Forced Ethnic Migrations

1
FORCED ETHNIC MIGRATIONS

ON THE BALKANS:
CONSEQUENCES AND
REBUILDING OF SOCIETIES
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
22-23 February, 2005
Sofia, Bulgaria
2
© Antonina Zhelyazkova, Atsuko Kawakita, Dobrinka Parusheva, Dragoljub Djordjevic,

Daisuke Nagashima, Elton Skendaj, Evgenia Ivanova, Hidajet Repovac, Ibrahim Yalamov,
Ilija Milcevski, Ilona Tomova, Marijana Filipovic, Marko Hajdinjak, Moyuro Matsumae,
Omer Turan, Ryoji Momose, Savcho Savchev, Skelzen Maliqi, Tetsuya Sahara, Toni
Petkovic, Tsvetana Georgieva, Vassil Penev, 2006
© Tanya Kmetova, Ekaterina Popova, translators, 2006
© International Centre for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations, 2006
© Meiji University, 2006
ISBN-10: 954-8872-61-7
ISBN-13: 978-954-8872-61-4
3

ON THE BALKANS:
CONSEQUENCES AND
REBUILDING OF SOCIETIES
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
22-23 February, 2005

Sofia, Bulgaria
INTERNATIONAL CENTRE MEIJI UNIVERSITY

FOR MINORITY STUDIES TOKYO
AND INTERCULTURAL
RELATIONS (IMIR), SOFIA
4
Edited by Ekaterina Popova, Marko Hajdinjak

FORCED ETHNIC MIGRATIONS IN THE BALKANS:
CONSEQUENCES AND REBUILDING OF SOCIETIES
Conference Proceedings
Bulgarian, First edition
Format 70х100/16
Printer‘s sheets 16,5
International Centre for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations

Meiji University
5
CONTENTS:
Tetsuya Sahara – FOREWORD .................................................................................5

Antonina Zhelyazkova – ЕDITORIAL NOTE .........................................................8
FIRST SESSION: GENERAL OVERVIEW OF BALKAN MIGRATIONS ............... 11

Tsvetana Georgieva – MIGRATIONS IN THE HISTORY OF MULTI-
ETHNICITY AND MULTICULTURALISM IN THE BALKANS
(Bulgarian Sources)............................................................................................. 13
Tetsuya Sahara – FORCED ETHNIC MIGRATIONS AND MODERNITY
IN THE BALKANS ............................................................................................. 21
Atsuko Kawakita – ‘ЕXPULSION’ OF THE GERMAN POPULATION
FROM ЕASTERN ЕUROPE: TOWARD OVERCOMING NEGATIVE
HISTORICAL HERITAGE ................................................................................ 40
Dragoljub B. Djordjevic, Marijana Filipovic – THE ROMA AND
ETHNOCULTURAL JUSTICE: TOWARDS A MODEL OF
INTEGRATION ................................................................................................... 50
Omer Turan – TURKISH MIGRATIONS FROM BULGARIA ...................... 75
Discussion ................................................................................................................. 92
SECOND SESSION: THE BULGARIAN CASE: TURKS, POMAKS, AND ROMA.. 101
Ibrahim Yalamov – THE ‘RENAMING’: CONSEQUENCES AND HOW
TO OVERCOME THEM ................................................................................. 103
Evgenia Ivanova – THE ‘RENAMING PROCESS’ AMONG THE POMAKS:
THIRTY YEARS LATER ................................................................................ 115
Ilona Tomova – MIGRATION OF ROMA IN BULGARIA............................ 122
Moyuru Matsumae – TRACES OF THE ‘RENAMING PROCESS’ AMONG
POMAKS IN BULGARIA (AN ANALYSIS OF THEIR DISCOURSE) .... 136
Savcho Savchev – TEN ESSAYS FROM TODAY’S BULGARIAN
JOURNALISM .................................................................................................... 140
Discussion ............................................................................................................... 152
6
THIRD SESSION: FORMER YUGOSLAVIA: WAR, STATE-BUILDING AND

DEMOGRAPHIC FEARS ............................................................................................... 163
Marko Hajdinjak – GETTING AWAY WITH ADMINISTRATIVE
MURDER: ETHNIC CLEANSING IN SLOVENIA ................................... 165
Toni Petkovic – THE CASE OF CROATIA ........................................................ 176
Dobrinka Parusheva – WOMEN AND WAR IN THE BALKANS:
UNACCOMMODATED DIFFERENCE AND (SOME OF) ITS
SCAPEGOATS ................................................................................................... 183
Ryoji Momose – DEALING WITH SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN THE
YUGOSLAV WAR: LEARNING FROM THE LESSON OF THE
FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN SERBIA .......................................................... 196
Daisuke Nagashima – MUSLIM NATIONALISM IN BOSNIA-
HERZEGOVINA: THE ELITE-LED NATIONAL MOVEMENTS
AMONG BOSNIAN MUSLIMS .................................................................... 199
Hidajet Repovac – POST-DAYTON BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA ....... 205
Discussion ................................................................................................................ 209
IV SESSION: FORMER YUGOSLAVIA: WAR, STATE-BUILDING AND

DEMOGRAPHIC FEARS – CONTINUED ................................................................ 219
Elton Skendaj – ETHNIC VIOLENCE IN KOSOVA AFTER THE NATO-
YUGOSLAV PEACE AGREEMENT ............................................................ 221
Shkelzen Maliqi – THE ISSUE OF KOSOVA AND THE MINORITIES .... 226
Vassil Penev – THE POLITICAL SYSTEM OF THE REPUBLIC OF
MACEDONIA AND THE FUTURE OF MULTIETHNIC SOCIETY
(26 Theses)........................................................................................................... 231
Ilija Milcevski – MACEDONIA BEYOND OHRID: CONFIDENCE, GUNS
AND THE REFERENDUM ............................................................................ 236
Discussion ................................................................................................................ 242
7
FOREWORD
Tetsuya Sahara
Faculty of Political Sciences and Economics
Meiji University, Japan
Nationalist violence, which occurred after the fall of the communist regimes,
still has a strong impact on Balkan societies. Not only has violence hindered rapid eco-
nomic progress, but it has also seriously decreased the chances of reconstructing socie-
ties through indigenous initiatives. Peoples are obliged to accept ‘guiding hands’ from
without in determining their political and economic systems, social values and, even,
cultural orientations. The most striking examples are Bosnia and Kosovo. There, peo-
ple cannot even decide their own political destiny by themselves, but must obey the
advice of the ‘international community’ when making important political decisions.
According to some critics, these are examples of contemporary colonialism in the form
of paternalistic intervention in the so-called ‘states in bankruptcy.’ They also represent
a form of globalisation.
Although globalisation is a multiplex phenomenon, a desire to impose a single
standard across the world is in its nature. One of the most explicit forms of this stand-
ardisation is the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It
is true that the ICTY is a genuinely humanitarian institution committed to universal
justice. The ICTY, however, also has the nature of paternalistic intervention because it
seeks and follows a single standard of the international criminal code. The contradic-
tion is clearly revealed in the difficulties that the ICTY has recently been confronted
with. In the beginning, Serbs regarded it as an anti-Serb institution and did not fully
support it. Conversely, Croats, Bosniaks, and Albanians widely expressed their be-
lief in the credibility of this institution. At a later stage, and in order to maintain its
neutrality and credibility, the ICTY began to bring many non-Serb culprits to justice.
The more it indicts non-Serbs, the less support it enjoys among Croats, Bosniaks, and
Albanians.
We know that the basic motive for establishing the ICTY was worldwide anxi-
ety about the practices of the so-called ‘ethnic cleansing.’ The term ‘ethnic cleansing’
became popular during the Balkan ethnic wars in the 1990s. The practice of ethnic
cleansing, however, is not a recent invention. That is why there are intense debates
among the Balkan peoples about defining the term and criminal nature of the phe-
nomenon. As the ICTY cases clearly show, Bosniaks and Croats tend to understand
the term as exclusively applicable to the Serb atrocities, and try to defend the misdeeds
8 Tetsuya Sahara
of their colleagues as heroic deeds of national emancipation. On the other hand, Serbs
exaggerate the origin of the practices as an invention of the Ustasha regime during the
Second World War, and seek to justify their atrocities as inevitable acts of self-defence.
There is a common pattern of thinking in the two cases.
It we take into consideration the fact that the perpetrators usually equate the
practices of ethnic cleansing with the struggles for ‘national emancipation,’ it will not
sound strange to say that the phenomena have their roots in the perception of the na-
tion state. In other words, ethnic cleansing has been part and parcel of Balkan nation-
alism. Indeed, there are many precedents in modern Balkan history. The Serb upris-
ing in 1804–13, the Hellenic revolution in 1821–30, the Russo-Turkish war and the
Bulgarian liberation in 1877–78, the Balkan Wars in 1912–13: all of these great histori-
cal events were accompanied by mass expulsion of indigenous (mainly Muslim) pop-
ulation. The Macedonian struggle at the turn of the twentieth century or war atroci-
ties during the two world wars, all saw ‘fratricidal’ battles among the Balkan peoples.
Population transfer on a mass scale was repeated, usually after ethnic wars, but also
during ‘peacetime,’ as we can see in the Bulgarian ‘Renaming Process.’ The systemat-
ic destruction of historical monuments of other nationalities and elimination of their
traces has been a quite ordinary practice in this region since at least the beginning of
the nineteenth century.
The fact that Balkan history abounds with examples of ethnic atrocities also sug-
gests that there must have been many endeavours to reconstruct the societies destroyed
by ethnic violence. So, we can find some hints for solving contemporary problems in
the past experiences. And we believe they will be a good substitute for the universal
justice from without in reconstructing a multiethnic society and peaceful coexistence.
The main purpose of the studies contained in this volume is to share informa-
tion concerning society-building efforts after ethnic violence and to discuss meaning-
ful devices to prevent the repetition of nationalist destruction. With this purpose in
mind, scholars from the Balkans, together with Western European and Japanese spe-
cialists, assembled in Sofia and spent two days in discussions. In order to avoid any
emotional misunderstanding, we dared not use the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ as a key no-
tion. Instead, we tried to use a more conclusive and less provoking term: forced eth-
nic migration. Both terms have a common feature as they connect a particular terri-
tory with a particular ethnicity. Although not all the participants agreed to understand
forced ethnic migration as a synonym of ethnic cleansing, we are sure that there was a
consensus that made the workshop functional.
Thus, this volume is the product of many people’s interest and collaboration.
And this study has a wider significance than I have tried to point out here. This is a rare
collection of the endeavours of Balkan specialists. I do not think it is easy to meet and
to discuss deliberately such a delicate theme for the people living in the region, even for
specialists. I am grateful to those who participated in the 2005 workshop in Sofia for
their splendid contributions and self-restraint efforts to achieve a common goal. It was
a real academic collaboration.
Foreword 9
I am particularly grateful to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for
its generous financial support without which this enterprise would not have been pos-
sible. I am also grateful to the staff of the IMIR and the Institute for Human Science at
Meiji University for their self-sacrificing efforts. I hope this will be the first step in the
attempt to internationalise Balkan studies both from within and without.
September 2005
10
EDITORIAL NOTE
Antonina Zhelyazkova
International Centre for Minority Studies and
Intercultural Relations (IMIR), Bulgaria
The present volume is a result of an interesting cooperation – between two

groups of scholars specialised in Balkan studies. Japanese experts from the Tokyo-
based Meiji University met and discussed relevant issues with their colleagues from
various Bulgarian institutions, such as the International Centre for Minority Studies
and Intercultural Relations (IMIR), the St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, the
Institute for Balkan Studies, and New Bulgarian University.
Prof. Tetsuya Sahara from Meiji University made the initial proposal for a sci-
entific conference to Prof. Antonina Zhelyazkova, Director of IMIR. After numerous
telephone and e-mail discussions and a few brainstorming sessions attended by Prof.
Sahara in Sofia, Prof. Sahara and Prof. Zhelyazkova outlined, with the help of sugges-
tions and input from Prof. Ekaterina Nikova of the Institute for Balkan Studies, the
programme of a conference with the title ‘Forced Ethnic Migrations on the Balkans:
Consequences and Rebuilding of Societies.’
The conference was held in Sofia in February 2005 and was hosted by IMIR. The
event itself, as is the present publication, was completely financed by Meiji University
as part of their long-term project for research and internationalisation of Balkan
studies.
IMIR has fifteen years of experience in international scholarly cooperation and
in organising similar conferences and round tables devoted to topics such as minorities,
Islam, and Balkan and Mediterranean studies. For this reason, we were very impressed
by the different approach of our Japanese partners. As IMIR’s Director, and on behalf
of the Bulgarian and other Balkan participants (from Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Turkey), I want to express our deepest gratitude to
Meiji University and personally to Prof. Sahara. Our cooperation was absolutely free
from formalities and bureaucratic obstacles and was – so untypical for our previous ex-
perience – based on unquestionable trust in the given word. For a brief, but most pleas-
ant period of time, the IMIR experts and administrative staff entered a world where
words meant more than papers and where promises were more binding than signa-
tures. We sincerely hope that this new atmosphere we experienced (our Japanese col-
leagues, too, had the chance to experience Balkan ‘curiosities’) – an atmosphere of joint
rationalisation of forced ethnic migrations in the history of the Balkan Peninsula – was
Editorial note 11
only the beginning of long-term cooperation in researching and popularising various
topics related to the Balkan and Mediterranean regions.
The issue of forced transfers of populations belonging to different ethnic and re-
ligious communities is painful and very much alive, regardless of how far back in time
those transfers might have occurred. When our team of experts was conducting inter-
views in refugee camps during and after the Kosovo crisis, we were well aware of the
fact that some of us, too, are descended from people who had been refugees in the pre-
vious century, and that we were preserving a mythology and family traditions originat-
ing in those times. Just like a few years earlier in Bosnia-Herzegovina, we were witness-
ing the formation of new groups of refugees. Their future was uncertain. What was cer-
tain was that new feelings of victimisation and new myths were emerging and growing
among them – and, quite possibly, also a thirst for revenge.
The fate of a single country, Bulgaria, can illustrate the scale of Balkan population
transfers. In the period from the 1878 Liberation to World War II, more than 800,000
refugees from Turkish and Greek Thrace, from Greek and Yugoslav Macedonia, from
Northern Dobrudzha, from the Western Outlands,1 from Romania and Banat, and
from Bessarabia came to Bulgaria. In the same period, 950,000 people left Bulgaria.
More than half of them were Turks, the others being Greeks, Bulgarians, etc. An over-
all picture of forced migrations on the Balkans, illustrated with a number of charts
and graphs, was presented at the conference by Prof. Ivan Ilchev. Unfortunately, his
busy schedule prevented Prof. Ilchev from preparing his paper for this publication. The
same holds for Prof. Akira Usuki, who attracted much interest with his comparative
perspective on forced population transfers in Israel and Palestine.
The purpose of the conference was not limited to discussing the history of forced
migrations on the Balkans, caused by wars, peace treaties or contemporary policies
of assimilation and local forms of apartheid. Driven by the positive approach of our
Japanese partners, the main purpose of the conference became to rationalise those
processes and above all, to discuss the possibilities for reconstruction of conflict-torn
societies. This purpose was partly achieved, mainly thanks to the contribution of our
Japanese colleagues and two colleagues from Germany and the UK. The transcripts of
the discussions held after each session of paper presentations are quite telling: scholars
from the Balkan countries are still guided by emotions when discussing events from
the recent and not-so-recent past.
The organisers expected that the discussion about the so-called ‘Renaming
Process’2 would be relatively uneventful, considering that almost two decades have
1
Territories lost to Serbia after World War I (Editor’s note).
2
The process of forced assimilation of Bulgarian Muslim minorities is known in Bulgarian
language as vuzroditelen proces. It is a bit difficult to translate this term adequately into English
and various authors have been using various options. Most often vuzroditelen proces is trans-
lated as the regeneration process, the rebirth process or the revival process. The rationale be-
hind the process and its Bulgarian name was that the Bulgarian nation-state had to ‘explain’ to
12 Antonina Zhelyazkova
passed since then. However, this discussion turned out to be just as ‘hot’ as the de-
bates on Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. Clearly, not only scholars but also Balkan
societies are in need of accurate analyses of these events – analyses based on original,
archived sources. The academic community is continuing to look for answers to the
questions ‘why did the violence occur,’ ‘could the ethnic cleansing have been prevented
and the casualties avoided,’ and especially to the intrusive question that cannot be an-
swered: Who is to blame – is it us or is it somebody from the outside?
The success of the conference and, hopefully, of this publication is largely due
to the unique meeting between scholars from Balkan countries and Japan. Despite
their different academic background, different experience and different viewpoints,
these scholars have common academic interests and speak a common academic lan-
guage. One of the major achievements of this cooperation was also the opportunity
the conference offered to young scholars specialising in Balkan studies to present their
own research, but also their political views about the events in question. A number
of young scholars from Albania, Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Japan dis-
tinguished themselves at the conference, demonstrating not only their maturity as re-
searchers but also presenting a detached, objective opinion about the past and the fu-
ture of the region.
the Bulgarian Muslims who they really were and help them regain their ‘true’ identity of ethnic
Bulgarians. The Bulgarian Muslims were seen as living in some sort of group oblivion and they
had to be born again. To achieve this, they were forced to change their names and abandon their
religious beliefs. For the purposes of clarity and consistency, we have decided to use the term
“renaming process” in this publication, and we have thus edited all the papers and discussions,
published in this volume, substituting the terms “regeneration process” and “revival process”
with “renaming process.” (Editor’s note)
13
First Session:
General Overview of Balkan Migrations
Moderators:
Prof. Hidajet Repovac

Prof. Antonina Zhelyazkova
14
15
MIGRATIONS IN THE HISTORY

OF MULTIETHNICITY AND
MULTICULTURALISM IN THE BALKANS
(BULGARIAN SOURCES)
Tsvetana Georgieva
Sofia University ‘St. Kliment Ohridski,’ Bulgaria
The history of multiethnicity and multiculturalism in Bulgaria is too complex

and too long to be reconstructed in one paper, be it plenary or not. Moreover, this his-
tory is not a specific Bulgarian phenomenon – it is a variant of an all-Balkan model
of coexistence and confrontation between Christians and Muslims who have shared a
common space for many generations. In the course of the history of their conflicts and
contacts, modern history included, considerable experience has been acquired, and
this experience must be analysed and rationalised impartially, beyond the immediate
conjuncture. In this paper I shall attempt to draw attention to the migrations and mi-
gratory movements in the Ottoman Balkans. I shall do so not only to address the gen-
eral topic of the conference, but also because these migrations are a key element in the
formation and manifestations of contemporary multiethnicity and multiculturalism
on the peninsula.
The sources information on which this paper is based on refer predominantly to
territories, which under the Ottoman rule Bulgarians considered to be theirs, despite
sharing part of them with other Balkan ethnoses and above all with a large Turkic pop-
ulation. Contemporary historiography explains the ‘Ottomanisation’ of the Balkans
as a result of the mass colonisation by Asian Minor newcomers and a long period
of islamization of the local Christian population. The outcome of the initial stage of
‘Ottomanisation’ of the peninsula at the end of the fourteenth century is relatively clear.
More obscure is the course the process followed later. This is most accurately described
by O. L. Barkan, who compares the settlement of the Turkmen nomads to billiard balls
rolling across the Balkans. These balls quickly found their pockets in the depopulated
plains and fields. Given the present-day level of information, this metaphorical de-
scription will probably be used for a long time as a point of departure in the study of the
migratory processes during the Ottoman conquest. The reason for that is not only that
source information is scarce. This description is also readily accepted by the majority
of Balkan and Turkish historians. For Balkan historians it is an irrefutable proof of the
tragedy that the conquered local population had to live through. Turkish historians use
it as a no less conclusive proof of the might of the early Ottoman state.
16 Tsvetana Georgieva
The picture of the rearrangement of the ethnic map of the Balkans during the
fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth centuries is supplemented by the scarce data
on the deportation of the Balkan population to Asia Minor and the settlement of war
prisoners from the western part of the peninsula and from the Hungarian territories
in the gazibey mülks (properties). The conclusion is that in the course of the Ottoman
invasion the Balkans were flooded by a huge wave of migration, which scholars believe
had the force of a destructive demographic tsunami. Data from the Ottoman tax reg-
isters from the middle and the second half of the fifteenth century cast doubt on this
thesis. These data suggest a stable network of settlements on Bulgarian territory, which
was the first one to be subjected to the Turkic invasion and parallel colonisation.
The earliest data from the mid-fifteenth century categorically document a rela-
tively mass presence of Muslims predominantly in the eastern part of the Bulgarian
lands. These Muslims were mostly Asian Minor colonists. According to calculations
of R. Kovatchev, in the last decades of the fifteenth century there were 2,360 Muslim
rayah households in the Nikopol sanjak (administrative district), amounting to 14%
of its population. There were only six Muslim villages in the Sofia kaza (district in the
Ottoman Empire), but no Muslims were found in the remaining 125 registered villages.
Muslims in the Vidin sanjak were registered only in the cities and the castles.
The registers from the sixteenth century show a smooth rise in the number of
Muslims in the western part of the Bulgarian lands. They had increased to 26% of the
population in the Pasha sanjak. At the beginning of the century the number of Muslims
in the Sofia sanjak remained small, approximately 6% of the population. By the end of
the century, however, it had grown to 18%, with Muslims living in twenty-one exclu-
sively Muslim and forty-two mixed villages.
In the mid-sixteenth century ‘the wide nomad front,’ described by A. Ostrovski in
the space between the Gulf of Orfanou (on the Halkidiki peninsula near Thessaloniki)
and the Rhodope Mountains, extended to the north of the Danube River and to the
west of the Ogosta River. The influx of Turkic nomads at the beginning of the sixteenth
century was intensified by a second wave of colonisation, considerably smaller in terms
of both size and scope, known as surgun. This was a coercive colonisation of the Asian
Minor Alevi, organised by the state under the rule of the sultans Selim I (1512-20) and
Suleyman I (1520-66). It was concentrated mainly in the region of Dobrudzha. The
organised and spontaneous settlements in Rumelia of people coming from Anatolia
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries provided a considerable demographic re-
source for the Muslim population. This large population was maintained during the
following centuries mainly by the Islamization of Balkan Christians and war prisoners
from regions neighbouring the Ottoman Empire. A new wave of Muslim immigrants
came at the end of the seventeenth and the very beginning of the eighteenth century.
This time Muslims came from the Hungarian territories that the Ottoman Empire had
lost. This migratory wave has remained outside the scope of interest of researchers.
However, this does not mean that the wave did not affect the ethno-demographic situ-
ation in the Balkans over the next centuries.
Migrations in the history of multiethnicity and multiculturalism in the Balkans 17
The first migratory waves of Muslim, mostly Turkic and Tatar people, in the
Balkans during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are the traditional explanation
for the Ottomanisation of the peninsula that changed its demographic picture in all
aspects – ethnic, religious and cultural. Undoubtedly, this assertion holds for a large
part of the Balkan towns in which the Muslim population had grown sharply. The
town of Plovdiv is a classical example: in the year 1516, 1,034 households were regis-
tered there, of which 879 were Muslim, 88 were Christian, 35 Roma and 32 were recent
Jewish settlers. The ratio of one to ten in favour of the Muslims demonstrates categori-
cally the total ‘Ottomanisation’ of Plovdiv. A similar, though less intense, process also
took place in the smaller urban centres – such as Samokov, where in 1569 the Muslim
households were 215 against 178 Christian households. A reverse process occurred in
the demographic situation in villages. More than 75% of all villages were exclusively
Christian, and about 15% were mixed. In these villages the number of registered ‘sons
of Abdullah’ and freed slaves suggests that a considerable part of them were first-gener-
ation Muslims. However, the presence of numerous Turkic and non-Koranic names in
the registers shows clearly that settled Turkic people constituted a significant percent-
age. Undoubtedly, Asian Minor settlers were registered in hundreds of Muslim villages
that had from one to five households. The registrars point out explicitly that they were
to a large extent yuruks (nomads). In the fifteenth century the yuruks were concentrat-
ed in the eastern regions, but during the sixteenth century they took over also some
western territories, including the Vidin and Kyustendil sanjaks. Towards the end of the
sixteenth century the number of yuruks decreased considerably, with some of them
disappearing altogether and others settling in villages of twenty or more households.
For Bulgarian historiography this change is one of the proofs of an intensive process of
Islamization that is documented through the number of registered Muslims who iden-
tified themselves as ‘sons of Abdullah’ – that is, Islamic neophytes.
I would like to draw attention to the Muslim and mixed villages, which were
found in the registers dating back to the end of the fifteenth century. In the light of cul-
tural anthropology, these villages were the places of direct contact between two quite
different civilisational models – the model of the settled Christians and that of the
near-nomad Muslims from Asia Minor. In fact, an extremely important cultural trans-
formation of the descendants of the Muslim colonists had taken place in such villages
not only in the Bulgarian lands but also in the Balkans at large. It is a well known fact
that by the end of the sixteenth century – that is, in about one century – a large part
of the nomads had dispersed, the majority of them settling as farmers. The inhabitants
of almost all registered Muslim and mixed villages were granted the status of rayah or,
in other words, of productive and tax-paying population. The nature of the registered
rayah’s taxable production was identical to that of the neighbouring Christian villages.
To illustrate, I shall give as an example the situation in eighteen Muslim villages, which,
according to the 1479 register, had almost completely encircled the old Bulgarian capi-
tal of Turnovo. The registrar explicitly mentions that these Muslim villages were new
– that is, they were non-existent in the old registers. The total number of their Muslim
households was 364. The men who were household heads had predominantly Turkic
names, such as Aydan, Turalı, Hisar bey and Göçeri.
Koran-related are the names mainly of forty-two household heads and unmar-
ried men, whose second name is ‘son of Abdullah,’ and the names of eighteen freed
slaves. I am drawing attention to the fact that about 16% of the inhabitants of these
new villages were first-generation Muslims because, in my opinion, by sharing their
production experience with their fellow-villagers they had facilitated the transforma-
tion of the nomads into settled farmers. The change is categorically proven by the taxa-
ble products of the local rayah: wheat, barley, rye, millet, and beehives. The only differ-
ence in the tax register of the Muslim village of Avcılar and the neighbouring Christian
village of Dimcha are the fifteen buckets of must and the tax on swine levied from the
Christians in the second village. In the sixteenth century, dozens of Muslim villages
had to pay taxes on vineyards and on must. The fact that the descendants of the Asian
Minor nomads had mastered the local farming practices proves that they had adapted
to the local conditions and to the farming activities in the Balkans, by mastering the
centuries-old production practices of the Balkan population. It may be added that this
process was bilateral, although not completely equivalent in terms of its parameters.
The fact that in a similar register from the Kyustendil sanjak from the sixteenth cen-
tury two thirds of the rice growers in the Strumitsa region are Christian is significant
enough.
Their skills in growing rice, unknown till the Ottoman conquest, mean that they
had learned from the Muslim colonists. Metodija Sokoloski has found that in the mid-
sixteenth century there was an intensive wave of settlement by the yuruks – a name
given to the nomads in the Ottoman registers. This process was directed and imple-
mented by the central authorities, which had made numerous efforts to place the no-
mads under administrative control, but the real transformation of the nomads into
farmers occurred through their contacts with the local population and by learning how
to grow the local crops. The result was a type of farming common to Christians and
Muslims, which blurred the sharpest edges of their cultural differences. It is the point
of intersection on which their compatibility was built, since both on the everyday and
social levels Christians and Muslims turned out to have similar interests and to face
similar threats in their personal lives. This process was neither short-lived nor void of
problems. Dozens of Ottoman documents provide evidence of court cases between
Christians and Muslims over land plot disputes and the common land between neigh-
bouring villages. But the number of such cases among Muslims or among Christians
only was not lower. Essentially, these conflicts were economic, not civilisational. The
transformation of the colonised nomads into settled farmers had created the condi-
tions for the existence of the system of komşuluk (the spirit of neighbourhood) be-
tween people of different origins and religions. With its strict rules, this system regu-
lated everyday life and transformed the mutually acknowledged otherness into a fa-
miliar, recognised difference. There was a ritual exchange of sacred food during the
major religious festivals between neighbours of different religions, and a mandatory
participation of representatives of the other religion in the key rites of passage (wed-
dings, births, burials). Respect for the different communities was demonstrated in eve-
ryday contacts. Respect was a mandatory requirement and its violation could threaten
order and the expectations of both communities. In a cultural anthropological aspect
the komşuluk system proved to be not only a link connecting the cultural traditions of
Christians and Muslims, but also a chain of their mental attitudes and standards of be-
haviour. Eventually, it also left an imprint on the scale of Christian values where com-
promise proved to be more valuable than conflict. Through this system the Muslim and
Christian notions of good and evil became closer despite the contradictions embedded
in their primary cultural models.
There were other types of migratory movements, documented in the Ottoman
registers, which furthered this development. These movements can be defined as local
displacements of the population from one village to another and from village to town.
They were recorded in all detailed registers, which listed the names of the household
heads, the unmarried men, and widows in every settlement. As a rule, the registrars
recorded the changes in the population number using the hackneyed terms ‘runaway’
and ‘newcomer’ as additional qualifiers. Very frequently the two definitions for mi-
grants (‘runaway’ and ‘newcomer’) are found simultaneously in one and the same set-
tlement in different ratios. There are hundreds of examples of such individual migra-
tions. The 1445–1446 register of the village of Polovyane, Sofia district, offers an exam-
ple of the village-to-neighbouring-town movement. The registrar wrote that 32 out of
124 complete and 24 widow rayah households had settled in the nearby city of Sofia.
This implies that one fifth of the inhabitants of Polovyane had left the village and had
become urban residents. There were individual resettlements from one village to an-
other all over the country, though not on such a large scale.
A detailed register from the year 1501 for the Nikopol sanjak shows that there
were four newcomers, all of them non-Muslim, in the village of Bela. In the village of
Vulchetrun there were four newcomers too, but they were all Muslim. In the village of
Vishegrad there were six persons, three of them Muslim, who had run away. In the vil-
lage of Trumbezhki Izvor there were five newcomers, unmarried Christians, and one
of the old villagers had run away. A similar register from 1515–1516 for the Samokov
nahiye (neighbourhood, community) records five runaways and three newcomers in
the village of Mehomie (now the town of Razlog).
These constant internal movements all over the country were well known to the
authorities, who legalised them by entering the changes in the registers. The individual
migrations provide solid arguments against the traditional thesis concerning the serf
status of the productive rural population in the Ottoman Balkans. The massive migra-
tion all over the country shows that the central authorities had transferred the respon-
sibility for agricultural production and tax collection to the spahi (Ottoman landlord).
Obviously, they were not particularly concerned with exercising direct control over the
population. Through legislation the central authorities guaranteed the right of peasants
to legalise their new place of residence fifteen years, and in some cases ten years, after
leaving the village where they were originally registered. In practice, however, the place
of residence became legal after the first registration at the new place.
Since such migrations occurred all over the country, individual resettlements
became a second type of local migration. Present-day studies define them as ‘flight’ of
the inhabitants of whole villages, who left their homes. If we take even a single register
from the Skopje region, we will find resettlement of four villages: Barevo was complete-
ly deserted; Bobovo was destroyed in a flood and its rayah were registered in other vil-
lages; the inhabitants of the village of Dryanovo had ‘taken to flight’; so had the peas-
ants from the village of Yarovo. These collective resettlements of entire peasant com-
munities were rarer than individual migrations, but their occurrence in many registers
supports the assumption that they were a permanent factor. In many cases they were
not flights in an unknown direction – the registrar duly records the new settlement.
A register for the vilayet (province of the Ottoman Empire) of Nevrokop notes
that the village of Ponikovo was left uninhabited because its rayah had resettled in the
village of Kochan. A register from 1501 for the Nikopol sanjak reports that the inhabit-
ants of the village of Pavlitsi lived in the village of Devlyani, and that the rayah from the
village of Kozarevo had moved to the village of Konarevo. The list of similar examples
can be extended almost indefinitely. They were recorded in the Ottoman registers for
the purpose of correcting the size of a given timar (fief) rather than facilitating modern
studies; that is why it is very hard to set the record straight as to the intensity, direction
or cause of these collective local migrations.
In contemporary Bulgarian historiography they are used as an example of ‘the
difficult situation of the Bulgarian people under Turkish yoke’ or they are interpreted as
a mechanism through which rayah, be it Christian or Muslim, was able to reduce its tax
burden to a bearable level. The second thesis is proved by documents showing threats
of massive flights of rayah from villages, which directly served the Sultan’s Court or the
central authorities. Such is the case of the village of Dragobrashte in the Kochan nahiye
(neighbourhood), which was included in the Sultan’s hassas (properties). Its inhabitants
were obligated to keep in their houses wine produced for the Sultan’s Court. Against
this additional obligation they demanded to be relieved of regular taxes, threatening
to run away if their demand was not met. After long negotiations, as we would say to-
day, their additional taxes were abolished and they agreed to pay only ispenç (species
of small poultry), and of the regular taxes – only a fixed sum of money instead of the
tithe on wheat and a tax on the sheep. The Dragobrashte peasants did not run away se-
cretly. They even warned the authorities about their intentions and clearly formulated
their economic demands.
In the same year, 1573, the inhabitants of the villages of Karageltsi and Nikushel,
who were defending the Kratovo Pass, ‘ran away’ without notice. They scattered among
the neighbouring villages, after which travelling through Skopska Crna Gora1 became
A region north of Skopje, located along the present border between Macedonia, Serbia
1
and Kosovo (Editor’s note)

