BYZANTIUM-BALKANS-EUROPE

Professor Dr Boško I. Bojović ©©© BYZANTIUM – THE BALKANS – EUROPE From Universal to National – from National to Supranational Europe As a thousand-year empire (324-1453)1, the universal state that was disparagingly called Byzantium2 by new-age historians, was the Christian and medieval continuation of the Roman Empire whose inhabitants called themselves Romaioi – Romans3. Christianity as the state religion and Constantinople as the capital represent the major differences between this medieval Roman (or, in scientific jargon, Byzantine) Empire and the former, antique one4. Its major specificity consisted in reducing Roman law, Greek culture and Christianity into an until then unknown unparalleled synthesis for the whole Mediterranean basin5. With its unique legal system, faith, ideology, culture and identity, Byzantium was an unrenewable synthesis across three continents, a bringing together of the temporal and spatial quantum without parallel in history. 1 B. BOJOVIĆ, Le millénaire byzantin (324-1453), « Ellipses », Paris 2008 (277 pp.). The great exhibition devoted to Byzantium, which is currently being held in London (Royal Academy of Arts, BYZANTIUM 330-1453, 25 Оctober 2008 - 22 Маrch 2009), aspires to some kind of “rehabilitation” of this empire, which was depicted in the worst light by Western historians like Gibbon (for example E. GIBBON, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, éd. Random House, New York). The study of Byzantine history dispels the old stereotypes created due to the lack of knowledge and confessional prejudice. Thus, it can be stated that the so-called rehabilitation of Byzantium is the result of scientific knowledge (which also improves the understanding of the causes of its vanishing) as well as the abandonment of religious and cultural prejudice. It is also the result of the further expansion of the EU to the area of the Byzantine civilization region. 3 N. OIKONOMIDES, "Emperor of the Romans - Emperor of the Romania", Byzantium and Serbia in the 14th century, Athens 1996, p. 127-129; P. VEYNE, L'empire gréco-romain, Paris 2005. 4 Evelyne PATLAGEAN, Un Moyen Age grec. Byzance IXe-XVe siècle, Paris 2007, p, 57-60. 5 G. OSTROGORSKY, Histoire de l’Etat byzantin, Paris 1956 (rééd. 1983); A. GUILLOU, La civilisation byzantine, Paris, 1974, 620 pp.; S. RUNCIMAN, Byzantine Civilization, Plume, 1974, 112 pp. 2 It is especially important not to lose sight of the economic cohesion of the Christian empire of the Romaioi6. It was the only continuation of the antique urban civilization and its monetary economy at a time when the subsistence economy and the primitive exchange of goods were prevalent in other parts of Europe. The stability and universality of Byzantine coinage are one of the most reliable indicators of the superiority of its civilization in a much larger area, extending over three continents and gravitating toward the Mediterranean basin as the cradle of the most advanced civilization in that period. The fact that from the time of Constantine the Great until the time of Alexius Comnenus, from the 4th to the 11th century or, in other words, for seven and a half centuries, the nomisma (solidus in Latin) had the same market value, in terms of weight and gold purity7, best illustrates the inviolability and hegemony of the Byzantine monetary, economic and civilizational standards. The vanishing of the monetary hegemony which, in the late Middle Ages, from the time of the Crusades, was mostly taken over by Venice (and virtually preserved until the discovery of the New World) marked the beginning of the end of the thousand-year empire with the gradual loss of its universal character and its transformation into a monoethnic or, stated conditionally, “nation“ state8. 6 The Economic History of Byzantium: From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, Angeliki E. LAIOU, Editor-in-Chief, Scholarly Committee, Charalambos BOURAS, Cécile MORRISSON, Nicolas OIKONOMIDES†, Constantine PITSAKIS, Published by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C., in three volumes as number 39 in the series, Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 2002 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. 7 M. F. HENDY, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy, c. 300-1453, Cambridge University Press 1985; Cécile MORRISSON, Monnaie et finances à Byzance : analyses, techniques, Aldershot 1994, M. KAPLAN, Tout l’or de Byzance, Gallimard, Paris 2005; Id., Byzance, Les Belles Lettres, Paris 2007, p. 128-132. 8 Elen ARVELER, Politiéka ideologija vizantijskog carstva, (introd: Prof. dr Ljubomir Maksimoviç, trans: B. Bojoviç, éd: "Filip Viènjiç"- Beograd, "Retrospektive", ed: B. Bojoviç, Beograd 1988); original title: Hélène AHRWEILER, L’idéologie politique de l’empire byzantin, éd. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1975. 2 The civilizational shift at the beginning of the second millennium was reflected in the inexorable economic growth of the European continent and, in particular, Western Europe (which tended to be exponential)9. The Crusades were primarily the reflection and result of that economic and population growth which was to take Europe into the very centre of the history of mankind in the late Middle Ages, because the discovery of the New World marked the beginning of the global expansion and hegemony of the European civilization model, whose end could be being announced by the current global financial crisis. While the Byzantine civilization was inexorably sliding from the universal toward the particular over the centuries, the globalizing and hegemonic role was taken over by Western Europe. There are two factors behind that adverse evolution – the economic and the ideological (including the religious and church component as its mainstay). In the field of economics, the West introduced the new, so-called “argerial“ type of commodity money trade – the “long-distance“ one, thus abandoning the old “capilary“ (according to Braudel) type of trade10, which was practiced both in Byzantium and in other parts of the world until then. Economic autarchy became anachronous and lost pace with the new model of a globalizing economy11. The transfer of the focus of trade to the vast expanses of the oceans and new worlds gave grounds for Adam Smith’s “invisible hand“ as a self-regulatory factor of the ideology of liberalism. At the same time, it was disregarded that the notion of self-regulation, which was symbolically expressed by the syntagma “invisible hand“, could be mathematically valid only if the market area were 9 B. BOJOVIĆ, " Entre Venise et l’Empire ottoman, les métaux précieux des Balkans (XVe-XVIe s.)", Annales : Histoire, Sciences Sociales, novembre-décembre 2005, n° 6, p. 1277-1297 (with bibliography). 