This is an excerpt from The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us. Although it will be edited out of the 2021 edition, it can be helpful to understand Serbs and the Balkans.
Although the Orthodox Church plays a vital role in Serbia, some overestimate its influence. Bojan Hočevar, a Slovenian man, told me a common belief, “Yugoslavia broke up because of religious differences.”
Some believe religion was one of the biggest reasons for the breakup.
That’s right and wrong: religion was behind it, but it was neither Christianity nor Islam.
The real Balkan religion: Victimism
Everyone in the ex-Yugoslavia is always the victim, never the oppressor. Balkanians are convinced that whatever misfortune they’ve suffered is someone else’s fault, never their side’s fault. Their people are blameless and faultless.
Although some deliberately and knowingly spread such lies, most have honestly deceived themselves into believing the Victimism dogma. Even educated people, who can analyze another conflict zone in another part of the world with a high degree of objectivity and balance, suddenly lose all such faculties when examining their world. Gray becomes either black or white.
Related to the Victimism religion is the Balkanian love for portraying themselves as the underdog. For example:
- Slovenians were the working slaves for the other republics;
- Croatians were the underdog against the Serbs, who twisted them into accepting their language;
- Bosnians were the mistreated Muslims;
- Serbians were the underdog against the Croatians and Slovenians, who controlled all the wealth and resources.
In short, they’re all victims. Let’s see some examples.
In 1986, the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences wrote a document that became known as the SANU Memorandum. Before it was finished, it was leaked to the press. Because it’s an unfinished document, it’s not worth taking too seriously, even though many did. On the other hand, given everything that’s said about it, I read it to find the real story.
Some say the Memorandum was a political plan. No, it was a call for a political plan.
Some say it encouraged nationalism. Not really, it warned about the danger of it and noted that it was rising.1
Others say it advocated a Greater Serbia. No, at least not directly.
So if it was none of those, then what was it?
Here’s a summary: “Whine, whine, whine, boo-hoo, I’m a victim, it’s all their fault, I’ve done nothing wrong, I’m persecuted, whine, whine, whine, I’m a saint, I don’t deserve bad treatment, we’ve been victims for centuries, the world is against us, boo-hoo, whine, whine, whine.”
When you talk to other ex-Yugoslavs, the lyrics will change, but they’ll sing the same tune. They seem to have a competition for who has the most oversized violin.
Let’s listen to the Memorandum’s melody, which the believers of Victimism still chant today:
”The cultural achievements of the Serbian nation have become alienated, usurped or denigrated, ignored and left to decay; the language is being suppressed, and the Cyrillic script is progressively disappearing. . . . No other Yugoslav nation has had its cultural and spiritual integrity so brutally trampled upon as the Serbian nation. No one else’s literary and artistic heritage has been so despoiled and ravaged as the Serbian heritage. . . . Serbian culture has more writers and intellectuals who are out of favor, proscribed, ignored, or deemed undesirable than any other national culture in Yugoslavia; to make matters worse, many of them have been completely wiped out of literary memory.” Furthermore, “the Serbian nation has had to bear trials and tribulations that are too severe not to leave deep scars in their psyche . . . .”
Even though the Republic of Serbia was the biggest state in Yugoslavia, the Memorandum dramatically claimed, “After four decades in the new Yugoslavia, [Serbs] alone are not allowed to have their own state. A worse historical defeat in peacetime cannot be imagined.”
It repeats this hyperbolic mantra when it says, “But the worst misfortune of all is the fact that the Serbian people do not have their own state, as do all the other nations.”
Huh? Did these guys look at a map of Yugoslavia?
Finally, it says:
“Admittedly, the first article of the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Serbia contains a clause declaring that Serbia is a state, but the question must be asked what kind of a state is denied jurisdiction over its territory or does not have the means at its disposal to establish law and order in one of its sections, or ensure the personal safety and security of the property of its citizens, or put a stop to the genocide in Kosovo and halt the exodus of Serbs from their ancestral homes.”82
Conclusion: we have a state, but it doesn’t count, so feel sorry for us, please.