very difficult. ‘Out of necessity’ and following an order issued by the Sultan, the local
authorities had to trace them, return them to their villages and – in compensation for
their obligations to defend the dervent (the pass) – relieve them of all taxes.
By the mid-seventeenth century the flight of entire villages had become the
number one problem for the Ottoman fiscal system. Dozens of documents issued by
the central authorities demand tracking down and returning the rayah to villages in
order to ensure the collection of çiziye (poll-tax) and avarız (extraordinary tax), i.e.
taxes collected by the central government. That the situation was critical is evidenced
by a Sultan’s fırman (decree) from 1672, which states the total inability of the authori-
ties to collect çiziye in twenty villages in the kaza of Huzurgrad (Razgrad), since elev-
en villages had moved out and the inhabitants of the remaining nine villages had re-
fused to appear before the kadi (judge) court – they had set their houses on fire and
run away. The documents of the local authorities show that this was a migration proc-
ess that could not be controlled. The authorities found out that the tax-paying popu-
lation had decreased due to a plague epidemic and the resettlement of the peasants in
farms or vakıf (bequeathed property for charity purposes) settlements. The popula-
tion demanded tax cuts for separate villages and entire kazas. The central authorities
responded by ordering the rayah to be turned back from the ‘small towns, villages and
influential people’s farms.’
The information provided by the local administration frequently supports these
findings. In a 1660 petition by the non-Muslim rayah of the kasaba (small town) of
Turnovo and its kaza for a çiziye tax cut, it is pointed out that forty families from the
town and several hundreds of families from the adjacent villages had resettled in the
vakıf village of Arnautköy (present-day Arbanasi).
In a document from 1659 with the same content, signed by a clerk in the lo-
cal fiscal administration, it is claimed that the rayah that had left the Turnovo kaza
had resettled in Yambol, and in the villages of the same kaza and those around Stara
Zagora, Nova Zagora and present-day Alexandroupolis. Christians and Muslims from
the Nevrokop kaza had migrated in the same direction, namely towards the Thracian
Plain. Most probably this process was related to the spread of the landowners’ farms,
around which large new villages appeared.
In the Ruse region alone, eight new villages with more than forty households
were founded around private land properties at the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
tury. At the same time, about one in ten villages in the Marica River valley had in their
names the word ‘farm.’ A series of sultan’s orders addressed to the Vidin kadi provide
evidence about the intensive resettlements of peasants across the Danube River in both
directions. Some of the documents ordered that the peasants who had fled to the north
of the Danube be made to come back. Other documents ordered the inclusion of the
settlers from Wallachia, who had gone into hiding from the owners of the vakıfs, timars
(fiefs) and farms, in the list of the tax-paying rayah.
In Bulgarian historiography these spontaneous migrations are usually used as
evidence of an intensive process of Islamization, since they were found mainly in the
çiziye records. The more comprehensive database containing information from the
avarız defters (register lists) indicates that the Muslim population was also actively in-
volved in the migrations. The direct consequences of these spontaneous displacements
were a denser network of villages in the plains and a growing urban population. They
transcended the local and regional level and intensified the multiethnic relations in the
entire Balkan Peninsula.
Evliya Çelebi’s travel notes give a relative idea about their parameters. According
to him, in the city of Plovdiv the infidels were Bulgarians and Greeks. In the city of
Belgrade people spoke Turkish, Serbian, Bulgarian, and Bosnian. In Elbasan there were
Bulgarian and Greek infidels, in Thessaloniki people spoke Turkish, Greek, Jewish,
Bulgarian, Serbian, and Albanian. Documents from the next centuries show that the
chaotic migrations did not severely disrupt the settlement network, which means that
the depopulation recorded in the seventeenth-century registers was temporary. Many
of the villages that existed in the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries have survived to this
very day. By seeking compromise solutions and introducing some reforms in the tax
collection system, the Empire succeeded in restricting, within possible limits, the cha-
otic migration but it could not stop it altogether.
Conversely, the movement of individuals and groups of the population on a lo-
cal and regional scale is considered to be a sustainable solid component of Balkan re-
ality and a way out from extreme situations. Undoubtedly, behind the resettlements
of individuals and masses there are countless cases of outburst of violence and thou-
sands of human dramas. But over the centuries these migrations from places of birth
and from one’s own ethnic environment have marked countless intersections of multi-
ethnic contacts. They have evolved into a permanent network transmitting everyday-
life standards, moral attitudes and spiritual values between the different communities.
Ultimately, they have created the common Balkan world. Despite all the efforts of the
Balkan people themselves and of many external factors, this Balkan world is perceived
by the non-Balkan people, and even more so by ourselves, as a mutually related human
community, whose main distinctive features are multiethnicity and multiculture.
23

AND MODERNITY IN THE BALKANS
Tetsuya Sahara
Faculty of Political Sciences and Economics
Meiji University, Japan
Migration is one of the central issues of the modern Balkan history. The basic
ethnic composition of today’s Balkan states is virtually a product of migration in the
one-hundred year long period from the beginning of the nineteenth to the first quar-
ter of the twentieth century. The essence of this migration can be described as eth-
nic homogenisation within the borders of the Balkan states. While it was common to
find several religious, linguistic, and cultural groups living together in one single re-
gion until the eighteenth century, today the ethnic landscape has changed drastically.
Although it is true that the Balkan states still have a complicated ethnic structure, they
have by far much simpler ethnic entities than they did in the eighteenth century. It was
the displacements of ethnic groups that brought about the drastic transition from eth-
nic mixture to ethnic division. This paper concentrates on the migration process in the
modern Balkans and attempts to elucidate the framework of a comparative study.
Migration is a broad notion that comprises all kinds of movement of places of
living that humans make. Families and individuals can migrate either by their own will
or against their will. Although the demarcation line between free-will migrations and
those forced against their will is not well-defined, the extreme circumstance in the lat-
ter case can be described as an intentional and systematic forced migration perpetrat-
ed by the state. The most typical example is the exchange of population based on the
mutual agreement of governments. Next in importance to this extreme case are those
types of forced migrations that make people emigrate because of intentional deterio-
ration of living conditions either prescribed or sanctioned by the state or non-govern-
ment bodies. We can point out cases where people decide to flee because of the de-
struction of the political order.
Some social scientists argue that a human being naturally seeks to live in an eth-
nically homogenous milieu. Ordinary people, however, will more than likely want to
remain in the place where they have established their living base for a long time. It is
not a natural consequence that families or individuals who have enjoyed more or less
tolerable living conditions will suddenly decide to migrate to another place and start a
new life. Thus, the majority of the migration processes that have resulted in the ethnic
transformation of the modern Balkans seem to have occurred against the will of the
24 Tetsuya Sahara
migrants. This author calls these movements of population forced ethnic migration. A
forced ethnic migration is a type of compulsory migration in which members of a par-
ticular ethnic group, or those other than the members of a particular ethnic group, are
forced to emigrate from certain geographic regions by reason of persecution based on
their specific ethnicity.
Forced Migrations Before the Modern Period

There have been constant flows of population in the Balkans since ancient times.
Even before the nineteenth century, some types of migrations could have been classi-
fied as forced migrations organised and directed by the state. The sürgün, or the state
oriented population transfer during the Ottoman period, may be the most famous
example of a pre-modern compulsory migration. The sürgün stemmed from an old
Islamic tradition. The most typical sürgün was to bring Anatolian Turkic Muslims into
newly conquered Balkan land and settle them on particular sites. People were trans-
ferred in groups, and sometimes even entire communities were moved. From the fif-
teenth to the sixteenth centuries this type of population transfer frequently took place,
and resulted in the formation of many settlements in the Balkans. Thus, migrations
changed the ethnic composition of the regions.1 In addition, the sürgün was not limited
to the Muslim population. Christians and Jews were massively transferred on state or-
der too. For example, Sultan Mehmed II deported Balkan Jews to repopulate Istanbul
after the conquest of the city.2
The motives for the sürgün policy were primarily economic. Although these
communities suffered harsh times both during and after deportation, the population
transfers were not intended to be punitive measures. Contrary to the modern depor-
tations, which were designed to make the region ethnically homogenous, the sürgün
practices tended to bring about an ethnic mixture. The settlements of Anatolian Turkic
Muslims among the Christian population, together with their effect on the conversion
of the local population, created multi-ethnic/religious landscapes.
1
There is a debate on the historical characteristics of sürgün. While Turkish scholars tend
to emphasise the aspect of state initiatives and planning, Antonina Zhelyazkova assumes that the
process was largely spontaneous and not state-controlled. In this paper, the author dares to take
the Turkish stance because a comparative study needs simplification. In truth, the author is not in
a position to judge this debate. It is beyond the goals of our discussion here. Whether the sürgün
was state-controlled or spontaneous, it is clear that the state did not have a desire to make the
territory ethnically pure. As for classic research on the sürgün, see Lütfi Barkan, Ömer. ‘Osmanli
Imparatorlugunda bir iskân ve kolonizasyon metodu olarak sürgünler,’ Istanbul Üniversitesi Iktisat
Fakültesi mecmuasi, 11 (1949–50), pp. 524–559, 13 (1951–52), pp. 56–78, 15 (1953–54), pp. 209–
237. See also Zhelyazkova, Antonina. 2002. ‘Islamization in the Balkans as a Historiographical
Problem: The Southeast-European Perspective,’ in Adanir, F., & S. Faroqhi (eds.). The Ottomans
and the Balkans, A Discussion of Historiography, Brill: Leiden, pp. 223–266.
2
Rodrigue, Aron. 1995. The Jews in the Balkans, Blackwell: London, p. 5.
Forced ethnic migrations and modernity in the Balkans 25
During Ottoman times it was very rare, even exceptional, that a migration would
change the ethnic composition of a certain region in favour of a specific ethnic group.
Such cases were not organised by the state in peacetime, but they did happen during
or after wars or other political disorder during which the central government tem-
porarily lost control over a particular region. The famous ‘great emigration’ of Serbs
that occurred in 1690 is claimed to have drastically changed the ethnic composition of
Kosovo.3 However, this emigration was a by-effect of the Austro-Ottoman War, and the
initiative for the former came from the local Serb community.
Modern Migration
After the seventeenth century, the sürgün population transfers almost disap-
peared, and disorganised deportations or refugee-type migrations increased only
gradually. The central government lost control over most of the Balkan provinces. The
emergence of local Muslim notables and their struggle for power accelerated the de-
terioration of the social order. The increase of activities by the bandits (hayduks, kird-
zalis, and klephts) endangered the lives of all peasants regardless of religion. All those
factors eventually contributed to the increase of migration. From the nineteenth cen-
tury onward, however, a new type of mass migration began to appear. The character-
istics of this new type were as follows: it was caused by massive popular violence; the
violence was ethnically motivated; and the perpetrators attacked all members of other
ethnic groups.
From the end of the eighteenth century onwards, the Balkans experienced a
drastic increase in civil wars: provincial uprisings, revolts of feudal lords, and clashes
between local armed groups. These civil wars were divided into two patterns; one was
waged by Muslims against Muslims, and the other was waged by Christians against
Muslims.4 During the 1820s and 1830s, the government of Sultan Mahmud II made
great effort to control the unruly ayans (Muslim notables). The Sultan organised a se-
ries of military campaigns to the unruly provinces such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia,
and Albania, and finally succeeded in bringing rebel Muslim landlords under control.5
3
There is a classical work on the theme. See Popović, Dušan. 1954. Velika seoba Srba
1690: Srbi seljaci i plemici, Belgrade: Srpska Književna Zadruga.
4
There were also cases in which Muslim warlords attacked the Christian population. These
military activities were usually short-term operations, and should be categorised as pillage.
5
On the nature of Sultan Mahmud’s ayan policy, see Karpat, Kemal. 1973. An Inquiry
into the Social Foundations of Nationalism in the Ottoman State: From Social Estates to Class,
from Millet to Nations, Princeton: Centre of International Studies Research Monograph, p. 87;
on the Ottoman campaigns to Bosnia and Kosovo, see: Istorija Srpskog naroda. 1981. Vol. 5,
part 1, Belgrade: Srpska književna zadruga, pp. 227–232; on the Campaigns to Albanian lands,
see Skendi, Stavro. 1967. The Albanian National Awakening, 1878–1912, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, p. 23.
26 Tetsuya Sahara
The campaigns of the Ottoman government did produce groups of refugees, but they
cannot be regarded as massive ethnic migrations. On the contrary, it was the Christian
revolts against the Ottoman authority that in many cases directly caused a drastic
change in the ethnic composition of the region. Even before the nineteenth century,
the Christian population frequently stood up for arming against the Ottomans when
war between the Empire and the Christian states broke out. However, from the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, the growing number of Christian revolts were organ-
ised on the initiative of the local Christian population.
The mass migration caused by the Christian revolts usually victimised the
Muslim population. The Ottoman government, although not at all immune to the
suppression and retaliation, never took measures regarding the mass transfer of the
Christian population to get rid of the unruly provinces. Rather, the Ottomans sought
to appease the Christian discontent and gave more autonomy to Christians, as we can
see in the case of Morea after the 1775 uprising and Sumadia after the Kotin war.6
However, the Christian rebels did not respond in kind and were very harsh toward the
Muslim population.
The Christian warriors mercilessly massacred Muslims and Jews both in the first
Serbian uprising of 1804–13 and during the Greek Revolution of 1821–30. In both cas-
es, many perpetrators were recruited from the ranks of ordinary Christian peasants;
thus, the battle took on the characteristics of ‘neighbours at war.’ It is misguided, how-
ever, if one assumes that these events were the outcome of religious hatred. It is true
that many of the victims in those two events were linguistically the same people as the
perpetrators. Christian Serb peasants attacked Slavic Muslims who spoke the same dia-
lect. Greek revolutionaries killed Hellenic Muslims and destroyed all the Islamic sym-
bols. Yet the basic motive for the violence was not simply religious, but rather originat-
ed in nationalistic sentiment.
The Serbian rebels waged battle only against the Dahijas (the Muslim outlaws
who challenged the Sultan’s authority and oppressed the Serbian peasants) and their
allies during the first stage of the uprising.7 The rebels kept a good relationship with
other Muslims and even sought an alliance with them for the battle with the Dahijas.8 It
was not until 1807 that Serbs began indiscriminate attacks against the non-Serb popu-
lation. It is interesting to examine what brought about this change in attitude. In 1807,
the Serb leaders decided to side with Russia in the war against the Ottomans, and to
6
Panterlić, Dušan. 1949. Beogradski pašaluk pred prvi srpski ustanak, 1794–1804,
Belgrade: SANU.
7
Novaković, Stojan. 1904. Ustanak na dahije 1804: ocena izvora, karakter ustanka, vo-
jevanje 1804, Belgrade: Državna štamparija.
8
Mateja Nenadović describes the good relationship between Serb warriors and the
‘Turks’ (in fact, Slavic Muslims) during the first phase of the uprising in his memoirs. See
Nenadović, Mateja. 1969. The Memoirs of Prota Matija Nenadovic (edited and translated by
Lovett Edwards), Oxford: Clarendon Press.
build up their own independent state. The leaders started to claim that they were the
heirs of the medieval Serbian state, and raised the flag of the Nemanjić dynasty. The in-
cident shows that the emergence of Serbian nationalism set the stage for the atrocities
against ordinary Muslims.
The Greek Revolution was more nationalistic from the very beginning. The acts
of the revolutionaries thus were defined by a nationalist strategy. Within two months
of the start of the revolution, Greeks had succeeded in forcing the Ottoman army to
retreat behind the walls of several port cities. Then, Greeks started an attack on almost
all the Muslim peasants who still remained in the countryside. They killed Muslims re-
gardless of age or gender, and confiscated their property. By doing this, Greeks turned
the Morea into a literally ‘Greek land.’9
Historians like to describe those two events as the beginning of ‘national libera-
tion movements’ in the Modern Balkans. It is necessary, however, to add one point to
this political assessment. The two events were also the starting point of massive Muslim
deportations in modern times. Massacres inevitably accompanied the mass exodus.
Indiscriminate killing provoked a strong fear among the Muslim population, and many
fled from their homelands. The Christian rebels claimed that Muslims/Turks were op-
pressors coming from the outside, and did not allow the refugees to return. Thus the ef-
fects of migration became permanent.
When the ‘national liberation movement’ turned out to be successful, it brought
about ethnic migrations and an enormous humanitarian catastrophe. The Bulgarian
independence also caused massacres and mass deportations of Muslims. Unlike its
Serbian and Greek precedents, the Bulgarian ‘national liberation’ was the by-product of
Russian invasion instead of a mass popular movement. Many Bulgarian peasants and
urban dwellers, especially their leaders (čorbadjias in Bulgarian), more or less tolerated
Ottoman rule, and wanted to improve their status by peaceful means.
There were also militant elements, called ‘revolutionary nationalists.’ The
Bulgarian ‘revolutionary nationalists’ adopted a strategy of overthrowing Ottoman rule
through popular revolt. The extremists, however, did not gain any mass-scale popu-
lar support. Most had to go in exile and instead sought to organise domestic networks
from abroad. They were affected by Italian nationalist ideas and adopted the guerrilla
strategy used by Mazzini and Garibaldi. They twice organised cheta guerrilla units and
sent them to Northern Bulgaria in the hope of igniting mass uprisings there.
Originally, a cheta meant a unit of the hayduks. The hayduks were Balkan tra-
ditional Christian bandits, who escaped to the mountains usually after getting into
trouble with the Ottoman authorities. They also attacked wealthy Muslim landlords
on behalf of the poor peasants. Thus, in popular belief, the hayduks were the heroes in
the struggle against Ottoman oppression. The Bulgarian revolutionary nationalists in-
tentionally played on this tradition and even recruited some real hayduks. Although
9
McCarthy, Justin. 1995. Death and Exile, The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims,
1821–1922, Princeton: Darwin Press, pp. 10–12.
28 Tetsuya Sahara
the cheta guerrilla strategy of the Bulgarian revolutionary nationalists failed misera-
bly, their efforts contributed to bringing together the Balkan hayduk tradition and the
modern nationalist guerrilla war concept.10
The Bulgarian ‘revolutionary nationalists’ also played an important role as col-
laborators of the Russian army during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. During the
war, Russians engaged in expelling the Muslim and Jewish populations from the area
they occupied. After routing the regular Ottoman army, the Cossack units committed
the major atrocities. They were employed as shock troops to expel the Muslim popula-
tion, killing Muslim peasants indiscriminately, pillaging and burning villages. Bulgarian
nationalists played a similar role. Not only did they organise paramilitaries to resume
subversive activities; they also collaborated with Russians to wipe non-Christians from
the territory.11 After a city was captured by the Russian army, Bulgarians would attack
the Muslim and Jewish sectors, pillage their shops and destroy religious foundations,
thus forcing Muslims and Jews to flee. In the countryside, local priests and teachers in-
stigated the Christian villagers to rob their Muslim neighbours of their property.12
The atrocities against the Muslims during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–
78 were a unique combination of the Russian experience of anti-Muslim war in the
Caucasus and the Balkan tradition of nationalism. In the Caucasian wars, Russians
carried out a systematic expulsion of Muslim populations, both from the lowlands and
from places of strategic importance. They used Christian paramilitaries, especially the
Cossacks, for de-Islamization of the territory.13 The same joint pattern of operation be-
tween the regular army and the paramilitaries was also introduced into the Balkans.
Even in the nineteenth century, the old-style forced ethnic migrations have sur-
vived. A good example was the immigration of the Crimean Tatars and the Circassians.
During the middle of the century, first, the Crimean Tatars, and then, the Circassians
massively fled their homelands because of Russian persecution. They flowed into the
10
Political use of bandit tradition (more accurately ‘invented tradition’) is not a unique
innovation of the Bulgarian nationalists. It was a rather widespread practice of the Balkan na-
tionalists. As Cathy Carmichael points out, the idea of the bandit had been an integral part of
Balkan tradition at the level of popular culture during Ottoman times, and mobilising bandits
as anti-Ottoman forces became important in the struggle for ‘national liberation.’ Thus, the ex-
istence of bandits became a definitive part of national identity in most of the Balkan states. See:
Carmichael, Cathy. 2004. Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans, London: Routledge, pp. 39–41.
11
Turan, Ömer. 1998. The Turkish Minority in Bulgaria, 1878–1908, Ankara: Türk Tarih
Kurumu, pp. 119–133.
12
Tamir, Vicki. 1979. Bulgaria and Her Jews: The History of a Dubious Symbiosis, New
York: Yeshiva University Press, pp. 81–90.
13
On the Russian conquest of the Caucasus, John Baddeley’s classical research is still
worth consulting. See Baddeley, John. 1908. The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus, London:
Longman, Green and Co.; on the Muslim reaction to the conquest, see Henze, Paul. 1992.
‘Circassian Resistance to Russia,’ in Benningsen Broxup, Marie et al (eds.). The Russian Advance
Towards the Muslim World, London: Hurst, pp. 62–111.
Ottoman territories as refugees. The Ottoman government gave shelter to these refu-
gees, and allotted them land in its dominion. In the Balkans, the main destination was
the southern bank of the Danube and Southern Serbia.
The allotted lands were of strategic importance to the empire, as they constituted
the empire’s borders with Russia and other Christian states. It might be possible to see
this colonisation policy as a product of the modern concept of demographic warfare,
as we can notice in the policy the idea of decreasing the rate of the Christian popula-
tion in precarious places.14 It is, however, much more correct to say that it was instead
a remnant of old sürgün practices, as the colonisation was not accompanied by the sys-
tematic deportation of the Christian population in exchange.
It is not clear at what time the Ottomans began to consider the adoption of a
Russian-style demographic policy. During the Tanzimat era, the Ottoman government,
at least officially, propagated an ‘Ottomanism’ policy in which all Ottoman subjects, re-
gardless of their religious or ethnic backgrounds, were to be treated as equal citizens
of the empire. However, a drastic change had taken place by the time of the loss of
Bulgaria and Bosnia, two major Christian provinces of strategic and economic impor-
tance to the empire.
As we have found, the traditional Ottoman colonisation policy tended to cre-
ate an ethnic mixture on the Sultan’s territory. After conquering the Christian territo-
ries, the government encouraged Muslim emigration. Conversely, after the victory of
the Christian states, the Muslims in the ‘redeemed’ lands were expelled, and then given
shelter on the neighbouring Ottoman territories. In both cases, the religious and ethnic
composition of the Ottoman lands became heterogeneous. We can even see this prac-
tice in the aftermath of Serbian and Greek independence. According to the privileges
conferred to Miloš Obrenović, Muslims were restricted and could dwell only inside the
cities on the territory of the Serbian prince.15 Muslims were also excluded from the ter-
ritory of the Greek Kingdom. Although these seemed to be the beginning of the mod-
ern practices of building states on an ethnic basis, the policies were rather an extension
of old practices. Both cases affected only Muslims, and neither Serbs nor Greeks in the
Sultan’s lands were asked to leave to the new states. In 1878, however, the Ottomans
presented an utterly new proposal to the Russian side in the negotiations on the peace
treaty. According to Bilal Şimşir, in February 1878 the Ottoman delegate, Safvet Paşa,
14
On the colonisation of the Circassians and Crimean Tatars, see Saydam, Abdullah.
1997. Kirim ve Kafkas gocleri, 1856–1876, Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu; Pinson, Mark. ‘Ottoman
Colonisation of the Circassians in Rumeli after the Crimean War,’ Études Balkaniques, 3, 1973;
‘Russian Policy and the Emigration of the Crimean Tatars to the Ottoman Empire, 1854–1862,’
Güney-Dogu Aurupa Arastirmalari Dergisi, 1, 1972.
15
The legal status of the Serbian Principality was finally settled by the Sultan’s Edict
(Hattiserif) of 1830. Article 11 ordered that Muslims leave the territory and sell off their proper-
ties. See Dragoљ, J. & M. Mirković (eds.). 1986. Državnopravna istorija Jugoslavije, Odabrani iz-
vori sa komentarima, Belgrade: Savremena administracija, p. 43.
30 Tetsuya Sahara
proposed moving the Muslims who had been left north of the Balkan mountain chain
to the south, moving the Bulgarians in the south to the north, and liquidating their
properties by a mutual exchange.16 Although the proposal was in vain, it was the first
proposal for population exchange made by the Ottoman side.
Thus, in the nineteenth century we notice new patterns of forced ethnic migra-
tion in the recorded history of the Balkans. These new patterns were characterised by
a tendency to make the affected territories ethnically homogenous. In the first stage,
the main motive for the deportation was popular violence. Then, the state apparatus,
especially the army, began to play an important role, in collaboration with the ‘ordi-
nary people.’ The popular violence at this stage became more organised and systemati-
cally operated in a fashion similar to the earlier types of violence. At the vanguard of
the popular violence were the paramilitary units, composed of old hayduk-style ban-
dits and guerrillas who were revolutionary nationalists. The state also showed its will to
control the fate of its subject ethnic groups.
The First Half of the Twentieth Century

