik

Croatia, A Nation Forged in War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997 (338 p.)

     This book clearly deserves attention: It is the first by this Anglo-Saxon author about Croatian history and is also the first presentation of its kind about Croatia’s rising from the ashes of communism. Marcus Tanner worked as a reporter for London’s Independent newspaper from 1988 to 1994 and was honored by the Queen of Britain herself for his contributions to the development of journalism and reporting. In the introduction of the book, published by the U.S. publisher Yale University Press, the author writes that this book is a result of his desire to fill in some gaps in understanding the former Yugoslavia and his opinion that Croatia deserves to be studied separately. Tanner finds that everyone, especially western liberals, was more attracted to “the sufferings of Bosnia’s Muslims than Croatia’s Catholics, who were marked with the Ustasha tag.” Tanner concludes that it is almost impossible to write about the war of the nineties without first referring to the events of World War II, first Yugoslavia or political atmosphere of the twenties and thirties. He then decided to start from scratch — going back to the time of the first Croatian kings. The result of this is a book that breathes with an understanding of the Croatian idea of independence. This is a rarity because newborn Croatia has many times been “unwelcome” in the western world as an unwanted newborn. Tanner describes in detail the break- up of the former Yugoslavia as well as the Serbian skims in the former Yugoslavia Presidency. For a change, he is an author who does not blame Croatia or Slavonia, but Serbia, for the aggression.

     Reviews of the recently published book are still few. One of the first reviews was written by Branko Franolic, Ph.D., the correspondent for the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences who lives in London. In his review for the Croatian Times (English edition in London), Franolic, an expert of Croatian literature and history, states that Tanner “correctly and objectively” writes about all periods in Croatian history. Franolic says that: “This kind of understanding about what was happening in Croatia was possible because Tanner is well-versed in Croatian history, language, and society. Tanner’s vision of the events that occurred during the 1990’s will definitely provoke many controversial opinions and much bitterness. But we have to know that this is our recent past and it is still too early to cast some sort of judgement. But at least the facts have correctly been transferred to the page.” Franolic adds that Tanner’s presents a basic book for people who want to find out more about the breakaway of Yugoslavia, the liberation of enslaved Croatia, nationalism of small European nations and the imperialism of the opposition party involved in the conflict.

     Another review was conducted by Professor Norman Stone, a former Oxford University faculty member and a member on former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s advising team. Stone, currently a professor of international relations at the University of Ankara, was one of the people defending the Croats’ will to become an independent country. He reviewed the book: Serbs: History, Peace, Myth, and the Destruction of Yugoslavia by author Tim Judah in the British newspaper Sunday Times, where he says Judah focuses on Serbia’s tragic present and is therefore saying that the Serbs were infected by some sort of collective mania after the eighties. “Serbs are a thorn in the side of Germany, the Vatican, Islamic countries and finally, America” and this is the source of their psychotic madness that gave rise to Slobodan Milosevic. Far from hating the Serbs, Judah asks himself the question: what went wrong with the Serbs? In writing about Tanner’s book, Stone notices Croatia could soon become “another Spain and the most successful European economic source.” He also talks about Croatia’s stormy history, stating that Croatia had a fascist state during World War II but that this type of regime was “generally not well accepted by the majority of Croats.” Stone comments that some countries think the Croats caused the break-up of Yugoslavia, and that the Germans shouldn’t have recognized Croatia. He also claims that the British Foreign Office didn’t mind these types of comments because some of the misinformation even came from its own office. He concludes that most books on the subject have a pro-Yugoslavian tone or orientation, like books by Fitzroy Maclean, R.W. Seton Watson or A.P.J. Taylor. Marcus Tanner’s book, therefore, is most definitely interesting. Jasna Jazic. Vjesnik, Zagreb, April 25, 1997

U Salonu Marije Giorgi Bona (In the Salon of Maria Giorgi Bona). Dubrovnik: Zavod za povijesne znanosti HAZU, 1996. (197 pages)

     During the late 18th and 19th centuries, the home of Maria Giorgi Bona was a gathering place of numerous Dubrovnik’s and European distinguished people engaged in literary and cultural issues. She entertained both domestic and foreign celebrities, her learned Dubrovnik friends and relatives, most outstanding intellectuals of her time, including the renowned Abbot and travel writer Alberto Fortis. Moreover, she encircled herself with like-minded ladies of the society forming a distinctive women’s cultural circle. They engaged in science, philosophy, literature, music, and handicrafts.

