I get "We were unfortunately unable to place the cookie that is necessary for the use of our site. Is your computer connected to the internet through a company network? We recommend that you ask your IT department for an exception for DER SPIEGEL content. Have you configured a browser extension or the browser itself such that cookies are blocked? Please add DER SPIEGEL to your list of exceptions. Should you continue to have problems, you can find more information here."
I only have ublock origin and a minimum of config changes.
> The memory of Jasenovac, the "Auschwitz of the Balkans,” is one of the more neglected facets of recent Croatian history. The fascist Ustasha’s henchmen murdered around 100,000 people, mostly Serbs, Jews and Roma, in their satellite state, which was tolerated by Hitler.
Funny, you didn't hear a lot about that in the media while we were bombing out Serbia in the late 90s / early 00s.
I did not comment at all about the "rightness or wrongness" of what either side did: My comment was more about the American media and how it covered the conflict. My honest feelings about the region are that it's a bunch of people who have been brutal to each other for centuries (and continue to be), but if you watched Christian Amanpour on CNN during that time, you would get the impression that it was an entirely one-sided conflict where only the Serbs did wrong and we were completely justified in stepping in and waging war. In my opinion, I think in 100 years looking back this will be remembered by some very observant historians as the prelude to Afghanistan/Iraq and the "beginning of the end" of America's dominance. People were complete tools, there was not even the hint of a counter-narrative to the "Serbs are bad" stories being pushed by the govt through mainstream media. The real story, of course, was a lot more complicated. The Serbs weren't "right" for trying to get revenge on people who collaborated with Hitler to exterminate them but that background information was never even presented while the war was being sold to US public.
More concerning is the proud position Jasenovac holds in the modern day right-wing Croatian narrative - an increasingly socialised, romanticised version of neofascism.
The Croatian Wikipedia Disinformation writeup from a few weeks ago [0] was some rabbithole - for those who understand the language.
Muslim Bosnians and Albanians are not Croats and have nothing to do with whatever you are describing. Serbs find any way to justify their horrendous act, except come out clean and move on to have better relations with their neighbors.
Correct. My comment made no mention of Bosnians or Albanians, nor did it have anything to do with Serbs.
I’m assuming you wouldn’t pass a captcha test, but if I’m wrong and you want to elaborate on your comment I’d love to better understand the point you were trying to make.
The bombing of Kosovo was to protect Albanians from ethnic cleansing. Also, Bosnians are not croats and had nothing to do with it and what happened during WW2. And the serbs did genocide to them anyway.
This victim mentality is toxic. How is this justified in any way? "We got mistreated during WW2, so we feel justified to do war crimes to completely other groups 50 years later...."
I can't speak for other ex Yugoslav republics, but Bosnia and Herzegovina is in permanent state od limbo, for 25 years, and probably for the next 25. Corruption is rampant, nationalistic retoric abundant...
One of the main reasons we are a failed state is Dayton peace agreement. It awarded war and genocide. Just imagine post WWII Germany, splitted in two parts, one ruled by ex facists, still denying holocaust, the other part ruled by self serving, corrupt, thieves and bastards (can't say they are better than facists, because all of them got into power and got rich during the war)
The whole region will have half of the population (from year 1991), in just a few decades. Young people/families will never return...
For starters, don't reward war crimes. Organize swift trials. They've only recently finished trials of high ranking generals and officials, there are thousands lower ranked ones which will never feel the hand of justice.
Dunno, we're probably fucked up anyway. Our education system is destroyed, splintered into many small pieces, low quality, that is the worst thing for the future. There are simply too many layers of government, half of the country considers itself part of Serbia, the other part is busy crying wolf (while stuffing money into pockets). Teritorial rearangements wont make people more educated, happier, wealthier...
Even welcoming Bosnia into EU wouldn't help, that would be just a free pass to relocate for work, and a shot of a decent life (that is not easy to achieve in a foreign country, working jobs locals would not take)
Islamic state in Bosnia, that's funny. If you've ever been in Bosnia, then you would have known that the majority do not care about islam as itself. Yes, they might identify themselves as "muslim", but they aren't religious per se. My friends would go to pray for Bayram and then the whole city would eat and get drunk together, very Islamic. :)
Reminds me of a story my mother told me. Basically, my family are all "Muslims" and "religious". But there was one dark secret... my grandpa loved bacon. Whenever his cousin who was a Hodja came to visit us, my grandpa would hide his home brew raki and his lovely bacon.