The twentieth century is an era characterised by the establishment of the frame-
work of nation states in the Balkans. A strong tendency for the state to exercise control
over the fate of its nation appeared. Along with this idea, popular violence increasingly
conspired with the state. The most notorious case of this collusion was the Macedonian
struggle at the turn of the century.17 Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania all par-
ticipated in this struggle. The main actors in the bloodbath of Macedonia were the
so-called chetadzhis or komitadzhis. Chetadzhis or komitadzhis were paramilitaries
who were usually organised and financed by nationalist organisations. The purpose of
chetadzhi/komitadzhi activities was to change the ethnic map of Macedonia in order
to support their nationalistic causes. Those who sympathised with Bulgaria sought to
instigate the population to take up arms for the national uprisings. Others sought to
counteract this point of view. Thus, several nationalist paramilitary groups operated in
Macedonia, struggling with each other to secure support among the Christian popula-
tion and contain their rivals’ sphere of influence.
16
Şimşir, Bilal. 1988. The Turks of Bulgaria, 1878–1985, London: K. Rustem & Brother,
pp. 158–159.
17
There are numerous works on the Macedonian question. Most of them cannot avoid
taking a partisan viewpoint. The following works seem to this author to be relatively neutral
and worthy of mention here: Adanir, Fikret. 1996. Makedonya sorunu, olusumu ve 1908’e ka-
dar gelisimi (trans. by Ihsan Catay), Istanbul: Tarih Vakfi Yurt; Lange-Akhund, Nadine. 1998.
The Macedonian Question, 1893–1908 (trans. by Gabriel Topor), Boulder: East European
Monographs; Karakasidou, Anastasia. 1997. Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to
Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870–1990, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
These groups enjoyed tacit support from the government whose cause they es-
poused. Thus, the core of the chetadzhi/komitadzhi units was composed of military
veterans, usually army officers who were in reserve or on vacation. Most of the armed
bands were organised abroad, and then sent into Ottoman territory. They smuggled
munitions, threatened villagers to secure support for their causes, recruited paramili-
tary men among the population, and attacked villages that declared support for the
foreign nationalist causes. They pretended to be the followers of the hayduk tradition,
and indeed there were many hayduks among their ranks. The essence of the chetadzhi/
komitadzhi movement, however, was not the same as that of the ‘primitive rebels.’ It
was a modern movement in which priests and teachers played a major role as champi-
ons of Balkan nationalism, whose main components were religion and language. The
state also contributed to future proliferation of popular violence by creating the myth
of national heroes who had lost their lives during the struggle for the sake of their na-
tion. For example, Paulos Melas, the Greek military agent who was engaged in several
subversive activities and killed by the Ottomans, was enshrined as a national hero in
Greek Macedonia and became the symbol of the Greek cause there.18
The Macedonian struggle was a curtain raiser for the nationally motivated pop-
ular violence that erupted during the Balkan wars and the First World War. These wars
were the worst culmination of a nationally motivated popular violence in the history of
the modern Balkans. Atrocities committed by ‘ordinary people,’ combined with those
committed by the regular army, were widespread across the Balkans and Anatolia, pro-
ducing a most tragic humanitarian catastrophe. This time, not only the Muslims but
also the Christians were massacred and massively deported.19 At the first stage, com-
mon scenes could be witnessed. All over Macedonia and Thrace, the chetadzhi/komit-
adzhi units, backed by the regular armies of the Christian states, killed and chased the
Muslim population from their cities and the countryside, resulting in an enormous loss
of life.20 In many cases, the war operation resulted in thoroughly wiping out the alien
population, and producing an ethnic purification of the territory. Alan Ostler, a corre-
spondent of the Daily Express, wrote on the case of the Bulgaro-Turkish front:
18
Karakasidou, Anastasia. 2004. ‘Affections of a Greek Hero, Pavlos Melas and Heroic
Representations in Greece,’ in Todorova, Maria (ed.). Balkan Identities, Nation and Memory,
London: Hurst, pp. 197–232.
19
The atrocities during the Balkan wars were well-documented by an international com-
mission composed of scholars from six countries: Report of the International Commission to Inquire
into the Cause and Conduct of the Balkan Wars. 1914. Washington: Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace; see also an excellent work of journalism by Leon Trotsky: Trotsky, Leon. 1980.
The War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky: The Balkan Wars, 1912–13, New York: Monad Press.
20
According to McCarthy, of the 2,315,293 Muslims who had lived in the area taken
from the Ottoman Empire in Europe, 1,445,179 were gone. Of these, 413,922 were migrants to
Turkey during and after the Balkan Wars, and 398,849 came to Turkey later. He calculates the
death toll at 632,408. McCarthy, Death and Exile p. 164.
32 Tetsuya Sahara
From the Bulgarian frontier as far south as a line down roughly across to Visa,
the country, with the exception of Adrianople, is actually in the hands of Bulgars.
But infinitely more serious to the Turkish people than the mere military occupa-
tion of the tract of land by a hostile force, is the fact that the native population
has been driven out of it.21
Then, this sphere of Hell spread to the other coast of the Aegean.
The Turkish government of the nationalist Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee
of Union and Progress) took measures to deport part of the Christian population,
mostly Greek Orthodox, from Western Anatolia during the spring of 1914. Part of
the reason for the deportation was to provide homes to the Muslim refugees from the
Balkans, but it was also a kind of preventive detention. During the deportation, local
Muslims organised attacks on the Christian urban sectors, and the general ethnic ten-
sion drastically increased.22 In 1919, the landing of the Greek army erupted into pop-
ular violence in Western Anatolia. This time the local Christian population played a
major role. The occupying Greek army intentionally provided arms and munitions to
the local Christian population. The purpose was obvious. Greeks sought to change the
ethnic composition of the region in their favour and instigated the local Greeks to ex-
pel their Muslim neighbours.
The Greek paramilitaries attacked Muslim sectors of the cities, killing communi-
ty leaders, sacking shops and residences, destroying mosques and other religious foun-
dations, in order to disperse the Muslims. Greeks also organised cheta-style units and
dispatched them to Muslim villages to commit the same atrocities as were being com-
mitted in the cities. Many Turks fled to the places that the Greek Front had not yet
reached. Some took up arms and hid in the mountains as resistance.23 Then came the
defeat of Greeks at the hands of the Kemalists. The perpetrators and the victims ex-
changed their roles. Turkish bandits, especially those who claimed to be heirs of the
efe tradition, hoisted the flags of Turkish nationalism and let the Greek population fol-
low the routing Greek army.24 In this fashion, most of the Anatolian Greeks had left for
Greece or the Russian Caucasus as refugees by 1923.
At the other corner of Anatolia, Armenians experienced the same tragedy as
Greeks.25 Armenians, once called ‘the most faithful Christian subjects of the Sultan,’
21
Rakin, Reginald. 1914. The Inner History of the Balkan War, London: Constable, p. 303.
22
Toynbee, Arnold. 1922. The Western Question in Greece and Turkey; A Study in the
Contact of Civilisations, London: Constable, pp. 140–141.
23
Toynbee, The Western Question, pp. 271–299.
24
The Efe-Zeybekleris are the traditional bandits in Western Anatolia. On their activi-
ties and social character, see Yetkin, Sabri. 1996. Ege’de eskiyalar, Istanbul: Turkiye Ekonomik ve
Toplumsal Tarih Vakfi.
25
The ‘Armenian genocide’ was not a single separate historical event. It is difficult to
understand why the Ottomans started the mass deportation of the remaining Christian popu-
had been affected by the same nationalism as their Balkan compatriots by the turn
of the century.26 During the second half of the nineteenth century, revolutionary na-
tionalists emerged among the Ottoman Armenians. Armenians densely populated the
wide area stretching from the Caucasus to the Mediterranean coast of Eastern Anatolia
by World War I. The Ottoman Armenian nationalists maintained a close relationship
with the Russian Armenians. The Armenian population also were sympathetic to the
Russian army, led by Armenian generals and accompanied by Russian Armenian vol-
unteers, during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. After the war, in Western Armenia
the relationship between Armenians and the Muslim population, mostly composed of
Turks and Kurds, deteriorated as the Ottoman government manipulated the enmity of
the Muslims to put down Armenian movements seeking autonomy. The reforms prom-
ised by the 1878 Treaty of Berlin remained a dead letter. The disappointed Armenians,
most of them intellectuals, began to organise defence groups in a number of locations.
They then followed the Balkan nationalist movements. By 1885, the first Armenian na-
tionalist party, the Armenakans, had been set up in the Van district.27
After the Sassun uprising of 1894 and the Hnchakians’ demonstration in
Istanbul, the Ottoman government began to take harsh measures. In October 1895,
Turkish and Kurdish forces launched a systematic attack on Armenian villages and on
the Armenian quarters of the towns. By the next summer, between 100,000 to 200,000
Armenians had been killed, and over half a million were doomed to poverty by looting
and pillages. A number of villages were burned, and Muslims settled in the depopulat-
ed places in exchange; even forced conversions were reported. Because of these atroci-
ties known as the ‘first Armenian massacre,’ tens of thousands emigrated. It is notewor-
thy that during these atrocities, paramilitaries known as Hamidiyes played a major role.
The attitude of the Ottoman government toward Armenians had changed from one
lation, without taking into consideration the successive plight of the Muslims in the Balkans.
The long process of the dismantling of the Empire was a chain of massacres and an exodus of
the Muslim population. Thus, Vahakn Dadrian is partly right when he says that ‘the Armenian
genocide was a by-product of the conflicts in the Balkans.’ But it is entirely misguided when
he claims that Western diplomacy during the Eastern Question was a forerunner of the ‘hu-
manitarian intervention,’ seeking to alleviate the plight of the subject nationalities groaning un-
der Turkish misrule: Dadrian, Vahakn N. 1995. The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic
Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus, Providence: Berghahn Books, p. xx. Saying
this is no different from saying that the colonialism by the imperialist states of nineteenth-cen-
tury Europe was a genuine mission to civilise the peoples of Asia and Africa. The Westerners
saw the nationalist movements of the Ottoman Christian subjects as a lead for their imperialist
policy towards the Middle East.
26
Sonyel, Salahi. 1993. Minorities and the Destruction of the Ottoman Empire, Ankara:
Türk Tarih Kurumu.
27
Nalbandian, Louise. 1967. The Armenian Revolutionary Movements: The Development
of Armenian Political Parties Through the Nineteenth Century, Berkeley: University of California
Press, pp. 67–89.
34 Tetsuya Sahara
of appeasement to that of taking preventive measures. The government intentionally

sought to eliminate the nationalist threat from Eastern Anatolia before it could emerge
as a concrete movement. Apparently, the Ottomans regarded the entire community of
Armenians as an unruly element that would cause separatism in the future.28
The strategy of the Armenian nationalists also changed after the massacre of
1895–96. Contrary to the former moderate stance to seek reform by peaceful means, the
new generation adopted a more radical line to organise terrorist activities in the hope of
Western intervention on their behalf. When war broke out between the Ottomans and
Russians in the autumn of 1914, and especially after the abortive expedition of Enver
Paşa to Transcaucasia during the winter of 1914–15, the Armenian revolutionary na-
tionalists began to take up arms and organise subversions. They also attacked Muslim
villages, and committed atrocities against the civilians.29 The violence of the Armenian
nationalists, however, was limited both in scale and sphere of activities. Initiatives for
the second Armenian massacre mainly came from the Ottoman side. After the cata-
strophic defeat of his expedition, Enver blamed Armenians for his failure. In February
1915, Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman army were disarmed and transferred to work
battalions. Disarmament was also forced on the entire Armenian population. In March,
many Armenians of Zeitun and the other Cilician cities were killed; the survivors were
deported. By the end of the next month, the final stage of the deportation had been
set up. Orders were cabled to governors and military commanders in the six provinc-
es to remove Armenians by force. Armenians, regardless of age and gender, were told
to leave for new locations in a few hours or days. The deportees were forced to move
to distant places, especially to Syria, usually on foot and without proper supply of food
and drink. Hundreds of thousands were killed by fatigue, hunger, epidemics, and at-
tacks by the local Muslim population.30 Though the estimated number of victims varies
between 300,000 and 3,000,000 depending on the political stance of the claimants, the
fact remains that almost the entire Armenian population in Eastern Anatolia was wiped
out. It is also a matter of serious dispute how much the Ottoman government was re-
ally committed to the death of Armenians. Turkish scholars tend to emphasise the role
of non-government factors, such as the attacks by Kurdish tribes, and Muslim ‘popular
violence.’ Even if so, it is obvious that the Ottoman government, imbued with Turkish
nationalism, ordered the transfer of a particular group of the population because of their
ethnicity. In this way, Turkish Muslims, long-time victims of Christian nationalism, now
adopted the same chauvinistic opinion regarding their perpetrators.
The same type of preventive deportation was also witnessed in Bosnia during
the First World War. The Bosnian military governor and notorious Croatian national-
28
Bournoutian, George. 1994. A History of the Armenian People, vol. 2, Costa Mesa:
Mazda Publishers, pp. 88–98.
29
Gürün, Kamuran. 1985. The Armenian File: The Myth of Innocence Exposed, London:
K. Rustem & Brother, pp. 186–206.
30
Naimark, Norman. 2002. Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century
Europe, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 27–38.
ist Stefan Sarkotić began to arrest and deport prominent Serbs; almost five thousand
were interned in camps. Sarkotić also ordered the deportation of fifty thousand Serb
civilians from the Drina Valley. These are the first examples of forced ethnic transfer in
modern Bosnia. Sarkotić also employed paramilitaries to oppress Serbs. A special de-
fence force recruited among Muslim Bosnians and Croats eventually grew to twenty
thousand and engaged in ‘anti-bandit operations’ along the Drina border with Serbia.
The force committed massacres of Serb villagers and deported them.31
It is most probable that the period from the Balkan Wars to the Anatolian War
was the worst culmination of the ethnic deportation caused by popular violence in
modern Balkan history. The original form of these atrocities was set during the Russo-
Turkish War of 1877–78, when paramilitaries organised by the nationalists and sup-
ported by the regular army played the major role in massacring and deporting civil-
ians. This format was now revived after forty years with even worst brutalities. Not only
the Balkan Christian states but also the new nationalist state, Turkey, participated in
those atrocities. Almost all over the war theatre, we can find traces of collaboration be-
tween the army and the paramilitaries resulting in huge casualties among the civilians
and deportation of these civilians on a mass scale. In this way, the basic ethnic map of
the Balkans and Anatolia was changed and formulated anew.
It was obvious that the states concerned bore the major responsibility for the
spreading of popular violence. They gave tacit approval to the organisation and opera-
tion of the paramilitaries. The regular army officers distributed arms and munitions to
civilians to transform them into paramilitary units, and provided them with training,
financial aid, and information. It is, however, also true that ‘ordinary people’ voluntar-
ily launched attacks against their ‘neighbours.’ Many villagers and urban dwellers or-
ganised armed bands that went to faraway places in search of war spoils. Such people
committed atrocities with apparent personal motives; they plundered money and oth-
er precious things, stole harvests, cattle, and/or sheep. Thus, we can call the violence a
‘grass-roots’ type of deportation.
Unfortunately, most of the perpetrators were not condemned as war criminals
at that time. Not only did they escape from trials; many of them were applauded as na-
tional heroes. The reason was simple. They had contributed to the enforcement of the
nation states by eliminating aliens from the ‘national territories.’32 Thus, they became
role models for the next generations. It was a triumph of the principle that the state in-
deed controlled the fate of its nation.
The attitudes of the ‘international community’ at the time also contributed to es-
tablishing the basic political principle. The Lenin-Wilson doctrine of national self-de-
termination was ostensibly democratic by claiming a nation possessed the right to de-
termine its own political fate. This principle, however, only escalated the deterioration of
Lampe, John. 1996. Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country, Cambridge:
31
Cambridge University Press, pp. 106–107.

32
Toynbee, The Western Question, pp. 277–278.
36 Tetsuya Sahara
human rights by admitting that groups, not individuals, decided destinies. The view was
nothing less than a reproduction of the ethnic cleansing33 tradition. The ‘international
community’ approved the war criminality of nation states as a fait accompli, while forc-
ing the victims to content themselves with their moderate status as minorities.
If we take into consideration the atmosphere of the time, it might not be impos-
sible to understand why such anti-human treatment as population transfers were wel-
comed as rational measures for resolving ‘national questions’ in those days. Greece and
Bulgaria, Turkey and Bulgaria, and Greece and Turkey successively signed agreements
on population exchange.34 However, it is nonsense to assume that those state-spon-
sored deportations were more humane than those caused either by popular violence
or by war operations. A great many people perished during the transportation, as the
directing governments did not or could not provide the appropriate support they had
promised. Many people lost their lives owing to the shortage of food, epidemics, and
harsh transportation conditions. It was really hard for those who managed to arrive at
the final destination to settle in life again.
The compensation for their loss of property was not acceptable at all, or if pro-
vided, it was far from adequate and late to arrive. It took those individuals a long time
to rebuild their lives and adapt to the host countries. It is also misguided to assume that
the population exchange, in the long term, contributed to the stability of the states in-
volved. They did not recover from the economic damage caused by the deportation for
a long time, and suffered from under-development.35 In spite of these ramifications,
33
This author likes to use the term as a broad concept that is not limited to describing
the same kinds of mass violence as those that raged during the wars of Yugoslav succession.
According to the definition of the UN commission of experts in 1994, ‘“ethnic cleansing” is a
purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-
inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geo-
graphic areas.’ The definition does not exclude state-sponsored population transfer, at least in
theory. Among the historians studying modern war criminal acts, it is rather common to under-
stand the term as including mass deportation: Hayden, Robert. 1996. ‘Schindler’s Fate: Genocide,
Ethnic Cleansing and Population Transfer,’ Slavic Review, 55 (Winter 1996), pp. 727–748; Ball-
Fialkoff, Andrew. 1996. Ethnic Cleansing, New York: St. Martin’s Griffin; Naimark, Fires of Hatred;
Várdy Steven & Hunt Tooley (eds.). 2003. Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century Europe, Boulder: East
European Monographs; Martin, Terry. 1998. ‘The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,’ Journal of
Modern History, 70 (December 1998), pp. 813–861.
34
For a general survey of this theme, see Ladas, Stephen. 1932. The Exchange of Minorities:
Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, New York: Macmillan.
35
As for the negative effects of the population exchange in Greek state and society,
see Pentzopoulos, Dimitri. 1962. The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and Its Impact on Greece,
Paris: Mouton; see also the papers read at an international conference organised by the Refugee
Studies Centre, University of Oxford, in 1998: Hirschon, Renée (ed.). 2003. Crossing the Aegean:
An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange Between Greece and Turkey, New
York: Berghahn Books.
the ‘international community’ repeatedly enforced the same kind of solution to several
cases that followed in history. The ‘democratic states’ that prepared the Potsdam dec-
laration approved the deportation of six million Germans from Eastern Europe. The
concept of ‘divide and solve’ was also clearly a concept followed by the Dayton Peace
Accord in 1995.
Furthermore, population transfer is no different an option than the ‘grass-roots’
type of transfer. There was not the slightest humanitarian consideration in the basic mo-
tives of such a state-sponsored population transfer. It was not out of concern for human-
itarian care but out of nationalist anxiety that the population exchange was prepared.
The population transfers were no more than brushing up on the task of total elimination
of the alien elements, a task which wartime violence had failed to complete.
From the Mid-Twentieth Century to the Present Day

Taking the scale and the sphere of influence into consideration, we can call
World War I the culmination of ethnic deportation based on the tradition of nation-
alist violence. World War II, however, surpassed its predecessor in depth of brutality.
The worst example can be seen in the case of NDH (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, the
Independent State of Croatia).
The notorious Fascist puppet state was in a way a compilation of the worst anti-
human elements of Modern Balkan nationalism at that time. Lagging behind the other
Balkan ‘historical’ nations, Croats succeeded in building their ‘nation state’ as late as
1941. It was not the result of the ‘national liberation’ movement (nor war) of Croats,
but a present from Hitler and Mussolini, who appointed Ante Pavelić and his Ustashe,
a small group of Croatian nationalists, to govern the country. As frequently happens
to latecomers, Croats adopted the preceding models in their most purified forms. The
militant Croatian nationalists, known as Ustashe, stated an ‘ethnically pure’ state to be
their goal. The Ustashe inherited the stream of Croatian nationalist thought that re-
garded Serbs as the most dangerous enemy of the nation. The tradition started in the
‘Party of Right’; then the ‘Party of Pure Right’ succeeded it. It might be true to say that
the Ustashe atrocities partly derived from the peculiarity of this idea. However, the
atrocities themselves were not the unique products of this line of Croatian national-
ism. The famous three-part theory36 that many writers mention when they explain the
Ustashe and NDH was the essence of a nationalist policy that many Balkan states had
exercised in one way or another, if with much less intensity.
Deportation was a favourite policy of the Balkan governments in the first half of
the twentieth century. Forced conversion, even if not so common, was not unknown.
36
On June 22 in Gospić, Mile Budak, the Ustasha chief propagandist and Pavelić’s edu-
cation minister, openly announced that one third of the Serbs of NDH would be deported to
Serbia and another third converted to the Catholic Church (thereby Croatised). The other third,
he added, would simply be killed. See Lampe, Yugoslavia, p. 205.
38 Tetsuya Sahara
The Bulgarian and Greek nationalists had been converting the population of Macedonia
by force to their own churches. The Bulgarian government tried to Christianise Pomaks
(an ethnic group of Slavic Muslims) in 1912–13.37 Probably the only innovation the
Ustashe added to the list of Balkan nationalist atrocities were the concentration camps
for extermination.
We may be able to say that the most important contribution of the Ustasha re-
gime to the history of Balkan nationalism was that a strong opposition to their ex-
treme view prepared the stage for criticism of nationalist violence as a whole. There
had been, of course, anti-nationalist voices in the Balkan societies even before World
War II. However, it was only after the bloody experience of the Ustasha regime that
the majority of people began to turn their attention to the criminal acts of nationalists.
The Genocide Treaty of 1948 also contributed to this process. However, in the former
Yugoslavia, people tended to look for examples of genocide more in the case of the
Ustashe than in the case of the Nazis. A growing number of people started to consider
an ‘ethnically pure’ state a crime against humanity, not a heroic deed. It is interesting to
examine the etymology of the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ when we consider that process.
The term ‘ethnic cleansing’ did not first appear in the Bosnian war. As is well known,
the term frequently appeared in political discourses in the latter half of the 1980s in
Yugoslavia. At that time, the Serb nationalists used the term to describe the alleged
plot of the Albanian nationalists to create an ‘ethnically pure Kosovo.’ In this context,
they understood the term as a synonym for genocide, and tried to label Albanians as
the ‘Ustashe of today.’38 The irony of this episode shows us that embryos of a new type
of thought might have made it possible to break with past nationalist criteria. However,
the tide turned in the opposite direction.
The appearance of the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ in political discourse in the former
Yugoslavia indeed produced catastrophic effects on ‘brotherhood and unity,’ a basic
concept of the country’s federalism. Quite contrary to producing an anti-nationalist
public sentiment, the manipulation of the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ produced a ‘kettle-
calling-the-pot-black’ dispute among the Yugoslav peoples and resulted in the triumph
of the old-style nationalist way of thinking. Ultimately, that thinking then triggered off
the new ethnic wars.
These paradoxical consequences were much derived from the nature of the po-
litical culture of the socialist regimes. Communism always took an ambivalent stance
toward nationalism, as Communism espoused both internationalism and national lib-
eration. The socialist governments partly contributed to the appeasement of national
37
Georgiev, Veličko & Stajko Trifonov. 1995. Pokrustvaneto na bulgarite mohamedani,
1912– 1913: Dokumenti (Christianisation of the Bulgarian Muslims, 1912-1913: Documents),
Sofia: Prof. Marin Drinov Press.
38
Mertus, Julie A. 1999. Kosovo: How Myths and Truth Started a War, Berkeley: University
of California Press, pp. 135–140.
antagonisms, as they used socialism to control the emergence of chauvinistic elements.
It was also true that the socialist regimes provided a degree of protection to minority
ethnic groups. However, the socialist regimes by no means resolved the ‘national ques-
tions.’ They cherished the primordial nationalist idea that a nation was a basic unit of
humanity; thus any individual must belong to a certain nation, or ‘ethnic group.’ In this
way, Communism preserved the essence of the old-style Balkan nationalism. The com-
munists also mobilised nationalist sentiments to fortify their regimes. After the 1960s,
National Communism triumphed over internationalism in most of the Balkan states.
The most notorious case was the so-called ‘Renaming Process’ in Bulgaria. During this
process, the Bulgarian Communists even introduced an ethnic policy that closely re-
sembled the three-part theory of the Ustashe. Although they did not embark on mass
killing, the Bulgarian Communists tried to deport a portion of Bulgarian Muslims, and
assimilate the others.39
The real breaking point with the exclusivistic thinking of nationalist tradition
thus came with the fall of Communism. The bloodbath during the wars of Yugoslav
succession made a strong impact both on the ‘international community’ and on Balkan
indigenous societies. The wars themselves were no more than a repetition of the calam-
ities that raged in the region from 1912 to 1921. All the parties concerned justified their
military activities in the name of national liberation and claimed to be the legitimate
heirs to the national traditions.40 The styles of the atrocities that occurred were archaic
as well. In fact, they were a grand compilation of similar ethnic violence witnessed dur-
ing the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The UN commission of experts describes
the atrocities in Bosnia as follows:
‘[E]thnic cleansing’ has been carried out by means of murder, torture, arbitrary
arrest and detention, extra-judicial executions, rape and sexual assaults, con-
finement of civilian population in ghetto areas, forcible removal, displacement
and deportation of civilian population, deliberate military attacks or threats of
attacks on civilians and civilian areas, and wanton destruction of property.41
39
On the ‘renaming process,’ see Eminov, Ali. 1997. Turkish and Other Muslim Minorities
of Bulgaria, London: Hurst; Yalamov, Ibrahim. 2002. Istorija na turskata obshtnost v Bulgarija
(History of Turkish Community in Bulgaria), Sofia: Krugozor. It may be fair to add that the
Balkan Communist governments did not commit to the large-scale mass deportation of all
members of an ethnic group, while their Soviet comrades were deeply engaged in such policies
between 1936 and 1945. The expulsion of Germans from Yugoslavia and Romania was an ex-
ceptional case.
40
This author has previously pointed out the characteristic of post-socialist Balkan na-
tionalism as a recurrence to pre-WWII models, and named it an ‘atavistic nationalism.’ See
Sahara, Tetsuya. 2000. ‘Balkan Nationalism after 1989,’ Acta Slavica Iaponica.
41
UN Security Council. Final Report of the Commission of Experts, S/1994/647.
40 Tetsuya Sahara
All of these acts were common and ordinary scenes in the past. Paramilitary
groups mushroomed all over the contested areas. Although they came from varied
backgrounds, whether former JNA soldiers or amnestied convicts, the groups pre-
tended to be voluntary fighters with good will and desire to protect their oppressed
brothers.42 Many paramilitaries enjoyed tacit or explicit support from their govern-
ments as well. They were primarily responsible for well-known acts of ethnic cleansing,
such as chasing people from their homes, pillaging the countryside, brutalising, raping
women, and murder. The most severe damage to life and limb was done by them. The
nationalist atrocities resulted in the creation of more or less ‘ethnically pure’ zones.43
Croatia and Kosovo have become the ethnically purest state/region in Europe. Bosnia-
Herzegovina has become a political body composed of three ethnic territories. The re-
publics of Serbia and Montenegro have also become much simpler in their ethnic com-
position than before the wars. So, the wars left nothing new, except for one point.
The difference between the Yugoslav wars and the former Balkan ethnic con-
flicts resides in the fact that the contemporary ‘international community’ did not ac-
cept, at least in theory, the nationalist claims to establish ethnically pure states. An in-
ternationally sanctioned population exchange did not occur. An international criminal
court was set up and started the work of punishing those who committed war crimes.
These subtle changes in the response to ethnic cleansing will contribute to breaking
with the notion that the state controls the fate of its nation.
Conclusion
Modern forced ethnic migration is a quite different event than those that hap-
pened in earlier times. Contrary to the earlier cases, the modern examples create ethni-
cally pure territories, and the result becomes permanent. Forced deportation appeared
simultaneously with the rise of nationalism. Most of the deportations were justified
until recently as acts of national liberation. Christian peasants attacked and pillaged
42
During the Yugoslav wars the bandit tradition was effectively mobilised for organis-
ing paramilitary units. Paramilitaries drew some of their inspiration from fighters in the Balkan
Wars and the Second World War. For instance, the Serb paramilitary fighters in Croatia and
Bosnia often referred to themselves and were referred to by others as Chetniks (Royalist Serb
paramilitary during WWII). See Carmichael, Ethnic Cleansing, p. 42. Many of the notorious par-
amilitary leaders came from the criminal circles. Thus, in a sense, they simply engaged in their
long accustomed activities. Notwithstanding, people welcomed them as protectors and even ac-
cepted them as their heroes. The reason is simple: the paramilitaries pretended to be patriots
and justified their atrocities by tapping into the nationalist rhetoric. See Čolović, Ivan. 2004. ‘A
Criminal-National Hero? But Who Else?’ in Todorova (ed.), Balkan Identities, pp. 253–268.
43
It is also important to add the following point. Paramilitaries waged atrocities on their
own initiative. See Bax, Mart. 2000. ‘Warlords, Priests and the Politics of Ethnic Cleansing: A Case-
Study from Rural Bosnia Herzegovina,’ Ethnic and Racial Studies, 23/1, January 2000, pp. 16–36.
their Muslim neighbours when war broke out. Victims and refugees were regarded
as oppressors (or collaborators of the oppressors) and denied their rights to dwell in
the land. Then revolutionary nationalism gave formal justification to the atrocities and
contributed to institutionalising ‘grass-roots’ violence and creating paramilitaries. The
paramilitaries were essentially a tool of the modern states. Under the guise of tradition-
al popular violence, such as the hayduks or efes, the core of those who committed the
violence were career soldiers. By using these paramilitaries, the states succeeded in eth-
nically purifying their territories. At the next stage, the states become directly engaged
in the deportation of people. Governments, either by mutual agreements or with the
approval of the ‘international community,’ exchanged their ‘unwanted elements.’
It is a serious mistake to consider such state-sponsored deportation as a human-
itarian option to the alternative, ‘grass-roots’ violence. The notion of ethnic cleansing
served to reveal the continuity between them clearly. While the popular violence di-
rectly posed serious threats to members of the minority ethnic groups and frequently
resulted in a mass exodus, the state-sponsored deportations served to sanction the con-
sequences of ‘grass-roots’ violence and to complete the deportation work to create eth-
nically pure spaces. They both composed a successive process and complemented each
other. They shared the same principle that the state controlled the fate of the nation.
The notion of ethnic cleansing will also contribute to the future break with the
tragic chain of forced ethnic migrations in the modern Balkans. Ethnic cleansing is
none other than a form of traditional nationalist violence. As the understanding that
ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity becomes more widespread, it will become
much more difficult to justify nationally motivated violence as an act of national self-
determination.
42
‘EXPULSION’ OF THE GERMAN POPULATION

