1. Conor Gleeson
Thesis
Identity Politics, Imagined Communities, and the March of History: An
Examination of the Balkan Region
The Balkan region is at the crossroads of multiple small ethnic groups, at least
three major religions, and has historically been a territory with immense strategic value
for both local powers and supranational empires. Unfortunately, the confluence of all
these factors has rendered the Balkan region highly unstable as multiple outside interests
attempt to use local identity politics in order to gain control of the region for defense or
trade purposes, even as the pressure and influence of these forces tears apart the very
communities they ostensibly try to protect and lead.
1. Slavs Fighting Slavs: Identity Politics in the Balkan Region
Key to the study of the Balkan region throughout its history and the multiple
levels of power politics is to look at the ethnically Slavic makeup of the region and
examine the ethnic and linguistic power dynamics at play. The Slavic peoples are the
largest ethno-linguistic group in Eurasia and comprise over 50% of its population. The
Slavic peoples can be largely divided into three separate groups: the Western, Eastern and
Southern Slavs. Western Slavs comprise modern-day Poland, Czechs and Slovak peoples,
while Eastern Slavs are usually the Russians, Ukrainians, and inhabitants of Belarus. The
Western and Eastern Slavs are sometimes known as the Northern Slavs, in contrast to the
more isolated Southern Slavs of the Balkan region. Due to continuously changing
national boundaries, the area henceforth referred to as the Balkan region consists of the
current Serbian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Albanian,
Bulgarian, Romanian, and Slovene nations in addition to slivers of modern-day Greece
that have since been absorbed as populations have migrated and demographics changed.

2. Conor Gleeson
Thesis
The Slavic peoples initially show up in historical records in the early sixth
century, moving into former Germanic lands in present-day Albania. The formerly
Germanic lands were empty because much of Europe was fleeing from the Huns, a
nomadic group of warriors that contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire and set the
stage for the development of Eastern Europe as a whole. The Slavic peoples moved into
the region vacated by the Germanic peoples and established their own semi-nomadic
social structures. By the time the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires had grown out of
the ruins of Rome the Slavic peoples were in the middle of “invasive expansion in great
numbers” (Moravisick and Jenkins, 1967) during the reign of Emperor Heraclitus of
Byzantium, somewhere between 610 and 641AD. Of particular note in this time was that
the Serbian people had already established an identity with a ruler known as an Archon
who had led them to Byzantine protection from the North, though any further details
concerning Slavic identity beyond their existence are not mentioned. When the Slavs
began to distinguish themselves as a distinct identity is unclear, as Mr. Kobylinski
believes such an identity might have begun development as early as 200 AD while others
hold it as late as 500 AD. As Byzantine historical sources are the ones that directly state
the presence of a Slavic people at the time of the sixth century, the latter interpretation is
more likely or at least confirmable.
The Christianization of the Slavic peoples and the beginning of a widely spread
Slav identity both occurred in the ninth century with the rise of the Bulgarian Empire,
which developed as a regional buttress against both Byzantine and Muslim invasion of
Southern Europe. In the process of establishing the Bulgarian Empire, the Slavic identity
reached the apogee of its cultural influence while paradoxically isolating the Southern

3. Conor Gleeson
Thesis
Slavs from their Northern fellows. As the Bulgarian Empire established itself in the
Eastern European region, the Serbians and Croatians attempted to fight them off, only to
be subjugated by the Bulgarians in 924 and again in 998AD. Once subsumed by the
Bulgarians, the Southern Slavs then faced competing cultural dominance between their
Bulgarian conquerors who introduced the Slavic identity against the Grecian-influenced
Byzantine Empire, causing the Balkan lords to subdivide into smaller national groups
once more according to whichever empire offered the best deals at any given time, a
pattern which reoccurs with depressing regularity throughout Balkan history.
The competing cultural influences and divisions of regional medieval powers
isolated Southern Slavs linguistically, as Southern Slavic languages and culture drew
from both Bulgarian and Byzantine influences from Western Europe. At the same time,
the return of Germanic peoples to Austria in the tenth century also isolated the Balkans
on an ethnic and geographic level as well as linguistic. This isolation created a sense of
alienation that persisted in the cultural mindset of the Balkans and was only reinforced by
the domination of the Muslim Ottoman Empire from the 15th century to the 17th. The
consistent intrusion of foreign elements into the Balkan region combined with the cultural
remnants of Slavic identity to create a sense that the community is under siege by outside
threats and made it easy for successive rulers as well as outside powers to gain influence
or power by appealing to a nationalist fear of the “other” and asserting that the
community identity is under threat. This is exemplified by the 11th through the 14th
centuries, where the Serbian Empire under the Vojislavljević dynasty went through seven
kings in ten years as it alternatively sought to ally with Bulgaria against Byzantium,
proclaim its independence, and then ally with Byzantium as Hungary and Bulgaria

