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A L S O+T O D A Y
Banned in Belgrade
T A B L E+T A L K NATO bombs are blasting Yugoslavia. But will the airstrikes be enough to halt Milosevic's ethnic cleansing? Take your place at the round table in the Headlines area of Table Talk
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The Kosovo myth A battle fought 600 years ago animates the Serbian lust for a province now populated by Albanians. BY CHRISTOPHER OTT | With NATO warplanes making good on a long-standing threat to stop Serbian attacks in Kosovo, what makes Serbia so determined to hold the small province, where 90 percent of residents are ethnically Albanian, not Serbian? It's "the Kosovo myth," says Tomislav Longinovic, a leading expatriate Serbian scholar and an associate professor of Slavic Languages at the University of Wisconsin, where he is writing a new book called "Borderline People: Imagining 'The Serbs.'" At the heart of the current conflict, he says, is a fervently patriotic version of the Battle of Kosovo, in which the Ottoman Turks defeated Serbian Prince Lazar and his allies in 1389. The defeat at Kosovo meant hundreds of years of Ottoman servitude for the Serbs, but it has taken on mythic proportions as the battle that ultimately halted the expansion of the Ottomans and Islam into Europe. If this sounds like ancient history, it was, and maybe still would be if it were not for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. In 1989, Milosevic stirred up nationalist passions based on the 600-year-old Kosovo myth to cement his hold on power while Eastern European communism crumbled. "The popular political imagination has substituted the Albanians for the Ottomans who defeated the Serbian army in 1389," Longinovic says. "The Serbs have shown readiness not only to fight their neighbors to the death, but to take on the entire world community as well." But the current conflicts shouldn't be seen as a hopeless case of "bloodthirsty barbarians fighting it out in the Balkans," the Serbian scholar insists. The Kosovo myth has been cynically exploited to release deadly nationalist passions against the Serbs' neighbors in the region, but it may also make victims of the ordinary Serbs who live under Milosevic's rule and oppose his designs on Kosovo, but who will bear the brunt of NATO attacks. Longinovic talked to Salon about the ancient history of the current conflict. What is the Kosovo myth? Any understanding of the current civil war in former Yugoslavia has to start with an understanding of the Kosovo myth and the way it is periodically resurrected by nationalist politicians and intellectuals. The myth is central to the Serbian perception of national destiny, and the crucial feature is defeat at the hands of Asian invaders. This was seen as a fight between Christianity and Islam, which elevated Serbia from its real position as a minute agrarian Balkan state to a leading defender of Europe and the Christian faith. Ever since 1389, the Kosovo myth has been so charged with a mixture of patriotism and hatred of those who caused "the fall" -- Turks, domestic converts to Islam and Serbian traitors to the national or nationalist cause -- that every political manipulation of the myth is able to instantly unite the people behind any leader who is unscrupulous enough to tap into it. It's also important to remember that Kosovo has tremendous significance because there are more than 1,300 religious objects housed there, dating from the 11th century through the 17th century, making it the Serbian or [Eastern] Orthodox Jerusalem. This is something you never hear about in the mainstream media. The Serbs who are left there -- 10 percent or less of the population of Kosovo -- are basically people who cannot afford to move out, poor peasants, or those old monks and nuns who mind the 1,300 religious objects. There really isn't any sort of vital interest there, yet it has tremendous symbolic value. What role is the Kosovo myth playing in the current conflict? On June 28, 1989, Slobodan Milosevic delivered a speech in front of more than a million Serbs to commemorate the battle of Kosovo exactly 600 years before. This speech in Kosovo marked the end of the common Yugoslav idea, and after it, Milosevic became firmly entrenched as the only Serbian leader who could appeal to the masses. He created the contemporary impression of a seamless, uninterrupted identity of the Serbian people found in the Kosovo myth. But a lot more has led to the current crisis. Well, Tito died in 1980, and then the first Albanian riots, demanding republic status within Yugoslavia, started right away in 1981. This was the first trigger. At that time in 1981, I was serving my military service in Nis, which now is the center for military operations in Kosovo. I was working in a recruit center, and I was given the job of testing the new incoming recruits. A large number of them were Albanians who had been participating in these demonstrations, and for the first time in my life, this dream that I had of Yugoslavia as a stable country came apart -- when I saw the misery of these people. I witnessed several beatings of Albanian demonstrators by the military police, and that sobered me up about where I was living. I think this heavy-handed response to the Albanians, which continues today, was really the trigger that started the breakup of Yugoslavia. N E X T+P A G E+| Serbia's sacrifice for Europe and the West |
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