FROM EASTERN EUROPE:
TOWARD OVERCOMING
NEGATIVE HISTORICAL HERITAGE
Atsuko Kawakita
Tokyo University, Japan
1. ‘Expulsion’ of the German Population from Eastern Eu-

rope
Toward the end and shortly after the Second World War, the German popula-
tion was forced to emigrate from the German territory to the east of the Oder and the
Neisse, and from Central and Eastern European countries including Czechoslovakia,
Poland and Hungary, as well as South Eastern European countries (Romania, Bulgaria
and Yugoslavia), the Soviet Union and the Baltic countries. In Germany this forced mi-
gration is called Vertreibung (expulsion) and Germans who were forced to leave their
residence area at that time are called Vertriebene (expellees).
Of the fifteen million expellees and refugees, approximately twelve million ar-
rived on the territory of postwar Germany, including both the West and the East. These
expellees and refugees constituted approximately 20% and 25% of the population of
West and East Germany respectively.1 During the forced migration the expellees and
refugees suffered from plundering, assault and battery, and sexual assault on women.2
After 1950 West Germany’s Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War
Victims systematically collected extant private documents and records related to the
experiences of the victims of the forced migration, complemented them by question-
naire surveys, and published a Documentation of the Expulsion of the Germans from
Eastern-Central Europe in five volumes with three supplements in the years 1953 to
1961. In addition, the federal government commissioned a Documentation of the
1
Reichling, Gerhard. 1986. Die Deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen, part 1, Rheinbreitbach:
Kulturstiftung der Deutschen Vertriebenen; 1989. Die Deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen, part 2,
Meckenheim: Kulturstiftung der Deutschen Vertriebenen.
2
Bundesministerium für Vertriebene (ed.). 1984. Dokumentation der Vertreibung der
Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, 5 vols., München: Deutscher Taschenbunch Verlag; Benz,
Wolfgang (ed.). 1995. Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten. Ursachen, Ereignisse, Folgen,
new ed., Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbunch Verlag, and so on.
‘Expulsion’ of the German population from Еastern Еurope: toward overcoming negative ... 43
Crimes of Expulsion in 1969, which was compiled from the ‘Eastern Documentation’ of
the Federal Archive of Germany. Further, there are many other collections in the form
of accounts given by persons involved, response sheets to questionnaire surveys, his-
torical analysis and posthumous writings of private individuals in the Federal Archive
of Germany. There are also official documents from zones of occupation and other fed-
eral administrative institutions till 1955, which report predominantly the fate of expel-
lees and refugees after their arrival in the western zones of occupation, and materials
from the ministries, which were responsible for expellees and refugees at the regional
and local level. In addition, there are plenty of materials in the collections and archives
of the Home Province Information Offices, the search operations of the Church and
the German Red Cross, and the nation-wide organisations of expellees and refugees or
their affiliated societies.
The actual details of the forced migration are reported in great detail in these
documents and materials. The following are some examples:
1) Suffering of the Germans who did not flee after the invasion of the Red Army
Among my relatives about three quarters died during Russian rule. Two broth-
ers of my father were shot to death ... When Russians came, they tried to rape
my cousin ... My uncle and aunt wanted to help her and were shot to death.3
For us the situation became more and more terrible. All cattle, horses, sheep,
pigs, all poultry, fat and meat, milk, eggs; Russians took everything away,
plundered everything; dresses, shoes, laundry, all grain crops.4
2) Sexual abuse of German women
Soon thereafter we became acquainted with the most terrible Russians. They
sprang upon the women like wolves.5
Women and girls had to work hard despite having an insufficient food supply.
We also saw shameless scenes where women and girls were stripped naked
and beaten. On one evening in the girls’ school at Turnplatz women and girls
had their clothes removed and were lashed in front of the eyes of hundreds of
soldiers and officers of the Czech army. Many injuries occurred.6
At all times of the day we women were raped and our shirts were torn from
our bodies. … I cannot speak in public about the kinds of animalistic perver-
sities that the German women had to endure …7
3
An account of a woman from East Prussia, in Kuhn, Ekkehard. 1989. Nicht Rache, nicht
Vergeltung: die deutsche Vertriebenen, Frankfurt am Main; Berlin: Ulllstein, pp. 81–82.
4
Henke, Josef. 1995. ‘Exodus aus Ostpreußen und Schlesien. Vier Erlebnisberichte,’ in
Benz (ed.). Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten, p. 122.
5
An account of a woman from the district of Naugard in Pommern, in Kuhn. Nicht
Rache, nicht Vergeltung, p. 76.
6
Harasko, Alois. 1995. ‘Die Vertreibung der Sudetendeutschen. Sechs Erlebnisberichte,’
in Benz (ed.). Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten, p. 146.
7
Naimark, Norman M. 2001. Fires of Hatred. Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century
Europe, Cambridge; Massachusetts; London: Harvard University Press, p. 119.
44 Atsuko Kawakita
3) Forced migration from East Prussia

Then Sunday, 11 November came, the day of our evacuation and transporta-
tion from our homeland. After Poles had conducted house searches and robbed
us of all useful things on Saturday, we went to the designated place with twen-
ty pounds of hand baggage, were registered and under the control of armed
guards walked to Sonnborn where the Polish office resided. There we spent
two days and after having our baggage searched and suffering further plunder-
ing we had to walk to the station of Mahrungen ... After Poles had pillaged us
all along the way, we got on the transport train (approximately 45 cattle wag-
ons for 4,500 persons). In my wagon there were 116 people. There was no place
in the wagon to stand or to sit. ... After Poles had pillaged us thoroughly once
again, the train jerked into motion ... The plunder lasted 11 days.8
The first stage of the forced migration in particular required a lot of sacri-
fice. Under harsh conditions over two million died in the process, many from
hunger and disease.9
2. Forced Migrations as a Twentieth-Century European Phe-

nomenon
It was the demarcation of the Central and Eastern European borders after the
Second World War that led to the forced migration of the German population from
Eastern Europe. At the Tehran Conference of 1943, the Allies agreed upon the Curzon
Line as the western border of the Soviet Union, and Poland lost its eastern territory. To
compensate Poland for the loss of its eastern territory, part of the eastern territory of
Germany was in turn placed under Polish rule. The alteration of borders seemed to re-
quire the immediate migration of the ethnic German inhabitants in order to avoid the
risk of ethnic problems in the region in question.
Trying to solve the problem of minorities through forced migration was not an
unprecedented attempt. A naïve reliance on the concept of an ethnically homogeneous
nation state and a lack of hesitation about putting the idea into practice by force was
widely shared across twentieth-century Europe. Since the birth of the ethnically hetero-
geneous states in Eastern and South Eastern Europe after the First World War, the prob-
lem of minorities had become a pressing issue of international policy.10 Creating homo-
geneous inhabitant groups by removing heterogeneous elements was believed to lead to
the solution of ethnic problems. In the twentieth century many population exchanges
took place and the region where they most frequently occurred was Eastern Europe.
A protocol annexed to the peace treaty between Bulgaria and Turkey in September
1913 was the first international convention, which formulated the idea of the resolu-
8
Henke, ‘Exodus aus Ostpreußen und Schlesien,’ pp. 123–124.
9
Reichling, Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen, part 1, p. 36.
10
Henke, Klaus-Dietmar. 1995. ‘Der Weg nach Potsdam – Die Alliierten und die
Vertreibung,’ in Benz (ed.). Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten, p. 59.
tion of ethnic problems through population exchanges.11 In November 1913 a Turkish-
Bulgarian Mixed Commission signed the ‘Convention Concerning the Exchange of
Populations’ in which the two governments agreed to the voluntary resettlement of
50,000 people from the Bulgarian and Muslim populations respectively within fifteen
kilometres on either side of the entire common boundary.12 Most of the minorities had
already emigrated during the war and what was intended by the convention was to
confirm a fait accompli.13
Britain and France drew on this model in the negotiations towards the settle-
ment of the conflict between Greece and Turkey at the conference of Lausanne in 1922/
23, and a convention concerning forced population exchanges was signed in January
1923 by Greece and Turkey. The evacuation of approximately 400,000 Turks and ap-
proximately 1.3 million Greeks was a sorrowful operation, which dragged on for years.
Despite the monitoring of the transfer by a Mixed Commission of the League of Nations
and despite consensus about the rights of minorities, countless hardships and unfair
treatment resulted for the persons involved.14
For example in Greece the occupation of Muslim houses by Greek refugees
forced the Muslims to leave their homes and to migrate to Turkey as quickly as possi-
ble. The condition of Greeks remaining in Turkey was also precarious. Confiscated of
their movable property and starving in the depth of winter, they were made to travel
barefoot for many miles to the ports specified for their departure. In both countries
those subjected to population exchange were sometimes victims of attacks.15 On closer
examination, in view of not only the actual conditions of the transfers but also consid-
ering the social and economic influence upon both countries, it can be stated that the
population transfers in the eastern Mediterranean area were barbaric and ruinous ac-
tions, particularly in their first stages.16
But the more time advanced the more it seemed to politicians and diplomats
that this served as a positive example for the effective settlement of minority problems
through radical ethnic separation.17 So the Second World War had barely begun when
both the Polish and Czechoslovak governments-in-exile began talking about the ex-
pulsion of Germans from their respective countries after victory in the war. Both gov-
ernments referred frequently to the ostensibly successful transfer of Greeks and Turks
under the Treaty of Lausanne.18 In the political negotiations during the Second World
War, the population exchange between Greeks and Turks after the First World War
11
Ladas, Stephen P. 1932. The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, New
York: Macmillan, pp. 18–20.
12
Henke, ‘Der Weg nach Potsdam,’ p. 59.
13
Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, pp. 18–20.
14
Henke, ‘Der Weg nach Potsdam,’ pp. 59–60.
15
Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, p. 429.
16
Henke, ‘Der Weg nach Potsdam,’ pp. 59–60.
17
Ibid., p. 60.
18
Naimark, Fires of Hatred. Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe, p. 108.
46 Atsuko Kawakita
served as a model and functioned as a standard argument of prominent statesmen

from the anti-Hitler coalition.
But Americans and British were increasingly worried about the costs to their do-
mestic budgets of feeding and housing Germans in their respective zones of occupation.
In order to avoid the continued influx of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia,
the Western Allies insisted that the process of deportation should be slowed down and
regularised.19 Thus Article XIII of the Potsdam Treaty read:
The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recog-
nise that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof,
remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken.
They agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and
humane manner.20
So far all three governments (the USA, Britain, and the Soviet Union) agreed on
the need for moving Germans out of Eastern Europe as an acceptable solution to the
ethnic problems in the region, and were not against the population transfer in itself.
The resolution of minority problems through ethnic separation was a dominant idea
especially in the first half of the twentieth century, and the international community
put it into action in order to establish postwar Central and Eastern European order.
In the latter half of the twentieth century, the international community ceased to
take the initiative in putting forced migration into action as a recipe for solving ethnic
problems. But when there were frequent outbreaks of ethnic hostilities and conflicts,
especially in the former Yugoslavia as well as in Asia, Africa and Central and Southern
America in the latter half of the twentieth century, behind those conflicts stood the
idea that the homogenisation of inhabitant groups leads to the solution of ethnic prob-
lems. The principle of self-determination connected with nationalism and racism had
in the twentieth century and has even today a destructive power as an ideology, which
leads to ethnic conflicts and ethnic cleansing.
3. Reconciliation after Ethnic Conflicts: The German Case

Today in troubled regions all over the world there is an urgent need to stop con-
flicts, to provide humanitarian relief to refugees, and to redress and eliminate the major
factors causing social differences and poverty which in turn make societies vulnerable
to conflict. Furthermore, it is necessary for social reconstruction to address issues such
as punishment of the perpetrators, and compensation and mental care for the victims.
Ibid., p. 111.
19
Historical Office Bureau of Public Affairs. 1960. Foreign Relations of the United States:
20
Diplomatic Papers. The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference) 1945, Vols. I and II.
Washington, DC: Government Printing Office (GPO), p. 1511.
While addressing these actual topics, it is also necessary to make efforts for total so-
cial reconstruction including a prevention of future conflicts. For example, education
for prevention of recurrence of violent conflicts, and reconciliation and promotion of
dialogue among the parties in conflict are important. In this context it is important to
make use of European experiences in overcoming past negative heritage and in work-
ing on regional reconciliation in post-conflict regions.
For this purpose the relations between Germany and Eastern Europe after the
Second World War and the ‘expulsions’ provide an interesting case for considering the
reconstruction of post-conflict interstate relations. We would like to take the case of the
‘expulsion’ of Germans as an example in order to examine how to handle the concept of
collective memory in the context of reconciliation.
Germany, which started the Second World War with its invasion of Poland, oc-
cupied neighbouring European countries and above all committed mass-killing of
European Jews, played the role of perpetrator in the Second World War. On the oth-
er hand, in the collective memory of postwar Germany, the ‘expulsion’ of Germans
symbolises Germany as a victim in the Second World War. The German right wing in
particular has been trying to balance out the crimes of Nazi Germany with the severe
damage caused by the ‘expulsion.’ It is obvious that this is hardly acceptable historically.
Nazi Germany encouraged the transfer of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe into
German-occupied Poland, and expelled Jews and Poles from the region. According to
current views, this population transfer policy escalated, became radicalised and led
to the Holocaust, a systematic mass-killing of human beings.21 Especially in Eastern
European countries it is sometimes said that the forced migration of the German pop-
ulation from Eastern Europe after the Second World War was just a recompense for the
violent population transfer policy of Nazi Germany.
The difference of standpoints is reflected in the variety of words, which are as-
signed to name the historical forced migration process in the countries concerned. The
German term Vertreibung has strong emotional implications. It has been used mainly
because of the fact that it functions critically against those who put the forced migra-
tion into practice. This happens because the term Vertreibung refers semantically to
the movement of cattle driven by humans in the meadow.22 The term ‘transfer’ in the
Potsdam Treaty on the other hand implies a movement of people from one place to an-
other or orderly evacuations involving maintenance of property. The Czech term odsun
21
Aly, Götz. 1995. Endlösung: Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen
Juden, Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.
22
Wojciechowski, Marian. 1987. ‘Die Evakuierung, die Flucht und die Zwangsumsiedlung
der deutschen Bevölkerung aus den Gebieten östlich der Oder und Neiße (1944–1951),’ in
Jacobmeyer, Wolfgang (ed.). Die Beziehungen zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und
der Volksrepublik Polen bis zur Konferenz über Sicherheit und Zusammenarbeit in Europa
(Helsinki 1975), Braunschweig: Selbstverlag des Georg-Eckert-Instituts für Internationale
Schulbuchforschung, p. 75.
48 Atsuko Kawakita
in contrast has none of the implications that are associated with the terms Vertreibung
or ‘transfer.’ It only implies the presence of a superior power. Questions about why
or where are not raised. Odsun does not have ethical or legal meanings and implies
therefore no responsibility and no memory of the administrations or contracting par-
ties to the population transfer conventions. Consequently odsun can be justified as
a ‘historical necessity.’23 In Poland, another perpetrator of the forced migration, the
term wysiedlenie is often used. This is a Polish term whose counterpart in German is
Ausweisung. The term Ausweisung expresses a legally legitimised act and suppresses
therefore all the signs of violence implied by Vertreibung.24 Comparing various terms, it
is obvious that Vertreibung is a word that reflects the victim consciousness of Germans.
The term Vertreibung connotes an accusation against the injustice of the Vertreibung
and an intention to attack those who executed Vertreibung.
In view of the fact that each country has a different terminology which reflects its
own standpoint, the recommendations of the German-Polish Textbook Commission
in 1976 adopted the term Bevölkerungsverschiebung.
The territorial changes at the end of the Second World War led to large-scale
population shifts (Bevölkerungsverschiebung). They aimed to match ethnic boundaries
with national boundaries as far as possible. The historical experiences of ethnic con-
flicts as well as the violent population transfer and occupation policy in the preceding
period played a substantial role in this context.25
On the other hand there are many cases in the process of forced migration of
Germans from Eastern Europe where the term Bevölkerungsverschiebung does not al-
ways seem a fitting description of the situation. In line with this, Recommendation 22
of the German-Polish Textbook Commission said:
In the former German territory to the east of the Oder and Neisse, which was
ceded to Poland based on the Potsdam Treaty, lived approximately 8.5 million
people in 1939. About half of them, in addition to the majority of the German
population in Danzig as well as the Germans who lived in Poland, were either
evacuated or fled into the German areas to the west of the Oder and Neisse be-
fore the end of the war with the loss of many lives. In the years 1945 to 1947
the majority of the German population who remained in the Oder-Neisse areas
23
Schmidt-Hartmann, Eva. 1995. ‘Menschen oder Nationen?,’ in: Benz (ed.). Die
Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten, p. 180.
24
Kera, Sumio. 2000. ‘Dainiji sekaitaisen go no doitsujin “tsuihō” mondai – Poland ni okeru
sono genzai’ (‘“Expulsion”’ of German Population after World War II: From the Viewpoint Nowadays
in Poland’), Journal of Modern and Contemporary History, vol. 46 (2000), p. 60, footnote 1.
25
Empfehlungen für die Schulbücher der Geschichte und Geographie in der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland und in der Volksrepublik Polen. 1995. Braunschweig: Selbstverlag des Georg-Eckert-
Instituts für Internationale Schulbuchforschung, p. 29.
were displaced or forced to emigrate, based on the allied transfer agreements.
In succeeding years spontaneous emigrations and departures to rejoin families
took place especially in 1956/57.26
The recommendation refined the process generically referred to as Vertreibung

into various stages: free-will evacuation and refuge, displacement, forced migration,
emigration and spontaneous departure.27 This terminological refinement was an ap-
propriate compromise between Germany and Poland at the time. But these termino-
logical politics also show us the limits of bilateral dialogues on the historical conscious-
ness. The forced migration after the Second World War cannot be confined to a mere
matter of a simple bilateral perpetrator-victim relationship between Germany and
Poland or Czechoslovakia, but has to be discussed in the entire context of the forced
migrations in twentieth-century Europe.
Now in Germany a plan to build a centre for the commemoration of expulsions
and forced migrations in twentieth-century Europe is in progress. The Foundation for
the Centre against Expulsions (Stiftung Zentrum gegen Vetreibungen), one of the pres-
sure groups of expellees and refugees, which was established in September 2000 for the
purpose of setting up the centre for the commemoration of expulsions, is making ef-
forts to realise the plan. The foundation describes its purpose as follows:
The fate of the more than 15 million German victims of deportation and expul-
sion from the entire region of Eastern and South Eastern Europe, along with
their own culture and settlement history in their homeland, must be able to be
learned at a glance in Berlin.
...
Expulsion and genocide of other nations particularly in Europe definite-
ly fall under the themes dealt with by the CENTRE AGAINST EXPULSIONS
(ZENTRUM GEGEN VERTREIBUNGEN). In Europe alone more than 30 na-
tional groups suffered and are suffering from such violations of human rights:
Albanians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Estonians, Georgians, Ingush, Crimean
Tatars, Poles, Chechens, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Greek Cypriots and all the
persecution and mass-killings of European Jews by the National Socialists.
Up to now pressure groups of expellees and refugees have been working on the
issue of the German ‘expulsions’ in liaison with German right-wing groups in postwar
West Germany. Until the German unification their largest concern was the border issue.
German expellees and refugees established their own interest groups in West Germany
26
Ibid.
27
Kondo, Takahiro. 1989. Kokusai rekishi kyōkasho taiwa – Europe ni okeru “kako”
no saihen (International Schoolbook Dialogue: Reconstruction of the Past in Europe), Tokyo:
Chuokoron-sha, pp. 101–104.
50 Atsuko Kawakita
and demanded the recovery of the former German eastern territories where they had lived
and desired to return to their home towns. During the Cold War period, West Germany
neither formally recognised the new border between postwar Germany and Poland, nor
discussed the treatment of the expellees and refugees with Poland and Czechoslovakia. In
this situation the pressure groups of expellees and refugees were one of the strongest ac-
tive forces demanding the return of the former German eastern territories.
In Germany today, after the unification and formal recognition of the estab-
lished postwar border, compensation for confiscated property is the most pressing topic
for the expellees and refugees. After the German unification in 1990 a Reconciliation
Declaration was agreed with Poland and Czechoslovakia. But no agreement was reached
and indeed no negotiations were conducted in relation to compensation for the expel-
lees and refugees. The West German government compensated the expellees and refu-
gees in the 1950s within the framework of domestic war victim aid. But now pressure
groups of expellees and refugees are demanding compensation for confiscated proper-
ty from the Eastern European countries, which were newly included in the EU in May
2004. The pressure groups of expellees and refugees have declared that they are ready to
file a complaint to the Court of Justice of the European Communities and the European
Court of Human Rights. A political solution to the issue has not yet been found.
Although all parties can to a certain extent admit the new and fascinating char-
acter of the concept of the Foundation for the Centre against Expulsions, which would
commemorate all the forced migrations and expulsions in twentieth-century Europe,
this historical and political background of the issue makes Germans somewhat hesi-
tant to speak openly about the plans of the Centre, and other Eastern European coun-
tries suspicious of growing conservatism in German historical consciousness.
4. Commemoration of Negative Historical Heritage in the

European Framework: Learning from the Holocaust Re-
membrance
As discussed above, the forced migrations and expulsions in twentieth-century
Europe were not a problem of any individual bilateral interstate relationship. Therefore
problems concomitant to these forced migrations, especially the remembrance of this
historical process, cannot always be dealt with effectively and properly through bilat-
eral dialogue. To resolve the conflicting perspectives, efforts have to be made by the
European community itself. Finally, I would like to discuss the activities in remem-
brance of the Holocaust, in which European countries have already begun to take ini-
tiatives for creating a cooperative framework.
With the developments in European integration, the importance of researching,
remembering and handing down information concerning the Holocaust is increas-
ingly recognised as a challenge for Europe. While Holocaust education has not been
incorporated into the legitimate education curriculum in each country yet, interests
in research and education about the Holocaust have become more and more intense
The Roma and Ethnocultural Justice: Towards a Model of Integration 51
in Europe. Efforts for the creation of a future Holocaust education programme in the
European framework are being made at various levels.
For example, the Swedish government established a ‘Task Force for International
Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research’ in Stockholm in
May 1998. Begun with three countries, Sweden, the USA and Britain, the Task Force
was joined by Israel and Germany in September 1998, and by France, Holland and
Poland in March 1999. The Task Force currently has twenty member countries, mainly
from Europe. The purpose of the Task Force is ‘to place political and social leaders’ sup-
port behind the need for Holocaust education, remembrance, and research both na-
tionally and internationally.’ This organisation supports projects such as teacher semi-
nars on the theme of the Holocaust, publication of educational pamphlets, education-
al materials and research papers, and information services.28 In addition, the Swedish
government invited the representatives of forty-six countries to Stockholm in January
2001, held the first ‘Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust’ and provided
a forum for discussion concerning education, remembrance and research about the
Holocaust. The declaration, which was adopted at the Forum, reads as follows:
With humanity still scarred by genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, anti-Semitism

and xenophobia, the international community shares a solemn responsibility to
fight those evils. … We share a commitment to commemorate the victims of the
Holocaust and to honour those who stood against it. We will encourage appro-
priate forms of Holocaust remembrance, including an annual Day of Holocaust
Remembrance, in our countries.29
Commemoration of ethnic cleansing and forced migrations in twentieth-cen-

tury Europe and prevention of further violence in the future also need to be discussed
not in a single country but in the pan-European community. In April 2004, shortly be-
fore the EU’s eastern enlargement, the ministers of education of Germany, Poland, the
Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Austria met and made a decision to establish
a ‘European Network against Forced Migrations and Expulsions.’ They agreed to pro-
mote networking of memorial museums and research institutions in European coun-
tries, to accept the participation of organisations of forced migration victims within
the network, to hold another meeting in October 2004 and to let experts develop the
design of the network in the future.30 Unfortunately, to judge from developments up to
the present date, we cannot be optimistic about the future of the network, but even so
it should be positively evaluated as the first step toward overcoming the negative herit-
age of twentieth-century Europe.
28
http://taskforce.ushmm.org/
29
http://www.holocaustforum.gov.se/
30
Ein Zentrum wird vertrieben, in taz, 24.4.2004.
52
THE ROMA AND ETHNOCULTURAL JUSTICE:

TOWARDS A MODEL OF INTEGRATION*
Dragoljub B. Ðorđević
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Nis,
Serbia and Montenegro
Marijana Filipović
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Nis, Serbia and Montenegro
‘…Without recognising the importance of ethnocultural justice,

And without basic arrangements that would assure some balance
Among ethnic aspirations, the process of modernisation cannot start to un-
fold.
The society might very well wish economic well-being
But will remain unable to make purposeful
And concentrated efforts to achieve it.’1
Global Multiculturalism as a Fact and the Problem of

