In Balkan Ghosts, journalist Robert Kaplan delivers a 'political travelogue' of the Balkans, looking at the national problems of each country therein. After one chapter each on Croatia, Serbia, Albania, and Macedonia, the bulk of his book (40%) looks at Romania, and the remaining 30% at Bulgaria and Greece. I summarize each country below.
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Croatia: Catholic; hates Serbia. One Croat leader in the WWII era was blamed for helping (or not hindering) the murder of thousands of Serbs in a concentration camp.
Serbia: Once dominant in the region, points to its loss to Ottoman Turks in 1389 as their day of tragedy. One region- Kosovo- is autonomous and full of Albanian Muslims, which really angers the Serbs.
Albania: Largely forgotten, descendants of ancient people (older than Greeks), often invaded or desired by Serbs and Greeks. Lots of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, and ethnic Greeks elsewhere in the land.
Macedonia: A 'mixed salad,' dominated by various factions over the centuries. Claimed by Bulgaria and fought over by them, Serbs, Greeks, and Turks. An occasional hotbed of violence and instability as a result.
Romania: See themselves "as a Latin race, speaking a Latinate tongue, cast into a violent sea of Slavs and forgotten by the rest of the Latin world." Committed many atrocities siding with the Nazis in WWII. Kaplan spends time in its different sections- Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, Bucovina - and how each suffered in ancient and modern times (being caught between three empires- Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Turkey, and Russia), focusing on communism.
Bulgaria: A powerful kingdom in Medieval Europe and birthplace of the Cyrillic alphabet. Fell under Byzantine, then Ottoman, then Russian, domination. Suffered worst (compared to other Balkan nations) under the Ottomans due to geographic proximity. Allied with Germany in both world wars in an attempt to conquer Macedonia (with its large ethnic Bulgarian population). Also fell under communist rule.
Greece: Often viewed in the West as a romantic birthplace of western culture and democracy. Has a facade of a democratic tradition, but not much different than its Balkan counterparts. Dominated by Ottomans for centuries. Avoided falling under Soviet rule, but suffered under poor and autocratic leadership of its own kind in the twentieth century. Has a "historic role as the ideological battleground between East and West."
Overall, Kaplan "defines the principal illness of the Balkans: conflicting dreams of lost imperial glory. Each nation demands that its borders revert to where they were at the exact time when its own empire had reached its zenith of ancient medieval expansion." And, the attempts to "erect ethnically uniform states" in the twentieth century caused no end of discord, since ethnic and national boundaries seldom align.
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Writing this in 1993- soon after the outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars- Kaplan quotes Shakespeare as a harbinger of the future: "So foul a sky clears not without a storm." He summarizes the issue: "Conflicting ethnic histories, inflamed by the living death of Communism, had made the Balkan sky so foul that now, sadly, a storm was required to clear it."
This is a good book. It delivers history through three mechanisms:
- the author's observations based on his travels and journalism work in the Balkans throughout the late Communist era
- the author's interactions with locals in each place (often people of relative prominence), getting their perspective (often ethnically/historically charged)
- bringing in outside historical data (often more objective)
It's a nice way to learn history. You get a flavor not just for what happened but what the current people believe happened (not always the same thing). It's well-written and informative. The author is experienced (reporting on the region for decades and living in Greece for seven years) and appears fair in his treatment (if he has a slant, I couldn't detect it). Though the account seems uneven (focusing more on Romania than others), it's worth your time.
Rating: A
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