I lived in the Balkans for 30 years. Serbs have great culture and kafanas, but they are extremely political. It’s so hard to hold a normal conversation without them mentioning Russia, Yugoslavia, Kosovo/Albanians, NATO la-la-la. Especially in kafanas, I can confidently say that a majority of them still live in the past and can’t move on and it’s really sad.
The parent comment is ridiculous hyperbole. I spend several months every year cycling around the Western Balkans, largely for the sake of maintaining my knowledge of the languages and therefore I spend a lot of my time in cafes chatting with whoever’s around. Sure, Serbs sometimes bring up politics like any people would, but it isn’t at all “hard to hold a normal conversation”. I can and have talked with them about everything under the sun.
As a Serb, I wouldn't really describe Serbia as being unaligned/centrist. The corrupt politicians (I wouldn't dare call them people) in the gov't itself eat from the laps of Russia because the West = Evil for some nebulous reason that nobody quite understands anymore (slightly exaggerating, it's mostly to do with Kosovo and NATO involvement in the Yugo wars in the 90s but most of the youth don't give a shit about that anymore), while the youth, at least in the bigger cities, tend to support the EU and want Serbia to join them one day if we're to have any hope of advancement.
At the same time they're also selling the country to the highest bidder, which for now are various Arab states like the UAE and the Saudis (lookup the Belgrade waterfront as an example), though there's also lots of Chinese money flowing into the pockets of the politicians as well.
It's a horrifically corrupt country with legitimate war criminals and their leashed dogs (like current PM Vucic) still holding the reigns, trying to scam and bruteforce their way to as much money as they can muster before the inevitable happens. Meanwhile it experiences insane levels of brain drain as anyone sensible and with the means to (my parents in the 80s and myself and pretty much everyone else in my family now included) gets the fuck out and never looks back twice.
Mind you, myself and most Serb diaspora I know don't want anything to do with the place. I was born and grew up in Indonesia and have visited Serbia a handful of times at most, so it's not a country I'd call home in any sense of the word. Even then, it still depresses me how hopeless the situation seems for anyone living there, as relayed to me by the few friends and family that are still stuck there with no way out.
As someone who knows the people and the place, I have to say that a lot of the political takes I ever heard from regular Serbians have either been of a fatalistic self-defeating kind ("everything is shit and it cannot be changed") or of a nationalist self-defearing kind ("everything is shit and it is the fault of $other_nations").
I can emotionally understand why the stances are often so fatalistic — it has to do with the way society in Serbia works on a daily basis — but as a foreigner who worked there once and has friends living there I could witness myself that a lot of the problems there are home grown. The focus on the unfair outside world is a great way to ignore the shit that goes on at home.
That being said I have been talking about regular Serbs. Like everywhere you will also find sharp analytical minds with singular positions in Serbia and it is well worth listening to them.
I don't believe any serious intellectual position in the west still believes the myth of the end of history.
I also speak Serbo-Croatian and travelled the Balkans extensively. I think to call it just a subculture is a bit harsh. There's definitely a significant chunk of the population that does miss Yugoslavia and bratstvo i jedinstvo. In my experience, the sentiment is actually strongest in Bosnia, which makes sense, as it is the most mixed of the successor states and also the one that suffered the most from petty nationalism.
Personally, I also think that Yugoslavia was a good idea that was killed by right wing gangsters. We're all much more similar than we're different and we should focus on that instead of on what Freud called the narcissism of small differences. If Munich and Berlin can be in the same country, why can't Zagreb and Belgrade?
We speak the same language (even tho some don't want to admit it - I usually use "po našu" when referring to the language, meaning "in our language", thus avoiding the nationalist names and pettiness), eat mostly the same foods, have similar mentalities etc.
I agree with you on the ethnic Albanians though - they never made sense in Yugoslavia, the state of the South Slavs. Kosovo should be part of Albania and the Serbs need to shut up about it already.
I only have some annecdotal stories, from a friend who grew up in Croatia and then had to flee during the Yugoslavia war, where one of the parents is Serbian and the other is Albanian. The stories are both from his childhood (being pushed into the sea as a kid, because they noticed he's from a certain group, not being sold bread as a kid because he used the wrong word when ordering) and from recent years (e.g. getting beaten up at a bar by a group of people, because from his accent it was clear he wasn't from that area).
I'm not trying to say that Serbia sucks, or that Serbs suck, or that all Serbs are like that, or anything in that direction. Almost all people I personally know from ex-Yugoslavia (including Serbia) are great people. But – especially given the conflict-rich history of that area – there are still a lot of conflicts and animosities between ethnic groups, and Serbia also has its fair share of xenophobia (in contrast to what GP suggested in their comment).