Solving the ‘Living Together’ Issue
The question of different communities’ living together is maybe one of the old-
est social issues. Since the beginning of the world, there has always been the same
problem – how can two, three or more, more or less similar or different groups of peo-
ple be organised to live on the same territory, at the same time, without avoiding or
hating each other. The very question emerged because of the fact that although there
are numerous unpopulated territories on Earth, the majority of places have multiple
‘owners,’ or at least people who are trying to be that. Multiculturalism has long since
*
This paper was written under the project (1310) on ‘Cultural and Ethnic Relations in
the Balkans – Possibilities of Regional and European Integration’ implemented at the Faculty
of Philosophy, Niš, and financed by the Ministry for Science and Technology of the Republic
of Serbia.
1
Várady, Tibor. 2001. ‘On the Chances of Ethnocultural Justice in East Central Europe,’ in
Kymlicka, Will and Magda Opalski (eds.). Can Liberal Pluralism be Exported? Western Political
Theory and Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe, Oxford University Press, p. 136
become a global fact, a practice that is only confirmed by exceptions. Naturally, paral-
lel with multi-culturisation, there was a process of scientific verification of the concept
and analyses of the co-living phenomena. A number of different theories, which first
of all depended on the particular groups in question, were produced. That is why it is
not surprising that until recently, thinking about multiculturalism referred mainly to
particular needs of people such as immigrants, and it started being connected with
structural changes in contemporary society only ten years ago.2
The idea of ethnocultural neutrality represents the answer of the majority of
Western, liberal academics – such as Walzer, Ignatieff and Pfaff – to the question of
organising ethnocultural variety.3 According to these authors, states should be liberal
on this question, which practically means that they should be indifferent towards the
ethnic identities of their citizens and their representations. Ethnicity is seen as some-
thing that people may pursue, but only in their private lives and as long as the others
are not endangered. The state should be neutral regarding the language, history, lit-
erature, and other ethnic or cultural characteristics of the people who live in it. The
United States of America is usually given as an example of ethnocultural neutrality
because the country does not have an official language which is defined as such by its
Constitution.4 Ignatieff and Pfaff5 have gone even further, claiming that the existence
of ethnocultural neutrality is actually the factor that distinguishes liberal, civic na-
tions from illiberal, ethnic nations. While liberal nations are defined through belong-
ing based on acceptance of democratic values and principles, and are completely un-
interested in ethnocultural identities, illiberal nations are founded on the reproduc-
tion of a particular ethnocultural identity.
The principle of ethnocultural neutrality, according to Kymlicka,6 has often
been used as an excuse for refusing any demands that minorities would have and
which would go further than the basic individual civil and political rights. This princi-
ple has a lot of shortcomings and it is not feasible in real life. If we take the USA as an
example, as a country that is usually cited as a prototype of the liberal state, we will see
that despite the official neutrality there is a great number of systematic mechanisms
that are far from indifference and practically promote integration into a particular
ethnocultural group. Although the English language is not constitutionally defined as
the official language, there is a legal act requiring children to learn English at school;
in addition, one of the criteria for acquiring American citizenship is the ability to
speak English. In this way, a hegemony of the English language has been established,
because English has become the first language of public use, pushing other languages
2
Semprini, Andrea. 1999. Multikulturalizam, Beograd: CLIO.
3
Kymlicka, Will and Magda Opalski (eds.). 2001. Can Liberal Pluralism be Exported?
Western Political Theory and Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe, Oxford University Press.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid. p. 16.
54 Dragoljub B. Ðorđević, Marijana Filipović
aside. Kymlicka thinks that the story does not end with the usage of the language issue
and that it is far from accidental – that is, far from being the exception that confirms
the rule. Namely, the process described above was undertaken in order to promote the
integration into something that he calls societal culture. Under this syntax, Kymlicka
understands a territorially concentrated culture, which is based on a common lan-
guage used in a great number of societal institutions that cover the full range of hu-
man activities in public and private life. The American government has intentionally
promoted integration into such a societal culture so that it could provide citizens with
access to institutions that base their existence and work on the English language.
Kymlicka believes that the model of ethnocultural neutrality is a myth which
cannot be achieved in real life and which needs to be replaced with a more realistic
model of ‘nation-building.’ This model is almost entirely based on the promotion of
the societal culture that includes the majority of citizens, although it is also possible
that a government might support the existence of two or more societal cultures within
one state. Positive examples of this can be found in Switzerland, Canada, Spain, and
Belgium. The tools of the nation-building model are the use of one language, develop-
ment of the national media, promotion of national symbols and holidays, naming of
streets, rivers, and mountains after national heroes or events. The model is present in
almost all liberal democratic countries and it was applied in their building. The basic
mechanisms or means for establishing one dominant societal culture are: introducing
an official language, a uniform system of education, acceptance of the policy of migra-
tion and naturalisation, altering of administrative regions in order to lessen the share
of minorities in them, and centralisation of power. The nation-building model is so
widespread and accepted that despite the positive examples of existence of more than
one societal culture, one can question whether this model is fair to minorities. Or, to
quote Kymlicka himself, ‘the standard for evaluation of minority rights isn’t ethnocul-
tural neutrality any more but ethnocultural justice.’7 Although he does not say explic-
itly that nation-building affects minorities destructively, Kymlicka nonetheless claims
that if there are a language and culture that are being supported by the state and at the
same time represent a frame for the functioning of the economy, politics and other
social subsystems, this means that the people who recognise this particular language
and culture as their own have a big advantage.
As far as East European countries are concerned, Kymlicka believes that they
do not even pretend to be ethnoculturally neutral and that they are trying to apply
the nation-building model. This practically means that these countries are working
for the spread of a common societal culture on their entire territory. Considering that
this model is taken from liberal countries, where the minority question does not con-
stitute the foundations and reason for conflicts and instabilities, one may say that East
European countries are obviously applying and putting the above-mentioned mecha-
nisms in different contexts. Kymlicka talks about nine differences in applying the na-
7
Ibid. p. 21.
tion-building model observed between liberal (Western) and illiberal (East European)
states. Those differences are: the level of coercion which is used in order to promote
common national identity; more restrictive concept of public sphere and more expan-
sive concept of private sphere in which differences are tolerated; banning speech or
political parties which are against integration into the unique national identity; defi-
nition of the national community; narrowly defined concept of national identity; val-
uing or non-valuing the nation as the highest value in society; attitude towards cos-
mopolitanism in national identity; attitude towards dual nationality; and, attitude to-
wards minorities which are territorially grouped and do not accept the official model
of national identity.
Having in mind the history of ethnic conflicts in Eastern Europe, the following
question must be posed: How does applying the liberal model of nation-building as a
dominant way of solving co-living affect minorities? It has been shown that this mod-
el, combined with more extreme variants of the above-mentioned nine factors, does
not give good results and that states are faced with growing demands of minorities for
autonomy and greater alienation from the preferred societal culture. Finally, Kymlicka
thinks that when minority groups find themselves within the project of nation-build-
ing, they have four possible options of reacting to it:
1. they can emigrate;
2. they can accept integration and discuss the fair terms of integration so that
they would not lose their identity;
3. they can fight for autonomy and in that way preserve their, parallel to the of-
ficial, societal culture; and,
4. they can accept permanent marginalisation.8
Emigration is possible only if there is a country, which would be ready to ac-

cept the particular minority group. If such a country does not exist, there is a dan-
ger that the minority group would only make other countries angry since they would
have to deal with it. Integration can be perceived as the best solution, but it implies
big responsibility on the part of the minority group, very strong identity, as well as the
existence of a self-conscious cultural and political elite that would negotiate the inte-
gration terms. Integration also presupposes readiness of the state to negotiate and as-
sure a favourable climate for minorities so that they can then join the societal culture.
Forming an independent societal culture has proved to be a good solution in some
liberally oriented countries; however, it again relies on the strong identity and the will
of the state to ‘share’ the public sphere within its borders. Finally, permanent margin-
alisation seems to be the easiest, but also the most tragic solution. However, minori-
ties that lack either well-developed self-consciousness or identity are very likely to
slowly slip into that direction.
8
Ibid. p.22.
Multiculturalism in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Serbia: The

Roma as a Model of Ethnocultural Justice
It seems that multiculturalism, or any other ‘multism,’ is especially true for the
Balkans. The territory occupied by the former Yugoslavia (SFRY), as well as Romania,
Bulgaria or parts of Greece, has constantly been populated by a mixture of different
peoples. Moreover, it has also been a scene of conflicts that flared up precisely be-
cause of multiculturalism. This brings us to the general question of the relationship
between the status of minorities and ethnocultural justice in these regions and, more
specifically, in the area of Southeast Serbia, East and Central Bulgaria, and Northwest
Macedonia.
The basic characteristic of the three regions is undoubtedly the diversity of
their population. There is hardly a single square metre here, which is not populat-
ed by two or more different ethnic, cultural, religious or other groups. Furthermore,
there is hardly a single square metre without a presence of majority-minority relation-
ship; this relationship is so complicated that a particular group may simultaneously
constitute the majority in one area and a minority just a couple of kilometres away.
Bulgarians, Macedonians, Serbs, Albanians, Turks, Vlachs are found in all of the re-
gions, and their status depends on the history, the surrounding population, organisa-
tion, existence and support of the kin-state, but also on the attitudes of the states to-
wards the minority question.
To compare the situation regarding multicultural reality and application of eth-
nocultural justice in the countries in question, we decided to focus on Roma as a
group that lives in all three regions. East European governments in general, and es-
pecially the governments of the countries that are being discussed here, have often
been criticised by Romani leaders and activists for not paying enough attention to the
Romani question. On the other hand, having in mind that Roma in the earlier com-
munist systems of these states were not even recognised, and that now all three coun-
tries constitutionally and by other legal acts protect Roma’s rights to be educated in
their mother tongue, and also to be politically, culturally and religiously organised, it
seems that things are moving in a positive direction. Macedonia, for example, was the
first of all other ex-Yugoslav states to recognise Roma as a national group, while the
Macedonian government was the only one to show a consistent attitude towards this
group. According to Barany,9 the governments in Skopje have always viewed Roma as
a truly integral part of society; it was maybe in the context of problems with the ‘prob-
lematic’ Albanian minority that they realised that it was better to have a positive atti-
tude towards the solution of the minority question.
Barany further believes that Bulgaria, on the other hand, showed great passiv-
ity towards Roma until 1997. He sarcastically comments that the best thing which
9
Barany, Zoltan. 2002. The East European Gypsies. Regime Change, Marginality, and
Ethnopolitics, Cambridge University Press.
Bulgarian governments did in this period for Roma was actually the fact that they did
not mention them much in a racial or anti-Gypsy context. This changed after the gov-
ernment of Ivan Kostov won the elections, since the government not only expressed
a wish to integrate Roma into Bulgarian society but it also founded offices, which
would work on this issue. Finally, this government, helped by Romani and interna-
tional non-governmental organisations, elaborated a national programme for integra-
tion of Roma.10
As regards Serbia, the minority question in general and the Romani question
in particular is far from being solved. Alpar Lošonc is one of the authors who claim
that the biggest problems in solving the minority question are to be found exactly in
the wider social, political and legal context.11 Using Vojvodina as an example, he states
that the ethnic map has been changed radically and that the minorities’ share of the
total population has decreased, which negatively affects their chances in society. The
reason for this Lošonc sees in the fact that there is no coordinated commitment on
the part of the power-holders to minorities, as well as in the fact that since the 1990s
the institutional structure of minorities has been destroyed – these institutions have
often been used as statistical examples, as a décor, but the real chances for using them
are rather small. Finally, Lošonc concludes that Serbia in particular has a problem
regarding this question since its institutional capacity concerning ethnic diversity is
very weak.12
Integration as a Way Out?

Despite the relatively bleak present, but also the gloomy predictions for the
foreseeable future, we accept Várady’s statement that without constructive solutions
for the minority question no country in the region could completely transform and
progress. Co-living of different ethnocultural groups is imperative, whereas the ways
in which we will achieve it is a field where we can show our creativity. This is especial-
ly true for Roma. Namely, having in mind the strategy of minorities for responding to
the nation-building project discussed by Kymlicka, both Roma and the countries in
the region are faced with a turning point: integration or permanent marginalisation!
10
See more in Social Integration of the Roma Population in Bulgaria. 2000. UNDP; as well
as Framework Programme on Integration of Minorities, in which there is a special section on the
Roma. Also in: Mitev, Petar-Emil. 2004. ‘Ethnic Relations in Bulgaria: Legal Norms and Social
Practice,’ in Bašić, Goran et al. Prospects of Multiculturality in Western Balkan States, Belgrade:
ERC/FES.
11
Lošonc, Alpar. 2003. ‘Multikulturalnost i etnokulturni diverzitet s posebnim osvrtom
na Srbiju,’ in: Bašić, Goran (ed.). Demokratija i multikulturalnost u Jugoistočnoj Evropi, Beograd:
Centar za istraživanje etniciteta.
12
More on the status of the Roma in Serbia in Đorđević, Dragoljub B. (ed.) 2004. Romi:
od zaboravljene do manjine u usponu, Niš: OGI.
Emigration is unrealistic for Roma since there isn’t a single state, which would accept
them without hesitation. Suffice it to recall that many Romani families were expelled
literally overnight from Germany and other countries in Western Europe although
these families went there as refugees from Kosovo. Autonomy as a solution for Roma
is also unrealistic because they are not territorially concentrated anywhere in this re-
gion. Autonomy presupposes the existence of very strong feelings of group belonging,
that is, national identity, which, especially knowing the results of the last public census
in Serbia (2002), is not true for Roma. Apart from national identity, autonomy also re-
quires the existence of well-organised political, cultural and educational institutions.
Roma have started to work in this field, but the Romani elite, on whom many of these
depend, is still extremely disunited.
Kymlicka himself mentions the problem of integration of Roma. While discuss-
ing the theory of ethnocultural justice, he compares African Americans and Roma,
and wonders if some integration models could be applied to Roma. Kymlicka puts
Roma in the ‘difficult cases’ category because he cannot easily categorise them into
any of the groups (national minorities, immigrants, and metics13). The idea that Roma
could be compared to African Americans is based on the fact that both groups lack ter-
ritorial concentration, as well as that they are situated at the bottom of society wherev-
er they might live. Perhaps an even more common characteristic is the fact that both
groups are internally divided on the question of preferring integration or demand-
ing recognition as a separate and specific culture. Having these similarities in mind,
some authors suggest applying the principle of affirmative action to Roma, a princi-
ple that has been applied for years in the USA with respect to the African American
minority. However, considering that affirmative action has failed to change the status
of African Americans significantly, and considering that there are obviously more dif-
ferences than similarities between Roma and African Americans (who do not have
the problem of a common language and non-understanding, which is one of the key
barriers to developing a national identity of Roma; also, the African American strug-
gle for recognition started long before the Romani one, as a result of which they have
succeeded in building a large number of institutions that, on one side, serve the inter-
ests of African American groups, but on the other, exercise organised pressure on gov-
ernment), Kymlicka thinks that Roma are an East European minority, a specific case
for which there is no matching Western model. He, thus, concludes that the Romani
groups should negotiate with each separate country about their status, especially since
he believes that the attempts to organise Roma as a transnational or European minor-
ity have failed primarily because the majority of countries are scared of the idea, but
also because many Roma are against it as well.
13
‘Metics’ is Kymlicka’s term and represents minorities that have been living in a state for
a long time but have for some reasons been excluded (or have excluded themselves) from the
‘polis.’ Groups that form this category are illegal immigrants, Gastarbeiters, and the like.
Contemplating the same problem, Gheorge and Mirga14 pose a justified ques-
tion: Does integration as a strategy for development of the Romani community have
any value for Roma? Answering this question, these honourable Romologists prob-
lematise, as possible alternatives to integration, separation or complete withdrawal
from the majority society, and assimilation or giving up on the identity of a group
and joining the dominant societal culture. As noted above, Roma are nowhere con-
centrated territorially so the very idea of complete territorial separation is alien to
them. Moreover, the Romani tendencies are towards the opposite – towards cohesion
with the majority community in economic relations. Assimilation is also unaccept-
able and unrealistic. The reasons could be found both in the almost complete a pri-
ori rejection of Roma by other groups, in repressive assimilation acts of the state to
which Roma, rightly, react negatively, and in their inability to adjust to the demands
of the majority culture. However, even integration requires sacrifices, which we are
not sure that states – or even Roma themselves – are ready to make. The positions of
both parties are understandable. For states, i.e. for the majority of society, integration
of Roma would mean, inter alia, redefining their own identity. The majority society
would have to give up widespread stereotypes and prejudices, as well as the policy of
the ‘usual suspects’ practised towards Roma for a long time. Roma, on the other side,
see a danger in integration because integration can be only one step away from assim-
ilation. Members of the Romani elite, who oppose integration as a modus vivendi of
the Romani community, fear that they will lose their own ethnic and cultural identity.
If we take into account the fact that the Romani identity is still a stumbling block for
the Romani elite and people, and thus has a very shaky basis, such an attitude should
not be so easily rejected as irrational. Because, Mirga and Gheorge conclude, identity
is not closed and given forever, but it is a changeable construction that depends on
and transforms along with internal and external changes and influences. These au-
thors agree that integration carries a lot of value for Roma and that at present there is
no alternative. However, they still leave unanswered the question of what integration
should be like and how big a price should be paid for it.
On the basis of the majority of reasons discussed above, as well as on our per-
sonal beliefs, we consider integration as the only positive solution both for minorities,
in this case the Roma, and states. Naturally, as in the case of all notions that have be-
come quite popular in the last decade, many different things have been understood
under the label of ‘integration’ – that is why we need to define the term. If we look
it up in dictionaries, we will find that integration is ‘(l’integratio) restoration, boost-
ing something with whatever is important for it.’15 Besides dictionaries, definitions of
integration can be found in other theoreticians’ works. Thus, for example, Heidmets
14
Gheorge, Nicolae and Andrej Mirga. 1997. The Roma in the Twenty-First Century: A
Position Paper. Project on Ethnic Relations, Princeton, NJ.
15
Vujaklija, M. 1976. Leksikon stranih reči i izraza, p. 360.
and Lauristin16 define integration as a process of political and social inclusion of ‘ex-
cluded’ groups. making them equally competitive with the majority in the sphere of
education and on the market. They further claim that at the socio-cognitive level, in-
tegration means removing the barriers that inhibit minorities from taking part in lo-
cal social and political life. Veronika Kalmus, the author of the article ‘Is Interethnic
Integration Possible in Estonia,’ on the other hand, puts emphasis on tolerance and
understanding, and claims that one cannot talk about integration if there is no mutual
understanding between the majority population and other minority groups.17
Accepting the basic principles of the above-mentioned definitions of integra-
tion, from our point of view, and in respect to Roma, integration is based on:
■ the principle of ethnocultural justice as a way for solving the minority ques-
tion;
■ the fact that Roma are an ethno-class – that is, that they do not have any-
thing or have very little, live on the brink of poverty, and depend on social
welfare;
■ the assumption that Roma agree with living interculturally;
■ the assumption that they agree with the peaceful preservation of their status
of an ethno-class; and,
■ the active role of all actors, and especially Roma themselves, who must take
responsibility for their place in society.
Factors Influencing Integration of Roma

Despite the fact that for us, in the situation and under the circumstances de-
scribed above, integration as a solution to the Romani question does not have an al-
ternative, it is clear that the process will not develop smoothly. Thus, it is logical to
analyse the factors influencing the Romani integration. We categorise them into three
groups: state and general social atmosphere; attitudes of the majority and other peo-
ples towards Roma; and factors arising from characteristics and attitudes of Roma
themselves. Since we have already discussed the general social atmosphere in one of
the previous sections, we will move on to the other two factors. By doing this, we do
not claim that the topic is exhausted but we believe that for the purposes of this study
there is no need to open further discussions.
Integration of Roma and attitudes of majority peoples towards Roma.

In the previous section, we identified the active role of all participants in the
integration process as one of the basic principles. Indeed, no matter how much ef-
16
Kalmus, Veronika. 2003. ‘“Is Interethnic Integration Possible in Estonia?”: Ethno-po-
litical Discourse of Two Ethnic Groups,’ in Discourse & Society, Vol. 14(6), pp. 667–697.
17
Ibid.
forts Roma put into becoming equal with the rest of society, they will not succeed
unless other people from the surrounding population perceive them as equal and un-
less those people see the necessity of structuring living together in a positive and con-
structive way. As is obvious from the results of many research projects18 conducted in
the last couple of years on the territory of the countries under consideration here, eth-
nic and social distance towards Roma, as one of the most important indicators of the
attitudes towards a particular ethnic group, are very pronounced.
According to the data obtained during the research project (1310) on ‘Cultural
and Ethnic Relations in the Balkans – Possibilities of Regional and European Integration’19
in Northwest Macedonia, the situation regarding this issue is as follows: all three dom-
inant groups in the surrounding population (Macedonians, Albanians, Serbs) agree
that they wouldn’t marry a Rom (95.6% Albanians, 83.0% Macedonians, and 90.6%
Serbs). The results are not so drastic in the case of other elements of the Bogardus
Social Distance Scale, but despite that a general trend of very strongly expressed so-
cial and ethnic distance towards Roma has been noticed in this region. The same study
showed that Western Bulgaria is maybe the most open towards Roma. Namely, al-
though 76.9% of Bulgarians, 75.4% of Turks, and only 51.5% of the Vlachs declared
that they would not marry a Rom, we can say that generally speaking the percentages
are much smaller than the ones in Serbia and Macedonia. This trend of greater open-
ness towards Roma is especially notable in the case of living together (asked if they
would live in a neighbourhood with Roma, 48.9% of Bulgarians, 69.3% of Turks, and
even 80.0% of the Vlachs replied affirmatively; in the same city would live 59.5% of
Bulgarians, 73.7% of Turks, and 82.2% of the Vlachs; an almost identical percentage of
them would live in the same country: 59.0% of Bulgarians, 74.6% of Turks, and 82.2%
of the Vlachs) and working in the same company (58.4% of Bulgarians, 68.4% of Turks,
and 82.2% of the Vlachs would work in the same company with a Rom). Finally, in
South-eastern Serbia, ethnic, social and religious distance towards Roma was noticed
in all three groups with which Roma live (Albanians, Bulgarians, Serbs), and especially
in the sphere of marriage – among Albanians it is 98.3%, among Bulgarians 64.4%, and
among Serbs 83.5%. Attitudes are almost divided concerning the ethnic orientation of
a friend: 50.0% of the Albanians, 74.4% of Bulgarians, and 53.9% of Serbs would have
a Rom for a friend, while 44.8% of the Albanians, 20.0% of Bulgarians, and 31.8% of
Serbs would not accept a Rom for a friend. As far as the other elements of the Bogardus
Scale are concerned, the majority of responses are positive.
18
For example, studies conducted under different projects by a group of researchers
from the Romology school of Niš, which included, in addition to one of the authors of this study
(Dragoljub B. Ðorđević), sociologists Lela Milošević and Dragan Todorović.
19
The project was financed by the Ministry for Science and Technology of the Republic
of Serbia, and was conducted by researchers centred around the Institute for Sociology, Faculty
of Philosophy in Niš.
Although the data are not so optimistic, as well as on the basis of research
projects conducted before ours,20 the social distance towards Roma can be said to be
lessening. Accordingly, one of the authors of this study, Dragoljub B. Ðorđević, in the
article ‘The Balkan Non-Roma about the Balkan Roma,’21 comes to the following con-
clusions:
‘The non-Roma of the Balkans – that is Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria – in re-
spect to the Balkan Roma in most cases agreed with the following:
1. They rejected the racist idea of expelling Roma, their good neighbours,
somewhere else, in another town or country (60.4%);
2. Burying Roma in the local cemetery is accepted (67.4%);
3. Somewhat less than half of them demonstrate religious tolerance and accept
joint practice of religious rites with a Rom, co-religionist (45.8%);
4. Direct blood transfusion is accepted while the social distance from Roma is
lessened (52.5%);
5. The behaviour of skinheads towards Roma is not supported (94.8%);
6. In a minority percentage the idea of positive discrimination towards Roma is
supported (40.1%); and,
7. Roma are an ethno-class (61.4%).’22
Dragoljub B. Ðorđević claims further that in respect to some questions the per-
centage of undecided is somewhere around one third of the respondents, as estab-
lished also by our research in the three countries under review. He concludes, and
here we agree with him, that the integration of Roma cannot and will not happen as
long as there are such high percentages of people who are still far from the practice of
multiculturalism and interculturalism.
20
Dragoljub B. Đorđević, for example, showed in the researches that he undertook in the
period between 1999 and 2002 that ethnic distance was especially expressed among Albanians,
Bosniaks and Serbs, being always higher than 70% and, in some cases as high as 98.4%. Such
high percentages were also recorded in the case of accepting the Roma as bosses at work (from
48.5% to 93.5%), while the proposition of accepting the Roma for friends was not rejected by
more than 50% of Serbs, Bosniaks and Albanians. These results are quite different from the re-
sults established by our research project and could indicate that the social distance towards the
Roma is lessening. See more about the above mentioned studies in Đorđević, Dragoljub B. 2004.
Social, Ethnic and Religious Distance Towards Roma of Serbia. And in Dragoljub, B. Đorđević et.
al. Romas & Others, Others & Romas. Social Distance, Sofia: Ivan Hadjiyski Institute for Social
Values and Structures.
21
Đorđević, Dragoljub. B. 2004. ‘The Balkan Non-Roma about the Balkan Roma,’ in
Regionalni razvoj i integracija Balkana u structure EU – Balkanska raskršća i alternative, Niš:
Filozofski fakultet – Univerzitet u Nišu. Institut za sociologiju. SVEN.
22
Ibid. p. 598.
Integration of Roma and characteristics of the Romani communities.
When we talk about the connections between integration of Roma and charac-
teristics of the Romani communities, the factors influencing integration are divided
into (at least) two groups: the first is general characteristics of Roma, and the second
consists of attitudes of Roma towards the questions we consider important for the
success of the integration project.
As far as the first group of factors is concerned, it comprises all current problems
found in all of the countries in which Roma live: the problem of identity, territorial
sparseness, and ethnic distance towards the other peoples. According to Hancock,23 it
is very difficult to define and promote a group of characteristics, which can be called
Romani identity. The reasons are to be found in:
■ Romani tendency to hide their identity in public situations;
■ Problem of ownership of identity: Roma are usually told who they are, usu-
ally by politicians and academics outside the Romani group;
■ Non-existence of consensus about history: even data on where Roma ar-
rived in Europe, when that happened, how it happened, are subject to de-
bate. Revealing the real history is thus for Hancock a condition for solving
the identity problem;
■ The questions of dual identity: disagreements between ‘real,’ Indian identity,
and ‘European’ identity;
■ The question of ‘Indian’ identity: common Roma either do not worry much
about this side of their identity or claim that for them even Indians are Gadjé
and that they cannot identify with India; and,
■ Non-existence of the kin-state.
Apart from these general identity problems which are common for all Romani
communities, there are those which are more common for the region in question
here – that is, for the Balkan Roma. These characteristics result from conflicts be-
tween different groups of Roma (for example, Orthodox Roma versus Muslim Roma;
indigenous Roma versus Roma refugees), recent ethnic conflicts in the region which
created an atmosphere in which Roma were not only expected to take sides but also to
state to which side in the conflict they belong to – Serbian or Albanian. Finally, ethni-
cally aggressive surroundings have given rise to more extreme versions of the strug-
gle for identity, to which, according to some sociologists,24 the Romani elite reacted by
promoting nationalistic tendencies.
23
Hancock, Ian. 2003. We Are the Romani People, University of Hertfordshire Press;
Hancock, Ian. The Struggle for the Control of Identity, retrieved March 2002 from the
World Wide Web: geocites.com/Paris/5121/Identity.htm;
Hancock, Ian. Origins of the Romani People, retrieved October 2002 from the World
Wide Web: geocites.com/Paris/5121/origins.htm
24
Jovanović, Ðokica. ‘Roma Mimicry – the Last Resort,’ in Todorović, Dragan (ed.). 2003. Culture
in the Processes of Development, Regionalisation and Eurointegration of the Balkans, Niš: SVEN.
Ethnic distance, as one of the barriers to successful integration, has also been
noticed among Roma, although to a much smaller extent than the distance, which
other people in the surrounding population show towards them. In the research that
we undertook in the regions of Northwest Macedonia, Eastern and Central Bulgaria,
and Southeast Serbia, we found the following data, which refer to ethnic distancing
of Roma towards the other nations. In Serbia, for all modalities of the Bogardus Scale
except for the question of multiethnic marriages, Roma in respect to Serbs give a very
high percentage of positive answers – from 89.3% of agreement to have Serbs for
bosses, to 98.1% of agreement to have Serbs for friends, to live with them in the same
city or country. Ethnic distance towards Bulgarians is characterised by a somewhat
smaller number of positive answers, but still very big. Thus, for example, 87.3% of the
Roma in Southeast Serbia would live in the same city and country with Bulgarians,
and 84.5% of them would work in the same company. High positive percentages are
also found when we talk about potential friendship between Roma and Bulgarians
(76.7%) and when Roma talk about Bulgarians as potential neighbours (79.6%). In
addition, more than half of the interviewed Roma would have Bulgarians for bosses
(62.1%), while 23.3% would not accept this practice. The only case in which slightly
more than half of Roma had a negative attitude and expressed higher ethnic distance
towards Bulgarians is in the case of marriage, where 51.9% of Roma would not marry
a Bulgarian, whereas 32.7% would. It is interesting to see that in this modality we also
have 15.4% undecided. Finally, we can say that the Roma in Southeast Serbia express
the highest ethnic distance towards the Albanians. The percentage of those Roma who
would marry a member of Albanian nationality is relatively small, 16.5%, while the
percentage of those who would not is 66.0%. In this case too there are 17.5% unde-
cided. The most positive answers Roma from the sample gave in respect to living in
the same country (63.7% for and 29.4% against) and in the same city (66.0% for and
29.1% against), acceptance to work with Albanians in the same company (66.0% for
and 29.1% against), and to have an Albanian for a neighbour (60.6% for and 32.7%
against). On the other hand, slightly more than half of the respondents would accept
an Albanian for a friend (51.0%), while 36.5% would not.
It seems that the most difficult was the question of accepting an Albanian for
a boss, considering that 45.6% of Roma answered positively and 41.7% negatively. In
this case 12.6% were neutral.
In Central and Eastern Bulgaria, we came to the following data on the ethnic
distance that Roma express towards other surrounding nations. We chose for compar-
ison Bulgarians, Vlachs, and Turks. It can be said that Bulgarian Roma are the most
open to Bulgarians, considering that they expressed very positive attitudes concern-
ing almost all modalities of the Bogardus Scale: 79.5% of the Roma in Bulgaria would
have a Bulgarian for a friend or for a boss, while 88.0% of them would work in the
same company with Bulgarians; 92.8% of the interviewed Roma in Bulgaria would
live in a neighbourhood with Bulgarians, while 95.2% of them would live in the same
country, and 96.4% would live in the same city. The only modality regarding which
those who expressed negative attitudes are a statistically significant percentage is mar-
rying a Bulgarian, and it is 19.3% versus 63.9% of those who expressed positive atti-
tudes on this question. It seems that the Roma of Eastern and Central Bulgaria are the
most distanced from the Vlachs, considering that 56.6% of them would not marry a
Vlach. It is also interesting to note that the highest percentage of undecided answers
is related to attitudes towards Vlachs: 25.3% of Roma could not decide about marry-
ing Vlachs, 23.0% of Roma were undecided about whether they would have a Vlach
for a friend, 41.0% about whether they would live in a neighbourhood with Vlachs,
and 49.4% about whether they would have a Vlach for a boss. Surprisingly high per-
centages of undecided are also found in the modality of living together in the same
city (26.5%) and in the same country (27.7%). On the other hand, if we exclude inter-
marriage, there are almost no negative answers, while the positive answers range from
38.6% of those who would have a Vlach for a boss to 71.1% of Roma who would live in
the same town and country with Vlachs. When we talk about the distancing of Roma
in Central and Eastern Bulgaria from Turks, the general impression is that the ethnic
distance is small because the respondents gave very positive answers to almost all mo-
dalities of the Bogardus Scale, with a very small percentage of negative answers. The
exception is marrying a Turk, where 50.6% of the interviewed Roma expressed posi-
tive attitudes and 34.9% negative. In almost all other modalities, negative attitudes do
not cross the threshold of statistical relevancy. Neutral responses are not an exception
in this case either, but they are not as drastic as in the case of attitudes towards Vlachs;
they are found on the questions of marrying a Turk (14.5%), having a Turk for a friend
(25.3%), living in the same neighbourhood with a Turk (12.0%), working in the same
company (15.7%), and having a Turk for a boss (19.3%).
As far as Northwest Macedonia and distancing of Roma from other surround-
ing nations are concerned, the study found that ethnic distance was most pronounced
towards the Albanians, but not drastically. Negative answers prevail only to the ques-
tion about marrying an Albanian (78.6% negative versus 17.3% positive answers).
Although negative answers are to be found in other modalities, they do not exceed
24.0%, whereas positive answers range from 70.4% who would have an Albanian for
a friend, through 74.5% who would live in the same neighbourhood with Albanians,
78.6% who would have an Albanian for a boss, 84.7% of Roma who would live in
the same city with Albanians, 85.7% who would work in the same company with
them, to 86.6% who would live in the same country with Albanians. In respect to the
Macedonians and Serbs, the Roma from Northwest Macedonia gave statistically sig-
nificant negative responses only to the first question on the Bogardus Scale. Thus,
55.1% of Roma would not marry a Macedonian, and 57.1% would not marry a Serb.
Other modalities are characterised by an extremely high percentage of positive an-
swers concerning both Serbs and Macedonians: 94.0% and over.
We do not intend to analyse the present data in depth here (all the more so con-
sidering that a number of our colleagues from the research team are doing this) but
simply to use the results to illustrate our own attitudes and come to some conclusions
that could be helpful when discussing possibilities of integration. Thus, looking at the
given results, we conclude the following:
■ Comparing the aspirations of the surrounding majority/other peoples with
the attitudes of Roma, we noticed a tendency for Roma in all three countries
to ethnically distance themselves less than the others;
■ Less social distance was also recorded towards the dominant/majority peo-
ples in the country: the Roma in Serbia expressed the least ethnic distance
towards Serbs, the Roma in Bulgaria expressed the least ethnic distance to-
wards Bulgarians, and finally, the Roma in Macedonia expressed the least
ethnic distance towards the Macedonians;
■ In Serbia and Macedonia, Roma expressed the largest ethnic distance to-
wards the Albanians, which can be read in the light of the events from the
last five years in the region;
■ In Bulgaria we recorded the highest percentage of those who could not ex-
press an opinion – that is, neutral ones. Such answers appeared in Serbia as
well but far less frequently, and they were almost non-existent in Macedonia.
The general conclusion is that neutral answers are never expressed towards
the majority people in the country.
These generalisations can be interpreted in different ways. Firstly, it can be said