This is fantasy propaganda that was used by the genocidaires in Republika Srpska to justify the war they started and the actual genocide they committed.
I remember when Spiegel did this same sort of travel story through the US and it turned out the author just made most of it up to fit whatever stereotypes he wanted to confirm about americans. Hard to take them seriously after that.
I recommend Rebecca West's 'Black Lamb and Grey Flacon" as good book on the Balkans. The people seem strongly in touch with history going back centuries.
Amazed that the article paints Croatia as a country with "rising anti-democratic forces" while for some reason not mentioning that a month ago the mayoral election in the capital city (quarter of the population) was won by a left-green coalition modelled on Podemos. They won 40% of the vote.
Croatia is strange in that regard. On the one hand you have that mayoral election, on the other you have their national soccer team flying the nationalists version of Croatias flag. (if what our newspaper claimed was true. even if it is, they also printed a wrong flag of the opposite team on their jerseys once, so it could also just be a stupid mistake).
I love that country so, very nice people and a beautiful landscape!
It wasn't the nationalist version, any state flag is inherently a nationalist symbol, the problem is that the logo is from the NDH, a Nazi puppet state of Croatia, which created the Jasenovac concentration camp.
It might be a mistake, but as a young adult, everyone around me (I live in Croatia) knows what the 'first white square' symbolizes.
Thanks for clarifying. Any idea how that flag ended up on the jerseys? That's kind of printing the Reichkriegsflagge on German jerseys, with the true equivalant, the Nazi fla, being outlawed.
I believe the official explanation was an "interpretation error" of the vector image used as the source. The printer has taken "full responsibility" for this mistake and apologized. How convenient. From a technical perspective not very plausible, if not borderline impossible.
More likely, a deliberate choice made by a powerful individual, for which anyone with any actual knowledge or proof knows all to well that it would be suicide to talk about it publicly. Whether that would be literal or figurative suicide, that is debatable. Either way though, while Croatia is part of the EU these days, the way in which things function are still very much similar to some other countries in the region .. where powerful individuals can make arbitrary decisions with absolute impunity.
There are plenty of powerful individuals in Croatia who harbor strong sympathies towards the country's dark fascist history. Plenty of those managed to get away with their role in war profiteering (or worse), during the last wars. Probably more than anything because they happened to be useful and on the side of powerful corrupt people in the USA and EU. Regretfully so, because Croatia is beautiful country and home to some incredibly whole/goodhearted people (very much like in other former Yugoslavian states).
Thanks for the background. Fully confirm what you say about the people. It's just sad to see how much damage a couple of ruthless, self-service people can do. But blaming the printer, really? That's like blaming an intern...
Well, my condolences then. I dont know where this sentiment comes from that left/green is automatically good and democratic. Thats a really weird propaganda bit that went through almost everywhere.
It should be noted that while the article writes "communist" and "regime", the economy and political structure of Yugoslavia differed drastically from what was going on in the likes of the USSR, DRR, etc. as did their foreign policy [1][2][3]
Tito was impressive just by managing to be somewhat communist but never falling under the control of the USSR. Maybe being the first real pain for Nazi Germany in WW2, resistance wise, helps not being affraid of larger powers.
The conflict in what used to be Yugoslavia is not 30 something years old. It's about 14 centuries old. It is the clash of cultures between Christians and Islamist, with the later trying to impose their beliefs on the former.
I stayed over there for about one year just before the fighting would start. Yugoslavia was a beautiful country indeed.
Yugoslavia was an ethnically mixed state, with the exception of Slovenia. Serbia tried to keep its terriorially disparate Orthodox communities in one state, but was too weak to do so in the end. There was also a growing unwillingness of the rich northern countries to pay for the less developed southern countries (just like today in the EU).
After the economic failure of communism, there was also a crisis of idealism and people were trying to find meaning in their past religious traditions. Politicians inflamed the divisions to secure their power. Islamism had hardly anything to do with it.
first of all the region was Illyrian, then it was conquered by the Roman empire, and it was the border between the West and East Roman (Byzantine Empire), which was Christian. Then the pagan slavs migrated/invaded it in the 650-700, and the Byzantine Empire fought them back (there are still villages in Greece that have Slavic toponyms).
