RE-IMAGINING YUGOSLAVIA Learning and Living with Diverse Cultural Identities by Radoslav Draskovic A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements For the degree of Master of Arts Graduate Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto ©Copyright by Radoslav Draskovic 2010. RE-IMAGINING YUGOSLAVIA Learning and Living with Diverse Cultural Identities Radoslav Draskovic Master of Arts, 2010 Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto Abstract of Thesis: This thesis uses the example of Yugoslavia-the land of the South Slavs (also known as the Balkans) - to study how the twists and turns of historical evolution have been reflected in communal understanding of that history. Key words: imagined communities, nation-state, historical memory, the study of history. ii Acknowledgments: The great Mahatma Gandhi once said: “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it”. I found that this sentence appropriately describes every human endeavor including the road I have chosen for the last three years of my life. This thesis marks the conclusion of a deeply personal journey as well as a great learning experience that I had at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at University of Toronto At the end of this trip, before anyone else, I would like to thank my professors Harold Troper and David Levine who have taught me a great deal during the course of my studies, with their views, knowledge and advice. I am especially grateful to my mentor, Professor David Levine, for his intellectual guidance, patience and understanding of all the challenges that I met during the course of my study and while writing this thesis. I owe special gratitude to my friends, Edin Tabak and Nenad Vuckovic, both fellow graduate students in Australia and Austria respectively, who read my papers and my thesis and contributed with their valuable suggestions. I am deeply grateful to Douglas Sokolyk for his help during the course of my studies, his support and his invaluable friendship. I would also like to use this opportunity to thank Chris Sokolyk who edited the last few chapters of my thesis. My studies would be much more difficult without the support of two special friends, Srebrenka Bogovic and Enrico Forte, who have read and edited each of my papers and a large portion of this thesis. I am most indebted to both of them for their sharp editorial eye, sense of humor, endless e-mails, and their unwavering support from the very beginning to the end of my studies. Finally I am most deeply grateful to the three most important women in my life: To my wife Gordana for her patience - as she lost her husband to the historical sciences for the last three years - as well as for constantly challenging my picture of the world for the last 25 years. I am most thankful to my daughter Sonja for finding the time in her busy teenage life to deal with her dad, his English, and his obscure themes from the iii murky world of her origins. Without her help and support this journey would be much harder if not totally impossible. And finally to the memory of my mother Nevenka, for teaching me with her life many invaluable lessons especially the one that real communities are always more important than imagined ones. iv Table of Contents: Abstract ........................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. v Chapters: 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 Living with the ‘Other’ ................................................................................................. 2 Nation: a Fate or a Construct? ..................................................................................... 5 2. Balkanisaton of the Balkans, (sixth century-1914) .................................................... 13 The Lines of Division ................................................................................................ 15 The ‘Ethnic Cyclones’ and the Military Frontier ....................................................... 19 The Myths and the Golden Ages ................................................................................ 23 Imagined Communities .............................................................................................. 25 The Language of Volk ............................................................................................... 28 The Serbs,the Croats and the Yugoslavs .................................................................... 31 The Issue of Bosnia ................................................................................................... 34 3. The First Yugoslavia (1918-1941) ............................................................................. 42 The Great War and Unification ................................................................................. 42 The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes ............................................................ 45 Socio-economic Divisions ......................................................................................... 47 The Centralists, the Unitarists and the Hard Opposition ............................................ 49 Cultural Bonds ........................................................................................................... 55 Royal Dictatorship and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia ................................................. 58 The War and the Formation of the Second Yugoslavia ............................................. 62 v 4. Tito’s Yugoslavia (1945-1980) .................................................................................. 70 The Dictatorship of the Proletariat ............................................................................. 71 The Quarrel with Stalin ............................................................................................. 78 The New Course ........................................................................................................ 80 The Reformists versus the Conservatives .................................................................. 82 Yugoslavia’s Golden Age .......................................................................................... 85 The Croatian Spring and the Serbian Liberals ........................................................... 89 The Bosnian Question ................................................................................................ 96 The Last Constitution .............................................................................................. 100 5. The Death of Yugoslavia (1981-1991 ...................................................................... 103 Unravelling at the Seams ......................................................................................... 103 The Albanian Question ............................................................................................ 107 The Culture of Apocalypse ...................................................................................... 111 The Cultural Wars .................................................................................................... 115 The Rise of Slobodan Milosevic .............................................................................. 120 The Media Wars ...................................................................................................... 127 A Perfect Enemy ...................................................................................................... 130 Against the Wind ..................................................................................................... 136 Slow Slide Towards Catastrophe ............................................................................. 138 War in Croatia ......................................................................................................... 140 Bosnian Tragedy ...................................................................................................... 145 One Country, Three Nationalisms ........................................................................... 148 At the Gates of Hell ................................................................................................. 155 6. Instead of Epilogue (1995-2010) ............................................................................. 163 War for a Memory ................................................................................................... 163 Bosnia Divided ........................................................................................................ 165 Cultural Cleansing ................................................................................................... 173 With God on Our Side ............................................................................................. 177 vi Education of the Future Warrior .............................................................................. 181 The Rediscovery of the Ethnic Past ......................................................................... 184 Language of Division .............................................................................................