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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why genocide happens?, January 16, 2007
This review is from: Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide (Hardcover)
Anzulovic's Heavenly Serbia is a great resource for students of the Balkans and the Yugoslav wars. It is also a good read for those with a general interest in the Balkans. The book is well written and well researched.
Strengths
Anzulovic sets out to explain how the myth of Heavenly Serbia has set the stage for the genocidal wars of the 1990s. He manages to do that very well in this book. He uses historical documents to prove that the myth was initially not a popular myth at all, but a church version of what had happened at the Battle of Kosovo in 1989. Further, he shows how the narrative spread among the population through the singing bards. Then, Anzulovic explains how the myth was used in the 19th and 20th centuries to justify Serbian megalomaniac ambitions. An, intriguing part of the book is the section where the author talks about how international circles had accepted the myth thus giving legitimacy to both the Serbian territorial ambitions and the genocidal campaigns.
Weaknesses
One weakness of the book is that Anzulovic often becomes repetitive. Also, one could argue that the author draws from too few sources when trying to prove his hypothesis. He relies a lot on Njegos's The Mountain Wreath to argue that the idea of eliminating entire ethnic groups to create a compact Serbian state was accepted widely. However, the content of one Serbian book is not as significant as the popularity of that book,. And, Anzulovic mentions the popularity of this and other similar books (Noz) to argue that the Serbian intellectuals were in fact promoting the myth Serbian victimization and calling for `revenge.'
In conclusion, Heavenly Serbia is an indispensable book for those who seek to understand the wars of 1990s in the Balkans. And, not only those but, also, previous wars of the 19th and 20th century in the Balkans which in fact were prequels to the 1990s, as this book implies.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How not to read this book, June 2, 2011
This review is from: Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide (Hardcover)
I can understand that the sole title of this book makes Serbs and Serb-loving people scream "Propaganda!" And from that point on, the very words of this book are viewed in different light, with a prepared knife in hand.
Please, don't do that. Anzulovic spent his life abroad, dedicating it to find a cause of this madness that sweeps the Balkans for years. He delivers a psychological view to the cause of a bloodshed, a view that may not be the full and absolute truth but it makes you think. If you reject that view without giving it a fair thought and your feelings are hurt, then you have certainly proven the point of this book.
This book is not intended to offend and disgrace Serbs, as it is not intended to glorify Croats or any other nation. The purpose of it is not to discuss history of the Balkans. So the people reviewing this book citing Croat crimes in Jasenovac are totally missing the idea. But to show the good intention, the author mentions the approx. numbers of victims in Jasenovac, by comparing the Jewish sources, American, Croatian and Serbian (the last two being remarkably similar, given they were done independent one of the other) in contrast to overblown figures of some Serbs. This has been done only to further the point of the psychological view of ideology that possessed the minds of some Serb leaders. Nothing else.
The author explains the mentality of the, mostly, mountain dwelling people (and how they influenced the leaders of the conflict) that exist in all of our countries, but none were more entangled in ideological games than those living in present day Serbia and Montenegro. Of course, once the spark lit the fire, it was hard for either side to quell its rage in rampage that followed and thus gave an "excuse" for revenge, murder, crimes, etc, to either side. After that point on, it was all zig-zag and only thing to do afterward is count the dead.
Please, let us not repeat that history again.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Balkan Mischief Makers, May 31, 2010
This review is from: Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide (Hardcover)
Recent Balkan wars represent a succinct example of the incestuous relationship between culture and brain function. A multicultural, relatively prosperous society with a high degree of inter-ethnic marriage is torn, within a year or two, into murderous fiefdoms. Appalling crimes are committed and justified by appealing to old myths resurrected by political expedience. Europe watches, helplessly, as veneer of civilization is torn with people reverting to Old Testament tribal eye-for-an-eye brutality.
This book tries to explain the causes and conditions that propelled Serbs into renting asunder of (an illusory?) tribal harmony in communist Yugoslavia. The main thesis is that Serb personal, political and religious life is defined by myths (of Serb defeat by the Ottomans, of "Serb exceptionalism", etc). Several chapters attempt to show that the genocidal streak in the Serbian national mythos originated in a violent 19th century poem calling for elimination of Turks and their collaborators. Anzulovic shows that, far from resisting occupation, Serb aristocrats were valuable vassals of Ottoman Turks, helping to consolidate Ottoman power both through troops and personal service. There is an intriguing link between the Serb tradition of banditry and its disregard for victims which may be relevant to our understanding of the Bosnian war. Pace A., in Servia, cruelty when successful is admired; thus Serb paramilitary atrocities in Bosnia created a vicious self-reinforcing circle that was actively encouraged by intellectual, artistic and religious elites in the Serb capital (Belgrade). The author shows a particular scorn for the Serb Orthodox Church which has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Bosnian genocide through its "St. Savaist" populism. As far as the Belgrade Patriarchy is concerned, murdering innocent Muslims does not contradict Christ's teachings. In other words, for a few blood-soaked years the Serbs represented an Orthodox version of the Taliban.
Much of what A. says appears, to an outsider, convincing. The zeal with which Serb civilians, paramilitaries and soldiers tortured, maimed and murdered innocent Croats & Bosnians should be contrasted to the effeteness, confusion and lack of professionalism of European (British, French and especially, Dutch) armies which watched the genocide on the ground, sometimes from yards away. If I was in Afpak I certainly would be concerned if I had to serve next to the craven Dutch troops whose surrender of Srebrenica should represent a case study for every contemporary military school.
The book is not without problems. While trying to explain the Bosnian war, A. overplays the sway of mythos over the Serb "soul' while overlooking the role of Milosevic's opportunistic populism and the naked economical self-interest of Bosnian Serbs. The endless referral to violent medieval Serbian myths, poems and works of art overlooks the fact that almost every culture possesses their equivalents: Popol Vuh, Icelandic sagas, Warao creation myths, you name it. Finally, while the Serbs are portrayed as monsters egged on by their deviant cultural and religious institutions, the author overlooks the neighbors: Croats, who as Nazi collaborators committed far greater atrocities [that were said to disgust the Waffen SS itself]]; Albanians who are running arguably the most efficient and ruthless pan European drug trafficking and prostitution operation in history, Hungarians, who have their own sordid history of medieval slaughters. Claiming, as A. does, that the Serbs have a monopoly on violence and atrocities is absurd. Anyone who's read Burkhardt's seminal Civilization of the Renaissance will know that cruelty was the order of the day amongst the pre-Italians. Like the Bosnian Serbs, the Hutu perpetrated the Rwanda genocide mostly because of the their need for more land; historic hatreds were an excuse.
If A. is ethnically Croat, then one should consider this book as a (yet another?) salvo in the inter-ethnic rivalry between the two Slavic tribes.I'd say this book should be read with reservation as the lack of objectivity and pro-Croat bias make it apparent that the author's main goal is to demonize a historic antagonist/competitor. Anzulovic is a partisan, not a scholar and the book should be read as another installment in the propaganda jostle between Southern Slavs.
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