The byzantine empire started declining, and the slavs created the first Bulgarian empire (the Bullgars were Turkic nomadic tribes who mixed with the local Slavs, but they were not Islamisiced then and eventually converted to Christian Orthodox). The different slavic tribes started fighting with each other and created the many petty kindoms which formed the today's south slav ethnicities. And eventually the Ottomans conquered the whole place in 1400s until the 1900s, including the Albanians and eventually the Romanians in north East, and parts of Hungary in the north.
So.... there is 500 years of conflict against the ottomans, but really there is another 1000 years of medieval conflicts that you are completely ignoring.
At the start of the civil war, I was obliviously bicycling from Milan to Trieste to Ljubljana to Zagreb and was planning on going South to Greece. I was in Ljubljana when Slovenia broke off and could tell something was afoot. I bicycled to Zagreb (best single day ever) and I could tell, obvious even to me, that something was definitely was going on, if not exactly there then somewhere near. I then bicycled to the Hungarian border as fast as I could peddle. I paid something like $50 at the border for not having a visa, $50 well spent.
The Slavic majority in Macedonia has a name, Walter Mayr. It is Macedonians. Western media’s ignorance of one small nation’s struggle for recognition really puzzles me. Yes we are Slavs but you don’t call Russians Slavic majority in Russia. After more than a century of neighbour's aggressive politics to stifle Macedonian’s national awakening the least I expect from the media is to call the majority of my home country Macedonians.
Not to mention the blatant usurpation of the greek word "macedonia" without any linguistic, ethnic connection to it (ancient macedonians were greeks, not slavs).
That region is still called Macedon and the modern inhabitants of that region are themselves called Macedonians. As opposed to the slavic macedonians, they do have strong historical, linguistic and ethnic connections to the term. Do you see the problem here?
As you can see from the map Macedon was partially occupying territory of the modern country Macedonia. But what is more important than arguing about Ancient Times is respecting the national identity of the people that live today. The history of the name is complicated and we don’t share the same views with the Greeks but that is not the reason to fight over a name. Everyone in the world knows Greece. And nobody thinks they can’t use or consider the name Macedonia part of their history. What is interesting is why majority of Greeks feel threatened of their neighbour’s self identity.
I'm not talking about the Greeks, undoubtedly they also have their own concerns. But from a historical, scholarly or researcher perspective, you can't deny that this situation is very confusing. As an American who is interested in history and Ancient Greece, I can't in good conscience refer to your country as Macedonia in conversation. I always use the formal name "North Macedonia" and pretty much always have to explain the history behind that name.
This is as insufferable as someone refusing to refer to Athens, Georgia or London, Ontario without the state/province name, even in casual conversation near the place. Or saying that morpho butterflies aren’t actually blue, they just look blue.
Ui, "young nations", that sounds like a wonderful excuse. Of course, since these nations are young, almost infants actually, they need protection, right? Like small children sitting in a school bus? The first thing that came to mind when I read "young nations" was israel. A wonderful young state mostly occupied with killing off the people who were living on that land prior before the british decided to give it away. Wonderful thing such young nations.
To be fair, the Bulgarians (and Macedonians) haven't done much killings since the two balkan wars before ww1. They tend to co-exist mostly peacefully with their neighbors, especially the last 15 years.
The serbians have been the ones trying to kill almost every other ethnicity around them. They are the bad guys of the region, yet they tend to claim victimhood the most (from NATO, to Croatians in WW2, to XXX ethnicity...).
Slavic Macedonians are Bulgarians though.... and Macedonia is a made up buffer state with two different ethnicities (Slavic and Albanian), and a name that borrowed it form completely different region and time, which most of it is connected with Greece anyway.
Hence Greece was blocking NMKD to join Nato, because of the name and cultural appropriation, Bulgaria is currently blocking the ascenction to EU for similar reasons, and the Albanians there really want to join Albania if they had the chance.
It is kinda of a made up country... but so is Belgium and some others. Lets see how it goes in the long run, but if one day it disolved, where the west part goes to Albania and the Central and East part goes to Bulgaria, it makes perfect sense.
The fun fact, is that there are two villages in Albania that have a large slavic composition, and the borders were drawn in 1912 before the making of the macedonian state.
They all say they speak 'bullgarski' and consider themselves bulgars, and not Macedonian.