     Maria Giorgi Bona amassed a considerable library that attests to her broad and diverse interests in many fields of knowledge, including natural sciences and the classics. Besides many major treatises by Greeks and Romans, the private library contained most of the 18th century representative editions from the period of English Enlightenment to the French encyclopedists with equal interest shown for domestic sciences and contemporary Latinists. She ordered books from her friends abroad and read their original versions in Latin, French, Italian, and English. Marija’s library also contained several epistles and biographies of great women. Besides Nouvelle Heloise by Rousseau, we come across Letters by Madame de Sevigne, Anecdotes by M. La Contesse du Barru, etc.

     The only existing written record by this extraordinary woman are letters addressed to her daughter Marija (Marieta). They unveil the tender, profoundly touching character of their writer, casting light on a subtle mother-daughter relationship uncommon in the literature of the time. This correspondence is a valuable record of culture and life in Dubrovnik and Giorgi Bona family, and it offers information on various subjects. Her interests focused on politics, war, the French, teachers, fashion and servants, voyages across the Adriatic, convents, relationships between the sexes, affectation as a social trend, theater, music, handcraft, books and leisure, family relations and inheritance, greediness and avarice, sickness and health, etc. These letters display her strong will and sensibility, intimacy and discontent of an unhappily married woman, as well as confidence in her own judgments proven in the case of the marriage of her younger daughter to a commoner and alien. Essentially a learned woman, Maria Giorgi Bona left an imprint of her sophisticated scholarliness in 18th century Dubrovnik for her drawing room was a genuine meeting place of the most outstanding men and women of the time. She has been characterized as “candelabro lucente” of the Dubrovnik cultural life at the sunset of the Republic.

The Road to Hell and Back (Chicago: Croatian Franciscan Press, 1999), 137 pp., photos, appendix.

     Father Sosic’s account of his internment in the Serbian camps of Keraterm, Omarska, and Manjaca is a valuable contribution to the literature on suffering and the human spirit. Like Viktor Frankl, Sosic discusses life in a death camp, and like Frankl, he draws conclusions that stress our need for meaning and faith in hopeless situations.¹ Frankl lived through Auschwitz as a Viennese Jew and a psychoanalyst; Sosic experienced the Serbian camps as a parish priest from Ljubija, a small town in an ethnically mixed area in Bosnia. But the conditions in the camps, the brutality, the efforts to destroy the human spirit, and the faith in human dignity and a greater Good which saw both men through were similar. For Frankl, meaning was crucial, for Sosic, prayer was “a cure for all wounds” and faith in God and the actions of good men his salvation. (pp. 117, 122-3)

     Frankl was interned because he was Jewish, Sosic because he was Croatian. Both men describe extreme crowding and vicious brutality. Keraterm had no running water and only one toilet for 600 inmates. (pp. 43-4) Sosic estimated that over 3,000 men were killed in Omarska, “a factory of crimes” and “the most horrible of all the concentration camps.” (p. 51) He lost 20 kilograms and was tortured to the point of welcoming death as a release. (pp. 61-2, 71) During the transfer from Omarska to Manjaca, prisoners were stuffed 98 to a bus and left for two days with windows closed and no water. (pp. 94-5) At Manjaca, 4,500 men were crammed into seven stables, with little food, no running water, and poor sanitation. Those who rebelled ended in the “confinement cell,” a dank, flooded cell. (pp. 102, 108) Like most personal accounts, Sosic’s story is anecdotal, not analytic. Yet his experiences fit into a larger literature and a larger human experience. Brutalized, he was grateful to a Serbian officer who treated him as a human being. (p. 103) With little hope of release or survival, he and other inmates expected too much from journalists, the Red Cross, and Orthodox prelates. But none of the visitors witnessed the tortures and murders nor did they do much more than register the suffering of the inmates, who were too frightened to speak to them. (pp. 84-5, 111, 113-115)

