The Serbs; History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia

by Tim Judah

• ISBN13: 9780300071139
• ISBN10: 0300071132
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780300147841
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 1997-03-27
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

This wide-ranging, scholarly, and highly readable account opens with the windswept fortresses of medieval kings and a battle lost more than six centuries ago that still profoundly influences the Serbs. Judah describes the idea of "Serbdom" that sustained them during centuries of Ottoman rule, the days of glory during the First World War, and the genocide against them during the Second. He examines the tenuous ethnic balance fashioned by Tito and its unraveling after his death. And he reveals how Slobodan Milosevic, later to become president, used a version of history to drive his people to nationalist euphoria. Judah details the way Milosevic prepared for war and provides gripping eyewitness accounts of wartime horrors: the burning villages and "ethnic cleansing", the ignominy of the siege of Sarajevo, and the columns of bedraggled Serb refugees, cynically manipulated and then abandoned once the dream of a Greater Serbia was lost. This first in-depth account of life behind Serbian lines is not an apologia but a scrupulous explanation of how the people of a modernizing European state could become among the most reviled of the century. Rejecting the stereotypical image of a bloodthirsty nation, Judah makes the Serbs comprehensible by placing them within the context of their history and their hopes.

Author Biography

Timothy Judah was Balkans correspondent for the London Times and the Economist, reporting from Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and the former Yugoslavia

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix	(2)
Preface	xi	(3)
Acknowledgements	xiv	(1)
Author's Note	xv	(2)
List of Abbreviations	xvii
1 DEATH DOES NOT EXIST	1	(16)
Migrations
The Arrival of the Slavs
The First Kingdoms The Arrival of the Turks
The Military Frontier
AN EMPIRE ON EARTH	17	(12)
Birth of a Dynasty
The Holy Roots
High Noon of Empire Retreat from Empire
3 IT IS BETTER TO DIE IN BATTLE THAN TO LIVE IN SHAME	29	(19)
The Battle and its Aftermath
Lazar's Choice: The Empire of Heaven The Cult of Death
Preserving the Message
The Heavenly State
4 RESURRECTION AND BEYOND	48	(25)
From Pig Dealers to Princes
From History into Ideology Creating the New Nationalism
5 CUTTING THE TURKS INTO PIECES	73
The Burning Tradition
Bosnia's Sulphurous Vapours They Are Not Human Beings: The Balkan Wars Instinct and Experience: How Many?