Western analysts blame the 1986 Memorandum for starting nationalism, but that’s wrong. The Memorandum said aloud what Serbs had been saying to each other in whispers.
Nationalism was brewing in every Yugoslav coffee shop and bar long before the Memorandum came out.
The Victimism-filled Croatian Spring uprising happened 15 years before the Memorandum. In 1968, in the middle of Titoism and 18 years before the Memorandum, a Slovenian booklet wrote:
“It is clear that, economically speaking, to the Slovenian people Yugoslavia is a constant loss of funds and an obstacle to a normal economic development. . . . [Yugoslavia] does not allow us to independently manage resources to obtain the standard of living the Slovenian economy makes possible, the standard of living we could have if our development was not held back, the development the nation deserves for working hard and could have already reached if a large part of its resources had not been alienated from it against its will. . . . Yugoslav economic integration is not very highly valued by Slovenians and is even considered a great economic loss.”2
Serbs weren’t the founding members of the Church of Victimism.
The Balkan sport: Hyperboling
Balkanians act like children in a playground, each of them inventing a bigger, more exaggerated story to stir the wildest reaction they can get from you. Balkanians try to convince you that they’ve suffered the most and you should feel sorry for them.
For instance, Balkan historians seem to have a competition between themselves as to who can claim more lives lost in a war.
The one-upmanship feels like an auction, “I hear 100,000 dead! Does anyone want to claim 200,000? 200,000! And the man with the Croatian hat says 500,000 dead! But the guy eating a burek claims 700,000! The gentleman waving a Serb flag says one million! Do I hear two million!? Mujo and Haso claim 60 million!”
Then one day, a few objective Russian and Western historians visit Yugoslavia and say, “Are you guys nuts? There’s no evidence for these absurd numbers.”
For example, to get the 1.7 million WWII deaths that Balkanian “historians” were claiming, they ignored the 660,000 who emigrated out of Yugoslavia, and they took into account 335,000 births that would have happened had it not been for the war (these weren’t abortions—the estimate assumes that if all those people had not died, they would have produced 335,000 children, so let’s add that to the “death toll.”)
Jozo Tomasevich’s War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945, documents how every side in Yugoslavia exaggerated its WWII losses. They did it to get more war reparations, make more people feel sorry for them, justify oppressing the other group as “payback,” and gain respect. Tomasevich calls it “syndrome of being victimized.”
It continues today.
For example, Andre, a Serb-American, told me that half of Serbia’s population died in WWI.
Reality: 16 percent of the Kingdom of Serbia perished in WWI. That death rate was higher than other countries involved in WWI (the Turks were second with 13.7%), but that’s not good enough when you’re competing in the Hyperbole Olympics.
At Andre’s pity party, he told me, “If you look at history, the Serbs were enslaved by Muslims for 600 years and were almost wiped off the face of the planet in WWI and WWII. It is quite obvious that the Serbs are the prey and not the predator. Even in this latest war, it was the Serbs that paid the highest price hands down.”
Aleksandar Svetozarević, a young Serbian who was Couchsurfing at my place in Slovenia, made an accurate estimate, but put a hyperbolic twist: he said that WWI killed 30 percent of Serb men.
That’s true, but citing the male-death percentage usually doubles the standard ratio since most people who die in wars are men. This cleverly doubles the pity factor.
It also implies that there’s a type of genocide going on—that evil people target virile Serb men for extermination and stealing their women and children. It’s all part of The World’s Grand Plan to bring down the Serb man.
Speaking of genocide, the Memorandum decried the “genocide” that was going on in Kosovo before 1986.
Yes, between 1946 and 1986, Albanians killed several Serbs. Still, calling that “genocide” is hyperbole.
It’s like Americans calling the Boston Massacre (where British troops killed five Americans) a “genocide.” Even the attacks of September 11 weren’t genocide. In both cases, it was mass murder. Similarly, when Germans bombed civilians in London, it was war, not genocide. However, what Americans did to some Native American tribes was genocide.