4. Conor Gleeson
Thesis
pressured it in turn. Croatia experienced a similar state of unrest during this time, as its
territory consisted of both modern Croatia as well as Bosnia-Herzegovina, leaving it
vulnerable to Hungarian pressure from the north and Byzantine influence from the South.
Unlike its neighbor, Croatia joined with Hungary and was thus open to the cultural
exchange and ideas Hungary gained from Western Europe when the 15th -16th century’s
Renaissance and Enlightenment ideals began to flower. Still, the rapid changes of
leadership, local loyalty and uncertainty contributed to Balkan Slavic culture an
uncertainty in their political situation that allowed for the growth of easily manipulated
nationalism and ensured the prioritization of stability and constructed identity.
The Ottomans Arrive
As the Byzantine Empire collapsed, the many Orthodox Christian kingdoms in the
Balkans began competing with one another to maintain their territory or gain from a less
attentive rival. From the 10th through the 15th centuries there were a succession of
Bulgarian, Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian kingdoms, many of which held the same
territory, just at different times as the power of certain ethnic groups waxed and waned.
This historical phenomenon created the principle of “overlapping kingdoms” as
nationalist groups in the future would be able to use these contested territories to claim
their own legitimacy to the same territory. With a largely isolated population of farmers
and smaller ethnic groups combined with multiple groups of ambitious elites, the Balkan
region post Byzantine collapse was set to degenerate into continuous wars between the
ethnic states. However, the Ottoman Empire saw the power vacuum lefty behind by the
departure of the Byzantines and expanded into the area over the course of the 14th and

5. Conor Gleeson
Thesis
15th centuries. While many of the specific gains and territorial losses the Ottomans
achieved were increased or rolled back by temporary Slavic victories, on the whole
Ottoman rule lasted in the region for the following five hundred years, a considerable
span of time for any national power to maintain control of a separate region.
Most importantly while the later narratives created by nationalist movements and
dissatisfied elites was one of Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, in fact a majority of the
conquest was actually through political alliance and intermarriage of local leader’s
children with those of Turkish kings. For the Ottomans, the Balkans were very much a
frontier and the convoluted nature of the small Orthodox kingdoms necessitated a slow
process of alliances, voluntary conversions and elite intermarriage. The Ottomans were
initially viewed by both the elites and the local citizens as a largely stabilizing force,
bringing weapons, supplies, and logistical forethought to the region necessary for
security. A common dilemma the Balkan region faced in this period and would face in
the post-World War and Cold War environments was a decision between stability and
identity-based leadership. When identity-based politics threatened to tear the region apart
in ethnic strife and civil war, citizens looked towards a local strongman or authoritarian
government who could guarantee public safety and common societal laws at the expense
of personal freedoms and ethnic identification.
Part of what made the Ottoman rule of the Balkan region so successful was that
the Ottoman government did not destroy local political identification, displace large
masses of local citizens or impose Islam on the citizenry, but rather operated a relatively
hands-off approach at first. Local populations remained in place even though certain
potentially troublesome elite social classes in Serbia, Bulgaria, and Macedonia were