10 F. BRAUDEL, "Monnaies et civilisations. De l'or du Soudan à l'argent d'Amérique. Un drame méditerranéen", Annales, janvier-mars 1946, p. 9 sq.; Id., Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe siècle, t. 1. Les structures du quotidien: le possible et l'impossible, Paris 1979, p. 394-396, 403. 11 F. BRAUDEL, La dynamique du capitalisme, Paris 1985, p. 28-29, 47. On the expansion of the urban economy in the West from the late Middle Ages. cf. A. TENENTI, La formazione del mondo moderno, XIVXVII secolo, Bologna 1980, p. 58-65, 126-129. 3 really unlimited. If that vast expanse could seem almost boundless at the time of the discovery of the new continents, this cannot be the case any more, the process of globalization being well underway. The unprecedented global crisis with unforseeable implications is here to remind us of the spatial and temporal boundaries that cannot be surmounted. On a religious-conceptual and ideological plane, a disparity between regression and growth had a similar logical sequence. The late antique and early medieval Pentarchy had the character of administrative church regions, but their nature was purely territorial, notwithstanding their cultural and historical background. In the late medieval times within the territory of the Byzantine Empire, there emerged the “national“ or, more exactly, state autocephalous Churches – Bulgarian, Serbian and (later on) Russian and others. By the nature of things and following the logic of imperial autocracy, the Church was always subordinated to the empire12, although it enjoyed considerable autonomy, which was reflected in canon and, in particular, matrimonial law13. As Rome and Italy slipped away from the imperial power of Constantinople over time, the universalist aspirations of the Roman Curia decreased. It thus became the most important supranational institution and arbitrator in both the external and internal relations of the social and political factors in the West. By most frequently taking the side of the nobility against an autocratic ruler, the Roman Catholic Church became an important factor in maintaining the balance of power between the state and society (personified by the feudal class in the Middle Ages). In the role of the regulator and moderator, it also made a very important contribution to the rise of Western civilization. The Reform and Protestantism made a further contribution to this 12 J. MAYENDORFF, L'unité de l'Empire et divisions des Chrétiens. L'Eglise de 450 à 680, Paris 1993, p. 11sqq; P. VEYNE, Quand notre monde est devenu chrétien (312-394), Paris 2007 13 Angéliki LAIOU, Mariage, amour et parenté à Byzance aux XIe-XIIIe siècles, Paris 1992. 4 rise, with even greater dynamics based on the developed Protestant ethics14, all this being in favour of the exponential rise of capitalism. In that process – regardless of its contribution to the rise of civilization – Catholicism probably drifted away from the original ideal of Christianity, which Khomyakov formulated as “unity in freedom“. While Rome, becoming a state entity, accordingly sacrificed freedom to unity much the same as to determinism, the Reformation not less consistently was sacrificing unity to freedom. Therefore, despite its weaknesses and deviations, ideologization and increasing spiritual crisis in general, Orthodoxy still has a unique potentiality with respect to the original spiritual legacy, sacerdotal charisma and liturgical continuity, world conception as well as resocialization. The rise and fall of great civilizations is a complex historical process, which extends over long periods and may last several centuries. The thousand-year empire, which lasted from the foundation of Constantonople until its fall under Ottoman rule, succumbed to the dual tide of the conflicting and irreconcilable universalisms of the East and West, thus contributing to the vanishing of the medieval synthesis of the Mediterranean region15. The end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the New Age passed in the sign of the military supremacy of the Eastern monotheistic empire, aspiring to round off the Mediterranean basin and restore the territorial hegemony of the former Roman and Byzantine Empires16. The supremacy of the Western market economy and the lagging of 14 M. WEBER, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, Bodenheim, Athenäum Hain Hansein, 1993; en fr. Id., L’Ethique protestante et l’esprit du capitalisme, Paris 1964 (1905); Id., Histoire économique. Esquisse d’une histoire universelle de l’économie de la société, Paris 1992; Id., Sociologie des Religions, éd. Gallimard, Paris 1996, 545 pp; 15 B. BOJOVIĆ, “Синдром троугла на раскршћу светова (Срби на правцима европских подела)” (The Syndrome of Triangle at the Boundary Between the Worlds. The Serbs along European Divides), in Europe and the Seerbs, ed. Historical Insitute of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade 1996, p. 413-425 (Symary in English, p. 426-429). 16 F. BRAUDEL, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II, t. I-II, Paris 19825 (première édition, Paris 1949); H. INALCIK, The Ottoman Empire. The Classical Age (1300-1600), Londres 1973; R. MANTRAN (ed. R. Mantrana), Histoire de l'Empire ottoman, Paris 1989. 