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This enthralling and often chilling political travelogue fully deciphers the Balkans' ancient passions and intractable hatreds for outsiders. For as Kaplan travels among the vibrantly-adorned churches and soul-destroying slums of the former Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece, he allows us to see the region's history as a time warp in which Slobodan Milosevic becomes the reincarnation of a fourteenth-century Serbian martyr; Nicolae Ceaucescu is called "Drac," or "the Devil"; and the one-time Soviet Union turns out to be a continuation of the Ottoman Empire.
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Criticisms:
1) His approach is fairly egotistical since he believes that few Western reporters actually capture the complexity of the region, and none, except a rare few (of which he is one), ever understand the people or their real motivations. Although his assessment of Western reporters may have elements of truth, he seems to make the point numerous times throughout the book as if to create his own air of superiority.
2) Kaplan's assessment of Greece seems to carry the most weight since he lived there for seven years, whereas he sometimes only spends days in other regions. Nevertheless, he feels obliged to draw the same broad generalizations from those areas where he spoke to relatively few people, as he does from places where he met many people and spent much time. His underlying assumption throughout the book is that only a thorough understanding of history can engender a comprehension for the present state of affairs. Thus, in the countries he frequented little, he feels a fair amount of research in history allows him to make the same prognostications as he makes in areas where he has gotten to know many people.
Barring the above critiques, I enjoyed the book and found myself coming back to it until complete. He complements a firm grip of historical facts with a wonderful ability to depict people and places through metaphor and descriptive writing. Here is an example, "Greeks are married to the East. The West is our mistress only. Like any mistress, the West excites and fascinates us, but our relationship with it is episodic and superficial." His ability to characterize relationships, people and places with words is refreshing. I will definitely read more Kaplan.
The books clear strength lies in the author's lucid, fluid and descriptive writing style - it truly makes the book, from the literary point of view, a joy to read. The reader is given a vivid picture of the Balkan lands Kaplan visits in a sort of `travelogue from hell' or `anti-travelogue' regarding places that most readers will not yet have visited. Added to this is a good deal of insight and reportage, interviews with locals, and so forth, that lend the book much readability and depth.
Unfortunately, however, the book is marred by the author's own Western prejudices and biases. What we have here is a critique, in many ways, of the `backwards East' and a not-so-subtle head-shaking that the region is not more `Western' in outlook.
The problems surface on two levels: First, Kaplan's descriptions of the local cultural life are off the mark, due in many cases to his lack of understanding of Orthodox Christianity. Many ignorant comments are notable regarding Orthodox religious art, piety, liturgical life, church organization, etc. Kaplan is right that the Orthodox tradition has had a profound influence on the region, but his conclusions as to the nature of this impact are nothing more than a perpetuation of the common and long-held Western stereotypes about the Eastern Orthodox part of Europe - in particular, the myth that Eastern Orthodox Christianity is a dangerous brew of mysticism, austerity and nationalism. Not only is this an incorrect summary, but the impressionistic conclusion is false -- the reality of the impact of the Orthodox Church on these countries in the twentieth century is much more complex and nuanced than Mr. Kaplan leads the reader to believe. Kaplan would have been better served to study more about Orthodox Christianity before repeating so many tired stereotypes about it in this book. But, alas, many Western readers are not in a position to correct Mr. Kaplan, and will accept what he writes as true, thereby experiencing a convenient confirmation of their existing stereotypes.
Second, Kaplan's `program' for the region is unabashedly biased towards the 'enlightened' Western approach. According to Kaplan, the post-Enlightenment West is the paradigm that the world (or at least this part of it) must follow, and he accords much of the problems of these countries to their non-Western, Byzantine, Slavic, Eastern Orthodox Christian background - in a vast, vast overstatement and oversimplification of the real situation in the Balkans and in Europe in general. The fact that the Enlightenment itself led to the drastic decline of ethical life in the `West', and the development of the political ideologies that are the real cause of the tragedies of the Twentieth Century seems lost on Kaplan, who would solve the problems of the Balkan region by imposing the full-blown developments of Western Enlightenment ideology on these Southeastern Europeans.
The story of the Balkans is simple enough - it is a region that has been `put upon' by outsiders for centuries, each with their own designs for the region - the Venetians, the Byzantines, the Ottomans, the Austrians, the Nazis, etc. In the act of being downtrodden, rivalries developed and these have in some cases developed into ethnic hatreds. These hatreds are easily manipulable by local political powers to engage the population in one or another act of internal or external agression (read: scapegoating). The influence of outsiders on the region has been profoundly negative historically, and in my opinion, Kaplan is mistaken to assume that yet another `design' for the region would meet with any greater success than the previous ones have.
Read `Balkan Ghosts' for a great travelogue and an excellent portrayal of the present Western stereotypical view of the Balkans. But don't take his strereotypes to heart - the truth is much more complex and nuanced, and the region needs to be understood from the `inside out' rather than the view from the `outside in' that Kaplan presents here.