Serbian National Identity

Shqipëria është vendi i parë rus dhe sërb i anëtarësuar në NATO. Flamuri i saj i ashtuquajtur kombëtar në realitet është bizantin ose greko-sllav, dhe shqiponja e zezë dykrenare me emrin sllav Kosovo që në shqip do të thotë Zogu i zi, Mëllënja (Molllazeza në dialektin Gegë) ose Fusha e Mëllënjave, është trashëguar nga serbët pasi edhe Skënderbeu ishte sllav nga dinastia Brankoviq e sërbëve. Shqipëria gjatë sundimit komunist zyrtarisht e quante veten shtet dhe popull ateist, por në realitet faktet tregojnë se ishte shteti dhe populli më fanatik dhe më brutal i fundamentalizmit religjioz në botë. Cilit religjion? Çka tregon gjendja nga realiteti.

In 1907 David Pijade, a poet, writer and translator of Sephardic Jewish origin from Belgrade, published an article entitled “Serbian Renaissance” in Pregled, a new cultural magazine launched by him and a Serbian poet, Velimir Rajić. The article called its Serbian readers to turn to their folk heritage – folk-songs, art and architecture – as sources for a new, national Serbian art. The same issue of Pregled, as well subsequent numbers, included a selection of Pijade’s translations from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  A similar parallel between Nietzsche’s thought and the renaissance of Jewish culture is found in the young Martin Buber’s writings, which, as the article suggests, influenced Pijade during his sojourn in Vienna between 1900 and 1902. However, in the wake of the Serbian struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire, Pijade, like other young Serbian Jews, felt the need to express his loyalty and identification with the Serbian national cause, rather than, like Buber, with the Jewish one. Moreover, he influenced his younger brother Moša Pijade, an artist, to work towards a modern art influenced by mediaeval Serbian artistic heritage. This experiment was to end by the mid-1920’s when the brothers turned towards different causes: David to the Sephardic Jewish heritage, while Moša embraced a universalist communist ideology. Notwithstanding, their early efforts serve as an example of Jewish involvement in the national Slavic movements.

The continuous rise of the Serbian state in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is often described as a typical example of the Piedmont-style of national unification. The conventional historiography emphasises the role popular nationalism has played in this process, making little if any distinctions between the forms of Serbian nationalisms within and outside of the Serbian state. This article challenges such interpretations and argues that the formation and expansion of Serbia had less to do with society-wide national aspirations and much more with the internal elite politics within the Serbian state. Moreover, the paper makes a case that, rather than being a driving force of national unification, the expansionist nationalism was a by-product of the state development. This argument is articulated further through the comparison of the different nationalist trajectories in Serbia and among the ethnic Serbian populations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Serbia between the Cyrillic Alphabet and the Latin Alphabet

The paper deals with the discussions about the role of Cyrillic and the Latin alphabet in the Serbian society after the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991. Cyrillic is a traditional Serbian alphabet and the Latin alphabet was introduced only after the establishment of Yugoslavia in 1918. Recently, the majority of population prefers the Latin alphabet instead of Cyrillic. The aim of author is to identify the main actors of disputes regarding the alphabet in Serbia. This issue is going to be politicized, as the centre-right and right-wing political parties declared their aim to strengthen the position of Cyrillic by the legislative measures. On the other hand, such policy is part of nationalizing processes in Serbia, accompanied with the rejection of heritage of the former Yugoslavia.

The security environment of the European continent has been steadily shifting over the past two decades resulting in the emergence of a new concept of collective security based on democratic principles, regional co-operation and partnership. With the collapse of Yugoslavia and the resulting conflicts of the 1990s, the question of where Serbia lies within this re-conceptualization of security has become increasingly evident as talks of enlargement of the European Union become more frequent and the democratic transition of the region becomes more pronounced. The 2009 National Security Strategy of the Republic of Serbia is the first and only strategic document of its kind for Serbia, representing a starting point for strategic development and continuous improvement of security policy with regards to the establishment of national interests and the identification of threats that challenge its survival.

This chapter focuses on the Serbian television series Kursadžije ('Course Attendees'), which is remarkably popular in Serbia, and also in the former Yugoslav states and amongst Serbian Diaspora. Kursadžije is a comedy television series broadcast on the private Serbian television station 'Pink,' often criticised in scholarly literature and in the media for its tacky and superficial content. The main characters are Bosnian, Montenegrin, Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian, and Kosovo Albanian men and a Macedonian woman, taking part in a police course for the Special Balkan Forces. The plot of the series is superficial and revolves around ethnic and national jokes used among the course participants. The character with an ambivalent role in the series is a Roma woman, a cleaning lady in their school, who imposes herself as an equal group member. The chapter explores the notion of Serbian identity presented in the series through consideration of the relationship between the Serb and Kosovo Albanian and between the Serb and Roma woman. I will question what constitutes 'essential qualities' of Serbs according to the series-after the Albanian proclamation of Kosovo independence-by analysing their mutual relationship. As the Roma woman is stigmatised as a Serbian 'Other,' by juxtaposing her with the Serbian course attendee I will delineate Serbian self-display in comparison to Roma as the lowest class in Serbian society. In this respect, I argue that the series serves as a ventriloquist for Serbian wishes-that is, the Serbs as a distinguished group among other Balkan nations and groups.

"Černá Hora trochu jinak", In: Mezinárodní politika, vol. XXV, nr. 10/2001, pp. 33-35. Polemics with the article "Černá Hora a Srbsko", In: Mezinárodní politika, vol. XXV, nr. 7/2001, pp. 8-11, written by Jiří Dienstbier (1937-2011), Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the Situation of Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.