5 the Ottoman state economy17 resolved that conflict in favour of the West. In the late 16th century, the collapse of the financial system of the huge Ottoman Empire, which was still at the height of its might, marked a turning point in that process18. The decline and agony of the powerful empire lasted three centuries, until Kemal Ataturk created a strong nation state on the ruins of the dying multinational one. The outcome of the First World War was the creation of strong nation states, which replaced the multinational Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian empires. The restoration of a strong state was a more important and more lasting result of the Bolshevik revolution than an inefficient state-run economy under the communist model. The situation resembled the creation of the strong Jacobinian state, which replaced the sclerotic French Ancien Régime. That model of the nation state (État-nation) became prevalent in Europe in the 20th century. The model of a multinational monarchy, prevalent in the 19th century, became worn-out, but one must not lose sight of the fact that it gave to Europe both stability and peace, without continental-scale wars, throughout the 19th century – from the Congress of Vienna to the Sarajevo assassination19. During that period, Europe was by far the most developed part of the world; the colonial empires were the cause and effect of the 17 H. SAHILLIOGLU, "The role of international monetary and metal movements in Ottoman monetary history 1300-1750, in Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, Edited by J.F. Richards, Carolina Academic Press, Durham, North Carolina, 1983, p. 270; G. VEINSTEIN, "L'Empire dans sa grandeur (XVe siècle)", in Histoire de l'Empire ottoman, Paris 1989, p. 223-224; B. BOJOVIĆ, "Entre économie Monde et économie d'Etat – l’argent des Balkans (XVe-XVIe siècles)", Glas SANU LCIV, 13, p. 183-195. 18 N. BELDICEANU , “La crise monétaire ottomane au XVIe siècle et son influence sur les principautés roumaines”, Südost-Forschungen XVI (1957), p. 70-86; P. SEVKET, "The Disintegration of the Ottoman Monetary System during the Seventeenth Century", dans Metals and Monnies in a Gobal Economy, edited by Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Girâldez, Variorum 1997, An Expanding World. The European Impact on World History 1450-1800, Vol. 14, Princeton Papers in Near Eastern Studies, p. 72. 19 V. DEDIJER, The Road to Sarajevo, MacGibbon & Key, London 1967; ID., “Sarajevo Fifty Years After”, Foreign Affairs 42 (1964), p. 569-584; B. BOJOVIĆ, "L'attentat de Sarajevo 1914. La «Jeune Bosnie» et la «Main noire»", Histoire de guerre, N° 7, Un siècle de terrorisme, septembre-octobre-novembre 2002, p. 14-25; М. EKMEČIĆ, Дуго кретање између клања и орања. Историја Срба у Новом веку (1492-1992), (The long walk between killings and toil. Modern History of the Serbs 1492-1992), Belgrade 2007, p. 340=342. 6 globalization of its hegemony, as well as the price and means of the globalization of its civilization. The prevalence of the Jacobinian model of the nation-state marked the culmination of Europe as the factor and model across all continents and all parts of the world, while at the same time causing the radical regression of its model and the sunset of European hegemony20. The world wars turned Europe from the major factor of world history into a second-rate political, military and economic factor. The leading role in international relations was assumed by the two superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union. The power of the national egocentrisms of the Jacobinian states in Europe was too great to permit the prevalence of the economic and civilizational imperatives which would enable its further rise. The world wars brought mankind, primarily Europe, into the deepest abysses of the negation of most civilizational achievements and the most important human values, coupled with the lowest price and value for human life, the industrial production of death and the attempted extinction of whole races and peoples, as well as the negation of human dignity, ethics and common sense. The collectivist Marxist and National Socialist ideologies were the main causes of that regression, where the collectivity was dominant and man as an individual was only the impersonal means of the state. The consequence of that madness was the division of the European territory into the zones of influence of the superpowers and their military alliances. 20 M. S. ALEXANDER, The Republic in Danger: General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics of French Defense (1933-1940), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ; Anglo-french defence relations between the wars, ed. M. S. Alexander, W. J. Philpott, 2002, SHM, 2004; А. MITROVIĆ, Време нетрпељивих (The era of irreducible), СКЗ, Belgrade 1971. 7 The formation of the European Economic Community, as a common market that would transcend the opposing state egoisms, rival interests and national extremism, began after the Second World War with a view to preventing such madness in the future. One of the first recommendations of its founders, at the time of the formation of the Coal and Steel Community which preceded the EEC, was that special attention should be devoted to overcoming the differences in the historiographical interpretations of the more recent and very distant past in national histories. This is how the European Community/Union began to be built as the supranational institution of the European countries which joined together in a common interest and of their free will. Thus, consensuses, synergies and complementarities replaced the logic of conflicts, rivalries and a rough balance of power. The one-time irreconcilable animosity and confrontation between France and Germany have turned into synergy which constitutes the EU axis. Almost two centuries after the formation of a modern nation state, born at the time of the French Revolution, this type of statehood finished both its best and worst historical role. In the second half of the 20th century, Europe was persistently building a new community of states and nations. The collapse of the communist model of state and society also marked the dissolution of multinational communities which existed under such a model.21 The Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia disintegrated in a peaceful 21 During the 1990s, the West missed the opportunity to win over Russia and, thus, encourage and accelerate its democratization much more efficiently. The selfish US policy demonstrated once again that wisdom did not lie in victory. What would happen to the United States should the rapprochement between the EU and