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Thesis
married into to generate legitimacy then decimated and destroyed despite previous
alliances. It is through these previously elite groups that a narrative of conquest and
Ottoman oppression began to take root as the Orthodox elite were understandably
disgruntled to see their power bases demolished and families destroyed. To the layman,
however, Ottoman rule was a significant improvement because as long as they paid their
taxes their new landlords who had the feudal system demolished and allowed them to join
the military protected them. Additionally, most of the Balkans were spared the cultural
and religious destruction usually associated with occupying armies, a significant relief for
the now exhausted Balkan citizens.
The massive change that Ottoman rule inspired in the Balkans was the mass
arrival of Islamic populations in the region, largely from Anatolia and intended to work
as military and administrative elites to replace the Orthodox nobles who had been
married into to gain legitimacy then either destroyed or converted voluntarily. Some of
these migrations and concentration of Muslim populations occurred in Bosnia, Albania,
Eastern Macedonia and Southern Bulgaria. There was also a small, but noticeable influx
of Jews from Spain, notable because of the Ottoman’s emphasis on tolerance for “People
of the Book”, namely Jews, Muslims, and Christians who would live together more or
less in harmony, save additional taxes on non-Muslims. Of particular note for the social,
religious and political development of the Balkans was the Ottoman implementation of
their millet and devsirme systems, which contributed to the ongoing ethno-religious
conflict in the region.
The term millet means community or nation in modern Turkish. At the time it also
meant confessional, or religious community. So, there was the Muslim millet, the

7. Conor Gleeson
Thesis
Orthodox Christian millet, the Jewish millet, et cetera, a millet for each religion.
Essentially, what this meant was that the religious leaders of their community ruled each
community, and each religious committee had a representative in Istanbul. For the
Muslim community, this was the rule of the land because Islamic law was the official law
rule of the Ottoman state, but other religions they were almost like states within a state,
but not autonomous territories though extraterritorial. So, within your own village or
within your own neighborhood if you were in a larger city, you went to the religious
officials of your religion to pay taxes, go to school and settle disputes through court
systems. When a dispute crossed over between a Muslim and non-Muslim, the Muslim
court took precedence, but on the whole Balkan existing communities and their belief
systems would deal with cases.
There has been controversy and disagreement in the historical community over
how much the millet system was truly a system, because even though all these
communities technically had representation in Istanbul transportation time and distance
rendered most if not all of the truly important issues down to the local millet officials to
deal with them. It wasn’t very centralized, but it also operated in line with Ottoman rule
itself which was largely focused on maintaining its own existence by minimizing inter-
ethnic or religious strife in Turkey itself and didn’t emphasize Turkish nationalism at all.
There was a lot of local autonomy and patchwork sovereignties among Ottoman
territories, which largely contributed to the Balkan tolerance for Ottoman rule, as it
provided stability and security to the people with minimal loss of perceived self-rule due
to the millet system. But while the millet system and Ottoman rule allowed a great deal of
religious and ethnic tolerance at the time, it proved to merely be deferring ethno-religious

8. Conor Gleeson
Thesis
strife to a later date.
One of the largest root causes for later ethno-religious strife the Ottoman empire
created the conditions for was the devsirme system, a form of state slavery which
increased religious tensions in the Baltic region and generated powerful and log-lasting
communal memories of inter-identity conflict. The devsirme system began under the
reign of the Sultan Murat the First as a counter to the power of Turkish nobles by
developing his own private organization of soldiers and officials. These soldiers and
officials were originally Christian children conscripted from families in Albanian,
Bulgarian, Serbian, and Greek communities at seven to ten years old. The practice also
involved the conversion of these formerly Christian children to Islam, a decision that
inspired great resentment and reluctance among the Baltic communities, to the extent that
some families would disfigure their children to prevent their conscription and conversion.
(Christos Yannaras, 2006) But while these largely Christian children were being forcibly
converted to Islam and taken away from their homes to distant corners of the Ottoman
Empire, they were also being given unparalleled opportunities for success and
advancement, in not only the military Janissary Corps but also the Enderun School,
which trained officials for the Turkish palace and other areas of the empire. Even the
highest administrative post in the Empire that of the Grand Vizier, was open to members
of the devsirme system if they worked hard enough and were successful at their posts. As
a result of this two-pronged approach of conversion and conscription that paradoxically
offered opportunities for advancement there were some members of Balkan communities
that offered up their children for the Janissary program which would teach reading,
writing, and other vocational skills which would elevate the Janissaries to status far