The viewpoint that this article is missing: much of this “reversion” to anti-democratic governments in Central Europe (Visegrad+ Balkans) is coming from Western EU members pushing their newfangled cultural ideologies a little too hard. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Ex-Yugoslavia want to be a part of the EU for economic reasons, not so they can participate in American-led cultural movements. If the EU doesn’t wise up and tone down their revolutionary zeal, these countries are going to be pushed even further away, eventually even towards Russia, China, or Turkey.
I call bullshit on this. It's a propaganda tale from the controlled media in these states to avoid having to talk about oligarchs, corruption and and real issues. At least it's pretty visible in Czechia, where Andrej Babiš and the media controlled by him to use this narration. Hungary probably the same.
As far as I know most laws that are 'pushed' are based on providing equality, protection of minorities and avoiding discrimination (i.e. LBGT). Basically things like these are not okay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_anti-LGBT_law
That is only a very small part of it. The only reason laws like this exist is because they are perceived as being defensive measures against a huge “Western” cultural / media project.
As the other commenter said, most of these movements have nothing to do with Eastern and Central European history, so they aren’t received well. E.g. Poland and Hungary had no colonies so anti-colonialism ideology doesn’t make much sense to be there...yet it is being pushed.
I'm afraid this is not at all bullshit, even though I wish it was so.
While it is true that these opposing countries no doubt each have their own problems with (local/national) corruption and oligarchies, the ideologies that are currently being forced on them are very much the product of corruption and oligarchies on a much larger scale (just better hidden). In fact, none of these ideologies are what they claim to be.
This is all about powers who have essentially hijacked the EU project for their own greedy gains. This ideological criticism in reality just attempts to crush the (relatively amateurishly organized) local competition to their own hegemony. That isn't propaganda. It's an organization who cleverly knows how to abuse the general ignorance of most citizens regarding these countries and abusing it to frame reality into a conveniently useful picture/justification for their attempt to take (even more) control.
As much as there is all kind of things wrong with these opposing countries, of which there indeed is plenty, there is equally nothing good or lofty about what the EU is doing at the moment. As ironic as it might be, the local corruption and oligarchies in these countries may in fact only be child's play compared what has infested the EU.
The main difference probably being the success with which criminal elements within the EU have managed to hide their activities from the general population. Probably not in the least by "outsourcing" a lot of its business to either outside EU, or to local shady endeavors in these countries now criticized, where it's a lot easier to hide how profits are being made.
Of course, countries like Czechia, Hungary, Poland and a few more certainly should do more about their internal corruption. But what most people forget is that the current status quo to a large degree was build up and supported by powerful figures within the EU. Most of that because these corruptions at the fringes of the EU territory just so happened to be very convenient and profitable for the people who "accidentally" let all of this happen on their watch. Mind you, figures like Victor Orban became as powerful as they are now by gaming EU rules, with the full knowledge of those who made and governed those rules!
> the ideologies that are currently being forced on them are very much the product of corruption and oligarchies on a much larger scale (just better hidden). In fact, none of these ideologies are what claim to be. This is all about powers who have essentially hijacked the EU project for their own greedy gains. The ideological criticism in reality just attempts to crush the (relatively amateurishly organized) local competition to their own hegemony. That isn't propaganda. It's an organization who cleverly knows how to abuse the general ignorance of most citizens regarding these countries and abusing it to frame reality into a conveniently useful picture/justification.
care to elaborate? Is it about german/france hegonomy? About keeping the eastern countries for cheap labour from western coorporations?
There is lot's to dislike about the EU - would like to hear more details.
It isn't directly as much about the hegemony of any country or nation.
It's more about huge capital/business interests that have found their way into political parties in both the EU and most of its member states. While democracy is a great thing if it indeed represents the will of a people, even if divided by philosophical and practical disagreements, when political parties (covertly) become lobbying agencies for large business interests it becomes a very different story.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Yugoslavia, plenty of business were immediately involved with the "privatizations" of (formerly) nationalized resources and services. A lot of that was done with the assistance of local collaborators, many of which later became what we now call those local oligarchs and way too powerful politicians. What is currently happening has a lot to do with reigning back in these locals, after becoming a bit too powerful (and greedy), and taking even more than was already originally taken (if not stolen).