Russia be facilitated, should Russia adjust itself to the European standards at an accelerated rate and should a single market area stretch from the Atlantic to the Western Pacific. Instead, Russia is rearming itself at an accelerated pace. The EU will not be able to serve (Brzezinski dixit) as a “logistic base for a further tightening of the noose around Russia” for a long time. The more Central Asia is in the Russian orbit, the sooner it will be lost for the United States. Turkey is increasingly in a fissure between EU integration and increasing internal polarization that may also lead to its disintegration. The West (led by the United States) is repeating its fatal historical error made in the first half of the second millennium when, in an attempt to discipline it, it pushed Byzantium into lesser exclusivism, thus leaving the whole south-eastern part of Europe and the greater part of the Mediterranean to the powerful and irreconcilable Ottoman rival. The clash of civilizations, which was allowed in the Balkans during the 1990s, may return as a boomerang to those who supported it. The failure of the protectorate over Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is now admitted by its 8 and amicable way. It is shown that nation states have precedence in European integration processes over multinational ones, like former Yugoslavia22. What was the specificity of former Yugoslavia, which extended over the greater part of the Balkans and belonged more to South-Eastern Europe than to Central Europe ? The region where the degree of ethno-confessional homogeneity was considerably lower than in other parts of Europe and where the three great monotheistic religions or confessions – which do not represent a model of tolerance and dialogue according to their nature and historical heritage – encounter each other and overlap. The fact that in this region two-thirds of the population belong to the Orthodox Church and that the remaining one-third consists of Catholics and Muslims in an almost equal proportion, in addition to significant disparities in population growth among those three groups, determines the degree of stability in the Balkans, the region where the oldest states are considerably younger than most European ones and where new states and new nations emerge as the outcome of the world and local wars. As early as the 19th century, this part of the continent posed one of the greatest challenges to Europe’s stability at the time of its greatest progress. During the greater part of this European golden century, its great powers had to cope with the Ottoman legacy of the Balkan region, bearing the high-sounding name “Eastern Question“, the epilogue of Western protectors, is only one indicator of the obsolescence of such hegemony. The impasse in the Middle East points out that the bounds of militarist adventurism have been exceeded. The financial collapse and economic depression point to the general crisis of the Western model. Its initial prerequisite was the collapse of the communist-Soviet “alter ego”. The worn-out confrontation between thesis and antithesis is bringing Western and Eastern Europe into the situation resembling that in antique Greece, which never recovered after the Peleponnesian wars. However, the Greek culture outlived its civilization. Do the Euro-Asian East and West, as the distant successors of its legacy, have enough strength and sobriety for a new synthesis, or are we witnessing the beginning of their decline? All the more so, because it appears that the developmental dynamics of the Western model can be very successfully followed under quite different conditions. Should Russia establish a real democratic system, it would be proved that it actually won the Cold War and its aftermath. 22 Lj. DIMIĆ, Срби у Југославији (The Serbs in Yugoslavia), Belgrade 1998, 191 pp.; D. POPOVIĆ, “Le fédéralisme de l’ancienne Yougoslavie revisité, Qu’est-ce qui n’a pas fonctionné ?”,Revue internationale de la Politique Comparée 10, n° 1, Edition : De Boeck Université, Paris 2003, p. 43-45. 9 which was the Sarajevo spark that precipitated the World War and the establishment of the new European and world order as its direct outcome. However, the heterogeneity of the Balkan region is not the same in all countries of South Eastern Europe. In Romania, Bulgaria and, in particular, Greece and Turkey, one ethnoconfessional group constitutes over two thirds of the population. This is not so in the countries that once made up Yugoslavia (with the exception of homogenized Croatia and, even more so, Slovenia). While Macedonia and Serbia (even without Kosovo) have large ethnic minority groups, in Bosnia and Montenegro even the largest population group does not have an absolute majority23. It seems that the situation in Albania is similar (if one takes into account a significant percentage of the population of Bektashi faith): hardly one half of the population is Muslim (a more precise conclusion cannot be made due to the lack of the religious and ethnic indicators in the country’s population censuses). It is interesting to note that the so-called Western Balkans region, with the exception of Croatia after the expulsion of the Serbian population, is characterized by a proportionately high rate of heterogeneity (which is higher than in other parts of the Balkans), since the minority population groups constitute 25% or more of the population24. That is one of more important reasons why the integration of this part of South Eastern Europe poses such a great challenge to the further expansion of the European Union in that part of the continent. There is no doubt that the question of Turkey’s integration, to which the remaining, non- 23 E. ARNAKIS, « The role of religion in the development of Balkan nationalism », in Charles et Barbara Jelavich, The Balkans in transition : Essays on the development of Balkan life and politics since the eighteenth century, Univesity of California Press, 1963, p. 115; G. DUIJZINGS, Religion and the Politics of Identity in Kosovo, London 2000, p. 211-243; "Religion and the politics of ‘Albanianism’. Naim Frashëri’s Bektashi writings". In: Stephanie SCHWANDNER-SIEVERS & B. J. FISCHER (eds.), Albanian Identities: Myths, Narratives and Politics. London 2002, p. 60-69. 