9. Conor Gleeson
Thesis
beyond military chattel and into their own social class which would occupy much of the
Ottoman ruling class. Adding to the prestige was the tendency for powerful or wealthy
officials who were the products of the devsirme system to donate large sums of money or
establish schools in their old hometowns of the Balkans, reinforcing both the invasive
presence of foreign religion and culture as well as the positive effects it could have on its
citizens, which continued to polarize public thought. The system became so successful
that under Suleiman the Magnificent in 1563 it was noted by contemporary Muslim
observers that children were even being entered into the devsirme system for tax benefits.
But devsrime became a victim of its own success and was closed by other Ottoman
nobles jealous of the influence and power the Janissaries and converted officials held.
Though the resentments it inspired among Balkan religious communities remained,
creating a narrative that the Muslim communities in the region stole children and cultural
heritage from Orthodox Christian groups regardless of the successes the converted
children were able to attain elsewhere in the Empire. Finally, the devsirme system
highlighted a continuing cultural trend in the Balkan region which continues to this day:
the idea that prosperity and better lives for local children were best acquired outside of
their native lands, driving many citizens to seek employment and learning either in
Western Europe or further to the East in Orthodox Russia, further cementing a three-way
cultural split between Western European, Eastern Orthodox, and Islamic communities in
the region.
The patchwork cultures and closely-knit communities of the Balkan region that
were nonetheless split by ethnic or religious difference survived intact under the millet
system while elsewhere in Europe the powerful forces of the Reformation and the rise of

10. Conor Gleeson
Thesis
nationalism were ripping formerly heterogeneous populations apart and gluing them back
together into homogenous identically secure communities united around a common
identity of religious belief or faith in a nation-state.
Nationalism and the Baltic Region
Ever since its emergence as a widespread political phenomenon in the 15th
century, nationalism has been a potent and driving force in international politics and has
shaped the decisions and fates of millions of people around the globe. However, there
are significant differences between the civically minded, initial burst of nationalism that
propelled Western European and colonial nations into ascendancy, and the ethnically
minded modern version of nationalism that holds sway among nation-states of the
Balkans.
Benedict Anderson’s succinct description of the initial surge of nationalism is “an
imagined political community-and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”
(Anderson, 1991). The basic framework of the nation-state is the idea that “like shall be
ruled by like”, where a common language and beliefs are unified within the structure of
the state. This has proven to be difficult in the Balkans as the historical influence of
multiple empires and Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Islamic faiths provide
fertile ground for incessant subdivision and identity politics. Furthermore, nation-states
are imagined in the sense that they are constructed identities, built up around historical
myths and common lifestyles. The most important aspect of early nationalism, founded
within the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, was its aspect of non-interference. The
sovereignty of nations, the idea that “states should refrain from interfering in each other’s

11. Conor Gleeson
Thesis
affairs” (Smallman & Brown, 2011), has proven to be a critical building block in the
development of the international system but is noticeably absent in the history of the
Balkans, generating a sense of instability that larger nations and local politicians both fed
into and capitalized on as needed.
Nationalism was aided by the invention of the printing press and subsequent
increase in administrative efficiency, which allowed for Slavic groups formerly separated
by language and distance to forge a common identity as based on a commonly spoken
language and state-based record-keeping. Southern Slavic nations were still
geographically isolated from their Northern brethren by Germanic states, so the ideas of
common identity subdivided into even smaller ethno-religious groups and kingdoms
which allowed competing local princes to claim legitimacy over one another based on the
favoritism of regional powers.
The resurgence of nationalism at the turn of the century, during the First and
Second World Wars was in many respects similar to the first wave among Western
European countries, with disparate groups forming a cohesive identity as a nation, though
their attempts to build an official identity challenged established narratives of divine or
religious rule and often involved armed revolt and ethnic strife. In the 19th century, under
the influence of the Romantic Movement as well as French and German philosophy,
Balkan scholars began exploring their nations' identities through the collection of folk
stories, languages or histories, forging a communal narrative for their groups to rally
around. The well-educated colonial administrations left over in the Balkan area from the
Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian systems were able to mobilize their fellow citizens
through creation of new imagined communities as they became enveloped in the surge of