A big problem in all this is that shady business deals often stay below the radar of ordinary citizens, even though these same business deals might be of a huge influence of what happens in the (international) political arena.
Just as an example, think about how Royal Dutch Shell managed to score exclusive rights to natural resources in the Ukraine, for I believe as much as a decade. This happened either right before or shortly after the change of power in the country, but certainly before Crimea and the east of the country decided that they did not agree their new masters in Kiev. Now, go and guess where most of those natural resources are located. Looks to me like Shell just lost a lot of potential profit there. But of course the military/policing campaign that followed was all about crushing local terrorism. The key point in all this: I don't remember even a single EU news outlet running any story about Shell and the serious investments it just made (and then saw evaporate) in the Ukraine. This is just an example. There are plenty of other stories where business deals made in the dark end up being "conveniently coincide" with political events involving former Soviet or Yugoslavian countries.
Just like the EU government and media suffering from a case of instant autism regarding the (filmed) police brutalities in Serbia last year, despite many NGO's writing letters to both EU governments and the media alike. Of course it is a coincidence that the EU was just about to conduct talks with the country's president about Kosovo, where foreign industrialist would love to finally get their hands on the trillions (as in literally trillions) worth of natural resources. Something the "independence" war of Kosovo didn't manage to fully achieve, much to the dismay of some very powerful people.
It is said that Kosovo "happened" not long after members of the Albanian mafia made considerable campaign contributions to US lawmakers linked to the Clinton administration. I've seen plenty of Serbs therefore claim that this mafia essentially bought itself their own fiefdom. In reality, they are more like the local useful idiots who get a relatively small reward for their cooperation. The real story is how foreign industrialist (tried to) get their hands on this very important piece of land. For historical reference: Hitler rushed to Kosovo to get exclusive control over it. Back then for the same reason as now: key natural resources. There's some very interesting stuff in the ground there (and not all of it publicly declared, but it can be deduced with some basic knowledge of geology)
Having to constantly go through American left ideology pushed so far to balance the heritage of slavery and their social issues is tiring. Racism isn't really a thing in that sense (there's gypsies but that has a very different dynamic). Gender stuff feels way too forced.
These cultures are not comparable, these are not the burning issues in our society and yet they are pushed to the forefront of attention.
Meanwhile we have the most systemically corrupt governments (these guys don't even do the overt things like industry engagement and speeches after their term, our former PM is in jail for straight out taking bribes in a privatisation scandal, mayor of the capital was collecting bribes for standard city functions for 20 years, the only reason this got to public attention was he died before getting re-elected, and this is endemic in all levels of society)
Pushing on social agendas gives ammo to corrupt politicians to spin the story away from the important stuff and fight a strawman.
it is very beautiful.... it has its own tensions. Montenegrins (which are slavs) are more west looking, vs. Serbs (which are also slavs, who are more east looking), vs. Albanians who are not slavs and really want to join Albania anyway, and the are the people of the Sanjak region, who are closer related to Bosnians but are are mixture of slavs + others.
So, Montenegro is seen as a sleepy buffer state, created and kept by the great powers to keep Serbia (and Russia by proxy) away from the Adriatic and the Mediterranean Sea. It usually tries not to get involved into controversies. During the Yugoslav wars they wanted to stay out, but got ropped in by the Serbs.
All: please don't wage national or religious wars via internet comments on Hacker News. There's a lot of that in the thread below—not cool, and not what this site is for.
If you're going to comment on a topic like this please do so thoughtfully, substantively, and with respect for those who disagree—assume that there are a lot of them here, and their reasons for holding their views are just as valid, and just as rooted in their background, as yours are.
At this point this is probably on page 21 of HN, making my comment somewhat pointless, but I have an itch to scratch.
As someone with ties to the region, I am always slightly confused by these articles because they are mostly an echo of the past. There is not much new here. You can place it at any point in the last 20 years and it would for the most part be valid. There's a lot going on in the world and I understand people don't have the attention span for all the details of the globe, but they don't even need to have. As a German newspaper, Spiegel could take a look at Germany's role, or even the EU's in what happened there. There are interesting topics even today, e.g. what is Gerhard Schröder doing there now and what was his role 20 years ago? As it is now, it's mostly just a stereotypical report that riles people up and kind of ends up amplifying those stereotypes. The article could be about some islands in the Pacific, but that's not true if you are a German newspaper!