24 According to the census of 1981, Yugoslavia was one country with a rate of ethno-confessionelle consistency among the lowest in Europe, below 50%. The Serbs were represented in the order of the 36, 3%, Croats, 19,7%, Muslims, 8,9%, Slovenes, 7,8%, Macedonians, 5,9%, the Montenegrins, 2,5%. What is stated as Yugoslavs were 5,4%, were mostly Serbs outside Serbia, Dragana LAKOVIĆ, L’héritage juridique de l’exYougoslavie, le TPI et les processus d’intégrations euro-atlantiques, Pariz 2006, Master 2, EHESS, p. 4-7. 10 integrated eastern part of the Balkans belongs, poses an even greater challenge to the future of the European Union. Apart from these complex structural issues, there are ideological, cultural and subjective reasons which still stand in the way of those integration processes. It must not be forgotten that the interaction between the social and mental structures (G. Dimeziles) is crucial to understanding social and historical processes25. It is an axiom without which it is even much more difficult to understand the specifics of the region, the dramatic collapse of Yugoslavia, Serbia’s lagging behind in the transition process and its long-term disrepancy relative to the contemporary historical process, which made the collapse of Yugoslavia26, that is, the way it collapsed, chronic and irreversible, and still poses a threat. The political, institutional, ideological and psychological trap into which Serbia and the Serbian people have fallen, manifests itself as a double noose, or a double encirclement from which – after the significant post-October 2000 political change – there is still no way out. The European Union and the international community made a number of mistakes, wrong judgments and steps in dealing with the dramatic collapse of Yugoslavia, while the leaders of the Yugoslav "natiocracies" successfully followed the regressive populist political patterns. While others were tacitly or explicitly supported by the international community, the Serbs were punished and incriminated both when it was and was not justified, a double standard being applied. 25 G. DUMEZIL, L’idéologie tripartie des Indo-Européens, 1958 Bruxelles, 122 p.; ID., Mythe et Epopée, I-III, Gallimard, Paris 1968, 1971, 1973; M. MESLIN, “De la mythologie comparée à l’histoire des structures de la pensée: l’oeuvre de Georges Dumézil”, Revue Historique, 503 (1972); Georges Dumézil, numčro spécial des Cahiers pour un temps, Centre Georges Pompidou, Pandora Editions, Paris, 1982, 350 pp. 26 R. LUKIĆ, L’Agonie yougoslave (1986- 2003), les Etats-Unis et l’Europe face aux guerres balkaniques, Les Presses de l’Université Laval, Québec 2003, p. 213-218; Jelena GUSKOVA, Istorija jugoslovenske krize (1990-2000), I-II, Izdavački grafički atelje “M”, Beograd 2003; М. EKMEČIĆ, Дуго кретање између клања и орања. Историја Срба у Новом веку (1492-1992), Завод за уџбенике, Belgrade 2007, p. 501-548. 11 Yugoslavia was probably the country which derived the greatest profit from the Cold War. However, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was led by those who seemed not to wish to know that a new age had arrived. The problem posed by the already mentioned specific symmetry is even greater. It seems as if the international community hardly waited to simulate the continuation of the bloc division and Cold War in the traditionally unstable region – the simulation threatening to revive the demons of the more recent or the very distant past. The Balkan region has always been an object of the division into zones of interest and a proving ground for the regional and global balance of power27. Such processes were, and still are, taking place to some extent, so that the international community can easily find an alibi and justification for its political bias28 in the autistic anachronism of the Serbian political elite. At the same time, the Serbian ruling elite is given the strongest argument and alibi for its autarchic populism. Given such an inexorable dual fissure, even much bigger countries and more vital nations would hardly find a way out. No conspiracy theory can really contribute to understanding and, even less, finding a way out of the current situation in Serbia, whose further destiny also determines, to a greater or lesser degree, the further progress of the region, which is mostly comprised of even smaller and more static states. Therefore, only a structural analysis can contribute to rationalization 27 B. BOJOVIĆ, “ Les Balkans entre convergences et disparités (XIXe-XXe siècles). La Question d’Orient: les Balkaniques entre ingérences et leur responsabilité propre ”, in Structures fédérales et coopération interrégionale dans l’espace balkanique. Rapports et documents, actes du Symposium International , Gex, 12-14 septembre 1996, sous le patronage du Secrétaire Général du Conseil de l’Europe, Daniel Tarschys, du Président de l’Organisation pour la sécurité et la coopération en Europe, Flavio Cotti et sous les auspices du Centre de politique de sécurité, Genève 1997, p. 63-75. 28 Chantal DELSOL, La grande méprise, Paris 2004; Gabrielle VARRO, Regards croisés sur l’ex Yougoslavie, Paris 2005. 12 and demystification29 as a prerequisite for the response to the current and future challenges in the Balkans. It is the question of the specificity of state institutions, the state as such and, in particular, the relationship between the state and society, whose deficit dynamics represent the anachronous characteristics of that type of statehood or, more exactly, the state pattern and civilization legacy of the Byzantine cultural and historical area, whose socio-political pattern was defined as an “Eastern despotism“ by Marx and Engels30 in the spirit of the Eurocentric 19th century, and which poses a key challenge to the question of the boundaries of the so-called Judeo-Christian civilization to a greater or lesser extent. The criteria for setting those boundaries are not exclusively one-sided. They are based on historical processes and objective structural differences. The countries of South Eastern Europe and Turkey, as well as Russia, in a different way, inherited a similar type of statehood from Byzantium. The last Roman Empire which, at one time, represented the most