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Thesis
nationalism. This second wave of nationalism occurred much more quickly than the
previous European version because their former subjects were able to build on the state
structure the Austro-Hungarians, Ottomans, and Russians had implemented to control
their conquered territories, though the overall principles of the developing nations
remained the same: mutual adherence to noninterference and recognition of the nation’s
right to exist.
Many of the modern Balkan states had formed by the time of the First World
War: Serbia, Greece, Montenegro, Albania, Romania, and Bulgaria, with a more-or less
unified Yugoslavia formed out of the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian
Empires. During the interwar period, these new countries, as well as their neighbors in
the rest of Eastern Europe proved unable to meet many of their basic challenges in food
production, to ensure good relations with minorities, and to create workable political
systems, mostly focused on land allocation disputes or grievances brought about by
partitions drawn during the Treaty of Versailles. The Second World War made prospects
for Yugoslavia even worse as in addition to fighting against the Italian and German
invaders of the country and their local satellite governments, the Yugoslav citizens also
carried out a civil war between guerrilla nationalist and ethnic groups. Hundreds of
thousands of people were killed, leaving a legacy of mistrust and a thirst for revenge
exacerbated by the Nazi’s infamous puppet governments under the Croatian Ustate and
the Serbian Chetnik groups, which the former performed genocide against Serbian,
Jewish, and Roma, groups and the latter Croat and Muslim communities. This caused
over 1,014,000 deaths at least, most notoriously in the Bajic concentration camp run by
both the SS and the Serbian State Guard, former Serbian policemen who firmly

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Thesis
established a reputation for genocide in the Yugoslav communities and whose reputation
caused ethnic grievances as the nation broke apart.
The modern ethnic and national mobilization occurring across the developing
world, however, are proving to be a much more scattered and chaotic form of change
than the relatively ordered and peaceful waves of nationalism that preceded it. After the
fall of the Soviet Union, dozens of nations and ethnic groups found they were free to
pursue whatever courses they wished, with formerly repressed ethnic and regional
tensions springing to the surface. “Political identities often take ethnic form, producing
competing communal claims for power…the product of a violent process of ethnic
separation” (Muller, 2008) Yugoslavia is the most salient Balkan example, with Serbian
constructed identity clashing with the ethnically mingled Bosnia-Hzergovina and Croatia,
with devastating results. The notable factor in the new wave of ethnic mobilization is that
all the ethnic groups whose salient identities are in dispute continue to seek statehood and
recognition from both the United Nations and the European Union is still a valuable
prize. The concept of nation-states remains the vital international social unit, though
ethnic mobilization among the Basques, Tartars, and Czechs continue to challenge
existing state structures in the region. The rise in ethnic nationalism is driven by the twin
gearshifts of globalization and the resulting clash of identity fault lines. Samuel
Huntington, in his paper The Clash of Civilizations outlines this friction, “People can and
do redefine their identities and as a result, the boundaries of civilizations change”
(Huntington, 1993). The interaction of the six civilizations: Western, Confucian, Islamic,
Latin American, Hindu, and Slavic-Orthodox have been exponentially increased by
globalization. As populations along the boundaries of the civilizations interact and

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Thesis
exchange ideas, the global interaction makes their own identities more obvious and
oftentimes preferable to that of other civilizations. Thus, some groups that feel threatened
or uncertain how to deal with the globalized world turn inwards, strengthening their own
ethnic and cultural ties as a defense against the “other”. The historical subdivision of the
Balkan area between the Western, Islamic, and Eastern Orthodox civilizations allow for
the confluence of both ethnic and religious identity and is a testament to an upswing in
ethnic and national mobilization.
While the initial stages of nationalism were the creation of imagined communities
to organize and build a prosperous society, the resurgence of ethnic nationalism is a result
of the friction between the large civilizations that dominate the geopolitical landscape. In
Eastern Europe, small ethnic communities seek to mobilize and create their own place in
the world in response to the visible forces of globalization, which reveal to them the vast
sociopolitical boundaries of civilizations, grown from the seeds of early nationalism.
Tito’s World: Authoritarian Leaders as Managers
With only the force of will and authoritarian governance of Joseph Broz Tito
holding together an artificial country with seven national groups, three religions, and a
teetering economy, his death caused the gradual disintegration of his country. As power
and interest shifted away from the continuation of Yugoslavia as a state, nationalist
politicians rose up. In 1992, the Serbian and Croatian leaders met to divide up Bosnia,
which eventually resulted in the genocide and displacement of thousands of Muslims and
Bosnian citizens. The history of the Balkan region enabled Tito’s government and his