The article touches upon some interesting developments related to the EU, e.g. that it's unfortunately not really a solution as it's mostly resulted in people leaving, but it lacks focus in general, and it holds no critical views. Another interesting angle could've been the conflicts that have been brewing internally for decades now that there are clearly separated nation states, and the enemies are for the most part behind clearly defined borders.
And lastly it could take an optimistic view that surely exists if for no other reason than that I'm an optimist, and I'm not alone. Not all people had severed ties completely even during the darkest times, and it's been a long time since. It's time for new perspectives.
78 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 165 ms ] threadFirefox with uBlock Origin + uMatrix.
I only have ublock origin and a minimum of config changes.
Thankfully nathan_phoenix' archive.is link worked great.
Funny, you didn't hear a lot about that in the media while we were bombing out Serbia in the late 90s / early 00s.
However, the memory of Jasenovac often serves as justification for new atrocities commited to revenge the victims (50 years later!)
Serbia was bombarded for crimes on Kosovo, probably to stop Kosovo from becoming next Bosnia...
The Croatian Wikipedia Disinformation writeup from a few weeks ago [0] was some rabbithole - for those who understand the language.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27563118
I’m assuming you wouldn’t pass a captcha test, but if I’m wrong and you want to elaborate on your comment I’d love to better understand the point you were trying to make.
This victim mentality is toxic. How is this justified in any way? "We got mistreated during WW2, so we feel justified to do war crimes to completely other groups 50 years later...."
Outsiders meddling and their uninformed[1] rhetoric complicate things further.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_Waffen_Mountain_Division_...
One of the main reasons we are a failed state is Dayton peace agreement. It awarded war and genocide. Just imagine post WWII Germany, splitted in two parts, one ruled by ex facists, still denying holocaust, the other part ruled by self serving, corrupt, thieves and bastards (can't say they are better than facists, because all of them got into power and got rich during the war)
The whole region will have half of the population (from year 1991), in just a few decades. Young people/families will never return...
Even welcoming Bosnia into EU wouldn't help, that would be just a free pass to relocate for work, and a shot of a decent life (that is not easy to achieve in a foreign country, working jobs locals would not take)
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-deep-pathology-a...
https://medium.com/@micheleanderson/der-spiegel-journalist-m...
I love that country so, very nice people and a beautiful landscape!
It wasn't the nationalist version, any state flag is inherently a nationalist symbol, the problem is that the logo is from the NDH, a Nazi puppet state of Croatia, which created the Jasenovac concentration camp.
It might be a mistake, but as a young adult, everyone around me (I live in Croatia) knows what the 'first white square' symbolizes.
More likely, a deliberate choice made by a powerful individual, for which anyone with any actual knowledge or proof knows all to well that it would be suicide to talk about it publicly. Whether that would be literal or figurative suicide, that is debatable. Either way though, while Croatia is part of the EU these days, the way in which things function are still very much similar to some other countries in the region .. where powerful individuals can make arbitrary decisions with absolute impunity.
There are plenty of powerful individuals in Croatia who harbor strong sympathies towards the country's dark fascist history. Plenty of those managed to get away with their role in war profiteering (or worse), during the last wars. Probably more than anything because they happened to be useful and on the side of powerful corrupt people in the USA and EU. Regretfully so, because Croatia is beautiful country and home to some incredibly whole/goodhearted people (very much like in other former Yugoslavian states).
To clarify, I mean the printer as a company, not the device .. and yes, it indeed is as bad as blaming the intern.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Socialist_Feder...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titoism
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism
I stayed over there for about one year just before the fighting would start. Yugoslavia was a beautiful country indeed.
Yugoslavia was an ethnically mixed state, with the exception of Slovenia. Serbia tried to keep its terriorially disparate Orthodox communities in one state, but was too weak to do so in the end. There was also a growing unwillingness of the rich northern countries to pay for the less developed southern countries (just like today in the EU).
After the economic failure of communism, there was also a crisis of idealism and people were trying to find meaning in their past religious traditions. Politicians inflamed the divisions to secure their power. Islamism had hardly anything to do with it.
first of all the region was Illyrian, then it was conquered by the Roman empire, and it was the border between the West and East Roman (Byzantine Empire), which was Christian. Then the pagan slavs migrated/invaded it in the 650-700, and the Byzantine Empire fought them back (there are still villages in Greece that have Slavic toponyms).
