Serbdom
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Serbdom (Serbian: Srpstvo) is the ambiguous term used by Serbs to denote the patriotism or solidarity of the Serbian people. Used before the term "nationalism" (The term was coined by Johann Gottfried Herder (nationalismus) during the late 1770s.[1]
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[edit] History
"Whoever is a Serb and of Serb birth,
And of Serb blood and heritage,
And comes not to the Battle of Kosovo,
May he never have the progeny his heart desires,
Neither son nor daughter!
May nothing grow that his hand sows,
Neither dark wine nor white wheat!
And let him be cursed from all ages to all ages!"
[edit] Middle ages
The Battle of Kosovo in 1389 against the Ottoman Empire is a strong symbol for Serbdom.
[edit] Modern
At the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, many Serbian nationalist movements, such as Narodna Odbrana and Young Bosnia, were based more anti-imperialism (specially against Austro-Hungarian Empire) and secular Pan-Slavism than any religious identity; they included both Orthodox and Muslims, such as Muhamed Mehmedbašić, in their membership.[2][3] On the other side, the monarchist paramilitary movement Bela Ruka (created in 1912) had a more traditionalist approach, and by the 1920s its members became a prominent force in the First Yugoslavia after World War I.
Marko Miljanov's message to the Austrian ambassador to Montenegro: "Tell that Austrian deputy, to tell his Emperor, should God turn him over to good, to then unite the Serbdom: Bosnia and 'Erzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Old Serbia, and to make that the Serb Kingdom"
- In 1863, the Association of Serbian Philology commemorated the death of Cyril a thousand years earlier, its president Dimitrije Matić, talked of the creation of an ethnically "pure" Slavonic people: "with God’s help, there should be a whole Slavonic people with purely Slavonic faces and of purely Slavonic character"[4]
The renaissance of Serbian nationalism after three centuries of Ottoman control of the Balkans came at the time of the romantic-nationalist Revolutions of 1848 in Western Europe and the 19th-century expansion and rise of a great Slavic Orthodox power, the Russian Empire, which has designed itself as a protector (and later liberator) of Orthodox Christian peoples (among Serbs, Greeks, Montenegrins, Romanians, Bulgarians, Slavic Macedonians) on Ottoman lands.
A more radical Serbian nationalism was put in practice for the first time during the early 1920s, under the Yugoslav premiership of Nikola Pašić. Using tactics of police intimidation and vote rigging[5], he repressed the oppositions (mainly those loyal to his Croatian rival, Stjepan Radić) to his government in parliament[6], centralizing power in the hands of the Serbian politicians.[7]
At the rise of Nazism and fascism in Europe and the outbreak of World War II, Yugoslavia faced its first dissolution, and for the first time the rise to power of anti-Serbian Yugoslav separatist forces in secessionist territories – the most successful being the fascist Independent State of Croatia, which persecuted Serbs, Jews and Roma people, most notably the massacres of Jasenovac) and forced conversion of Serbs to Catholicism (Bosnian Muslims were tolerated by the Catholic leadership for political reasons of that time).
At the end of World War II, relations between Serbs, Croats and other peoples of Yugoslavia were deeply embittered by what happened during the years of 1941-1945 (like the Jasenovac concentration camp and the battles of Chetniks and Yugoslav Partisans guerrillas for power). To avoid more dividing conflicts, the Communist Slovene-Croat Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito imposed a federalized, socialist and secular composition on the Second Yugoslavia, based mainly on an official policy and the promotion of a Yugoslav cultural identity and a common Serbo-Croatian language. Regional nationalist and religious movements were harshly suppressed.[citation needed]
The second Yugoslavia was dominated by the communist regime. During the popular rise of the Yugoslav Communist Party during the interwar period, and throughout its suppression and public discredit at the hands of the Kingdom's government, the party had been rapidly reaching the conclusion that in order to maintain a united South Slavic country, internal nationalism would need to be suppressed: the autonomy awarded to Vojvodina and Kosovo; the absence of the Cyrillic script, and other measures reduced the power of Serbian nationalism.[citation needed] As the Eastern bloc started to crumble in the second half of 1980s, Serbian nationalism among Yugoslav Serb politicians began to resurface. This time the movement had an overtly religious and militaristic approach, with widely-publicized slogans like “Serbia for the Serbs” and “Only Unity Saves the Serbs”, culminating with the Slobodan Milošević speech in Kosovo in 1989.