If we refer to every mass murder as genocide, it dilutes the meaning of genocide. Genocide is a loaded, emotional word that some people use to get attention.
On the other hand, I disagree with radical Jews who like to reserve the word just for their holocaust and complain when anyone else uses it.
In the Kosovo chapter, we’ll discuss if and when there was genocide there, but for now, what is clear is that between 1946 and 1986, there was no genocide in Kosovo—that’s just another example of Balkan hyperbole.
Hyperboling in the Yugoslav Wars
When describing the Yugoslav Wars, a Bosnian told me that among his friends “a third stayed, a third left, and a third died.”
That echoed Mile Budak, the Ustaše leader who suggested eliminating Serbs from Croatia by “killing one third, expelling the other third, and assimilating the remaining third.”
Or Hermann Neubacher, who said during WWII, “A third must become Catholic, a third must leave the country, and a third must die!”
These spectacular sayings are for drama queens. The reality is that “only” about four percent of Bosnians died in the Yugoslav Wars. That’s grim, but not a Belarus grim (where a third did perish in WWII).
Croatians and Bosnians claimed that Serbs raped over 100,000 women—another hyperbolic lie. The danger with hysteria inflation is that when the UN finally offers a more objective estimate, people trivialize the reality: “Oh, only 12,000 women were raped?”3
Even the United States played the Hyperbole Game. The Clinton administration claimed that 100,000 ethnic Albanians were “missing” and used that as an excuse to bomb Serbia.
Later, “only” about 2,000 Albanians were confirmed dead.
The “Oh, that’s all?” reaction creates another cycle of self-pity as Balkanians say, “Now they belittle our suffering. Nobody cares about our plight.”
There are three motivations for victimhood.
First, some people love being the underdog—if they triumph, their victory is that much sweeter. Second, it brings sympathy from others.
Third, it justifies any of your future selfish (or even evil) acts. If you tell yourself that Serbs have always persecuted your people, then you’ll feel justified to persecute the Serbs.
Of course, people throughout the world (including Americans) play the I’m-the-biggest-victim-ever game. Still, in the Balkans, you’ll find it reaching acute (and annoying) levels.
On the other hand, perhaps we should be grateful that Victimism is the Balkan religion and not the opposite—Victorism. These people don’t drown in self-pity but instead, bathe in their victories.
If you follow the dogma of Victorism, then you have an unrealistically grand view of your history, culture, and nation. You’re the best, you’ve always won, nobody is better. Gee, sounds like the French.
Given the two options, perhaps it’s best to listen to whiny victims rather than vainglorious boasters. Obviously, the best is for nations to have a realistic and balanced view of themselves, but that’s hard to do when we look at ourselves in the mirror.
Where the Memorandum was right
Although the Memorandum wastes too much time preaching the Gospel of Victimhood, it makes some excellent points in between sermons.
For example, before reading the Memorandum, I believed that Tito did the right thing decentralizing Yugoslavia in 1974. Each republic was demanding more and more autonomy and the centralized communist command-and-control apparatus was inefficient and bureaucratic.
The Memorandum makes an intelligent counterpoint: decentralization created redundant bureaucracy and increased differences among the republics. This led to an “us-versus-them” mentality rather than “brotherhood and unity.”
When Croatia and Slovenia proposed evolving Yugoslavia into a confederacy in 1990, Serbia said, “Huh? First of all, we’re practically a confederacy already—that’s what the 1974 Constitution was all about, remember? It decentralized everything. Besides, we’ve been arguing that it’s that decentralization that got us into this mess, so what we really need is centralization!”
On the other hand, given the loud demands for autonomy in the early 1970s, it was unrealistic for Tito to ignore them forever; otherwise, Yugoslavia might have broken up in 1981 instead of 1991.
The centralization-decentralization debate and the ethnic issues were a distraction from the most significant problem: communism. The Memorandum correctly identified the rotten system:
“The conditions prevailing within the underground communist movement left deep traces: conspiratorial methods, internal hierarchy, the participation of only a handful of individuals in decision-making, insistence on ideological unanimity and unquestioning acceptance and carrying out of assignments, and harsh epithets (‘factionalist,’ or ‘enemy’) for anyone who disagreed with or criticized the adopted political line.”