The byzantine empire started declining, and the slavs created the first Bulgarian empire (the Bullgars were Turkic nomadic tribes who mixed with the local Slavs, but they were not Islamisiced then and eventually converted to Christian Orthodox). The different slavic tribes started fighting with each other and created the many petty kindoms which formed the today's south slav ethnicities. And eventually the Ottomans conquered the whole place in 1400s until the 1900s, including the Albanians and eventually the Romanians in north East, and parts of Hungary in the north.
So.... there is 500 years of conflict against the ottomans, but really there is another 1000 years of medieval conflicts that you are completely ignoring.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonians_(ethnic_group)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Macedonians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_(ancient_kingdom)#/m...
That region is still called Macedon and the modern inhabitants of that region are themselves called Macedonians. As opposed to the slavic macedonians, they do have strong historical, linguistic and ethnic connections to the term. Do you see the problem here?
The serbians have been the ones trying to kill almost every other ethnicity around them. They are the bad guys of the region, yet they tend to claim victimhood the most (from NATO, to Croatians in WW2, to XXX ethnicity...).
Hence Greece was blocking NMKD to join Nato, because of the name and cultural appropriation, Bulgaria is currently blocking the ascenction to EU for similar reasons, and the Albanians there really want to join Albania if they had the chance.
It is kinda of a made up country... but so is Belgium and some others. Lets see how it goes in the long run, but if one day it disolved, where the west part goes to Albania and the Central and East part goes to Bulgaria, it makes perfect sense.
The fun fact, is that there are two villages in Albania that have a large slavic composition, and the borders were drawn in 1912 before the making of the macedonian state.
They all say they speak 'bullgarski' and consider themselves bulgars, and not Macedonian.
I’m Macedonian and I don’t consider myself Bulgarian. I find it funny that others think that is ok to tell other people what they are. Makes no sense.
As the other commenter said, most of these movements have nothing to do with Eastern and Central European history, so they aren’t received well. E.g. Poland and Hungary had no colonies so anti-colonialism ideology doesn’t make much sense to be there...yet it is being pushed.
While it is true that these opposing countries no doubt each have their own problems with (local/national) corruption and oligarchies, the ideologies that are currently being forced on them are very much the product of corruption and oligarchies on a much larger scale (just better hidden). In fact, none of these ideologies are what they claim to be.
This is all about powers who have essentially hijacked the EU project for their own greedy gains. This ideological criticism in reality just attempts to crush the (relatively amateurishly organized) local competition to their own hegemony. That isn't propaganda. It's an organization who cleverly knows how to abuse the general ignorance of most citizens regarding these countries and abusing it to frame reality into a conveniently useful picture/justification for their attempt to take (even more) control.
As much as there is all kind of things wrong with these opposing countries, of which there indeed is plenty, there is equally nothing good or lofty about what the EU is doing at the moment. As ironic as it might be, the local corruption and oligarchies in these countries may in fact only be child's play compared what has infested the EU.
The main difference probably being the success with which criminal elements within the EU have managed to hide their activities from the general population. Probably not in the least by "outsourcing" a lot of its business to either outside EU, or to local shady endeavors in these countries now criticized, where it's a lot easier to hide how profits are being made.
Of course, countries like Czechia, Hungary, Poland and a few more certainly should do more about their internal corruption. But what most people forget is that the current status quo to a large degree was build up and supported by powerful figures within the EU. Most of that because these corruptions at the fringes of the EU territory just so happened to be very convenient and profitable for the people who "accidentally" let all of this happen on their watch. Mind you, figures like Victor Orban became as powerful as they are now by gaming EU rules, with the full knowledge of those who made and governed those rules!
care to elaborate? Is it about german/france hegonomy? About keeping the eastern countries for cheap labour from western coorporations?
There is lot's to dislike about the EU - would like to hear more details.
It's more about huge capital/business interests that have found their way into political parties in both the EU and most of its member states. While democracy is a great thing if it indeed represents the will of a people, even if divided by philosophical and practical disagreements, when political parties (covertly) become lobbying agencies for large business interests it becomes a very different story.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Yugoslavia, plenty of business were immediately involved with the "privatizations" of (formerly) nationalized resources and services. A lot of that was done with the assistance of local collaborators, many of which later became what we now call those local oligarchs and way too powerful politicians. What is currently happening has a lot to do with reigning back in these locals, after becoming a bit too powerful (and greedy), and taking even more than was already originally taken (if not stolen).
