Customer Reviews

Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

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 He uses historical documents to prove that the myth was initially not a popular myth at all, but a church version of what had happened at the Battle of Kosovo in 1989.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.

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.

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.

The author has expressed an agenda which is not supported by the facts. I offer the reader the following works to gain a better insight into this subject: "THE SERBIAN FOLK EPIC Its Theology and Anthropology by Rev. Dr. Krstivoj Kotur"; "SAINT PETER OF MONTENEGRO by V. Rev. Vladimir M. Mrvichin"; "THE MOUNTAIN WREATH of P.P. Nyegosh"; "HERO TALES AND LEGENDS OF THE SERBIANS by W.M. Petrovich"; "MARKO, THE KING'S SON by Clarence A. Manning". A brief review of almost any of these works will provide clarity, when compered with Anzulovic's work. A number of other materials are available to the reader at less cost, and may provide insight to a area of world conflict ("SPY IN THE VATICAN by Bronkn Bokum"; "THE SERBS CHOOSE WAR by Ruth Mitchell";...).

Anzulovic's book is well written and researched. I have studied this region of the world in-depth. However, when reading this book it is important for the reader to understand that Anzulovic is exploring the Serb side of events, and what lead the Serbs to commit the atrocities they committed during the 1990s. During the Balkan Wars, all sides committed atrocities and war crimes and one needs to explore the wars from all sides, and come to his or her own fact based conclusion.

If you want more Croation propaganda, this is your book. Dripping with hate, it at least gives you a sense of the type of thinking that caused Croatia to follow in the footsteps of the Nazi's during the second world war and today.

It seems that the author went ahead and rewrote the history as he saw fit. There are some major events that he "omitted". He failed to include genocides that were imposed on Serbs during Croatian and Bosnian wars, and he failed to include that there was 100,000's refugees from Croatia expelled during the war. I am apalled that the publisher even published such a book as a non -fiction.

How this claptrap passes for academic research is beyond me. For instance, I was especially surprised to learn that the Serbs intended to take over the Austro-Hungarian Empire before WW1. Anzulovic writes, with characteristic unsound thinking, that "Serbia's expansionist drive was evident [before WW1] when it sponsored the 1914 murder in order to destabilize the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (which stood in the way of its northward and westward expansion)." This is such a distortion that it's

laughable. Small Serbia invade the Austro-Hungarian Empire? What were the editors at NYU thinking? It makes you wonder why the US and Western Allies ever sided with the Serbs in the first place if indeed the Serbs were the root cause of the trouble in WW1. A joke, right, surely it is. I don't much care for other ridiculous mysoethnic statements Anzulovic makes throughout this D-thesis paper, such as "[The Eastern Orthodox Church], extremely closely connected with state and nation, long ago neglected the gospel and devoted itself to political issues to a higher degree than any other Christian Church." Anzulovic later goes on to tell us that this church can be juxtaposed against "authentic Christian thought." Overgeneralization? You haven't heard the half of it. This is truly embarrassing.

many people that are obviously lapping it up as well researched truth. What we have here is rehashed Croatian & Vatican propaganda that can be easily refuted by any serious, unbiased, scholarly college freshman.

I am a Serb myself, and was very young at the time of the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, and didn't understand them very well. Having come to America during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, I researched a lot on the subject. I appreceate Anzulovic's book for it's study on Serbian national myths, but don't accept them as the main reason for the wars. Milosevic's propaganda is what occurs to have been the main reason. This propaganda used the myths to inflame nationalism, but before that the nationalism was largely non-existant, and the myths thought of as nothing more than they really are. I think Yugoslavia wouldn't have collapsed had there not been Milosevic, conspiracy theories not considered. Croatia responded with nationalism of their own, and Tudjman was their counterpart to Milosevic, also using propaganda. Some of this Croat propaganda seems to be employed by Anzulovic too, since he for some reason strays from his subject of Serbian myth, and explains how Serbs in Krajina were not really Serbs, but Serbianised Vlachs, and thus in some way justifies their expulsion (?!) Clearly he is in some way biased, so I would read the book with caution.