     Sosic and his parishioners tried to hold on to their human dignity. But those who fought back, were killed. Others despaired, because although intellectuals and community leaders were marked for death, violence and death were largely random. So some took their own lives, others betrayed those dearest to them a father his son, a brother his brother simply to survive. (pp. 130-1) After his release, Sosic even saw a Serbian nurse abuse a wounded Croatian soldier.² Through it all, he remained a priest who prayed for deliverance and forgiveness for both victim and tormenter. (p. 89-90) He concluded that only good and evil exist, “there is no in-between,” and if evil triumphs, good disappears. (p. 127)

     We tend to view such accounts as descriptions of tragic and extraordinary experiences with no relationship to our lives. But this is an illusion. Frankl noted that camp life intensified our appreciation of our own past lives, and Sosic observed that in camp prayer had a special intensity. In effect, the camps push our human propensities toward good or evil to logical conclusions. Our tendency to look the other way when our fellows suffer was evident in the failure of journalists and Orthodox prelates to risk themselves to help those in the camps. Our tendency to give in to mob behavior was clear in the attack on a prisoner by Serbian women and children, who “tore the poor man apart like a scalded hen.”³ The use of children and youths to torture and kill prisoners shocked Sosic, who pitied “those middle aged men who used these innocent children for their evil ends” and condemned “this kind of war, in which young men are forced to kill and commit heinous crimes” as more evil than conventional wars. (pp. 49, 121) Yet children have been taught to kill in many places, and in our own ghettoes we have created a culture in which children are so brutalized that they kill as a matter of course. We blame them for their acts of violence, but Father Sosic pitied his tormentors and his fellow who invented crimes to explain their own internment and torture just as the victims of society’s failures are held personally responsible for sufferings inflicted by social and political systems.⁴

     Although Father Sosic believes we all can choose good or evil, the atrocious behavior of Serbian guards and civilians was not a manifestation of extraordinary evil, but of what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil. When a culture accepts unethical patterns of behavior and rationalizes immoral actions because they serve a goal, then evil wins. In Bosnia, virulent Serbian nationalism led to war and atrocities. “For fifty years Serbs have been preparing themselves for Greater Serbia,” Father Sosic writes. To realize their goal, they would “stoop to the most heinous actions that would leave any normal man dumbfounded.” (pp. 126-7) This book will leave some dumbfounded, unable to believe that our fellows could behave so badly. But it should be read as a lesson, not a tale of unique moral evil. Father Sosic has done all of us a great service, no matter our nationality. By sharing his experiences with us, he reminds us how fragile is our civilization and how precious our humanity. James J. Sadkovich
NOTES

     ¹ Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (New York: Washington Square Press, 1946/1984), passim, esp. 136-8. If suffering and death have no meaning, Frankl concluded, there is no meaning to survival, “for a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance as whether one escapes or not ultimately would not be worth living at all.” People must be allowed to suffer nobly, something modern society does not allow, and something that those in places like Auschwitz or Omarska would not allow. Like Sosic, Frankl implies that only by finding meaning in suffering one can overcome it.

     ² Sosic, p. 125. Brutalizing patients occurred elsewhere in Bosnia, e.g., Maurizio Cucci’s interviews, in Bosnia. Le vittime senza nome (Milan: Mursia, 1994), pp.13-32.

     ³ Sosic, p. 98. The incident was not unique. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987), pp. 167-8, describes an attack on two Indian prisoners by the women of Marblehead on a July Sunday in 1677. “Then with stones, billets of wood, and what else they might, they made an end of these Indians…we found them with their heads off and gone, and their flesh in a manner pulled from their bones.”