A big problem in all this is that shady business deals often stay below the radar of ordinary citizens, even though these same business deals might be of a huge influence of what happens in the (international) political arena.
Just as an example, think about how Royal Dutch Shell managed to score exclusive rights to natural resources in the Ukraine, for I believe as much as a decade. This happened either right before or shortly after the change of power in the country, but certainly before Crimea and the east of the country decided that they did not agree their new masters in Kiev. Now, go and guess where most of those natural resources are located. Looks to me like Shell just lost a lot of potential profit there. But of course the military/policing campaign that followed was all about crushing local terrorism. The key point in all this: I don't remember even a single EU news outlet running any story about Shell and the serious investments it just made (and then saw evaporate) in the Ukraine. This is just an example. There are plenty of other stories where business deals made in the dark end up being "conveniently coincide" with political events involving former Soviet or Yugoslavian countries.
Just like the EU government and media suffering from a case of instant autism regarding the (filmed) police brutalities in Serbia last year, despite many NGO's writing letters to both EU governments and the media alike. Of course it is a coincidence that the EU was just about to conduct talks with the country's president about Kosovo, where foreign industrialist would love to finally get their hands on the trillions (as in literally trillions) worth of natural resources. Something the "independence" war of Kosovo didn't manage to fully achieve, much to the dismay of some very powerful people.
It is said that Kosovo "happened" not long after members of the Albanian mafia made considerable campaign contributions to US lawmakers linked to the Clinton administration. I've seen plenty of Serbs therefore claim that this mafia essentially bought itself their own fiefdom. In reality, they are more like the local useful idiots who get a relatively small reward for their cooperation. The real story is how foreign industrialist (tried to) get their hands on this very important piece of land. For historical reference: Hitler rushed to Kosovo to get exclusive control over it. Back then for the same reason as now: key natural resources. There's some very interesting stuff in the ground there (and not all of it publicly declared, but it can be deduced with some basic knowledge of geology)
These cultures are not comparable, these are not the burning issues in our society and yet they are pushed to the forefront of attention.
Meanwhile we have the most systemically corrupt governments (these guys don't even do the overt things like industry engagement and speeches after their term, our former PM is in jail for straight out taking bribes in a privatisation scandal, mayor of the capital was collecting bribes for standard city functions for 20 years, the only reason this got to public attention was he died before getting re-elected, and this is endemic in all levels of society)
Pushing on social agendas gives ammo to corrupt politicians to spin the story away from the important stuff and fight a strawman.
So, Montenegro is seen as a sleepy buffer state, created and kept by the great powers to keep Serbia (and Russia by proxy) away from the Adriatic and the Mediterranean Sea. It usually tries not to get involved into controversies. During the Yugoslav wars they wanted to stay out, but got ropped in by the Serbs.
If you're going to comment on a topic like this please do so thoughtfully, substantively, and with respect for those who disagree—assume that there are a lot of them here, and their reasons for holding their views are just as valid, and just as rooted in their background, as yours are.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
As someone with ties to the region, I am always slightly confused by these articles because they are mostly an echo of the past. There is not much new here. You can place it at any point in the last 20 years and it would for the most part be valid. There's a lot going on in the world and I understand people don't have the attention span for all the details of the globe, but they don't even need to have. As a German newspaper, Spiegel could take a look at Germany's role, or even the EU's in what happened there. There are interesting topics even today, e.g. what is Gerhard Schröder doing there now and what was his role 20 years ago? As it is now, it's mostly just a stereotypical report that riles people up and kind of ends up amplifying those stereotypes. The article could be about some islands in the Pacific, but that's not true if you are a German newspaper!
The article touches upon some interesting developments related to the EU, e.g. that it's unfortunately not really a solution as it's mostly resulted in people leaving, but it lacks focus in general, and it holds no critical views. Another interesting angle could've been the conflicts that have been brewing internally for decades now that there are clearly separated nation states, and the enemies are for the most part behind clearly defined borders.
And lastly it could take an optimistic view that surely exists if for no other reason than that I'm an optimist, and I'm not alone. Not all people had severed ties completely even during the darkest times, and it's been a long time since. It's time for new perspectives.