Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse: Causes, Course and Consequences

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Contrary to accepted wisdom, Yugoslavia's disintegration was not the product of inherent and irrational ethnic animosities and centuries of strife that inevitably boiled over into the carnage of the early 1990s. Arguing that the primary utility of this interpretation is to help vindicate the West's policy of inaction, journalist and former war correspondent Christopher Bennett here suggests that the roots of the conflict can be traced directly to 1987. In this pivotal year, a fierce struggle was waged within the Serbian Communist party, between adherents of a Serb nationalist ideology (embodied by Slobodan Molosevic) and those Yugoslavs who clung to the concept of a multinational state. Once Milosevic gained the upper hand, he ruthlessly purged his rivals and launched a massive - and highly successfulcampaign of media indoctrination to stir up Serb nationalist sentiment. This new Serb nationalism, which has so alarmed and repelled the world since 1991, is thus Milosevic's creation and not simply the result of ancient historical enmity. Beginning and concluding his work with a detailed examination of the Yugoslav killing fields and explicitly rejecting the notion that Balkan peoples are somehow predisposed to violence, Bennett also provides a concise and accessible history of Yugoslavia, tracing Slavic culture and politics through the world wars and the age of Tito.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Drawing on sources written in English, Slovene and Serbo-Croat supplemented by interviews (Bennett, a British journalist, speaks both Slovene and Croat), this informative study describes how the Serbs, under the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic, disarmed Slovenian and Croatian forces in May 1990, leaving the territories they had protected virtually defenseless. Bennett criticizes the Serbian media for its willingness to generate nationalist hysteria-which Milosevic shaped into a pathological hatred for the non-Serbian population, as well as for other Serbs who refused to accept his vision of a Greater Serbia. Bennett calls ``unpardonable'' the refusal of the international community to protect innocent victims of the Serbian rampage in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but fails to make clear what he thinks should have been done. The greatest tragedy of all, in his view, is the demise of the Titoist ideal of brotherhood and unity that, until Yugoslavia's collapse, had kept the various ethnic and religious factions loosely allied for nearly 40 years. Prospects for a peaceful settlement in the foreseeable future are bleak, he says, as long as Milosevic remains in power. (Jan.)

Library Journal

This is an absolutely excellent must-read study of the collapse of Yugoslavia. While it will not make Serb partisans happy, it overflows with fresh insight and clarity on each page. On a subject that has attracted so much excellent writing, this timely book is in the first rank. Journalist Bennett deftly avoids simple answers (e.g., the common myth, "What can you expect from centuries old hatreds"). The "Serb national psyche which has so revolted the world since 1991," he argues, is not the product of centuries but has been "deliberately manufactured and intensively cultivated by Serb elites and media." Bennett extends his analysis to the international community (for which he has few good words) and powerfully underscores the cascading impact of the war, whose beginnings he traces to the post-Tito 1980s. The most profound lesson Bennett teaches is that the war was not inevitable and that the first victim was the Yugoslav and the Titoist ideal-and reality-of brotherhood and unity. Highly recommended.-H. Steck, Cortland Univ., N.Y.

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