     ⁴ Sosic, p. 129. “When a man ascertains that there is nothing he could charge himself with [to explain why he was in camp], he feels even more miserable.” In effect, lack of meaning created misery, which Frankl, pp. 128- 30, labeled an “existential vacuum.” For our tendency to blame victims, see Alexander Werth,Russia: Hopes and Fears (New York, 1970), pp. 80-5, and Jiri Pelikan, ed.., The Czechoslovak Political Trials, 1940-1954 (Stanford UP, 1971), pp. 28-9.

     The book can be ordered from Ante Cuvalo, 19121 Wildwood Ave., Lansing, Il 60438; Tel/Fax 708-895-5531; E-mail:cuv@netzero.com Price: $10.00

The U.S. Media and Yugoslavia, 1991- 1995. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998. xx, 272 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Tables. $69.50, hard bound

     This self-proclaimed “eclectic, a little bit improvised” (xii) and “incomplete” account of “why U.S. media did the job it did covering Yugoslavia’s dissolution (ix) is not eclectic at all. This book is rather like an artfully created mosaic of U.S. media coverage of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, with each piece of the mosaic carefully chosen, polished, and put into just the right place. In contrast to many similar works on the Yugoslav crisis and the subsequent war in Croatia and Bosnia, this book does an excellent job in locating and identifying sources that shaped the knowledge and opinion of the American public immediately before and during the war.

     Of particular value is the author’s discussion of the large body of media and mass communication theories, together with a skillful application of the same, in order to address systematically the most important issues and to highlight the ways in which “media short circuited the ethical and moral sensibilities of audiences” (xv). The author not only shows craftsmanship in manipulating the intellectual tools at his disposal to create his own map, but does so by supporting his arguments with superbly rich interdisciplinary scholarly, academic, and media sources. In this way he manages to lay before the reader the completely exposed “body” of the media as it is today, while also writing an “alternative history” of the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

     Although the first chapter reveals to us the power structure within the media, in chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 Sadkovich addresses such diverse issues as stereotyping and visual association and the dehumanization of polemical discourse. At the same time he shows how electronic news sources and news services homogenize news editorial style, tending to circulate some meanings and exclude others. In chapters 2, 3, and 8 the author points to the elusive nature of the media, depicting the work of journalists as routinized, stylized, and bureaucratic. He also argues that, in their desire to shock, journalists often promote a superficial and conformist view of what is otherwise a legitimate human interest story. In this way, the constant profusion of messages that incite, instead of messages that question, can easily lead us to accept the unacceptable and to consider violence as a matter of course, just as the constant portrayal of atrocities, detention camps, and interviews with rape victims led the audience to accept that kind of violence as “natural” to the war in Croatia and Bosnia. By treating this naturalization of violence as acceptable (because of long tribal hatred), the media does not allow the war to be portrayed within its sociohistorical and political context.

     For an “outsider,” who “consumes news and is consumed and confused by it” (xii), Sadkovich achieves exactly what he intended (especially in chapters 9 and 10): to expose the role of the U.S. media in the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the war in Croatia and Bosnia, and to counterargue every point where Croatia and Bosnia were treated unjustly by those who reported or wrote about it. It is a justified and well-supported critique of some media, academic, and scholarly sources, a critique that manages to show clearly the bias of U.S. media toward Serbian sources. For a long time before and after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Serbian sources were favored as reliable not because they were, but rather because of a legacy of skillfully executed propaganda from former Yugoslavia and the art of political public relations that was coming from Belgrade. The author, through numerous examples, fulfills his intention of showing that the Serbs were for a long time given the benefit of the doubt, while the Croats were ascribed the position of fascists and Nazis, with the added disadvantage of Catholicism, and the Bosnians were not to be trusted because of the danger of Islamic fundamentalism. He also argues that U.S. official spokesmen and media alike obfuscated the question of genocide, and that by making Slobodan Milo{evi} its agent and Serbia its base for peace in the Balkans, the west has precluded any serious effort to identify and bring to justice those who were ultimately guilty of “crimes against humanity,” and that in all of the above “no medium and no publication passed the ethical tests of fairness and completeness” (p.72).

