Norman M. Naimark - Yugoslavia and Its Historians: Understanding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s

E. H. Carr, What is History ? (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).

Robert Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (New York: Vintage, 1994).

Among the sources that discuss the influence of Balkan Ghosts on President Clinton, see David Halberstam, War in the Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals (New York: Scribner, 2001), 228.

For histories written by policymakers, see Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Modern Library, 1999); Warren Zimmermann, Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and its Destroyers (New York: Times Books, 1996); and David Owen, Balkan Odyssey (Harcourt, Brace, & Co., 1995).

See, among others, Tim Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); Marcus Tanner, Croatia: A Nation Forged In War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); and Laura Silber and Alan Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (New York: TV Books, 1995).

For interesting insights into the role of the media in the making of policy in the wars in the Balkans, see Samantha Power, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 40673.

Roy Gutman, A Witness to Genocide (New York: Macmillan, 1993).

See David Rohde, Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europes Worst Massacre since World War II (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1997).

See, especially, Chuck Sudetics moving Blood and Vengeance: One Familys Story of the War in Bosnia (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998).

See Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (New York: New York University Press, 1994) and his Kosovo: A Short History (New York: New York University Press, 1998).

For a review of the initial historical literature that appeared in the wake of the conflicts, see Gale Stokes, John Lampe, and Dennison Rusinow with Julie Mostov, Instant History: Understanding the Wars of Yugoslav Succession, Slavic Review , 55, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 13660. See also John Lampe, Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

For discussions of this trend, see Eric H. Monkkonen, ed., Engaging the Past: The Uses of History across the Social Sciences (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994), and Terrence J. McDonald, ed., The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). Of course, not everyone was inclined to take this turn. Philippe C. Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, for instance, advocated treating transition from communism as part of a much larger phenomenon of regime change, decrying the usual protestations by area specialists that political culture, historical legacy, or national character renders their case or cases incomparable. (The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt to Go? Slavic Review 53 [1994], 17385; quotation on p. 181, n. 15. See also their subsequent exchanges with Valerie Bunce: Slavic Review 54 [1995], 11127, 96587).

A remarkable manifestation of these debates was the Clinton administrations shift from Robert Kaplan to Noel Malcolm as its preferred Balkan expert. See Lenard J. Cohen, chapter 9, Unraveling the Balkan Conundrum: The History-Policy Nexus, in Serpent in the Bosom: The Rise and Fall of Slobodan Miloevi (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2001), 377405.

Mark Wheeler, Preludes to a Crisis, Times Literary Supplement , June 16, 1989, 65. See also Horace G. Lunt, Notes on Nationalist Attitudes in Slavic Studies, Canadian Slavonic Papers 34 (1992), 44570. For a frank and thoughtful discussion of the polarization in Yugoslav studies, see Joel M. Halpern and David A. Kideckel, Introduction: The End of Yugoslavia Observed, in Halpern and Kideckel, eds., Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture, and History (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 318.

A striking example of the which-side-are-you-on approach is a review essay by noted political scientist and Yugoslav specialist Sabrina P. Ramet. She states that the basic divide in Yugoslav studies was once between those who were sympathetic to Tito and optimistic about Yugoslavias survival, and those who were not. Today, on

one side are those who have taken a moral universalist perspective, holding that there are universal norms in international politics.... On the other side are authors who... embrace one or another version of moral relativism.... Authors in this second school tend to be more sympathetic to Miloevi, Karadi, and their collaborators and to express Germano-phobic (and, in [Susan] Woodwards case, also Slovenophobic) views.

Ramet, Revisiting the Horrors of Bosnia: New Books about the War, East European Politics and Societies 14 (2000), 475.

A number of newer works published through 1995, on both historical and current events, are discussed in Gale Stokes, John Lampe, and Dennison Rusinow with Julie Mostov, Instant History: Understanding the Wars of Yugoslav Succession, Slavic Review 55 (1996), 13660. See also James Gow, After the Flood: Literature on the Context, Causes and Course of the Yugoslav WarReflections and Refractions, Slavonic and East European Review 75 (1997), 44684. For a more comprehensive list, see Rusko Mat-uli, Bibliography of Sources on the Region of Former Yugoslavia (Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 1998). Cathie Carmichael has compiled bibliographies of Slovenia (1996) and Croatia (1999) for the World Bibliographical Series of Clio Press (Santa Barbara, Calif.). On Bosnia-Herzegovina, there is Quintin Hoare and Noel Malcolm, eds., Books on Bosnia: A Critical Bibliography of Works Relating to Bosnia-Herzegovina Published since 1990 in West European Languages (London: Bosnian Institute, 1999).

Sylvia Poggioli, Scouts without Compasses, Nieman Reports 47, no. 3 (Fall 1993).