advanced civilization model, used up its developmental potentialities and vanished from the historical scene under a forceful external impact and, probably even more, under the impact of its increasing internal contradictions, through a natural process, like natural death like many other great civilizations. Statehood, which was the most powerful factor of Byzantium over the centuries, became the gravedigger of its civilization over time. That omnipotent, rigid and utterly normative, universalist statehood became anachronous, ruling out any further development. The late Byzantine state was not able to accept a synthesis 29 Lj. DIMIĆ, “Kuda i kako – Mitovi i znanja o istoriji Jugoslavije” (Where and how. Myths and knowledge about the history of Yugoslavia), in The Shared History. Myths and Stereotypes of the Nationalism and Communism in Ex Yugoslavia. Mitovi I stereotipi nacionalizma I komunizma na prostoru bivse Jugoslavije, Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation – Salzburg, Centar za istoriju, Demokratiju i pomirenje – Novi Sad, Grafo marketing – Novi Sad, Novi Sad 2008, p. 9-22. 30 S. SFETAS, “The Anti-Russian Syndrome in the Views of Marx and Engels on the Eastern Question”, in Europe and the Eastern Question (1878-1923). Political and Civilisational changes, Beograd 2001, p. 290-294. 13 with its closest, Orthodox neighbours, who could have prolonged its life.31 Led by the imperative to remain equal only to itself at all cost, it was incapable of forming an alliance even with its neighbouring countries, thus offering a leds efficient resistance to the invaders. Despite its universal aspirations, the Patriarchate in Constantinople acted onedimensionally in relation to other, especially later, Orthodox Churches and states. This is also confirmed by the fact that in the calendar and liturgical practice of the Byzantine Church there was no place for the saints of other Orthodox countries32. Egotism, inherited from ancient Greek linguistic and cultural ethnocentrism, doomed Byzantium to tautological and autarchic self-isolation. In the first half of the 16th century, Sinadinos, a Greek priest from Serres, wrote that the main cause of the fall of Byzantium was its religious and cultural ethnocentrism33. The state which is an end in itself, the state which is more important than society, in which genuine interaction between society and the state as an institution does not exist and everything is subordinated to state institutions, the state in which the Church is at the service of the religion of autocracy cannot have a long-term development perspective. This type of statehood is characterized by a systematic conflict of interests between the state and society, chronic lack of investment, lack of any development strategy, static social processes and the lack of dynamics among social groups. Byzantium had no nobility; it had only the official aristocracy which was in a systematic conflict of interests as between the state function and state interest, between the state and society, to the detriment of both the 31 While the West was led by the imperative to discipline the Byzantines at all cost, Ottoman Islam was more tolerant of religious differences, which was one of the decisive factors in taking over the Byzantine legacy. Cf. B. BOJOVIĆ, Vassa CONTICELLO, G. JEHEL, Le monde byzantin (VIIIe-XIIIe siècle). Economie et société, Editions du Temps, Paris 2006, p. 56-62. 32 I. DUJČEV, “La littérature des Slaves méridionaux au XIIIe siècle”, in Id., Medievo bizantino-slavo, vol. III, Rome, 1971, p. 232-234, 240-241. 33 P. ODORICO, ΑΝΑΜΝΗΣΕΙΣ ΚΑΙ ΣΥΜΒΟΥΛΕΣ ΤΟΥ ΣΥΝΑΔΙΝΟΥ, ΙΕΡΕΑ ΣΕΡΡΩΝ ΣΤΗ ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΑ (17ος αιωνας), éd. “Pierre Belon”, Paris 1996, p. 162-165; B. BOJOVIĆ, "Нешто ново о Светој Петки" (New on the Holy Parascève), Политика, 25 oкtobar 1999. 14 state and society. At that time, Serbia had its statehood, which was designated by the great Serbian medievalist Nikola Radojčić as a “privilegial type of state“34. It is symptomatic that the mentioned phenomena are now characteristic of most countries belonging to the Byzantine cultural and historical legacy35. In our time, those are the countries with a chronic lack of investment36, from which capital is repatriated rather than reinvested or brought in and in which there is a systematic conflict of interests between the state function and state interest, between the state and society. Those are the countries whose society is an amorphous mass, without an initiative or profile, unable to protect itself from abuse involving the state function and utterly conditioned by state institutions. Those are the countries in which the communist system almost completely neutralized the civil sector and dissolved the little that was left of a weak civil society and democratic institutions, in which politics always took precedence over economics, demagoguery over responsibility, populism over culture, mythical consciousness over rationality, primitive infantilism over conscience and self-rectification. Those are the countries in which the state function in itself eliminates any legal regulations and responsibility, unless they are exclusively politically motivated. Those are the states which protect the interests of their thin ruling class layer and not the interests and property of their citizens. Those are the countries in which privatization is carried out by selling nationalized property, while the proceeds of such sales are not channelled into development investments, production and job creation, but exclusively into the preservation of the self-sufficient state function. Those are the countries in which the systematic usurpation of the state, social, private and legal is based on the party and police criteria. In these countries monopolistic nepotism and 34 N. RADOJČIĆ, Srpski državni sabori u srednjem veku (Serbian State Assemblies in the Middle Ages), Belgrade 1940, p. 33. 35 N. IORGA, Byzance après Byzance, Balland, Paris 1992, p. 253-275 (Epilogue В. Кндеа). 36 M. KAPLAN, Les hommes et la terre à Byzance du VIe au XIe siècle, propriété et exploitation du sol, Paris 1992, p. 499-500, 578, 580-581. 