that they only express and confirm the noticed a long time ago conformity of Roma.
This thesis is supported by the fact that Roma expressed the smallest ethnic distance
precisely towards those on whom their future depends the most – towards the major-
ity peoples in the countries under review. Furthermore, ethnic distance was relatively
more pronounced towards those peoples with which the majority people were in con-
flict or still have some unresolved issues. On the other hand, the same generalisations
can be interpreted differently – namely, as indicating an openness on the part of Roma
and a readiness to live, work, and profoundly share the same space with others; in oth-
er words, that Roma are ready to integrate into the societies in question. Whichever
path we decide to take, the fact remains: the majority of Roma are neutral on some
questions. Even this can be used for different purposes, and we suggest that it should
be interpreted and used in a positive way – neutral attitudes are those which can still be
influenced by the integration idea.
The attitude of Romani leaders towards integration is one of the factors that will
strongly influence the future of Romani communities, because the Romani political,
cultural and intellectual elites are opinion leaders and a side in the negotiation proc-
ess with other nations. However, the Romani elites do not have unified attitudes to-
wards integration and this further complicates the issue. Osman Balić, for example, is
‘the loudest opponent of integration, especially when it concerns Roma. Who do they
want to integrate, he and his supporters are asking – us Roma? Haven’t we been living
mixed with Serbs on this territory for the last millennium? We somehow live together
and I wonder who came up with the idea of this integration; we are not newcomers,
like the Chinese, or some intruders that should be taught order. We are an autoch-
thonous minority and we need every kind of support to emancipate ourselves from many
things and become closer to the majority.’25 Balić is primarily calling for emancipation,
which is perceived as a process that occurs within the Romani ethnos and that essen-
tially consists in defining the Romani identity, education, and lessening of poverty.
The term and at the same time the concept that should replace integration is becoming
closer, and he justifies its use by the fact that ‘Roma are at the bottom of the social hi-
erarchy of power in most of the countries they live in.’26
Although Osman Balić’s attitudes can be a reference point for a detailed anal-
ysis and debate on which process is important for the Romani minority and which
concept should be applied, we will not do that here. Instead, we will only note that in-
tegration includes becoming closer and does not rely only on the activity of one side,
namely, the Romani. Furthermore, integration does not oppose emancipation; more-
over, emancipation, in the way Balić defines it, is a basis for positive integration since
its result should be a self-conscious Romani community, which is a precondition for
equal status in the process of integration.
Integration and the attitudes of Roma towards some integration modalities.

Apart from the first two groups of factors that we discussed earlier, the suc-
cess of the integration model depends on the attitudes of Roma towards certain issues
which are manifestly or latently connected with its essence. We will here focus only on
three issues: the minority question, the national identity question, and the question of
changes/reforms. These factors are analysed through groups of questions, which were
posed to Roma during our research project. We started from more general and moved
towards more specific factors, hoping that we would ultimately get a clearer picture
about which model of integration, i.e. treatment of minorities in general, would be
more adequate for Roma.
Roma and the minority question. The minority issue is one of the key questions
of every state in the contemporary world not only because of the development in the
sphere of individual and group human rights, but also because of the fact that finding
a solution is crucial for the future of a large number of countries – especially the so-
called ‘young democracies,’ such as Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Serbia. Reality shows
that so far the minority question has been approached from the majority’s point of
view, i.e. from the standpoint of the majority’s opinion about what minorities need
and what they can and are allowed to be ‘given.’ Practices presupposing active par-
ticipation of minorities in defining the conditions of their being in a particular situa-
25
‘Romi od zaboravljene do manjine u usponu. Razgovor Dragoljuba B. Đorđevića i
Osmana Balića,’ in Romi od zaboravljene do manjine u usponu, Niš: OGI 2004. p. 44.
26
Ibid. p. 45.
tion, irrespective of declarative acceptance of equality and egalitarianism, have so far

largely depended on the dominant majority. However, if we want, even in theory, to
apply principles of ethnocultural justice, the opinion of minorities about solving the
minority question is very important. And who if not Roma could offer a more fruit-
ful insight into that question? Their attitude is very important also because of the fact
that they are a minority in all of the three countries in question (Bulgaria, Macedonia,
Serbia).
In the group of questions related to the issues noted above, we asked Roma to
express their opinion about the general living conditions of minority groups, about
the conditions in which they live, about problems influencing their status in society.
Looking at the interviewed Roma from Central and Eastern Bulgaria, it is interesting
to note the very high percentage of undecided Roma. On the other hand, the ratio be-
tween those who agree and those who disagree with the given statements is almost
equal. Thus, for example, 36.2% of Roma totally and largely disagree with the state-
ment that national minorities and ethnic groups are being granted excessive rights in
society, while 18.0% of Roma totally and largely agree with the same statement. Rather
surprising are the 45.8% of Roma who were undecided here. Opinions are even more
divided on the question of the responsibility for the poverty of national minorities:
33.8% of the Roma in Bulgaria totally and largely disagree with the statement that
national minorities are poor because their members aren’t enterprising and educat-
ed, 34.9% of Roma totally and largely agree with this statement, while 31.3% of them
could not choose an answer. We found similar responses to the question whether the
majority people should make all important decisions in society: 53.0% of Roma were
undecided, 25.3% totally and largely disagreed with this statement, while 21.7% of
Roma totally and largely agreed. It is also interesting to note that even 73.2% of the re-
spondents from this group of Roma could not state their opinion on whether nation-
ally and religiously homogenous states are more progressive than multinational and
multi-religious states. The percentage of those who disagreed with this statement is
almost insignificant, 8.6%, while 18.3% of Roma agreed.
The attitudes of the Roma from Southeast Serbia concerning the above-men-
tioned statements are almost drastically different from those of the Bulgarian Roma.
The very fact that the percentage of undecided is much smaller – that is, the fact that
the Roma in Serbia were more inclined to have an opinion about these questions –
throws a different light on the views expressed in the two countries. Also, the attitudes
of the Roma in Serbia largely met the expectations of the researchers: the vast majority
of Roma (82.4%) disagreed with the statement that minorities have too many rights,
as well as with the claim that the majority people should make decisions about all im-
portant issues in society (77.7%); 78.7% of Roma also agreed that members of nation-
al minorities are to blame for the poverty they live in. The Roma in Southeast Serbia
were undecided only about the statement that nationally and religiously homogenous
countries are more progressive (37.0%), whereas 44.7% of Roma disagreed, and 18.5%
agreed with it.
We found a similar situation among the Roma in Northwest Macedonia: the
percentage of undecided is irrelevant in the case of most of the questions, the re-
spondents having very clear views on most of the statements they were asked about.
Thus, 75.0% of Roma disagree with the statements that national minorities and ethnic
groups have too many rights, while 19.0% agree; 80.8% of Roma believe that the ma-
jority people shouldn’t be in charge of all important decisions in the state, while 12.1%
accept this idea. A significant percentage of undecided responses was recorded in
the case of more controversial issues: 39.0% of the Roma from Northwest Macedonia
could not decide if the statement that members of minority groups are to blame for
their poverty is true, 47.0% disagreed, and 14.0% agreed with it. Finally, 60.6% of
Roma believe that nationally and religiously homogenous states aren’t more progres-
sive, 18.2% think that they are, and 21.2% are undecided.
The question arises: Why was it so difficult for the Roma from Eastern and
Central Bulgaria to state their opinion on statements concerning central issues in
their life as a minority community? Or, the question could be asked from the other
perspective too: What is it that allows the Roma in Macedonia and Serbia to be cer-
tain and to clearly articulate their attitudes? The answers are very important because
responsibility for integration into the majority society cannot be taken without a read-
iness to express one’s opinion in an intelligible and clear way, Here, unfortunately or
fortunately, we cannot give conclusive answers to these questions; we can only suggest
possible explanations. The Roma in Serbia and Macedonia probably are more certain
in their attitudes precisely because the circumstances (ethnic disputes and conflicts,
aggressive surroundings) have forced them to have strong opinions. Also, maybe the
overall work of Romani leaders on building national identity has been more effec-
tive in Serbia and Macedonia. The fact that Romani media are the most developed in
Macedonia confirms our thesis. Considering that in both cases we are actually dealing
with the issue of identity, as well as its protection, it seems that the key, or at least part
of the key, to positive and constructive integration of the Roma lies in the actions dur-
ing which Romani identity will be defined, explained, accepted. Our conclusion match-
es the opinion of the Romani leaders who advocate the ideology of Romanipe (or
Romanipen). Romanipe is, in essence, cultural and national identity of Roma, but with
an important dynamic element since it presupposes constant reformation. Romani
leaders see the Romanipe ideology as the answer that Roma should give to majority
pressures.27
Strong national identity is one of the postulates for positive integration of
Roma, but not the only one. Accepting and taking responsibility for integration is one
of the important prerequisites. That is why we asked Roma to express their opinion
about what needs to be done in order to improve the status of minority communities.
For more on Romanipe, see ‘Romi od zaboravljene do manjine u usponu. Razgovor

27
Dragoljuba B. Đorđevića i Osmana Balića,’ in Romi od zaboravljene od manjine u usponu, Niš:

OGI 2004.
The answers of the Roma from Serbia and Macedonia, on one side, and from Bulgaria,
on the other, again differ significantly. While the Roma from Serbia and Macedonia
believe that the majority people should show solidarity (37.1% of the Roma in Serbia
and 71.7% of the Roma in Macedonia), the Roma in Bulgaria think that it is most im-
portant to apply laws (34.9%), although they agree with their fellow Roma from the
other two countries that solidarity of the majority people is important (18.1%). The
idea of engaging minorities as one of the prerequisites for improving their status is
supported by 26.5% of the Roma from Bulgaria and 26.7% of the Roma from Serbia,
but it is not even mentioned by the Macedonian Roma.
It is good to see that Roma are conscious of the fact that without accepting re-
sponsibility for their own destiny they would not be able to change their status. Yet,
it is interesting to note that such readiness was not recorded among the Macedonian
Roma, who still perceive the majority people and the application of laws – which
is the second selected postulate and which again mostly depends on the will of the
majority people – as being responsible for their status. Without any desire to justify
standpoints and deeds of the majority peoples in the three countries and although,
as we pointed out earlier, we agree that without an active role of the majority people
there cannot be positive integration, we also believe that Roma are not in a position
to transfer all of the responsibility onto somebody else. Integration has to be done by
Roma themselves: ‘[T]heir shoulders will have to bear the burden of self-strengthen-
ing and self-equipping in order to be able to better and more widely approach and use
society’s goods, demonstrate power in social space and gain respect from the wider
community.’28
Roma and national identity. While discussing the attitudes of Romani lead-
ers towards integration as well as opinions of academics concerning the integration
of minorities, we mentioned as its shortcoming the possibility that integration might
ruin the identity of a group that is to be integrated and might grow into assimilation.
To prevent this from happening, we concluded and subsequently confirmed that con-
sciousness of one’s own identity is critically important. That is why in our research we
were interested to know what Roma’s attitudes towards this were. Before talking about
and interpreting the results, we must note that some questions from the questionnaire
which we chose to illustrate the attitude to identity are many-layered and do not ex-
clusively refer to the segment that interests us: some of them are more related to eth-
nocentrism. Despite these shortcomings, we nevertheless decided to include them in
our analysis hoping that they will be helpful in a discussion about the integration of
Roma.
When we look at the results we got during the research and data analysis, we
first see that the percentage of undecided Roma in the sample is very high for all three
countries and for almost all questions. Still, we can say that the Bulgarian Roma were
28
Ibid. p. 48.
the most undecided. As many as 65.1% of them were not sure if the biggest danger to
national identity came from the influence of foreign ideas and behaviours, compared
with 25.0% of the Serbian Roma. There were no undecided responses to this question
by Roma in Macedonia, where the majority (74.0%) clearly stated that they disagreed
with the above statement. The majority of Serbian Roma (45.4%) also disagreed with
this statement, while one third of them (29.6%) supported it. In Bulgaria, few disagreed
with the statement that the biggest danger to national identity comes from foreign in-
fluences, while 25.3% agreed. A high percentage of the Bulgarian Roma were unde-
cided about whether a person could feel completely secure only if they lived in a com-
munity where the majority was constituted by members of their own ethnic group –
37.3%, although the majority (56.6%) expressed an opinion and agreed with the state-
ment. It is interesting to note that contrary to the Bulgarian Roma, the majority of
Serbian (55.5%) and Macedonian (56.0%) Roma did not agree with this proposition.
There were undecided responses in both countries, but their percentage is much lower
than in Bulgaria – 15.7% in Serbia and 20.0% in Macedonia. There are also Macedonian
and Serbian Roma who agreed with this statement – 24.0% in Macedonia and 28.7%
in Serbia. In addition, exactly half of the Serbian and the Bulgarian Roma agreed with
the statement that their people isn’t perfect, but that their cultural tradition is still bet-
ter than the others,’ while one third (60.6%) of the Roma from Macedonia disagreed.
Undecided responses are found in all three samples: Bulgaria leads again with 42.2%,
Macedonia follows with 23.2%, and Serbia comes last with 19.4%. Perhaps the most
interesting question in this set got the highest percentage of undecided responses in
the Macedonian sample: 36.7% of the Macedonian Roma were not sure if their ethnic
community possesses any qualities that makes it superior to others. Still, the majority
of them (40.8%) rejected this claim, while 22.2% agreed with it. On the other hand, in
Bulgaria the majority of interviewed Roma (67.5%) agreed that Roma are superior to
other people, while 26.5% of them could not decide. Finally, in Serbia the majority of
Roma (62.1%) agreed with Bulgarian Roma and the given statement, 17.6% of them
disagreed, and 20.4% were undecided.
The Macedonian Roma showed the greatest openness towards the other com-
munities and the smallest readiness to support extreme ethnocentric claims. By do-
ing that, they indirectly showed greater confidence in their own positions and iden-
tity. The Serbian Roma are following the same path but to a lesser extent and with a
lot of meandering. The most problematic is Bulgaria, both because of the surprisingly
high percentage of undecided responses and the fact that almost all who are not un-
decided think that national identity is in danger because of foreign influences, that
they feel most secure when they are surrounded by their co-nationals, and that they
are superior to other ethnic groups. Such attitudes of part of the Roma in Serbia and
the majority of Bulgarian Roma are worrying and can negatively influence the inte-
gration project. Ethnocentric attitudes could be also understood as a result of their own
insecurity, which again confirms that the question of strong identity is at the centre of
any model of integration.
Roma and changes. Since integration includes also a dynamic element, and thus
presupposes readiness to accept changes and undertake reforms in old ways of think-
ing and living, developing any kind of integration requires taking into account the at-
titudes of the minority community, in this case Roma, towards the issue. The opin-
ion that changes always bring something new and modern is widespread. As regards
social and political life, people in the Balkans almost always perceive changes in the
light of modernisation that comes from other countries, most frequently defined as
more developed and progressive. That is why, as Alpar Lošonc29 also notes, moderni-
sation values are often perceived as patterns which are foreign to the country’s tradi-
tion and heritage. Often, because of the same reasons, these values are rejected. If we
apply this thesis concerning the relations between countries to relations between ma-
jorities and minorities in the Balkan states, we may presume that most of the minor-
ity communities would have a negative attitude towards the changes that would come
from the majority people, i.e. the state as the latter’s representative. Considering that
the Romani community is characterised as being very patriarchal and traditional, we
may presume that Romani attitudes towards changes would be negative. Let us see
what Roma from our sample said about this.
The Roma from Serbia expressed rather negative attitudes towards changes.
Almost one third of them (56.6%) agreed with the statement that those people who
think that every change brings progress are wrong, 57.0% of them said that rebellious
ideas of young people do not contribute to the development of society, while 57.0%
believed that new things in life should not be accepted without thinking. The attitudes
are also divided concerning the statement that after every change in society things are
worse than before: 29.9% of Roma disagreed with this, while 28.9% agreed. The per-
centage of undecided Roma in the Serbian sample is quite high: undecided respons-
es are found in the case of every statement, with percentages ranging from 25.9%
(‘Rebellious ideas of young people contribute to the development of society’), through
27.8% (‘People who think that every change brings progress are wrong’), 30.8% (‘New
things in life should be accepted without thinking’), and ending at 41.1% (‘After every
change in society things are worse than before’).
Still, the percentage of undecided responses is again highest in Bulgaria – from
66.3% (‘Rebellious ideas of young people contribute to the development of society’),
61.4% (‘New things in life should be accepted without thinking’), 59.0% (‘People who
think that every change brings progress are wrong’), to 48.2% (‘After every change
in society things are worse than before’). If we exclude the fact that two thirds of the
Bulgarian Roma cannot state their opinion on almost every question, we can say that
the attitudes of the rest of the Roma from the Bulgarian sample towards the changes
are divided. Namely, while 35.0% of them believe that people who think that every
change brings progress are wrong, and 37.4% of the Bulgarian Roma agree with the
statement that after every change in society things are worse than before, the major-
29
Lošonc, ‘Multikulturalnost i etnokulturni diverzitet s posebnim osvrtom na Srbiju.’
ity of Roma in Bulgaria agree that rebellious ideas of young people contribute to the
development of society (21.7%) and that new things in life should be accepted with-
out thinking (25.3%).
The situation in Macedonia is not simple either: while the majority of Roma
from Macedonia believe that those who think that every change brings progress aren’t
wrong (46.9%) and that rebellious ideas of young people do not contribute to the de-
velopment of society (67.7%), 45.4% of them do not accept the statement that after
every change in society things are worse than before, and 43.5% agree that new things
in life should be accepted without thinking. To make things even more complicated,
undecided responses appear in this sample as well and comprise one third of all re-
sponses to the statements ‘After every change in society things are worse than before’
and ‘New things in life should be accepted without thinking.’
While trying to identify the general trends in Roma’s attitudes towards chang-
es, we cannot avoid saying a few words about the ways in which the questions in the
questionnaire were formulated. We think that it is very possible that the fact that the
questions were not sufficiently precise may have contributed to the very high per-
centage of undecided responses. Yet even so, the questions were very helpful and al-
though they might have failed to produce answers they have nevertheless opened new
chapters in the debate on the integration of Roma. Actually, we could interpret the
relatively negative attitudes of Roma towards changes as a result of the fact that in
Macedonia, Bulgaria and Serbia, in the last ten years, many things were started but
very few of them have been really brought to an end. This may also explain the differ-
ences in the strength of negative attitudes between the Roma in the three countries.
Namely, the Serbian Roma were most negative about changes and that can be under-
stood in the light of the fact that in Serbia there are constant changes of laws, rules,
regulations, every government introduces their own reforms which are then cancelled
by the next governments – there isn’t an end for non-constructive changes! On the
other hand, from the three countries Bulgaria is in the relatively best position – eco-
nomic and political reforms have brought Bulgaria quick inclusion into the European
Union, which means that Bulgaria has reached a particular level of social, political
and economic development. For citizens in general, and for the Roma in particular,
this means that the years of economising and ‘suffering’ the changes have paid off.
Finally, Macedonia is in a relatively better position than Serbia, maybe not so much in
economic terms but in terms of politicians’ attempts to preserve the rule of law, which
is strongly supported by the international community – Macedonia accepted the lat-
ter’s advice and changed its attitude, primarily towards minorities, thus avoiding civil
war. It, of course, has not completely solved the minority question but the general im-
pression that Macedonia has moved forward prevails.
How to explain such divided responses? For the purposes of this study, the con-
clusion that Roma’s attitude towards changes is not black-and-white only but includes
many shades of grey is sufficient. This conclusion is of real importance because there
is always more optimism and possibilities for negotiation among those who are not so
extreme in their attitudes. In the same way, better understanding of this division re-
quires introducing some other factors for analysis. Finally, it would be good to cross-
tabulate the attitudes of Roma towards changes and some independent variables, such
as place of residence, education, and year of birth. We think that those data would
give us a better idea of what and who ‘trips’ changes in the Romani community, which
would be an excellent basis for considering specific action. Still, that as well as intro-
ducing other factors for analysis, we will leave for another occasion.
In Lieu of a Conclusion
While writing this paper, our purpose was to discuss one of the most important
questions today – the issue of how different national communities can live together.
As we have shown, this problem can be approached from different perspectives, and
the solutions that are offered can vary. As our leading idea we accepted Kymlicka’s the-
ory of ethnocultural justice which, inter alia, includes existence of separate space for
minorities, more equal share of public space in society, and search for countermeas-
ures to neutralise ethnic recessions and prevent the transformation of the ‘one man,
one vote’ principle into ethnic monopoly of majority over minority. Ethnocultural
justice can be attained if states define their societal cultures broadly enough and offer
space for expressing differences from the official culture, or if they accept and facilitate
the existence of a larger number of societal cultures.
As far as Roma, as a minority community that interests us here, are concerned,
the attitude is clear – although integration into the majority societal culture brings a
number of dilemmas, uncertainties or dangers to all sides involved in the process, right
now it does not have an alternative. Emigration, self-government and permanent mar-
ginalisation are not realistic for the Roma in the Balkans. Moreover, emigration and
permanent marginalisation are also undesirable because they face Roma with even big-
ger problems and distance states from the principle of ethnocultural justice.
We have also shown that integration would depend on a large number of fac-
tors. Some of them are to be found in the very characteristics of the countries in which
Roma live, while others result from the openness or closedness of the surrounding
majority people. It is clear that as long as states accept minority communities for-
mally only, i.e. declaratively, integration will remain nothing but a dead letter. Efforts
must be made to counter deeply rooted, systematic inhibitory mechanisms that influ-
ence the majority of members of minority communities, and especially Roma. Alpar
Lošonc,30 while reflecting on these problems, comes to the conclusion that ethnoc-
ultural diversity cannot be reduced to agreements between the political elites of ma-
jority and minority groups, or to being an element of European integration (which is
one of the arguments that politicians have started using a lot recently in the context
of solving the minority question). As Lošonc says, ‘In the first case, it would just be
30
Ibid.
mere expression of interest-driven communion, which threatens the dynamics of in-
terests with instability. In the second case, it would be reduced to a technical element
of adjusting to European institutional structures.’31 Lošonc is right to conclude that
‘ethnocultural diversity touches the identity of Serbian [and we add Macedonian and
Bulgarian too] society, since one can insist on multiculturalism only through self-rec-
ognition of societal identity by means of ethnocultural diversity.’32
Considering the more concrete problems discussed here as well as the state of
affairs represented by the research results, we can offer the following conclusions, that
is, instructions for further action:
1. Any type of integration, and especially integration of Roma, should be based
on building and strengthening the identity of the minority community that
is being integrated. If group identity is weak or non-existent, integration is
very likely to turn into assimilation. Action to build and strengthen the iden-
tity of Roma should be undertaken by all relevant subjects – from Romani
non-governmental organisations, educational, political, cultural and infor-
mation institutions, through important individuals and the Romani elite, to
local ‘opinion leaders.’
2. Positive acceptance of integration of Roma requires a strong sense of self-
identity among the majority community too – if Serbs, Macedonians,
Bulgarians have a clear picture of who and what they are, their fears that
by integration Roma would take something away from them, as the most
important barrier to integration, will lessen. Thus, parallel with projects of
identity building of Roma, there should be projects on strengthening the
identity of majority population in a positive sense, and not through negation
of other surrounding communities.
3. Studies have shown that there is a distance on the part of the majority and
other peoples towards Roma, but that this distance has decreased – which
is a positive fact. However, there is still a lot to be done for a positive pres-
entation of Roma and for changing the attitudes of the other peoples. This
important role can be played by the media – both national and minority, i.e.
Romani.
4. Research has shown, among other things, that Roma do not easily accept
changes, therefore an appropriate way should be found for implementing in-
tegration in a form that will ensure that integration is not perceived as a nov-
elty introduced from ‘above’ (by the majority people), or as drastic change in
the previous way of life. Future action should be planed and taken as a series
of small steps before applying radical measures.
31
Ibid. p. 198.
32
Ibid. loc. cit.
5. Finally, recognising and understanding the importance of the fact that Roma
themselves must take responsibility for integration. In order for that to hap-
pen, there must be a critical mass of Romani leaders who would first agree
with the idea of integration and then take concrete steps towards its realisa-
tion.
We understand that for the time being at least, part of these recommendations
are unrealistic. We are also aware of the fact that many factors influencing the inte-
gration of Roma have not been taken into account. Without wishing to justify our-
selves, we must nevertheless stress that the problem is very complex and demands
constant monitoring, adding new factors and maybe omitting some of the old ones. It
is also true that we have not discussed any of the attempts that Serbia, Bulgaria, and
Macedonia as well as Romani leaders and organisations have already made towards
integration. We will leave that for another occasion and discussion.
77
TURKISH MIGRATIONS FROM BULGARIA