A Serb backlash arose within the League of Communists of Yugoslavia against the decentralized Yugoslav multiculuralism, beginning in the 1960s.[8] Serb communist officials, such as Dobrica Ćosić claimed that such a decentralized multicultural policy was not creating the Yugoslav nationality that was promised, but encouraging factionalism.[8] At the time Ćosić refuted accusations that he was a Greater Serbian nationalist, and claimed that he was in favour of a united Yugoslavia with republics within it on a temporary basis, until a united Yugoslav nationality could be formed.[9] Slovenian critic Dušan Pirjevec accused Ćosić of desiring a forced unitarism where Greater Serbian domination would flourish.[9] Ćosić's criticisms of Yugoslav cultural policy grew more intense and more in line with Serb nationalism than with Yugoslav nationalism.[10] In 1968, Ćosić condemned the Yugoslav government's policies in Kosovo that he claimed favoured the ethnic Albanian population while ignoring the persecution and forced emigration of Serbs and Montenegrins by ethnic Albanians that he claimed was taking place there.[9]
Serb nationalism escalated following the death of Tito in 1980.[11] Serbian intellectuals broke a number of taboos, such as Branko Petranovic, who identified Draža Mihailović, the Chetnik rival of Tito during World War II as being an important "anti-fascist".[11] Dobrica Ćosić joined other Serb political writers in writing the highly controversial Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts of 1986.[12] The Memorandum claimed to promote solutions to restore Yugoslav unity, but it focused on fiercely condemning Titoist Yugoslavia of having economically subjugated Serbia to Croatia and Slovenia and accused ethnic Albanians of committing genocide against Serbs in Kosovo.[13] The Memorandum was harshly condemned by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia as well as the government of Serbia led by Ivan Stambolić.[14] Members who would later support Serb nationalism maintained followed the status quo in Yugoslavia by denouncing the Memorandum. Serbian communist official Slobodan Milošević at the time of the release of the Memorandum maintained public silence on the issue, but in a meeting with members of secret police he formally endorsed the official government denouncement of the Memorandum, stating:
The appearance of the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences represents nothing else but the darkest nationalism. It means the liquidation of the current socialist system of our country, that is the disintegration after which there is no survival for any nation or nationality. … Tito’s policy of brotherhood and unity … is the only basis on which Yugoslavia’s survival can be secured.[14]
However, amidst the rising nationalist sentiment in Serbia, Milošević joined the Serb nationalists in 1987 as their major spokesperson in the communist establishment.[15] Milošević supported the premises of the Memorandum that included promoting centralization of power in the federal Yugoslav government to decrease the powers of the republics and autonomous provinces and a nationalist motto of "strong Serbia, strong Yugoslavia".[15] Milošević and the Serbian government supported a tricameral legislature, that would include a Chamber of Citizens to represent the population of Yugoslavia, a system that would give Serbs a majority; a Chamber of Provinces and Republics to represent regional affairs; and a Chamber of Associated Labour.[16] Serbia's specific endorsement of a Chamber of Citizens and a Chamber of Associated Labour faced opposition from the republics of Croatia and Slovenia as they saw the proposals as increasing Serbia's power and federal state control over the economy, which was the opposite of their intention to decrease federal state control over the economy.[16] Slovenia staunchly opposed the Milošević government's plans and promoted its own reforms that would make Yugoslavia a decentralized confederation.[17]
The rotating presidency was dissolved in favor of a Serbian-based one; the autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina were abolished.
The Serbian Orthodox Church, once neglected, resurged with unprecedented force due to a great Serb religious awakening — expressed in constructions like the Temple of Saint Sava, an immense Orthodox church who construction was brought to near-completion in Belgrade during the 1990s-first decade of the 21st century.
