Marquette University Slavic Institute Papers NO. 11

https://epublications.marquette.edu/mupress-book/1011/thumbnail.jp

Winds of Change 1989: A Perspective from an Office for Religious Affairs Somewhere in Eastern Europe

Under communism, in what used to be Eastern Europe, religion was neither outlawed nor favorably regarded either. In some cases, church and state had been at latent or open war as in Poland or in the former Yugoslavia. There, church-state relations radically changed over the course of more than five decades, which is the theme of this article. Confrontations began in 1945 and spanned to 1953. Accommodations from 1966 to 1980 permitted a relatively peaceful coexistence between church and state. Thereafter the public religions and ethnic mobilizations of the 1980s escalated into the Balkan wars of the 1990s. It was during this era when the major faiths merged with the ethnic warring factions. As the Cold War ended, and communist regimes collapsed across East Central Europe, Yugoslav post-Titoist elites in the two westernmost Yugoslav republics presented reform-minded positions and images. Revising restrictive policies toward religion seemed appropriate for a start. Slovenia, soon followed by Croatia, symbolically promoted Christmas greetings and programs on state TV. In Croatia, regional and local offices for religious affairs were urged from higher state and party authorities to make religious organizations the ailing regime’s friends

The Cowl - v.20 - n.8 - Dec 11, 1957

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 20, Number 7 - December 11, 1957. 8 pages

Hundred Years Since Yugoslavia’s Birth: Lesson on Nationalism, Balkanization, and Religion in Europe’s Periphery

In 2018, historians were marking the one hundredth anniversary of the foundation of a nation-state in southeastern Europe remembered as Yugoslavia–the country of Southern Slavs. The multi-ethnic nation used to connect several European ethnic groups of the shared Slavonic ancestry yet were divided by three major religions and mutually exclusive ethnic nationalist ideologies. The Yugoslav national project lasted seven decades under various regime types in a sensitive balance often disturbed by wars. In the 20th century alone, the territory of the former Yugoslavia saw six major wars, three cycles of ethnic cleansing and genocide, and about fifteen various states and regimes, half of which have by now collapsed and disappeared from the map. In a wider historical perspective, this Europe’s periphery has left the lesson which world history curricula ought not to overlook: how the Southern Slavs united, rose out of obscurity and then ruined themselves. In addition to that lesson, another may be developing as the world order seems to be changing. The world today is not the same as that which was formed at the end of the Cold War. Since the state arrangements in the ex-Yugoslav space have always changed and restructured in response to major changes in international order, it is likely that the Balkans will go to war again, possibly, again, in the broader context of major regional or even world wars

Postwar Serbian Nationalism and the Limits of Invention

Serbs have rarely drawn the attention of theorists of nationalism. Nonetheless, even if they have not been christened this or that sort of nationalist by theorists, they have emerged from the 1990S with two sets of descriptors attached to them by journalists, scholars and politicians, and those descriptors conform to the general outlines of current theoretical discourse. Serbs are either the captives of \u27ancient hatreds\u27 or the manipulated victims of modern state-builders. By now most of us no doubt laugh at the notion that ancient hatreds were the catalyst of the wars in Yugoslaviain the 1990S and nod approvingly at the suggestion that nationalism was merely a piece of Slobodan Milošević\u27s strategy in his consolidation of power in Serbia during the 1980s. Thus for most of us the Serbian nationalist movement of the 1980s and 1990S confirms the position of the \u27modernists\u27 among nationalism theorists, who argue that nationalism and national identity are functions of the actions of modern states. Using a case study drawn from my research, I shall argue in this article that we should neither uncritically accept modernist conclusions regarding Serbian nationalism nor dismiss out of hand variations on the disreputable \u27ancient hatreds\u27 (or in theoretical terms, primordialist) approach. Instead, I shall argue, modern Serbian nationalism cannot be explained by or contained within a single theoretical model