I've spent a lot of time in Serbia. They're not all obsessed with politics. Most of the younger generation are resolved to the reality that Kosovo is lost forever (and never really mattered much anyway). Unfortunately, the political ruling class is still trying to maintain support from hard-core nationalists and maintain their distance from the EU and NATO; this won't work out well for such a small, poor country.
Some foreigners criticize Americans for being ignorant of history, and they're correct. But ignorance is also a strength in that it allows us to move on without holding grudges. It's not a perfect analogy but to some extent Americans have found it easier to get over the Civil War that ended in 1865 than Serbs have from the Battle of Kosovo in 1389.
Nail on head. I have a cousin in Croatia who is very progressive and an artist. He's by far my favorite family member. But he lived in Osijek during yugoslavia and during the war and his animosity for serbs runs surprisingly deep.
While he doesn't dwell on it or let it consume him, if you ask then he will reveal that he still resents them for bullying and war crimes over 25 years later.
And in my view that was a relatively mild conflict compared to others like Israel and Palestine for example.
This is one of the sources of the appeal of Balkans for "foreigners" and one of the sources of frustration and despair for the Balkan people themselves.
We never dealt with these issues in any way whatsoever. As is the cultural norm of all of the Balkan people, shit that we don't want to deal with is pushed away, compartmentalized and annotated (for future ammunition against those who have caused the atrocities). This left the entire region susceptible to manipulation by those who wished to tear the region apart. A lot of anger has built up during the 50 years between Jasenovac and the wars of the 90s.
The article mentions serbia negotiating EU membership. Having traveled in many balkan countries that try to be in the EU, serbia felt like a place that doesn't really try too hard.
It's geographical disputes with neighbors aren't really helping.
That said, Serbia is an amazing country with many layers of history and a culture that I felt very fond of, and it's sad to see the recent movements.
Australian here - I too want to go back to old Yugoslavia and see what it was like. I recently had some time in Serbia and Kosovo, and it was eye-opening to say the least - the differences and the similarities between the cultures don't make a lot of sense to the milquetoast mentality inculcated into me by my Aussie upbringing. It is a very fascinating region of the world and I can only say that having spent time in both Belgrade and Pristina, there is a little bit of hope that the new generation will rise from the turmoil of their parents past. Slowly, bit by bit, the prejudice and distrust is eroding.
Hate those border crossings, though. The drive from Vienna to Pristina was something I'll never forget.
Don't forget the balkans have been destroyed multiple times by nationalistic wars, most recently in the Former Yugoslavia, so nationalistic sentiments may be more prominent.
You are ignorant. Go read about the Balkans, and come back when you are less ignorant. I used to be ignorant too, and cheered when NATO bombed Belgrade. One day I visited the Balkans and what the people there told me, made me change my mind completely.
I am for life and for human rights. I am not against the Serbs. I am against the Serbs who committed atrocities. Moreover, not all Serbs are the same. The ethnical salad bowl in the Balkans is mind-boggling. Superficial analyses are plain stupid in this case.
Many who identified as Yugoslavians left in 90s and are now Americans, Germans, Australians or Canadians. They don't live in the Balkans because ethnically clean countries and ethnicity ranking so high on the political agenda is offensive to them.
Many people in central Bosnia identified as Yugoslavians before the war and I would say most in the same region born in late 60s, 70s would have identified the same. So when someone says Yugoslavia, I think Sarajevo and Bosnia, not Serbia.
I've also lived in the balkans and my work involved tourism, I have to say this does sound like a complaint made primarily by germans and americans. I'm not sure if it's because germans and americans are the ones who get an earful of it most often due to heavier national involvement in the yugoslav wars and/or if we take it as a more of a personal affront.
The triumphal liberal cosmopolitanism of the 90s is starting to fade in Europe and the US, what's left looks more and more like cynical window dressing for brutal realpolitik. Nationalism, irredentist attitudes, ethnic cleansing and military conflict seem to be very much back on the menu as of late.
I see all of those as negative developments, but it's maybe time to wonder who's living in the past, them or us.
I work in California but we have a good sized team (~100) in the former Yugoslavia. The lead person in CA is Bosnian, most of the people we work with are in Serbia, but one team is in North Macedonia.
The way the head Bosnian guy explains it to me is that it’s all about money. People want to be able to eat, buy a car, take a vacation. If they paid well, everyone gets along, there’s no politics involved.
This was really surprising for me to hear. My best friend growing up was Serbian, one of my best friends in college was Croatian. It seemed all they did was talk politics. The Serbian would claim they were being bullied by the world for pushing unity, the Croatian about atrocities.
Here, in Silicon Valley, an actual refugee from the minority group, was looking above it all. I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it in the daily interactions of these different ethnic groups. It’s strange but also amazing. My colleague should figure out how to apply his work hard, get paid friendly attitude to create world peace.
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