The Origins of Ethnic Cleansing
in the Balkans
by
Zhivko B. Damyanovich
About the Author
 |
| Zhivko Bogdan Damyanovich 1916 - 2012 |
In 1960, Mr. Damyanovich was able to use an invitation to specialize in land economics to move to Canada,
where he graduated from the University of Toronto with a Master of Science (1962). He then had several
jobs with the Ontario Agricultural College, the Manitoba Department of Agriculture and Conservation, and
the Federal Trade and Commerce Department of Canada before moving in 1965 to Rome (Italy) to work for
the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. He retired in 1978 and passed away on 21 March, 2012., in Eugena, Ontario, Canada.
Throughout his career, Mr. Damyanovich wrote close to one-hundred expert-level reports, most of which
were published (in Yugoslavia and for intra-governmental use only). His Master’s thesis “Labour
Productivity in World Agriculture” won the Agricultural Economics Society of Canada’s award as the best
submission in Land Economics at Canadian Universities in 1962; however, he was never allowed to defend
his major work, the study “Resources in World Agriculture and their Use, 1947-78" which was submitted as
his PhD dissertation at the University of Belgrade, due to political interference.
I abhor atrocities of any and all kinds. I must note how from my earliest childhood I heard time and again how terribly my people suffered under Turkish tyranny for centuries, and then under the Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian invaders in World War I. Furthermore, I myself underwent the experience of World War II in which Yugoslavia was dismembered, with her inhabitants exposed to terrible losses, oppression, and terror. However, unknown to the Western World, a reign of terror continued for many years after the war’s end via the purges conducted in many districts in Serbia of monarchists known as Chetniks, in which many families perished.
As a boy I was very proud of how, after the end of the First World War, the Serbian people were greatly praised by others: not only for their bravery, but also for their generosity and kindness even to their fallen enemies. This praise was given both on an individual and collective level (especially considering the terms imposed on their foes). Doctor Archibald Reiss, a Swiss war correspondent of the time, expressed his great admiration for the Serbs by asking in his will that his heart be buried on the battlefield of Kajmakcalan (altitude of 2,520 meters) where in September 1918 he had witnessed the Serbian army break through the Salonika front (near Thessalonica, Greece) with Allied help. He made this gesture as a token of deepest homage to the gallantry and valor of the Serb soldiers he had been with throughout their four years of war, sharing in their sufferings as well as in their ultimate victory.
I therefore find it exceedingly hard to believe the stories now being circulated and repeated endlessly in the Western media of the worst cruelty and evil being perpetrated by Serbs in Kosovo upon their Albanian brethren. Is it possible that a nation, proud of its medieval glory, culture, and centuries-long struggle for freedom from various oppressors, can fall so low as to disgrace her entire past, disavow her ancestral fame and honor, turn her soldiers into the lowest barbarians, and expose her whole people to universal condemnation leading to the catastrophic ruin currently being inflicted?
Very likely there is some truth in these stories, but surely not to such an extreme extent.
In all great conflicts throughout history, whether they are intertribal skirmishes, civil clashes, or international wars, the truth is the first casualty. I used the word ‘casualty’ in terms of the truth being distorted, ignored, and filtered to suit various interests. There is no nation that can claim not to have had dark periods in its history, with atrocities, senseless massacres and enforced famines. Africa is a prime example with wars in Nigeria (Biafra), the Congo, Somalia, Angola, Mozambique, and more recently in Rwanda and Burundi. Even now the cycle continues with the Sudanese, Kurds, Chiapas natives, Tibetans, Chechens, Armenians, east Timorese and others. It has been the same throughout history; except there often were no war reporters to document, or historians to research and preserve the facts about those horrors for posterity.
It is extremely hard for me to accept the discriminatory generalization of various measures and actions undertaken by the present authorities in Kosovo as presented by the American media and repeatedly rebroadcast throughout the rest of the member nations of NATO. I’m particularly appalled by the ease with which journalists, Members of Parliament, and even governing statesmen (and women) use provocative and incendiary language. Do the events in Kosovo amount to “genocide,” or is the use of such terms rhetorical excess? Are we really dealing with a new “Holocaust,” or mere clichés that readily fit in with such defamatory and hate-inciting idioms? I don’t think more needs to be said about the utter inappropriateness of using such terms without substantiation nor the dreadful harm that can be caused by intentionally misusing such words.
Let us consider the accusations being levelled against the Serbian nation of “ethnic cleansing.” For a long time, I’ve been waiting for the Yugoslav authorities, or someone else, to explain the severe ethnical imbalance in the population of Kosovo and Metohia present at the outset of these past months’ unfortunate events. Surely, one ought to wonder how has it come to be that the Serbian presence in its own homeland has dwindled to where they are now an almost-negligible minority (10% of the total inhabitants)?! If this “cradle of Serbian civilization”, their “Jerusalem” was (and is) so dear to Serb hearts, how have they come to the point of losing almost all claim to it?!? In answer thereto, let me attempt a brief historical essay.