As a consequence of the radicalization of the various populations of Yugoslavia, nationalism reached high levels. Among Serb nationalists, this culminated on the idea that a revised "Greater Serbia" would be the new aim for Belgrade once each republic declares independence.[citation needed] Such factors as these ignited the violence that ravaged through the former territory of Yugoslavia from 1990 onward.[citation needed]
[edit] Culture
[edit] Folk attire
- The Šajkača is a national hat for ethnic Serbs; it has its roots from the 18th century Serbian river fleet in the Habsburg military known as "Šajkaši" that fought Ottoman Turks around the Danube and Sava river. The remnants of the military spread the design in the villages and it became a hat of the peasants. The hat would in the Balkan Wars and after the First World War act as the official hat of the Royal Yugoslav Army. The elderly ethnic Serbs in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially in the villages, wear the hat on everyday basis. The Serbs of Montenegro use both the Šajkača and the Montenegrin hat, the Šajkača also being a political pro-Serb sign.
- The Montenegrin cap is a national hat for ethnic Serbs of Montenegro and in later times the self identifying Montenegrins, originally in the shape of a flat cylinder, having a red upper surface (called tepelak) not dissimilar to the Herzegovina and Lika caps. It was wholly red until Prince-Bishop Petar II Petrović Njegoš surrounded it with a black rim (called derevija)[18], and the definition given was as a sign of grief of occupied Kosovo. The Kosovo myth was very popular in the old Montenegrin state. The enforcement of the cap upon the Montenegrin chieftains by Prince-Bishop Peter II Petrović-Njegoš was a mark of expression of then's dominating Serbian national identity[19]. The national telling recorded the most often version of the cap as following: the black wrapper was sign of grief for the once big Empire, the red the bloody defeat at the Battle of Kosovo[20] and the five small stripes on the top represent the remaining remains of the once greater Serbian realm[21], which became increasingly popular amongst the common folk during the reign of Prince Danilo I Petrović-Njegoš. Within the stripes is angled a six star, representing the last free part, Montenegro, shining upon the fallen and conquered[22]. Worn by the rulers and chieftains, the version with the Four Ocil symbol in the star's place had become across the years with growth of nationalism excessively popular amongst the ordinary people, the symbol of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which effectively worked on maintaining and raising the national identity.
[edit] Politics
[edit] Greater Serbia
Greater Serbia is a political concept directed towards the creation of a Serbian state which would incorporate all regions with significant Serbian populations in the Balkans.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ T. C. W. Blanning (2003). The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe 1660-1789. Oxford University Press. pp. 259, 260. http://books.google.com/books?id=3qCIzooCRlwC&pg=PA260&dq=nationalism+pejorative#v=onepage&q=nationalism%20pejorative&f=false.
- ^ Feature Articles: The Balkan Causes of World War One, from firstworldwar.com, 11 August 2001
- ^ Mohammed Mehmedbasic bio at Harold B. Lee Library website
- ^ Association of Serbian Philology: Hiljadugodišnja 1863:4
- ^ Balkan Politics, TIME Magazine, March 31, 1923
- ^ Elections, TIME Magazine, February 23, 1925
- ^ The Opposition, TIME Magazine, April 06, 1925
- ^ a b Wachtel 2006, 84-85.
- ^ a b c Wachtel 2006, 85.
- ^ Wachtel 2006, 85-86.
- ^ a b Ramet 2006, 322.
- ^ Wachtel 2006, 86.
- ^ Wachtel 2006, 85-87.
- ^ a b Ramet 2006, 321.
- ^ a b Ramet 2006, 337.
- ^ a b Ramet 2006, 338.
- ^ Ramet 2006, 339.
- ^ "Crna Gora i Crnogorci" by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić
- ^ "O najstarijoj kapi kod Jugoslovena..." by Miodrag Vlahović
- ^ Crna Gora... Narodni život i običaji" by Andrija Jovićević
- ^ "Crnogorska muška kapa" by Zorica Radulović
- ^ "Fizicki lik i izgled Njegosa" by Jovan Vukmanović
[edit] External links
- Serbian National League
- Fierce Serb Nationalism Pervades Student Foes of Belgrade Leader, The New York Times, 10 December 1996
- Antisemitism in Serbia, Stephen Roth Institute
- Serbia's Reluctant Path to Catharsis - Transitions On Line
- Steven W. Sowards "Serbian nationalism from the "Nacertanije" to the Yugoslav Kingdom"
- Scaife, Robert. "Serbian Culture of Victimization and Nationalism in a Post-Cold War Europe" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Inter-Continental Hotel, New Orleans, LA, Jan 09, 2005 Online <.PDF>. 2008-04-23
- Postwar Serbian Nationalism and the Limits of Invention - NICK MILLER Cambridge Studies