Furthermore, the Memorandum revealed how communism had corrupted the work ethic:
“There is virtually no appreciation in society of what it means to do an honest day’s work. . . . The salaries paid out in enterprises often depend less on performance and more on someone’s agility in fighting for higher prices or lower taxes. The systematic practice of covering the losses of some firms with the earnings of others kills incentive for both sides.”
Many countries with ethnic and linguistic challenges (e.g., Belgium, Spain, Canada) would splinter if their economies were as dysfunctional as a communist one. Yugoslavia’s fatal error was letting petty issues distract them from fixing their number-one problem: communism.
The only time Yugoslavia was truly united was from 1953 to 1965. Why? The West and East were pouring money in because Tito was two-timing the superpowers.
Money makes people shut up. Everyone complains less and their neighbor doesn’t seem like such an asshole anymore. Perhaps he still is one, but I’m not going to make a big deal about it because I’m fat and happy. That’s why Belgium, Spain, and Canada are still in one piece and Yugoslavia is not.
The other Memorandum
It’s good to read the 1986 Memorandum to understand what Serbian intellectuals would have told you after a couple of beers. Nevertheless, because the Memorandum was just a draft, it’s unfair to take it too seriously.
A lesser-known memorandum came out in 1995 that the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences did finish and sign. The 92-pager is called “Answers to Criticisms” to the Memorandum. It rebuts a decade’s worth of criticism and myths around the original Memorandum. Although it’s fun to listen to wild villagers, it’s also useful to hear what Serbia’s top academics have to say.
They recycle some of the Memorandum’s original points: “In 1991 . . . 25% [of all Serbs] lived in other republics . . . 16% of all Serbs . . . lived in [Vojvodina and Kosovo], often under difficult circumstances, as was the case in [Kosovo].”
That’s misleading: only 2.3% of Serbs were living in Kosovo; the other part of that 16% were in Vojvodina, hardly a “difficult” place to live. On the contrary, it’s probably the best place for a Serb to be.
Moreover, if Yugoslavia were to still exist today, 27% of Serbs would be living outside Serbia (assuming that Serbs in Kosovo are outside Serbia). So despite all the ethnic cleansing, the number has barely budged. If you include the whole world, about 40% of Serbs live outside of Serbia.
By saying these facts are unjust, the Academy implicitly believes that every ethnic group should live in one state and not outside of it.
If you buy that, then cry over these statistics: 16% of Croatians live elsewhere in the ex-Yugoslavia lands; in addition, if you consider the whole planet, half of Croatians live outside of Croatia, which is “worse” than Serbia.
By focusing on these facts, Serbs distract you from their better argument: that Serbs ought to have fundamental human rights no matter where they live.
The Academy complains that all the factories and investments were going to Slovenia and Croatia. At first glance, this argument is weak. If you’re going to open a manufacturing plant in the USA, you’d probably pick somewhere in America’s Manufacturing Belt—the Midwest. There’s plenty of existing expertise there, which makes it easy to find trained workers. Putting your factory in Mississippi (a state with a weak manufacturing tradition) is a lousy resource allocation.
On the other hand, communism was all about lousy resource allocation! It put equality in front of efficiency. Therefore, if there are far more factories per capita in one republic (like Slovenia), then a communist should spread the wealth and make future factories in undeveloped places (like Kosovo), even if those new factories would be five times more efficient in Slovenia.
The Academy argues that “Serbia was economically underdeveloped and Slovenia and Croatia enjoyed accelerated growth thanks to their political and economic dominance.”
The reality is that those two nations did better for the same reason they have always done better economically than the southern Balkans—they work harder. Having spent 18 months traveling throughout ex-Yugoslavia, it’s clear that the further south you go, the more laid back people get.
Slovenians are uptight workaholics and Macedonians are relaxed we’ll-do-it-tomorrow people. In between are the transition people; thus, southern Serbians are less industrious than northern Serbians, while Montenegrins are lazier than Croatians.