Omer Turan
History Department, Middle East Technical University, Turkey
The Ottoman Turks first came to the Balkans, which they called Rumelia, in 1356.
Over the next century, they conquered almost all the lands of the Peninsula. During the
reign of Murad II, they conquered today’s Bulgaria and Macedonia; during the reign of
Mehmet II, the Adriatic coasts; during the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent, lands up
to Szigetvar in Hungary were annexed to the Ottoman territory.
Among the Ottoman-controlled Balkan lands, today’s Bulgaria, Macedonia
and Greece were most densely settled by Turks. The Ottoman Empire annexed today’s
Bulgarian lands in the second half of the fourteenth century. Two hundred and fifty
years after the conquest, those lands had a dense network of Turkish settlements. The
Turkoman tribes, which were brought from different parts of Anatolia, sometimes as a
reward and sometimes as a punishment, were settled in almost all of today’s Bulgaria.1
As a consequence of this settlement, the Turkish population became a majority in
Chirmen, Sofia, Plovdiv, Stara Zagora, Tatar Pazarcık, Silistra, Razgrad and Varna at
the end of sixteenth century.2
Stanford Shaw defines the Ottoman Empire/Turkey as a ‘land of refugees.’ Non-
Turkish and non-Muslim groups, especially Jews, took refuge in the Ottoman lands
in different periods of history when they regarded their situation as insecure in their
places of origin.3 Generally speaking, as the Ottoman Empire started losing territories
at the end of the seventeenth century, people living in those lands and feeling affiliated
to the Ottoman Empire or regarding the Ottoman administration as their protector be-
1
Naldöken Turkomans, Tanrıdağı Turkomans, Ofçabolu Turkomans, Vize Turkomans,
Kocacık Turkomans and Tartars were the Turkoman groups who were settled in today’s Bulgaria.
Naldöken Turkomans were settled in Eskihisar-Zagora, Plovdiv and Tatarpazarcık; Tanrıdağı
Turkomans in Ruse, Tırnovo, Razgrad and Nikopol. For further information about those
Turkoman groups and their settlements, see Yücel, Yaşar. 1985. ‘Balkanlarda Türk Yerleşmesi ve
Sonuçları,’ in Bulgaristan’da Türk Varlığı, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, pp. 67–84.
2
Şahin, İlhan, Feridun M. Emecen and Yusuf Halaçoğlu. 1990. ‘Turkish Settlements
in Rumelia (Bulgaria) in the 15th and 16th Centuries: Town and Village Population,’ in Karpat,
Kemal H. (ed.). The Turks of Bulgaria: The History, Culture and Political Fate of a Minority,
İstanbul, pp. 26–42.
3
Shaw, Stanford J. 1991. The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, New
York: New York University Press.
78 Omer Turan
gan to migrate from Crimea, Caucasus, and the Balkans to the lands where Ottoman
sovereignty continued.4 In order to regulate migrations to the Ottoman lands and to
organise settlements, a refugee commission was established in 1860.5
Turkish migrations from the Balkans to Anatolia began with the Ottoman-
Austrian wars of 1683–1699. During these wars, the Austrian forces invaded present-
day Macedonia, burned the city of Skopje in 1689, and destroyed many of the Ottoman
monuments there. In those years, the city’s population was sixty thousand. Almost all
of the population left Skopje because of the fire, contagious diseases and Austrian op-
pression. Some of the Muslims came to Istanbul and established the Skopje quarter in
the city.6
Between 1806 and 1812, due to the Serbian, Croatian, Greek and Bulgarian
oppression, 200,000 Muslims became refugees in the Balkans.7 According to official
Ottoman statistics, more than one million refugees came to the Ottoman lands be-
tween 1876 and 1895.8 Approximately 100,000 Bosnians took refuge in the Ottoman
lands between 1882 and 1900.9 Beginning with the 1821 Greek Revolt until the 1912–
1913 Balkan Wars, the number of refugees that came from Crete alone was one hun-
dred and thirty thousand.10
Hundreds of thousands of Turkish refugees migrated to Turkey during, as well
as in the years after the Balkan Wars. According to Ahmet Halaçoğlu, the author of
a book about migrations from the Balkans to Turkey during the Balkan Wars, nearly
200,000 refugees were settled in Istanbul province in this period. From the beginning
of the Balkan Wars to 10 April 1913, the number of refugees that came from Rumelia
to Turkey was nearly two hundred thousand.11 According to Tevfik Bıyıklıoğlu, 200,000
from Western Thrace and 240,000 from Macedonia, or nearly 440,000 Turks migrat-
4
Saydam, Abdullah. 1997. Kırım ve Kafkas Göçleri (1856–1876), Ankara: Türk Tarih
Kurumu.
5
About the establishment of the commission and its activities, see Eren, Ahmet Cevat.
1966. Türkiye’de Göç ve Göçmen Meseleleri, Tanzimat Devri, İlk Kurulan Göçmen Komisyonu,
Çıkarılan Tüzükler, İstanbul. Also, Geray, Cevat. 1962. Türkiye’den ve Türkiye’ye Göçler ve
Göçmenlerin İskanları, Ankara: Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi.
6
Hoca, Nazif. 1986. ‘Üsküb,’ in MEB İslam Ansiklopedisi, Istanbul: Kültür ve Turizm
Bakanlığı, p. 124.
7
Eren, p. 33.
8
Devlet-i Aliyye-i Osmaniyye’nin 1313 Senesine Mahsus İstatistik-i Umumisi. 1316.
İstatistik-i Umumi İdaresi, Nezaret-i Umur-ı Ticaret ve Nafia, İstanbul, p. 27.
9
Bosna Hersek İle İlgili Arşiv Belgeleri (1516–1919). 1992. Ankara: Başbakanlık Devlet
Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü, p. 309; Gölen, Zafer. 1996. ‘Bosna Hersek Hakkında Bir Layiha,’
Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi, Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, Vol. 2, p. 297.
10
Ağanoğlu, Yıldırım. 2001. Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e Balkanların Makûs Talihi Göç,
İstanbul: Kum Saati, pp. 40–41.
11
Halaçoğlu, Ahmet. 1994. Balkan Harbi Sırasında Rumeli’den Türk Göçleri (1912–1913),
Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, p. 63.
Turkish migrations from Bulgaria 79
ed to Turkey during the Balkan Wars.12 According to the Helsinki Human Rights
Committee, 302,907 Turks between 1912 and 1913, and 276,489 Turks between 1918
and 1941 migrated from Kosovo to Turkey. Erhan Türbedar asserts that when these
figures are compared with other sources, they should include also some refugees from
Macedonia.13 Unfortunately, we are not able to give a certain figure about migration
from Bulgaria to Turkey during the Balkan Wars. The number of Turks who migrated
from Romania to Turkey was 113,710 between 1923 and 1938.14 According to Yugoslav
sources, 80,000 people migrated to Turkey between 1953 and 1966. Some Turkish
sources raise this figure to nearly one hundred and fifty thousand.15
These figures will grow if we consider unsystematic migrations from different
parts of the Balkans to Anatolia. What they all have in common is that they involved
people who felt affiliated to the Ottoman Empire and who, in order to save their lives
and honour, migrated from lands where Ottoman sovereignty had collapsed due to
Austrian or Russian attacks to lands where Ottoman sovereignty continued. Turkish
migration from Bulgaria is one of the most tragic migrations that Turks have ever suf-
fered in the Balkans.
Russia had been attempting to gain control of the Balkans against the Ottoman
Empire since the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774. In this frame, establishment of a
satellite Bulgarian state under its control was one of the Russia’s objectives.16 Moreover
Russia formed the ‘Bulgaria Commission’ composed of historians, diplomats and sol-
diers to determine peculiarities of the administration of the planned Bulgaria. During
the work of this Commission, it was seen that the Turkish-Muslim population would
constitute half of the total population of Bulgaria by the last quarter of the nineteenth
century.17 This demographic situation is also confirmed by the researches conducted by
the British and the French Consulates as well as the Ottoman yearbooks.18
The Turkish-Muslim population that constituted half of the future Bulgaria’s
population disturbed the pan-Slavic Russian administrators. This great population was
regarded as a threat to the existence of a Slav-Orthodox Bulgaria. Therefore, ‘to clean
the Balkans from the Turkish presence was declared as the objective of the 1877–78
Ottoman-Russian War and the war was planned as a ‘war of races and extermination.’
12
Bıyıklıoğlu, Tevfik. 1987. Trakya’da Millî Mücadele, Vol. I, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu,
pp. 92– 93.
13
Türbedar, Erhan. 2003. ‘Tarihte Değişen Siyasî ve Sosyal Dengeler İçinde Kosova Türkleri,’
in Türbedar Erhan (ed.). Balkan Türkleri, Balkanlarda Türk Varlığı, Ankara: ASAM, p. 74.
14
Ağanoğlu, p. 332.
15
Türbedar, p. 76.
16
Jelavich, Barbara. 1991. Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 1806–1914, Cambridge
University Press.
17
Turan, Ömer. 1998. The Turkish Minority in Bulgaria, 1878–1908, Ankara: Türk Tarih
Kurumu, pp. 55–57.
18
Ibid., pp. 79–98.
80 Omer Turan
The races mentioned were the Turkish and Slav races, and extermination refers to the
Turkish presence in the Balkans.19
The first Turkish migration from today’s Bulgaria began due to those reasons
and in that way. It would not be wrong to call the history of the Turks of Bulgaria af-
ter 1877 a history of migration. Special Cossack troops were formed ‘to exterminate’
civilian Turks and Muslims from their places. Those troops attacked and forced those
civilians to leave. Cossack troops performed their functions before the main Russian
army.20 On 8/20 July 1877, fourteen foreign correspondents wrote and signed the fol-
lowing report:
‘We are foreign press representatives gathered in Shumen. We believe that it is

our mission to summarise together the news, which we had sent separately to
our newspapers before, related to inhuman actions against innocent and de-
fenceless Muslims in Bulgaria. We record what we witnessed and testimonies of
children, women and elderly people who were wounded with spears, swords and
guns in Razgrad and Shumen. Those wounded people were telling horrible sto-
ries about cruel actions of Russian forces and sometimes of Bulgarians against
the Muslims. According to their testimonies, the entire populations of many
Muslim villages were massacred while escaping or in their looted villages. Every
day new wounded people are coming. We who have put our signatures below
have observed that most of the wounded people are children and women, and
they had been mostly wounded with swords.’21
The British ambassador Layard, in his report dated 24 July 1877, described the
situation to his government as follows:
‘The proceedings of Russians and Bulgarians in Bulgaria and Rumelia convinced

the Muslim inhabitants of the provinces and the Turkish government that it was
the deliberate intention of Russia either to exterminate the Muslim population
by the sword, or to drive it out of the country. There was to be a general confis-
cation of the property of the Muslims, which had already commenced. Without
any doubt, the shocking outrages, which were committed upon them, either by
Russians or Bulgarians under their protection, struck terror amongst the Muslim
populations. They were flying, at Russians’ advantage, to escape the fate of their
brethren, and were seeking refuge in the Turkish fortresses and in Istanbul.’22
19
Ibid., p. 120.
20
Turan, pp. 119–134; McCarthy, Death and Exile, pp. 69–70.
21
Kerman, Zeynep (ed.). 1987. Rusların Asya’da ve Rumeli’de Yaptıkları Mezalim. İstanbul:
Türk Dünyası Araştırmaları, pp. 24–25.
22
Turan, p. 137.
Survivors headed to Istanbul in an unplanned and unconscious way to protect
their lives and honour. Because of the great panic the Ottoman authorities could not
control events. The vice-governor of Plovdiv sent a telegraph to Istanbul on 12 January
1878, demanding the transfer to Edirne of 15,000 refugees who had been waiting in
snow for three days at the Plovdiv station. However, at that time all trains operating
the Edirne–Tatarpazarı line were confiscated in order to transfer soldiers, but the order
could not be applied because refugees stormed the trains. Still, the refugees could not
escape from the attacks of the Russian forces approaching Plovdiv on 14 January.23
Despite all difficulties, many refugees came to Istanbul. Faced with the misery of
this great number of refugees, foreign traders, businessmen and diplomats felt obliged
to help them. They joined aid activities, delivered daily food and supplies, and collected
aid from Europe by establishing an international society of aid for refugees.24 A quaran-
tine was applied to prevent epidemics in the city.
In the course of the 1878 peace negotiations between the Ottoman and Russian
authorities at the end of the 1877–78 War, the Ottoman delegate Safvet Pasha proposed
a population exchange. According to the Turkish proposal, the Turks living north of the
Balkan Mountains should have been brought to the south, and Bulgarians living in the
south should have been transferred to the north; their property and possessions should
have been exchanged mutually. However, the Russian delegation did not accept this pro-
posal. They probably thought that the Turkish population had already been expelled or
would be expelled from their lands so there was no need for such an agreement.25
The policy of expelling the Turks from Bulgaria and creating a homogeneous
Bulgaria during the war continued after the establishment of a Bulgarian state. As
Cengiz Hakov points out, ‘despite their different ideological and political orientation,
forcing the Bulgarian Turks to migrate to Turkey has been an unchanged state policy
of the Bulgarian governments.’26 The Berlin Treaty signed at the end of the war per-
mitted the return of all refugees except the Circassians. Those who trusted the above-
mentioned provisions of the Treaty and wanted to return were met with obstructions
on the part of the Russian authorities. Despite all obstructions, some refugees returned
but they were robbed, beaten and even killed. The houses of some had been destroyed
or were occupied by Bulgarians, who had been brought in from different places.27 Thus
those who returned to Bulgaria again migrated to the Ottoman lands, losing their hope
to live in Bulgaria because of this terrible treatment.
23
İpek, Nedim. 1994. Rumeli’den Anadolu’ya Türk Göçleri (1877–1890), Ankara: Türk
Tarih Kurumu, p. 27.
24
Turan, p. 143.
25
Şimşir, Bilâl N. 1985. ‘Bulgaristan Türkleri ve Göç Sorunu,’ in Bulgaristan’da Türk
Varlığı Bildiriler Kitabı, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, p. 49.
26
Hakov, Cengiz. 2002. ‘Bulgaristan Türklerinin Göçmenlik Serüveni,’ in Celâl Güzel,
Hasan, Kemal Çiçek and Salim Koca (eds.). Türkler, Ankara: Yeni Türkiye Yayınları, p. 371.
27
Turan, p. 148.
82 Omer Turan
In the Bulgarian Principality, Turks suffered from oppression of the new author-
ities on different pretexts, and migrated to Turkey to protect their lives and honour.
The Bulgarian gendarmerie or bandits sponsored by the Bulgarian gendarmerie forced
the Muslims to migrate by using violence.28 In order to prevent transfer of money to
Turkey, buying the property and possessions of Muslims, who wanted to sell their pos-
sessions and leave, was forbidden.29 The 1880 law on conscription of the Muslims and
the 1882 land tax law were among the reasons that caused migrations of Muslims.30
As Table 1 shows, according to the reports of the British and the French
Consulates nearly 100,000 people came to Turkey from Bulgaria via Port Varna alone
between 1879 and 1883. It should be kept in mind that this figure applies only to the
number of people who used Port Varna to leave Bulgaria. In addition to them, others
left by steamboat from the Danube ports, but we do not know their number. We know
that some of them went to Romania but we do not know exactly how many.
Table 1
Migration to Turkey from Port Varna Between 1879 and 1880
Period Number
1879 14,000
January–September 1880 18,033
October–December 1880 20,798
1881–1882 13,000 or 14,000
January–June 1883 35,000
Source: Balkanlardan Türk Göçleri, Bilâl N. Şimşir (ed.), Vol. III, pp. 104–106, 337–340,
486–488, 527–532.
As the British Consul Brophy wrote, ‘the greater bulk, however, of the Muslim
population quitting this country did not go by sea from Varna, but preferred to go
overland, crossing the Balkans in their own oxen-carts carrying their families and their
household utensils.’31 Laffon, the French Consul in Edirne, stated in his report dated
31 October 1883 that 50,000 refugee families from Eastern Rumelia and the Bulgarian
Principality had passed through Edirne in the last three months.32 According to the offi-
cial Ottoman documents, the number of refugees from Bulgaria who came to Istanbul
between March 1886 and February 1887 was 11,715; a total of 17,646 came between
Ibid., p. 150.
28
Ibid., p. 149.
29
30
Turan, pp. 150–152; İpek, pp. 130–149.
31
Şimşir, Bilâl N. (ed.). 1989. Balkanlardan Türk Göçleri, Vol. III, Ankara: Türk Tarih
Kurumu, p. 486.
32
Ibid., pp. 565–566.
March 1891 and January 1892.33 As Table 2 shows, according to Bulgarian official sta-
tistics nearly 70,000 Turks migrated from Bulgaria to Turkey between 1893 and 1902.
Table 2
Migration from Bulgaria to Turkey Between 1893 and 1902
Year Number
1893 11,460
1894 8,837
1895 5,095
1896 1,946
1897 2,801
1898 6,640
1899 7,354
1900 7,417
1901 9,339
1902 9,717
Total 70,603
Source: Principauté de Bulgarie, Direction de la Statistique, Statistique de
l’Emigration de la Principauté dans Pays Etrangers, de 1893 à 1902, Sofia, 1905, pp. IV–V.
According to the Bulgarian official statistics, 802,597 Muslims lived in the

Bulgarian Principality and in the Eastern Rumelia Province in the 1880-1884 period.
As is known, Eastern Rumelia was annexed by the Bulgarian Principality in 1885. After
Bulgaria gained independence, the Muslim population numbered 601,999 in 1910.34 In
other words, the Muslim population in Bulgaria had decreased by 200,000 in a period
of thirty years. If we consider the above-mentioned consulate reports, the growth rate
of the Muslim population and some other factors, we may claim that the number of
people who migrated from Bulgaria to Turkey must have exceeded 200,000. Stoyanov,
Vasileva and Eminov have written that 350,000 Turks migrated from Bulgaria to Turkey
between 1878 and 1912 – that is, in the period from the establishment of the Bulgarian
state to the Balkan Wars.35
33
İpek, pp. 152–153. Nedim İpek’s book, based on documents from the Ottoman ar-
chives, contains important information about migration to the Ottoman Empire from the
Balkans and subsequent settlement in Anatolia.
34
Turan, p. 113.
35
Stoyanov, Valleri. 1994. ‘The Turks in Bulgaria,’ in Relations of Compatibility and
Incompatibility Between Christians and Muslims in Bulgaria, Sofia: International Centre
for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations Foundation, p. 269; Vasileva, Darina. 1992.
‘Bulgarian Turkish Emigration and Return,’ in International Migration Review, Vol. XXVI, No.
2, Summer 1992, p. 346; Eminov, Ali. 1997. Turkish and Other Muslim Minorities in Bulgaria,
London: Hurst & Company, p. 79.
84 Omer Turan
In the Balkan Wars, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria fought against each oth-
er. During these wars both the Turks of Bulgaria and the Turks in invaded lands suf-
fered cruelties and torture. There are some figures about the refugees coming from
Kosovo, Macedonia and Thrace but we do not have exact data about the number of the
Turks who migrated from Bulgaria to Turkey during the Balkan Wars.36
Turkey and Bulgaria were allies in World War I. As a result of this, it can be said
that Turks did not face any oppression. After World War I, Alexander Stamboliyski be-
came prime minister of Bulgaria. This period is called the ‘golden age’ of the Turks of
Bulgaria. In both periods there was no serious migration movement from Bulgaria to
Turkey. In the period from the fall of the Stamboliyski government as a result of a coup
on 9 June 1923 to World War II, the Turks in Bulgaria were subjected to oppression and
unjust treatment, and they again started migrating en masse.
When we consider migrations from Bulgaria to Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s,
the cruelties of Rodna Zastita in Northern Bulgaria and the Thrace Committee in
Southern Bulgaria against Turks can be regarded as the main reason for those migra-
tions. Rodna Zastita forced Turks to migrate by attacking them, including killing them,
and announced that ‘other races have no right to live in Bulgaria.’37
The Turkish-Bulgarian population exchange agreement38 dated 18 October 1925
regulated migration from Bulgaria to Turkey. Article 2 of the agreement provided for
voluntary migration of the Turks from Bulgaria, allowing migrants to take their mov-
able property and animals with them, and to sell their immovable property and bring
their money freely. As a result of this agreement, migrations from Bulgaria occurred
relatively regularly in the first years of the Republican period. Since the migrants came
in moderate numbers and with their possessions and animals, there was no chaos in
Turkey in that period. As Table 3 indicates, until the 1934 fascist coup in Bulgaria
10,000 people migrated to Turkey per year, but after that the number increased to
15,000 per year.39 A report of the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry dated 21 March 1934
claimed that Turks in Bulgaria could exercise all rights and freedoms granted by the
36
As a result of the negotiations of 2–15 November 1913, after the Balkan Wars an
agreement was reached to exchange populations living on either side of the border between
Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire. Consequently, 48,570 Muslims living in Bulgaria and 46,764
Bulgarians living in the Ottoman Empire were exchanged. However, that event is outside the
scope of this paper, which deals with migration. See Önder, Selahattin. 1991. ‘Meclis-i Vükela
Mazbatalarında Türk-Bulgar Mübadelesi,’ in Anadolu Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi,
Vol. III, No. 1, 1991, pp. 207–225.
37
Şimşir, ‘Bulgaristan Türkleri ve Göç Sorunu,,’ pp. 53–55.
38
For the full text of the agreement, see, Belgelerle Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ve Türk-Bulgar
İlişkileri (1913–1938). 2002. Ankara: Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü, pp. 51–65; see also
Altuğ, Yılmaz. 1991. ‘Balkanlardan Anayurda Yapılan Göçler,’ Belleten, Vol. LV, No. 212, pp. 114.
39
About the settlements of the Turkish migrants who came from Bulgaria in Turkey, see
Öksüz, Hikmet. 2000. ‘İkili İlişkiler Çerçevesinde Balkan Ülkelerinden Türkiye’ye Göçler ver Göç
Sonrası İskân Meselesi (1923–1938),’ in Atatürk Dergisi, Vol. III, No. 1, Mayıs 2000, pp. 177–180.
Constitution and laws, but they were being instigated by Kemalist propaganda to mi-
grate to Turkey.40
The Turks of Bulgaria constituted the main axis of Turkish-Bulgarian relations during
the post-WWII period.41 Large-scale migrations occurred in 1950–51, 1969–78, and 1989.
Table 3
Migration from Bulgaria to Turkey Between 1923 and 1960
Year Number
1923–33 101,507
1934 8,682
1935 24,968
1936 11,730
1937 13,490
1938 20,542
1939 10,769
1940 7,004
1941 3,803
1942 2,672
1943 1,145
1944 489
1945 631
1946 706
1947 1,763
1948 1,514
1949 1,670
1950 52,185
1951 102,208
1952 4
1953 2
1954 9
1955 4
1956 32
1957 -
1958 6
1959 25
1960 11
Total 367,571
Source: Geray, Table 2.
40
Belgelerle Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ve Türk Bulgar İlişkileri (1913–1938), pp. 287–305.
41
Lütem, Ömer E. 2000. Türk-Bulgar İlişkileri 1983–1989, Vol. I, Ankara: ASAM, p. 320.
86 Omer Turan
The communists came to power in Bulgaria on 9 September 1944. They gave