     By partially chronicling the U.S. media accounts of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and by noting the books published on the same subject, together with an extensive bibliography, this book provides a precious source of information, but its dense style makes it at times difficult to read. As nearly every page offers extensive documentation based on years of research and is supplemented by an abundance of notes, it is very difficult if not impossible to do it justice in this short review. The only way to grasp the complex arguments put forward by this exceedingly well informed scholar is to read the book. This study is a must for anyone interested in the representation of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, but it should also prove of great interest to students and theorists of the media and mass communication and to media practitioners in general. DONA KOLAR-PANOV Sts. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia From Slavic Review, Vol. 58, No. 2, 1999, pp. 473-474.

     JAMES SADKOVICH, The U.S. Media and Yugoslavia, 1991- 1995. Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger, 1998. Pp. 296 Pages/ Price $69.50// To order – Phone: 800-225-5800

     Sadkovich’s book makes him one of that small group of committed commentators who believe that what happened in the Balkans (in the 1990s) actually matters. He provides a committed, almost forensic, investigation into how the West so easily managed to come to terms with the reappearance of genocide in Europe. This book punctures many of the conceits which allowed the West to believe that it was doing all it could do to stop the killing. Sadkovich shows that actually the West did as little as possible…(and) how the West could get away with doing as little as possible. This is an important book. It should be read by everyone who cares about what happened in the Balkans. But, much more importantly , it ought to be read by all those media workers, intellectuals, and bureaucrats who allowed genocide to occur without a whimper of protest.” Keith Tester Professor of Social Theory University of Portsmouth

Povijest dubrovacke luke (History of the Port of Dubrovnik). Dubrovnik: Zavod za povijesne znanosti HAZU, 1996. (252 pages)

     This scholarly book has given a new depth and interpretation of the history of Dubrovnik. With the help of the exact sciences, the author has concluded that Dubrovnik was a sea port already in antiquity and negates the traditional historiography which based its knowledge of the early history of Dubrovnik more on legend than on proven facts.

ABECZEVICZA. Zagreb, 1746 – Reprint Dubrovnik: Zavod za povijesne znanosti Hrvatske akademije znanosti i umjetonsti u Dubrovniku, 1997. Pp. 80.

     The book is divided into the following sections: Navucitel (pronounciaiton of Croatian letters), Abecevica (basic instruction in reading), Navuk krscanski (samll chatecism), Molitve (basic christian prayers), Ministracije (Latin responses for those serving Mass), Broj (instructions how to count and calcualte the time), Racun (brief insturtion in artimetics), and an Index, iliti Kazitel.

     This small but unique book, written in Croatian Kajkavien literary language, is a must to all scholars interested in Croatian language and culture.

 Translated by Sabrina P. Ramet.Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. xvii, 280 p. $27.99

     Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise tells the story of the disintegration and collapse of the former Yugoslavia. Commencing with the death of Tito, Viktor Meier discusses the role of the regions of Yugoslavia, including Macedonia, and in particular emphasizes the crucial part played by Slovenia before the outbreak of war in 1991. Drawing on federal and republican archives, especially in Slovenia, he analyses sources which are not officially open. He also discusses: the legacy of Tito’s regime, the constellation of personalities who dominated the Yugoslav stage during its dismemberment, the beginning of the end, in the late 1980s, when the military initiated a policy of permanent threat against Slovenia and the Serbian leadership worked to liquidate the autonomy of Kosovo, attempts to find a peaceful solution, including the proposal for a Yugoslav confederation, political conditions in Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Western policy toward Yugoslavia’s disintegration.

     “Relativism is beguiling, because it seems so ‘fair’. But relativism is also facile, offering the appearance of wisdom for those who lack either the time or the patience to sort out the facts. Viktor Meier’s “Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise makes a major contribution toward torpedoing relativist analyses about the Yugoslav crisis.” Sabrina P. Ramet