As a boy I was very proud of how, after the end of the First World War, the Serbian people were greatly praised by others: not only for their bravery, but also for their generosity and kindness even to their fallen enemies. This praise was given both on an individual and collective level (especially considering the terms imposed on their foes). Doctor Archibald Reiss, a Swiss war correspondent of the time, expressed his great admiration for the Serbs by asking in his will that his heart be buried on the battlefield of Kajmakcalan (altitude of 2,520 meters) where in September 1918 he had witnessed the Serbian army break through the Salonika front (near Thessalonica, Greece) with Allied help. He made this gesture as a token of deepest homage to the gallantry and valor of the Serb soldiers he had been with throughout their four years of war, sharing in their sufferings as well as in their ultimate victory.
I therefore find it exceedingly hard to believe the stories now being circulated and repeated endlessly in the Western media of the worst cruelty and evil being perpetrated by Serbs in Kosovo upon their Albanian brethren. Is it possible that a nation, proud of its medieval glory, culture, and centuries-long struggle for freedom from various oppressors, can fall so low as to disgrace her entire past, disavow her ancestral fame and honor, turn her soldiers into the lowest barbarians, and expose her whole people to universal condemnation leading to the catastrophic ruin currently being inflicted?
Very likely there is some truth in these stories, but surely not to such an extreme extent.
In all great conflicts throughout history, whether they are intertribal skirmishes, civil clashes, or international wars, the truth is the first casualty. I used the word ‘casualty’ in terms of the truth being distorted, ignored, and filtered to suit various interests. There is no nation that can claim not to have had dark periods in its history, with atrocities, senseless massacres and enforced famines. Africa is a prime example with wars in Nigeria (Biafra), the Congo, Somalia, Angola, Mozambique, and more recently in Rwanda and Burundi. Even now the cycle continues with the Sudanese, Kurds, Chiapas natives, Tibetans, Chechens, Armenians, east Timorese and others. It has been the same throughout history; except there often were no war reporters to document, or historians to research and preserve the facts about those horrors for posterity.
It is extremely hard for me to accept the discriminatory generalization of various measures and actions undertaken by the present authorities in Kosovo as presented by the American media and repeatedly rebroadcast throughout the rest of the member nations of NATO. I’m particularly appalled by the ease with which journalists, Members of Parliament, and even governing statesmen (and women) use provocative and incendiary language. Do the events in Kosovo amount to “genocide,” or is the use of such terms rhetorical excess? Are we really dealing with a new “Holocaust,” or mere clichés that readily fit in with such defamatory and hate-inciting idioms? I don’t think more needs to be said about the utter inappropriateness of using such terms without substantiation nor the dreadful harm that can be caused by intentionally misusing such words.
Let us consider the accusations being levelled against the Serbian nation of “ethnic cleansing.” For a long time, I’ve been waiting for the Yugoslav authorities, or someone else, to explain the severe ethnical imbalance in the population of Kosovo and Metohia present at the outset of these past months’ unfortunate events. Surely, one ought to wonder how has it come to be that the Serbian presence in its own homeland has dwindled to where they are now an almost-negligible minority (10% of the total inhabitants)?! If this “cradle of Serbian civilization”, their “Jerusalem” was (and is) so dear to Serb hearts, how have they come to the point of losing almost all claim to it?!? In answer thereto, let me attempt a brief historical essay.
Origins of the Albanian and Serbian peoples
The famous American historians Will and Ariel Durant, in Books 3 [Cæsar and Christ], 4 [The Age of Faith],
5 [The Renaissance], and 6 [The Reformation] of their 11-volume Story of Civilization, write here and there
about what was then the region of Illyria and later Albania exclusively in geographical, not ethnographical,
terms. When asked about their genealogies, Albanians claim to be descended from the ancient Celts who
settled on the eastern Adriatic coast in the region the Romans named Illyria. In the early nineteenth (19th)
century, Napoleon Bonaparte accepted this theory, which was then adopted by “enlightened” Western society
as a counterbalance to the Pan-Slavic movement embraced by the southern Slavs and Russia. Here is what
the Durants write:
“North of the Po and east of the Adige [rivers] lay Venetia. The district took its name from the Veneti, early immigrants from Illyria....” [Cæsar and Christ, p.454] The next reference is to an emperor who reigned from 249-251 AD.: “Decius, an Illyrian of wealth and culture whose devotion to Rome well deserved a name so honourable in ancient history.” [Cæsar and Christ, p.628] And again: “Domitius Aurelianus, Aurelian, successor to Claudius II, the emperor of the Oriental (Roman) Monarchy, was the son of an Illyrian peasant”, who reigned 270-275 AD. [Cæsar and Christ, p.638]
Now, that’s not very much to go by; so how can the present Albanians claim to be related to the Celts of long
ago? Can any connections be proved on the basis of culture, religion, or language? Can they find any
etymological connections to either the modern or the old Welsh, Breton, British, or Basque peoples, all of
whom strongly claim Celtic ancestry? Or is it more along the lines of the Italians claiming to be descended
from the Romans, the Hungarians from the Huns, the Swiss from the Helvetii, and the Spaniards from the
Phœnicians, Ostrogoths, or Visigoths? Unfortunately, history is quite reticent in this regard. There seems
also to have been an Asiatic Albania (somewhere in what now could well be the Kurdish region shared by
Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria); however, it is highly unlikely to have had any relation to modern Albania
other than the name.