15 negative selection prevail over free, competitive and quality-based selection, transparency is undesirable and autism and self-justification are dominant in public and political life. In such countries a leading tycoon can be a decisive political factor and, for example, the chairman of the anti-corruption committee. Such states do not serve their societies and the common interest, but act to the detriment of both, while the state institutions work against the citizens and society, since they undermine their own foundations. In such countries it is impossible to have an open society. Those are the closed systems of "democratorship" which can easily be identified. Such states cannot be nation or civil states; they can only be systemic and privilegial, autarchic and regressive. What is the real perspective of the West Balkan countries37 in relation to the development of the European integration processes? The end of the 20th century and the beginning of 37 As it is well known, the newly coined term “Western Balkans” refers to the area of former Yugoslavia from which Slovenia was taken away and Albania added. In contrast to other parts of the Balkans and the South-Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans, with the exception of the present Croatia, is characterized by a smaller ethno-confessional cohesion (Dragana LAKOVIĆ, L’héritage juridique de l’exYougoslavie, le TPI et les processus d’intégrations euro-atlantiques, Pariz 2006, Master 2). The homogeneity in this area represents about two thirds or even smaller majority of the biggest group, while on the other parts of Europe and its South East, it ranges from 80 per cent and above. It is certain that the independence of Kosovo and Metohia would move decisively the rest of Serbia and Kosovo and Metohia from the group with the less homogenous population to that with the higher homogeneity. It is also, certain that Serbia will not accept and recognize the unilateral secession of Kosovo and Metohia. It is clearly noticeable that the international community (or the Euro-Atlantic Alliance) had extended the privileges, from the very beginning of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, to the separatist determinations and, with the exception of Bosnia and Herzegovina, favored the separation of the ethno-confessional communities, giving its support to their separate life, next to each other, to a disadvantage of multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism, without being much considerate of such proclaimed principles and standards. Everything is developing as if the countries failing to enter on time into the process of Euro-Atlantic integrations inexorably get into the processes of disintegration. The question arises whether the crises with Kosovo and Metohia, which according to the latest analysis was an initiator of disintegration of Yugoslavia, is the termination or continuation of these disintegration processes? It is difficult to imagine not only the solution, but also the rebuilding and termination of these processes outside the Euro-Atlantic integration. But, it will be even more difficult to foresee the way and dynamics of these integrations. The fact that EU opted for individual, if not selective accessions to EU, makes the insight into this kind of forecasting even more difficult. The insight of particular interest due to the change in relations between the powers in the wider region, which can bring the new strains and to stray from the compromise solutions more favorable to all parties. Therefore a regional plan for the solution of crises, including that with Kosovo and Metohia, which looks all the more difficult to resolve, could encompass the whole region of the Western Balkans, which would be of a special importance for the wider region as well. While the countries of the Western Balkans are competing in approaching the EU market and democratic standards, their mutual approaching can only facilitate the transitional difficulties and speed up the preparations for Euro Atlantic integrations. Their cooperation in the area of economic and cultural exchange could be developed in the mutual multilateral relations which could be stimulated by the 16 the 21st have shown that the countries lagging behind in the process of Euro-Atlantic integration can be prone to disintegration. Yugoslavia had two chances to accede to the EEC using a shortened procedure. The first offer (1974) was declined by Tito and the second (1990) by Milošević and Tudjman. If the reasons for the rejection of that offer by Tito (ideological and geopolitical reasons in the Cold War period) and Tudjman (the creation of the Croatian nation state) can still be understood, it is difficult to understand the reason that was allegedly given by Milošević – the creation of a “strong federation“38. It is hard to believe that at the time of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia an experienced banker and pragmatic politician, who had spent a lot of time in the United States, could still harbour an illusion about the creation of any federation, let alone a strong one. As a pro-Soviet politician, he most likely believed, like Gorbachev, in the preservation of the communist system, albeit at the cost of the disintegration of the federation and implementation of a number of cosmetic reforms through the establishment of some kind of state capitalism. With Milošević’s political demise, this phenomenon was not sufficiently refuted – the DOS regime has so far displayed much more continuity with the previous regime than discontinuity. The situation is similar in most countries of the former Yugoslavia. appropriate facilities for the EU market area. The exchanges in the area of the culture and economy should be facilitated additionally by investments in communications, tourism, education and sports. In the course of the accession to EU, this multilateral cooperation of the Western Balkans countries should be open for Turkey to a greatest extent. Developing this idea of creation of the market area of about more than 100 million consumers requires a comprehensive project which would necessitate a systematic and multidisciplinary approach and a good knowledge of the South East and Asia Minor area. This project could contribute in a decisive way to rebuilding of the knot of the Western Balkans and Asia Minor - the knot and a center which in the absence of beneficial initiatives could become the additional factors of instability in the near future and imperil the efforts made with great difficulty so far and the results achieved in this sensitive part of the Europe and the Middle East. 38 Z. PETROVIĆ, Anatomie d’une auto-décomposition. L’ascension de Milošević au pouvoir en Serbie, 1982-1992, докторска теза, E.H.E.S.S., Париз 2008, p. 56-57, 112-117, 469-471; Z. MLYNAR, Nightfrost in Prague: The End of Humane Socialism, Karz Publishers, New York 1980. 