15. Conor Gleeson
Thesis
successors to build authoritarian states that focused most of their power on individual
leaders as managers of the ethnic, political, and economic systems.
When Yugoslavian security services made violent revolutionary action a dead
end, the choice to not enter a political game dominated by the establishment and force
movement on separate terms was less a sign of a radical movement and merely one that
wished to continue its activism, even if it lost a potentially powerful platform with which
to spread its message. Nationalist groups emerged as Yugoslavia fell and increasingly
began to operate on informal and formal rules, with increasingly legitimized groups
joining the political system even as their slogans and narratives were purged of material
that might seriously threaten the post war regime’s power. In the early years of Tito’s
reign hundreds of explicitly pro-Serbian or Muslim organizations were banned along with
the wider idea of religious or ethnically based political parties. The authoritarian
governments of the Baltic region have since realized that protests, while they do
challenge the infallibility of the regime, also act as a pressure valve to release frustrations
about poor economic conditions, lack of social movement, and other emotions that
threaten the stability of the regime. As a result, the political and social system created by
these circumstances is one that allows dissent, but defanged, and only on the regime’s
terms. Dissenters who have not allied themselves with “opposition” groups or parties are
then forced to walk a social and legal tightrope or regulations and police harassment
where the government can cut any wire and throw protestors into jail when the previous
day they were allowed to protest freely in public spaces. In short, political and social
mobilization opportunities are managed by Eastern European regimes in order to preserve

16. Conor Gleeson
Thesis
their own grip on power, creating a stagnant political situation, dissatisfied citizens who
have no real influence on power, and resulting economic woes.
Perhaps more important than their management of the political system is the
authoritarian management of national economies. While many Eastern European nations
attempted to initially continue a modified form of socialism, the exponential revenues
offered by goods deals with Western powers proved all too tempting, prompting the
creation of private economies and collapsing previously state-funded enterprises during
the post-Communism shocks of 1980’s and 90’s. In the 1970’s Yugoslavia used
economic ideas of import substitution and large-scale nationalization of the economy in
order to provide economic growth, but like many resource-rich states, the prosperity was
short-lived. Rising national deficits coupled with foreign debt weakened the Yugoslav
economy and caused local groups to withdraw from cross-regional or ethnic
collaborations in favor of safeguarding their own interests. Under a smokescreen of
liberalization the economy of Eastern European states became “a strong client network of
politicians allowed to enrich themselves by often illicit manipulations of the economic
openings his policies afforded” (Owen, p66). Russia followed a similar pattern of
economic corruption and nepotism under the guise of necessary liberalization. State
businessmen became new political assets in many Eastern European countries, being used
to gain legitimacy for economic reforms on the international stage while secretly
providing loans and money-laundering services to the government which had so
graciously offered these men the opportunity for control of national monopolies.
However, Yugoslavia’s President Ivan Stambolic was able to provide some measure of
legitimate economic reform in the 1980’s with slightly more transparency, reformation of

17. Conor Gleeson
Thesis
public enterprise, and privatization measures even as the privileged elite held onto their
interests as tightly as possible. Tito’s increased flexibility compared with other
communist leaders and their leader’s delicate political and economic balancing game are
what allowed the nation to escape the very worst of the 1989 reactions, as citizens could
legitimately look upon their leader’s efforts and see there had been positive developments
under his rule, even if later economic analysis showed that troubles had merely been
deferred, the perception of Tito’s rule as a “Golden Age” persists in the public mind.
(Predag, Rajsic, 2014)
To describe Eastern European leaders economic decisions for the past fifty years
is also to describe the inherent problems with resource traps, a prevalent situation in a
region that invested too much in heavy industry and minerals for export to the Soviet
Union. Resource traps are the combination of economic, social, and political effects that
result when a leader builds their entire economic sector on the creation and exportation of
a single natural resource. Rather than have their citizens pay harsh taxes which might
incite rebellion, Eastern European leaders financed the redevelopment and reconstruction
of their nations through heavy industry such as oil, coal mining, steel production and
shipbuilding, allowing the excess national budget to be used to line elite pockets, create
national stipends, or to create enormous welfare states. Such welfare states gave citizens
basic needs of living and medical care, at the cost of long-term economic stability,
political freedoms, and productivity, though Tito’s Yugoslavia notably pushed the
boundaries of the communist system to the point that the region isolated itself from
Soviet Union policy and economic assistance. Under national stipends and welfare state
funds, Eastern European nations stifled their own growth as non-coal or industrial