The Durants are equally vague about the Albanians during the early history of the Balkans in the Middle
Ages:
“At an alien distance, the Balkans are a mountainous mess of political instability and intrigue, of picturesque subtlety and commercial craft, of wars, assassinations, and pogroms. But to the native Bulgar, Romanian, Hungarian, or Yugoslav his nation is the product of a thousand years’ struggle to win independence from encompassing empires, to maintain a unique and colourful culture, to express the national character unhindered in architecture, dress, poetry, music, and song.” [The Age of Faith, p.657.]
To be fair, there is no mention either of the first Serbian states under Chaslav, Mutimir and Trpimir in the
eighth century, nor of Mikhailo or Bodin in the ninth and tenth centuries - particularly Mikhailo, who was
acknowledged as King of Serbia by Pope Gregory VII in 1077 (as I learned in high school in Belgrade).
Durant next writes that “in 1159 the Zsupan (Chieftain, pronounced “Zhupan”) Stephen Nemanya brought
the various Serb clans and districts under one rule, and in effect founded the Serb kingdom, which his dynasty
governed for 200 years.... During these centuries, Serbian art, Byzantine in origin, achieved a style and
excellence of its own. In the monastery church of St. Panteleimon at Nerez (c.1164) the murals reveal a
dramatic realism unusual in Byzantine painting, and anticipate by a century some methods of treatment once
thought original to Duccio and Giotto. Amid these and other Serbian murals of the twelfth or thirteenth
century appear royal portraits individualized beyond any known Byzantine precedent. Medieval Serbia was
moving toward a high civilization when heresy and persecution destroyed the national unity that might have
withstood the Turkish advance.” [The Age of Faith, pp.657-8]
The tale about Serbia is continued in Durants’ 6 volume (The Reformation):
“...the fourteenth century had been for the Balkans a peak in their history. In Wallachia (present-day Romania), Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, and Albania hardy Slavs cut the forests, mined and tilled the earth, pastured flocks, and eagerly bred their own replacements....The great man of Serbia in this century was Stephen Dushan....He trained a large army, led it with masterly generalship, conquered Bosnia, Albania, Acarnania, Aetolia, Macedonia, Thessaly. Transferring his capital from Belgrade to Skoplje (Skopje), he convened there a parliament of nobles, and bade it to unify and codify the laws of his diverse states; the resultant Zabornik Tsara Dushana, or The Law book of Tsar Dushan (1349), revealed a level of legal development and civilized usage not far below that of Western Europe. Financed and perhaps stimulated by this political exaltation, Serbian art in the fourteenth century rivalled the contemporary flourish in Constantinople and the Morea (today’s Peloponnesus in Greece); magnificent churches were built, and their mosaics were freer and livelier than those normally allowed by the more conservative ecclesiasticism of the Greek capital.” [The Reformation, pp.178-9]
Tsar Dushan died in 1355 while preparing a campaign against the Ottoman Turks. “His empire was too
heterogeneous to be held together except by a man of alert intelligence and disciplined energy.” Thus, the
Serbian Empire fell apart, helping to open the door for Turkish invasions which culminated in the Serb defeat
at the crucial battle of Kosovo on June 28, 1389.
There is no further mention of Albania as a nation or its rulers (except one note about the Bulgarian king John
Asen II {1228-41}, who absorbed Albania into his kingdom) until 1464, when in a crusade against the Turks
prepared by Pope Pius II, he [the Pope] expected at Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik) to “join Skanderbeg of
Bosnia and Matthias Corvinus of Hungary.....” [The Renaissance, pp.390-1]
This Skanderbeg is regarded as an Albanian national hero, attributed with successfully fighting off the Turks
in the second half of the 15 century. Durant says of him: “His real name was George of Castriota, and he th
was probably of modest Slavonian lineage; but legends precious to his people endow him with royal Epirote
blood and an adventurous youth.” Skanderbeg (shortened by time from Iskander Bey - “Alexander the
Prince” - the name given him by the Turkish sultan Murad II) died in 1468, “and Albania became a province
of Turkey.” [The Reformation, pp.186-7]
Next: Serbian Resistance to Turkish Rule
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