17 We have experienced the high cost of that far-reaching and confounding continuity, to which one can attribute not only the bloody disintegration of the federation, but also the forceful secession of one part of Serbia, which is still undergoing an unparalleled economic, institutional, political and social regression in modern European history – regression and decomposition whose end still cannot be perceived, a regressive process that is diametrically opposite to European integration. The collapse of the communist system, the vanishing of a bipolar power structure in which Yugoslavia had a specific and privileged role39, the globalization of the Western model and the hegemony of Euro-Atlantic integration had disastrous consequences for most countries of the former Yugoslavia. Although it proved to be the most compatible with those changes, Slovenia also lagged behind to some extent and experienced a relative regression as compared to its status in the former Yugoslavia, which was the only European country that applied certain market economy elements within a single-party, communist system. Instead of becoming a link between the two systems and an example of accelerated and successful transition, the former Yugoslavia became mostly a weight on the expansion of the European Union to South-Eastern Europe. It seems as if the ghost of the accursed Eastern Question is again hovering over the destiny of New Europe and the successful expansion of its model40. By imposing the question of its normative and conceptual framework, the Western Balkans and Turkey, each in its own way, now pose the greatest challenge to the European Union, since in that region the European Union is most directly 39 Starting with the fact Yugoslavia was, as a member of the Balkan Pact (with Greece and Turkey), during the fifties, even if informally, in fact a member of the South East wing of the NATO, G. TROUDE, Conflits identitaires dans la Yougoslavie de Tito 1960-1980, Association Pierre Belon, Paris 2007; М. EKMEČIĆ, Дуго кретање између клања и орања. Историја Срба у Новом веку (1492-1992), Belgrade 2007, p. 547-548. Concluded in October 1951, the military assistance agreement between the USA and Yugoslavia (MDAP), lasted until 1957, grants worth $ 15 billion were paid to Yugoslavia during this period, P. SIMIĆ, Тито и НАТО. Успон и пад друге Југославије (Tito and NATO. Rise and fall of the second Yugoslavia), Belgrade 2008, p. 75. 40 D. POULAKOS, “Some parameters of the Eastern Question”, in Europe and the Eastern Question (1878-1923). Political and Civilisational changes, Beograd 2001, p. 393-398. 18 faced with the legacy of the alternative antecedents, the Yugoslav, Turkish and Byzantine supranational models. By a concurrence of circumstances, the Serbs represent a significant regional factor in that legacy, if not the decisive one Their geographical location, on the axes of the Euro-Asian and Euro-Balkan transversals, as the European history of the last centuries has shown, does not allow that people to have a marginal role at the regional or European level. The very marginalization of that Balkan and Central European people, as was dictated, and is still dictated by the leading powers in the post-bloc period, has created considerable precedents in contemporary European history41. The NATO involvement in putting an end to the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia is the best indicator that not all is at its best in the most perfect of all possible worlds, as it seemed in the selfish mirror of victorious neoliberalism until the current financial collapse and global economic recession. As the decisive argument in favour of preserving NATO, the Yugoslav crisis will not always blur the contradictory challenges of the post-bloc reality and multipolar future. If the European integration of the Western Balkans and, in all probability, Turkey is not achieved within a shorter period, the Euro-Atlantic alliance will lose its historical chance to stabilize and Europeanize the most sensitive part of the European continent, which is so important and sensitive that over a medium term, if not a short one, it can easily be proved, like many times before, that Europe will either fall or survive in the Balkans. Born in Niš, Constantine the Great knew that quite well, so that he founded his thousand-year empire on the south-eastern tip of the Balkans. In fact, the global clash of civilizations began with the 41 G.-M. CHENU, « Les limités des interventions européennes », Ed. Marie-Françoise ALLAIN, François CALORI, Olivia CUSTER, L’ex Yougoslavie en Europe, de la faillite des démocraties au processus de paix, Paris 1997, p. 60-69; P. de BOIS, « L’Union européenne et le naufrage de la Yougoslavie (1991-1995) », Relation internationale 104, Genève 2000, p. 477-480; Y. BROSSARD, J. VIDAL, L’éclatement de la Yougoslavie de Tito (1980-1995), Désintégration d’une fédération et guerres interethniques, Paris 2001, p. 43-50. 19 vanishing of that great Greek-Latin and Mediterranean synthesis. The current financial and economic depression points to the beginning of the end of the hegemony of one part of mankind, if not of one model, since an alternative model does not exist any more. The global crisis, which cannot be bypassed by any part of mankind, can only accelerate the resolving of a dilemma as to the further development of global relations. The answer to the decisive challenge of the European future – the question of a choice between deepening the clash of civilizations and taking the path to a new and far-reaching synthesis – should be sought on the symbolic Belgrade-Istanbul-Ankara axis. Paris, November 2008 20