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Thesis
companies couldn’t gain enough foreign or domestic investors to become profitable,
while thousands of citizens simply worked in assigned government jobs, especially in
centralized bureaucracy and socialist states like Albania, Romania, and Bulgaria. Once
the Soviet Union and its economic support fell though, everything unraveled, creating
political tension and requiring Eastern European leaders to step in and manage both the
economy and political needs simultaneously. In short, as a result of Eastern European
leader’s economic management, the region as a whole is poorer and less interconnected
than it could be, as money that could have been used for independent development or
trade ends up being recycled by corrupt businessmen into government accounts and
private fortunes.
A Closer View: Yugoslav Identity Dissolution and Civil War
Tone Bringa and Carol Leff both attempt to analyze the Yugoslav conflict in the
modern day; though the former chooses to do so through the lens of a camera and the
latter through historical analysis, their examinations bring the Balkan ethnic identity
conflict into sharp focus. Carol Leff tells a largely political story with a longer view in
Democraticization and Disintegration in Multinational States, that sacrifices a sense of
immediacy and the human perspective in favor of overarching historical themes and
explanations for the conflict. Tone Bringa’s documentary, We Are All Neighbors, is more
biased, as it is rooted in the daily lives of the citizens of Yugoslavia, but it gives the
observer an accurate depiction of how communities are shaken apart as war and conflict
creep ever closer. Even though the two women take very different approaches, they

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Thesis
complement each other’s views, as they respectively present both the historical overview
and the small personal crises that make up a civil war.
Leff’s theory of state disintegration is largely politically based, as it emphasizes
the creation of ethno-federalism and asymmetric democratization as the inevitable march
of history. Ethno-federalism, Leff writes, was the result of people’s lack of faith in their
appointed governments, which causes division along ethnic boundaries. Asymmetric
democratization was the final straw that tipped Yugoslavia into civil war, as the different
ethnic groups with their disparate levels of societal progress, had opposing goals
regarding the future of the region. As a result, Yugoslavia collapsed and the ethnic groups
began to fight. These theories on ethno-federalism and asymmetric democratization can
be applied to the Balkan region over its entire history and are useful when examining
how great powers such as Russia and the Ottoman Empire were able to manipulate local
events to their liking even as they left the region a disorganized and self-perpetuating
mass of ethnic grievances and retaliatory wars caused by previous divisions or land grabs.
In her analysis, Leff focuses on the root causes of the civil wars, as well as the long-term
implications of her research, while Tome prefers to focus on the effects of the civil war:
the destroyed homes and relationships among people of different ethnic groups. Thus,
both analysts complement analytical views on the conflict by presenting the missing
puzzle pieces of the argument. Bringa’s documentary brings human focus to the vague
and abstract ideas Leff deals with in her paper, while Leff’s, in turn, places Bringa’s
documentary on the collapse of communities into its wider context.
Said documentary is based on examining the identity of a community and how
local conflict can twist, warp, and shatter a community’s collective identity and cause

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Thesis
distrust and a loss of unity among inhabitants. The Croatian/Christian locals slowly turn
indifferent to their Muslim neighbors out of fear, which prompts the Muslims to act
similarly. As the stresses surrounding the war heightened, both the Croats and the
Muslims sought comfort in prayer, though the Croats increasingly link their religion with
their ethnic identity, separating them even further from their Muslim neighbors. Neither
group is willing to trust the other first, for fear of betrayal or retribution. Thus, the semi-
ironic title, “We Are All Neighbors” reflects the previous optimism of the residents, as
well as the post-tragedy knowledge that even in the smoking ruins of their old lives, they
will still have to live with the consequences. This documentary supplements Leff’s
historical paper by focusing on national identity and ethno-nationalism from the
perspective of the individual, rather than the historian. Such a perspective is ultimately
necessary when considering a “solution” to the ethnic tensions and identity politics in the
region, as a historically-based, long-term view of the region may decrease the weight of
the millions of lives lost and blood spilled over communities who wished to remain
secure in their identities, but at the cost of another’s.
Conclusion
In summation, the Balkan region and the area of Yugoslavia in particular has been
one of continuous ethnic strife and identity politics because of its historical isolation
under the Ottoman Empire from the Reformation Wars of Europe which allowed Western
European groups to consolidate identities in preparation for widespread nationalist
movements. In addition to the area’s continuing adolescence as various ethnic groups
have tried to form their own nations to gain security, the surrounding Great Powers have
used the local tensions to guard their own borders or to aggravate another’s, ensuring

21. Conor Gleeson
Thesis
continued upheaval and strife as the region’s authoritarian-leaning governments attempt
to manage continuing domestic tension and global upheaval.
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22. Conor Gleeson
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