In short, southern Balkanians are more fun than Croatians, Slovenians, and Vojvodinians, but if you need to get shit done, you give it to the northern guys.
If we have to, we’ll fight. I hope they don’t be so crazy as to fight against us. Because if we don’t know how to work and do business, at least we know how to fight. — Slobodan Milošević
If it’s true that Slovenia and Croatia were economically ahead of the other republics mainly because Tito’s cronies gave them unfair advantages, then Serbia and the rest of the southern Balkans ought to catch up to Slovenia and Croatia any day now.
If a lazy work ethic, corruption, and disorganization had little to do with their backwardness, then soon we should see economic equality among the former republics. Of course, we won’t, and another bunch of excuses will come: “the EU is not letting us in, the war hurt us more than others, and our sexy women distract us.”
Although these are good excuses, in 30 years the story will be the same. The reason Serbia will probably never equal Slovenia’s per capita economic output is that they’re not Germans. Slovenians aren’t Germans either, but they’re a decent substitute.
On the other hand, who would you prefer to socialize with?
I’ll take the Serbs any day.
Lastly, the Western media claims that Serbs “dominated” Yugoslavia.
That’s debatable. It’s true: Serbs were 41 percent of the population, but had most of the government jobs, including about 75 percent of the police and army positions.5 The head of the military was a Serb.
The Academy claims all this was because Croatians and Slovenians had much better economies and better pay and didn’t want to lower themselves to the crappy federal government jobs.
Perhaps, but a better explanation is geography: Yugoslavia's capital was in the middle of Serbia, so most of the federal government jobs were there.
On the other hand, Tito and Edvard Kardelj, the two top Yugoslav dogs, were not Serbs. In fact, it’s possible that this duo made up the infamous saying, “A weak Serbia ensures a strong Yugoslavia.”
Although I don’t buy that Tito was truly anti-Serb, he certainly wasn’t pro-Serb either. What is quite clear is that Serbs did not disproportionately rule Yugoslavia for most of its existence.
It's hard to understand the Yugoslav Wars. I hope this analysis sheds a bit of light on this complex subject.
Endnotes
1. Although the Memorandum is not a direct call for nationalism and it warns about the danger of its rise, it does encourage its politicians to be more forceful about the national needs: “Serbian politicians since the Second World War, who are always on the defensive and always worried more about what others think of them and their timid overtures at raising the issue of Serbia’s status than about the objective facts affecting the future of the nation whom they lead.”
2. Slovenija 1968 kam? [Slovenia 1968, where to?] (Trieste, 1968; reprinted Ljubljana, 1990), pp. 10-12. Cited in Economic Change and the National Question in Twentieth Century Europe, edited by Alice Teichova et al, (Cambridge, 2000), p. 328.
3. In 1992, Croatia claimed that tens of thousands of its women were raped. Bosnia said about 55,000 Bosnian women were raped. A few “patriotic” women’s groups claimed Serbians raped 120,000 women in both countries. The European community's Investigative Mission reported about 20,000 raped women; the UN estimated over 12,000 rapes. The top four groups, in order of rapes: (1) Bosnian, (2) unidentified, (3) Bosnian Serb, and (4) Croatian. Source: M. Cherif, M. Bassiouni, and Marcia McCormick, “Sexual Violence: An Invisible Weapon of War in the Former Yugoslavia,” Occasional Papers no. 1 (International Human Rights Law Institute, De Paul University College of Law, 1996), pp. 10, 11, 44.
4. Kosta Mihailovic and Vasilije Krestic, “Answers to Criticisms,” Memorandum (Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 1995) p. 68. Available at http://www.rastko.rs/istorija/iii/memorandum.pdf
5. In 1950, the JNA was 60% of Serb and Montenegrin. In the mid-1980s, 68% of the JNA were either Serbians or Montenegrins; Croatians made up only 14%. By the late 1980s, Serbs had 75%. Source: John R. Lampe, Yugoslavia as History: Twice there was a country. Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 337.