land to landless Turks, made teaching of Turkish language compulsory in Turkish
schools, opened teacher schools, and paid salaries to the Turkish teachers. In doing so,
the communists aimed to gain support from Turks in the first years of their rule. The
communists gained more power after the 1946 elections. When the regime was con-
solidated in the second half of the 1940s in Bulgaria, the rights that had been granted
to Turks were abolished one by one. The communists nationalised land that had been
allocated to Turks, limited Turkish teaching, and abolished Koran teaching.42 Turkish
pious foundations, which had kept alive the Turkish schools were nationalised. In 1946
Turkish schools, which had until then had the status of private schools, were made state
schools.43 New legislation was passed, enabling the government to take control of the
religious administration of the Muslims in 1946.44
Because of these developments, Bulgarian Turks began to look for ways of mi-
grating to Turkey and sent a petition to the Turkish President.45 Turkish migration
from Bulgaria remained at its almost lowest level during World War II and in the fol-
lowing years. As Table 3 shows, the number of refugees sometimes decreased to hun-
dreds in these years. It averaged 2,100 per year. The reason was not any reluctance of
Turks to migrate to Turkey from Bulgaria but the prohibition of migration.
After World War II, Bulgaria entered the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence.
Turkish-Bulgarian relations followed a parallel way of development as did the Turkish-
Soviet relations.46 In those years, the Soviet Union began to claim a right over the
Turkish Straits. Turkey objected to this claim and took action to join NATO. Turkey re-
sponded to a call of the United Nations and sent a brigade to the Korean War that had
begun with attacks of the communists. All these developments strained Turkish-Soviet
relations. The Soviet Union objected to Turkey’s attempts to join NATO as well as to the
establishment of close relations between Turkey and the USA, and therefore attempted
to exert pressure on Turkey by using its satellite Bulgaria.47 In this context, Bulgaria de-
livered a diplomatic note to Turkey on 10 August 1950, declaring that nearly 250,000
Turks from Bulgaria wanted to migrate to Turkey, that Bulgaria would send them in
three months, and that Turkey should accept them.48
42
Hakov, p. 372.
43
On the education of Bulgarian Turks in that period, see Memişoğlu, Hüseyin. 2002.
Geçmişten Günümüze Bulgaristan’da Türk Eğitim Tarihi, Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı, pp. 228–233.
44
Eminov, pp. 82–83.
45
Şimşir, ‘Bulgaristan Türkleri ve Göç Sorunu,,’ p. 58.
46
Lütem, p. 42.
47
Sander, Oral. 1969. Balkan Gelişmeleri ve Türkiye (1945–1965), Ankara: Ankara
Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi, pp. 70-76.
48
On the Soviet Union’s demands concerning the Soviet-Turkish border and the Turkish
Straits after the Second World War, and Turkey’s subsequent desire to establish good relations
with the USA and to become a member of NATO, see Sönmezoğlu, Faruk. 1994. ‘II. Dünya
Savaşı Döneminde Türkiye’nin Dış Politikası: “Tarafsızlıktan NATO’ya”,’ in Sönmezoğlu, Faruk
(ed.). Türk Dış Politikasının Analizi, İstanbul: Der Yayınları, pp. 79–87.
The Turkish government responded to Bulgaria’s note with another note on 28
August 1950. The Turkish note stated that migration of such a large group within three
months was not normal, and that Turkey could always accept a moderate number of
refugees every year. Turkey demanded that Bulgaria permits the refugees to bring their
moveable property, and that ways of transferring money received for sales of immov-
able property be determined.49 According to Şimşir; between June and September
1950 a total 57,886 people received Turkish entry visas from the Turkish Consulates.50
According to Hakov; the Turkish Consulates issued visas to 212,150 people between 1
January and 30 September 1950.51
Turkey accepted nearly 30,000 refugees between 1 January and 7 October 1950.
The Turkish government closed the Turkish-Bulgarian border, arguing that Bulgaria
was sending people without visas or with fake visas to Turkey. After almost two months
of negotiations, Bulgaria accepted the return of such people and undertook not to send
them back. The border was reopened on 2 December 1950. Nearly 22,000 refugees en-
tered Turkey by the end of December.52 Consequently, some 52,000 refugees migrated
from Bulgaria to Turkey in 1950.53 Migration continued in 1951. Approximately 800
refugees were being accepted per day. The Turkish government closed the border once
again, arguing that Bulgaria was inserting Gypsies among the Turkish immigrants.
Bulgaria forbade migration on 30 November. The total number of immigrants, who
came from Bulgaria in 1951 was 102,208. This time the border stayed closed for about
fifteen months. Bulgaria accepted the return of the Gypsies whom it had sent with fake
visas, and the border was reopened on 20 February 1953. Turkey was willing to accept
immigrants in moderate numbers. However this time Bulgaria did not permit migra-
tion of Turks. There was almost no migration from Bulgaria to Turkey until 1968.54
According to a survey conducted among more than 154,000 immigrants who
migrated from Bulgaria in 1950–1951, eleven percent of the immigrants had come
willingly, 85% had come because it was impossible to live in Bulgaria, and 3% had
come because they had been forced to leave by Bulgarians. Twenty-four percent of the
respondents said that they had not been exposed to ill-treatment, and 74% argued that
they had been exposed to ill-treatment in different ways. Just 2.6% of the immigrants
had been able to sell their property at its real value, 63.4% had sold it far below its real
value, and 27.3% had been unable to sell their property.55
49
For the full text of the Turkish note, see Ayın Tarihi, No. 201, Ağustos 1950, pp. 41–46.
Even though the Treaty of 1925 proposed a new agreement on that matter, there was no agree-
ment yet.
50
51
Hakov, p. 372.
52
Sander, pp. 78–79.
53
Ibid., pp. 78–79.
54
55
Şimşir, ‘Bulgaristan Türkleri ve Göç Sorunu,,’ pp. 61–62. Kostanick, Huey. 1957.
Turkish Settlement of Bulgarian Turks, 1950–1953, Berkeley: University of California.
88 Omer Turan
The sudden interruption of the 1950–51 migration flow divided many families,
some of whose members were in Bulgaria, while others were in Turkey. Reuniting di-
vided families was a permanent issue on the agenda at least of the Turkish side in the
1950s and 1960s. Bulgaria put aside the migration subject and in 1951 began to ap-
ply some programmes to win over Turks. In this context schools teaching in Turkish,
Turkish teacher schools, a Turkish press, theatres and folklore groups were formed and
supported. All this aimed to create a Turkish mass that would embrace the socialist re-
gime and abandon religious values and traditions.
By the mid-1950s, it was obvious that the programmes applied could not suc-
ceed in transforming the Turkish identity into a socialist international identity. Thus it
was assumed in April 1956 that Turks and other minorities should be assimilated into
the Bulgarian identity.56 In this framework, in 1958 the communist regime resolved
to unify with the respective Bulgarian schools the Turkish high schools, the teacher
schools and institutes in the 1958/59 academic year, and the Turkish primary and sec-
ondary schools in the 1959/60 academic year.57 Education in Turkish was completely
abolished. This situation spurred the desire of Turks to migrate to Turkey in order to
escape assimilation. Many visa applications were submitted to the Turkish Consulates
in Bulgaria.58
In September 1961 Turkey delivered a note demanding that Bulgaria respect mi-
nority rights and permit people who wanted to migrate to Turkey to do so. Bulgaria did
not respond to this note for a long time. Eventually, a decision was made to negotiate
on the migration problem during Foreign Minister Ivan Basev’s visit to Turkey from 16
to 21 August 1966. After long negotiations, a limited migration agreement was signed
on 22 February 1968. A month later the Bulgarian Prime Minister Todor Zhivkov and
the Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivan Basev visited Turkey and a new treaty on migration
was signed on 22 March 1968. The treaty permitted migration of people whose close
relatives had migrated to Turkey before 1952. This permission applied to spouses, par-
ents, grandparents, children, and grandchildren. After the signing of the treaty, nearly
130,000 immigrants came to Turkey. These people had a status of people who emigrat-
ed on their own free will and they did not receive aid from the Turkish government.
Bulgaria could manage to keep the Turkish population at a certain level relative
to the total population by its policy of sending Turks to Turkey, a policy that Bulgaria
had been following since 1878. However Bulgaria had the lowest birth rate and popu-
lation among the neighbour socialist states. Thus Bulgaria decided to assimilate Turks
instead of expelling them, and began the so-called ‘Renaming Process.’ There are differ-
ent interpretations related to Bulgaria’s assimilation policy.
56
57
Memişoğlu, pp. 260–261.
58
According to Şimşir, who was a diplomat as well, applications began to be submitted es-
pecially in 1963, their number reaching 400,000 in March 1964. See Şimşir, Bilâl N. 2003. ‘Türkiye
ve Balkanlar,’ in Türbedar, Erhan (ed.). Balkan Türkleri, Balkanlarda Türk Varlığı, p. 335.
It is argued that Zhivkov followed an assimilation policy on the orders from
Moscow. According to the proponents of this argument, the Soviet administration used
Bulgaria as a pilot region in the assimilation of Turks. If this had succeeded in Bulgaria,
the same way would have been followed in other countries bound to the Soviet Union.
However, while Bulgaria was following an assimilation policy, the Soviet Union was
trying to apply perestroika and glasnost. In addition to this, Bulgaria could not rely on
Soviet support when it was criticised on the international scene because of its assimi-
lation policy.59 Vasileva notes that excitation of ethnic conflicts to prevent more dan-
gerous social conflicts was a typical characteristic of the Soviet Union and the Eastern
European states in the 1980s.60
Another, more frequently offered explanation for Bulgaria’s assimilation poli-
cy is that the Bulgarian population was decreasing while the Turkish and the Muslim
populations were increasing. The population growth rate in Bulgaria was at its low-
est level during the 1980s. General population growth decreased to 3.6% in 1980. This
rate decreased to 2.8% in 1981, 2.7% in 1982, and 2.4% in 1984.61 Additionally, as Table
4 shows, while the Bulgarian population was decreasing the population of minorities
was increasing. Lovech, Mihailovgrad and Vidin had a dense Bulgarian population.
When we consider the regions where the minority population is dense, we will see the
Macedonians in Blagoevrad, the Pomaks in Smolyan, and the Turks in Kurdzhali. As
we can see from Table 4, while the populations of the Bulgarian regions were decreas-
ing, the populations in non-Bulgarian regions were increasing. The Communist Party
leaders were afraid that Turks and Muslims would be a majority in Bulgaria by 2000.
And they applied an assimilation policy to prevent this possibility.
Table 4
Population Growth Rate in Some Regions of Bulgaria (%)
Year Lovech Mihailovgrad Vidin Blagoevrad Smolyan Kurdzhali
1979 –2.8 –1.6 –4.8 +9.6 +9.9 +17.9
1981 –3.3 –3.3 –6.3 +9.3 +7.8 +15.9
1984 –4.6 –4.9 –7.2 +8.3 +7.7 +14.0
Source: Poulton, p. 122.
59
Lütem, p. 489. Actually, Russians influenced Bulgaria’s policy not only towards Turks
but also towards Jews. See Mutafchieva, Vera. 1994. ‘The Turks, the Jews and the Gypsies,’ in
Relations of Compatibility and Incompatibility Between Christians and Muslims in Bulgaria,
Sofia: International Centre for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations Foundation, p. 46.
60
Vasileva, Darina. 1992. ‘Bulgarian Turkish Emigration and Return,’ International
Migration Review, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, Summer 1992, p. 346.
61
Poulton, Hugh. 1991. The Balkans, Minorities and States in Conflict, London: Minority
Rights Publications, p. 122.
90 Omer Turan
Eminov claims that the secret documents in the Archives of the Central
Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party demonstrate the plan of the Party.
According to this plan, both forced migration and assimilation would be used to re-
duce the Turkish population in Bulgaria by 10% to 15%.62 Eminov emphasises that the
communists manipulated and exaggerated statistical data and, on the basis of Table 5,
points out that while the Bulgarian population growth rate had decreased by 1.8% be-
tween 1956 and 1974, the decrease in the population growth rates for Turks was 7.5%
and for Gypsies it was 12.8%.63
Table 5
Population Growth Rate of Some Ethnic Groups in Bulgaria (%)
Year Bulgars Turks Gypsies
1956 8.3 25.2 25.8
1965 5.5 21.7 14.3
1974 6.5 17.7 13.0
Source: Eminov, p. 93.
In the framework of assimilation, a name change campaign was launched. In the

first half of the 1980s, the Gypsies and the Pomaks living in the Rhodope Mountains
were given Bulgarian names. The names of the Turks living in Southern Bulgaria, espe-
cially in Kurdzhali, were changed in November and December 1984. The Turkish-to-
Bulgarian name change in North-eastern Bulgaria was completed in March 1985. The
forcing of people to take Bulgarian names triggered a strong reaction both in Bulgaria
and abroad. Some of the resisting Turks were imprisoned, wounded and killed.64
The Turkish President Kenan Evren wrote a letter to the Bulgarian President
Todor Zhivkov demanding an immediate end of the forced name changing. In the
following months diplomatic negotiations, notes and protests between Turkey and
Bulgaria continued, sharpening in tone. Turkey was eager to find a solution to the
problem, including a comprehensive migration agreement on the basis of international
agreements and mutual negotiations. The Bulgarian administration regarded these de-
velopments as Turkish propaganda and intervention in its internal affairs.65
The attitude of the Bulgarian government changed after some events, which be-
gan in the village of Todor Ikonomovo (Mahmuzlu) and spread to neighbouring villag-
62
Eminov, p. 82.
63
Ibid., p. 93.
64
Poulton, pp. 130–151.
65
The memoirs of Ömer E. Lütem, who was the Turkish ambassador in Sofia at the time,
contain valuable information about the attitude of the Turkish embassy and government, their
attempts, the answers/reactions of the Bulgarian government and authorities, negotiations be-
tween the representatives of the two countries, mutual notes, reactions of international organi-
sations, etc. See Lütem, pp. 173–572.
es, and seven people were killed on 20 May 1989. When Zhivkov demanded the open-
ing of the border for immigrants, the Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Özal replied posi-
tively. Thus an unplanned and unorganised migration to Turkey began in June 1989.66
In the summer of 1989, a total of 369,839 people came to Turkey in less than
three months. The 1989 migration is the greatest migration wave from Bulgaria to
Turkey. Those 369,839 people, who constitute 43% of the Turks of Bulgaria, left their
lands where they had lived for centuries, their houses, jobs and social rights, and came
to Turkey. They formed a line more than twenty kilometres long at the Kapıkule bor-
der checkpoint, with their TV sets, refrigerators, pots, and domestic animals loaded on
cars, handcarts, and horse carts.67
Turkey was not ready and prepared to accept and settle such a great number
of people in such a short period. It therefore blocked free migration and permitted
only migration of the Turks who had visas. When Turkey took this action, a great
number of people that is close to the number mentioned above were preparing to mi-
grate to Turkey. However the migration of 369,839 Turks from Bulgaria terminated
Bulgaria’s assimilation policy and it terminated even the Zhivkov regime. As a result
of demonstrations that began in the autumn of 1989, Zhivkov had to resign as General
Secretary of the Party on 10 November 1989. The new administration declared that the
assimilation of Turks was contrary to the Bulgarian Constitution and the international
agreements, and harmed national unity. The new Bulgarian administration revoked re-
strictions on choosing native names, religious freedoms, use of a language other than
Bulgarian, and free practice of customs.68
In summer 1989, a survey was conducted among the Turkish immigrants in
Kapıkule and Çadırkent. The respondents were randomly chosen; all were from vil-
lages, mostly from Northern Bulgaria, and half of them had a university diploma. They
were asked, ‘What do you think about the attitudes of Bulgarians related to this event?’
Sixty percent of the respondents indicated that Bulgarians whom they knew did not
approve of the assimilation and forced migration policies of the Bulgarian government.
Forty percent said that some Bulgarians approved the policies, which were applied.
People from rural areas said that Bulgarians did not generally support the policies of
the government. However the city dwellers claimed that Bulgarians generally support-
ed the policies of the Bulgarian government. When the respondents were asked, ‘What
does your Bulgarian neighbour think?’ they replied that their neighbours had told
them not to leave their property unprotected, and that the Bulgarian government had
done an evil thing by starting all this. The neighbours had also said that the immigrants
66
Lütem, Ömer E. ‘Tarihsel Süreç İçerisinde Bulgaristan Türklerinin Hakları,’ in Balkan
Türkleri, Balkanlarda Türk Varlığı, p. 56.
67
According to Vasileva, the communist government promoted migration of Turks of
Bulgaria in order to solve internal problems. See Vasileva, pp. 347–348.
68
Lütem, ‘Tarihsel Süreç İçerisinde Bulgaristan Türklerinin Hakları,’ p. 57.
92 Omer Turan
would live in poverty and be miserable in Turkey, and some of them had not wanted to
part with the them and had cried.69
Table 6
Turkish Migrations from Bulgaria, 1878–1992
Years Number
1878–1912 350,000
1923–33 101,507
1934–39 97,181
1940–49 21,353
1950–51 154,198
1952–68 24
1969–78 114,356
1979–88 0
1989–92 321,800
Total 1,160,614
Source: Eminov, p. 79.
The Zhivkov regime fell in the autumn of 1989 and Bulgaria stepped on the path
to democracy. Great changes in policies towards Turks occurred. The Turkish identity
was recognised and Turkish names, language, newspapers and journals were permit-
ted. Turkish was also permitted in schools within certain limits. Religious freedom was
granted. Turks got the right to found social, cultural and even political associations and
parties.70 With the end of pressure against Turks and thanks to the granted freedoms,
154,937 Turks returned to Bulgaria. However almost the same number of people came
to Turkey due to economic, political and family reasons in the early 1990s.
At the beginning of the 21st century, migration from Bulgaria to Turkey is about
to cease. This is mainly due to Bulgaria’s new policies towards minorities, transition
to pluralist democracy, NATO membership, and coming accession to the European
Union. Some authors have started proposing a ‘Bulgarian model’ to bring an end to
ethnic conflicts in the Balkans. Yet, Turks and the Muslims constitute the bottom seg-
69
Toğrol, Beğlân. 1989. 112 Yıllık Göç (1878–1989), 1989 Yazındaki Üç Aylık Göç’ün
Tarihî Perspektif İçinde Psikolojik İncelemesi, İstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, p. 35.
70
About the situation of the Turks in Bulgaria in the 1990s, see Turan, Ömer. ‘Bulgaristan
Türklerinin Bugünkü Durumu,’ in Yeni Türkiye, 1995/3; Turan, Ömer. 2003. ‘Geçmişten
Günümüze Bulgaristan Türkleri,’ in Türbedar, Erhan (ed.). Balkan Türkleri, Balkanlarda Türk
Varlığı, Ankara: ASAM, pp. 27–43; Demirtaş-Coşkun, Birgül. 2001. Bulgaristan’la Yeni Dönem,
Soğuk Savaş Sonrası Ankara-Sofya İlişkileri, Ankara: ASAM, pp. 62–67, 90–94; Özgür, Nurcan.
1999. Etnik Sorunların Çözümünde Hak ve Özgürlükler Hareketi, İstanbul: Der Yayınları;
ment of society. And they severely suffer from the present economic and social prob-
lems in Bulgaria. Nevertheless, because they are not subjected to pressure against their
national and religious identities, they are not thinking of migrating. And they are work-
ing with their Bulgarian neighbours for the future of Bulgaria.
As Stanford Shaw puts it, the Ottoman Empire and her legatee Turkey is a ‘land
of refugees.’ In the course of history, Jews, Christians, and Muslims who suffered from
oppression in different regions took refuge in these lands. After the Ottoman Empire,
both in the process of establishing independent states and in following periods, Turks
and Muslims, who were the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, were regarded as a dan-
ger for the existence of the above-mentioned states. And in order to remove Turks and
Muslims, some inhuman actions were taken. In this framework, as we can see from
Table 6, the number of immigrants coming from Bulgaria, from its establishment to the
present day, exceeds one million. History demonstrates that such actions can be seen
more often in war periods and in totalitarian regimes. History again demonstrates that
such actions do not bring any benefit to states and regimes as in the Bulgarian case. We
wish that the Balkans would be a meeting point of different languages, religions and
cultures as they have been in history. With adoption of principles like tolerance and co-
existence, the bitter migration stories that have been told for 200 years should be con-
signed to history and should not be repeated.
94
DISCUSSION
Wolfgang Hoepken: We’ve just heard several excellent papers and I was getting
very anxious to ask some questions. May I start with the last paper by Mr. Turan con-
cerning the Turkish emigration from Bulgaria? I have a little bit of a problem to perceive
the Turkish emigration from Bulgaria in terms of a continuous story of suppression
and ethnic cleansing. It starts with the 1877–1878 war, which of course was accompa-
nied by a great deal of violence against Turks both from the Russian side and from the
Bulgarian side. In the political archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany
we have a fund, which consists of eleven volumes and is called ‘Acts of Cruelty Against
the Turks in Bulgaria.’ So there were, without any doubt, such deeds within the context
of war. But I have my doubts whether we can describe the war from the Russian side
as a war of extermination. I don’t think that this was a diplomatic priority of Russian
politics in 1876–1878. And if you look carefully at the documents, and I am referring
mainly to the documents I have found in the political archives of Germany, you will
find that there are some suspicions of German and British top diplomats that Russians
would like to see Turks emigrate, but in general this argument isn’t very prominent. I
don’t think that this was an ethnic war. It is a question of sources in this context. You
quoted Layard,1 who often reported to the Foreign Office about violence against Turks
to an extent that he was sometimes seen by the Foreign Office as going too far in this
argument. But I would question if this was really a war of extermination. And I also
would question if we can follow this through the next centuries, or the next decades.
A very interesting source, which for some reason I don’t think has been used enough
– a Bulgarian source on this question – are the annual reports of the local administra-
tors from the different okrugs [districts] of Bulgaria. Each year they report about de-
mographic changes. And if you go through them for the 1880s and 1890s, then you see
that time and again local administrators were complaining about massive emigration
because it was disrupting the local economy. So I think it was a very complex process
of emigration, which of course had been set in motion by violence, by war; it was sup-
ported in some way by state politics, but it also had different motives, very complex
motives. And I think we should distinguish that. This was my question to Mr. Turan.
I would like to continue with a short comment on the very rich paper of Prof.
Sahara, who gave us a very comprehensive overview of the various forms of migra-
tion. I think that you convincingly argued that we have to see the continuity of this
forced migration – the continuity, which is of course vested in the idea of a national
1
Sir Austen Henry Layard, (1817–1894), English archaeologist and diplomat. Layard
served in Parliament (1852–1857 and 1860–1869), became under-secretary of foreign affairs
(1861–1866), and was appointed ambassador to Istanbul (1877–1880) (Editor’s note).
Discussion 95
state, which tends to become homogeneous. But again here I think as a historian that
we should also see the very substantial differences. I would stress more than you did
the period after the turn of the century, particularly starting with the Balkan wars.
Starting with the Balkan wars, and then continuing – not only in the Balkans but all
over Europe – in the First World War and during the 1920s and the 1930s, forced mi-
gration became systematic, it became a matter of warfare. This was something new and
it marked a new quality, which you can clearly see in the Balkan wars. Ethnic migration
was being argued more in racial terms. In this sense I think what we saw in the Balkan
wars was more a part of the European ethnic policy influenced very much by the expe-
rience of the colonial wars, and then of course leading to the ethnic wars that Germany
conducted in the 1930s. So I would very much stress the differences between the twen-
tieth-century forced migrations and what we observed in the nineteenth century.
The second point to your interesting paper, which I have very severe reserva-
tions about, is connected to the Armenian question. I was a little bit reserved about
your terminology. You spoke about ‘prevention,’ ‘harsh measures,’ or some kind of pun-
ishment of Armenian nationalism. I ask, what exactly happened in Armenia? Was it
part of an ethnic cleansing in the tradition of the nineteenth century, or was it part
of a policy of annihilation of ethnic groups? I don’t want to go into the discussion of
whether it was genocide or not. For me it was genocide. For some Turkish colleagues it
was also genocide. On the one hand I think this marks the linkage between the policy
of ethnic cleansing and the policy of annihilation of ethnic groups. In fact it was nei-
ther planned nor institutionalised; the purpose wasn’t primarily to deport people but
to kill them. And in this sense I think it was also part of the twentieth-century politics
of annihilation. What you said about the Ustasha state also raises the question of conti-
nuity. Of course Ustashe were in some sense in line with nineteenth-century national-
ism, but they were not the outcome of nineteenth-century Croatian nationalism, as my
colleague Vasilije Krestic in Belgrade often claims. There are fundamental differences:
Ustashe are picking up from nineteenth-century traditional nationalism, but they were
as much a product of twentieth-century European racist ideology, and this was their
new quality.
Ilona Tomova: I would like to support Prof. Hoepken’s comments on the ex-
planation of the reasons for Turkish emigration from Bulgaria in the different periods,
and to point out especially the implications that land collectivisation and urbanisation
in Bulgaria had for the huge number of Turks who emigrated in this period. You inter-
preted emigration in 1950–1951 mainly as the result of pressure from the Soviet Union
against Turkey – a process in which the Bulgarian Turks were used as a means to an
end – and emigration in the 1960s and 70s as an attempt to avoid the assimilation of
the Turkish population by the Bulgarian authorities. I think, however, that one of the
very serious reasons for those mass emigrations lies in the fact that in this period the
Communist Party was conducting modernisation and industrialisation in Bulgaria at
the expense of the rural population and at the expense of all rural resources. This em-
96 Discussion
igration was much less ethnic than economic. Bulgarians, who couldn’t react in any
other way, moved to the towns and cities and formed the poor part of the urban work-
ing class. If we look at what was happening with Turks, we will see that in their case the
process of urbanisation was actually delayed as a result of their opportunity to leave the
country and go to Turkey, where they had other opportunities for economic progress.
And I think that this is extremely important. In fact, this process of urbanisation and
modernisation, which was conducted entirely at the expense of the rural masses, was
very difficult for Bulgaria at large. Eighty percent of the Bulgarian Turks were rural res-
idents, as were Bulgarians. They bore a huge brunt, but they had an opportunity to emi-
grate if they wanted to. Bulgarians didn’t have such an opportunity. Thank you.
Ibrahim Yalamov: I would like to say something in connection with Tomova’s

comment. I find it difficult to agree with such an explanation. My impressions are that
in the last decades, in the 1990s and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the
economic factor for the emigration of Turks from Bulgaria to Turkey has hardly been
so important. All emigrations have a common reason and each emigration in the dif-
ferent periods has specific reasons. I think that the common reason for all emigrations
are the restrictions but also the kinship ties of our Turks from Bulgaria with the Turks
from Turkey. However, specific reasons gained prominence in the specific periods. For
example, the main reason for emigration in the 1930s was the discrimination policy
of the authoritarian monarchic regime that was established in Bulgaria after the coup
d’état on 19 May 1934. The main reason for emigration in 1950–51 was the flight from
socialism, the flight from land collectivisation, and perhaps here we have some eco-
nomic factor. In the 1960s and especially in the 1980s the main reason was the desire
for survival, flight from assimilation. This is how I see things. Thank you.
Slavka Draganova: I only want to note another factor: the fear of the people
who are emigrating. For example, in the Russo-Turkish War in 1828–29 there was mass
emigration of Bulgarians across the Danube. Those were very affluent Bulgarians and
they left with a huge amount of cattle and property. Nobody was throwing them out.
They were simply afraid. To make them return to their native lands eventually, the
Turkish government provided a number of incentives. That is why this factor, fear,
must be taken into account too.
Omer Turan: Thank you for the comments. If you have to summarise more than
a hundred years in a short paper sometimes all emphasised things should be tolerated,
so I have to explain my points as well. Of course, in each period there were some fac-
tors that were more prominent than others. But if we generalise, cleansing the Balkans
from the Turkish presence was quoted in the Declaration of Objectives of the 1877–78
Ottoman-Russian War by the Russian government. Before the war they issued a dec-
laration explaining why they had decided to go to war, and these words were taken
from that declaration. The war was also defined as a ‘war of races and extermination’
Discussion 97
by Vladimir Cherkaski,2 who was the head of the pan-Slavic Russian Committee and
who was at the same time, I think, head of the Bulgarian commission established be-
fore the war. He wrote a letter and the Russian Ministry of Defence, which wasn’t pan-
Slavic, replied that they couldn’t exterminate four million people from the Balkans.
But if we look at what happened in practice, this war can be described as a war of races
and extermination. Special Cossack troops were sent before the main army to terrorise
Muslim and Turkish civilians and to make them leave the Bulgarian lands. This makes
it quite clear that it was a war of races and extermination. I have got plenty of reports
from the journalists who followed the war, from the British consuls, but I simply gave a
small example. These are my explanations to the comments about Turkish migrations.
Many of my colleagues made comments on Armenians and the Armenian prob-
lems. I would like to make a few points about that. About the population of Armenians
in the Ottoman Empire: according to official Ottoman sources, before the beginning of
the First World War the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire was about 1.2
million. But as we know, Ottoman official figures were always smaller than the actual
number of the population, not only in the case of Armenians but also of the Muslims
and of all nationalities. Normally we should add 30 percent. So you can say that the
Armenian population before the First World War was 1.7 million more or less, and
most of the demographers agree on that figure. Some Armenian patriarchs sometimes
claimed that there were 2.5 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. But for
instance when the British representative at the Berlin Conference questioned this fig-
ure they said, ‘Okay, let’s say one and a half million.’ Suddenly they dropped a few hun-
dred thousand. Nobody has seen the documents of the Armenian Patriarchate about
the census results, about the relevant reports. As Ivan Ilchev said, there were revolution-
ary Armenian groups in the Ottoman Empire and in their constitutions they stated that
they were waiting for a war period to claim independence. During the First World War,
as some of my colleagues mentioned, they collaborated with the Russian armies, which
invaded Eastern Anatolia. In Van, in Eastern Anatolia, the Armenian rebels declared an
independent Armenian state. Therefore the Turkish authorities were obliged to make
a decision that the Armenians from the war zones had to be transferred to another
part of the empire, mainly to Syria and Iraq. They weren’t deported from the Ottoman
Empire, and only the Armenians from the war zones were deported. According to the
reports of American consuls, about 600,000 Armenians reached Syria and Iraq. I also
have the reports of American Protestant missionaries who distributed food, soup, and
money for those refugees. Another figure is that approximately 500,000 Armenians
from Eastern Anatolia and the Turkish Black Sea coast followed the Russian army when
it retreated at the end of the First World War. They weren’t deported but they followed
the army because during the war they had collaborated with Russians. And also, dur-
2
Vladimir Cherkaski was a Russian knyaz and politician. During the Russian-Ottoman
war of 1877-1878, he was the Red Cross representative in the Russian army. He was named a
provisional governor of the liberated Bulgarian lands and as such issued an instruction on the
foundation of civil government of Bulgaria. He died on March 3, 1878 (Editor’s note).
98 Discussion
ing the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Boghos Nubar Pasha,3 who was the head of the
Armenian Committee at the Peace Conference, declared that there were about 700,000
Armenians in Anatolia, Western Anatolia, Istanbul, etc. So if we count those 600,000 in
Mesopotamia, 500,000 in the Caucasus, and 700,000 in Anatolia, we will get roughly the
same figure for the size of the Armenian population as before the First World War.
Hidajet Repovac: So, we still have half an hour for discussion. But before some-
body else joins the discussion, I would like to say a few words in connection with the defi-
nition of migrations as the only paradigm for the Balkans. I wouldn’t say that the problem
is the same in all parts of the Balkans. Migrations are caused by different factors in dif-
ferent regions. Of course, the reasons are political, economic, cultural, civilisational, etc.,
but for example in the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina, about which I will speak tomorrow,
there were also some other reasons. Violent nationalism on one side, and an attempt for
preservation of national identity in one of the republics of the former Yugoslavia on the
other. I think that the national identity of Bosnia-Herzegovina has been preserved, but at
a very high price. This price includes 1.5 million people who were forced to emigrate to
various European countries, and more than 250,000 people who were killed. In Sarajevo
alone, 10,200 people were killed, of which 1,700 were children aged under fourteen. This
is our Bosnian paradigm, which is different from various other types of Balkan migra-
tions. It is clear that the Balkans are a place where migrations of various kinds do occur,
caused by different factors forcing people to migrate. I think this is a topic we really do
need to talk about. And we need to hear many different opinions about how to overcome
such a situation and to prevent it from happening again, because it is clear that on the
Balkans the same things are happening all over again. So my question is: What is to be
done – politically, economically, culturally – in order to prevent a new repetition, because
another repetition will be even more terrible. Its consequences will be even more terrible.
Repetition is possible because the main reasons for migrations still exist.
Wolfgang Hoepken: There were also two papers, which didn’t deal with the
Balkans, and I would like to refer to the interesting paper of Ms. Kawakita concerning
Germany. I think you are certainly correct in stressing that currently in Germany there
is a discussion about the expulsion of Germans and, as you said, right-wing groups and
interest groups are strongly pushing forward this question which, by the way, has dam-
aged German-Polish relations very much. But I think that in the discussion of expul-
sion we should make a distinction between the political dimension and what I would
3
Boghos Nubar Pasha (Alexandria 1851 – Paris 1930). Son of Nubar Pasha, who was
three times prime minister of Egypt. Boghos Nubar Pasha was an engineer and civil servant in
Egypt. In 1906 he co-founded the Armenian General Benevolent Union, of which he remained
president until 1928. In 1919 he became president of the Armenian delegation representing the
Western Armenians at the Paris Peace Conference. He retired from politics in 1921, concentrat-
ing on welfare and construction (Editor’s note).
Discussion 99
call the dimension of memory. In the political dimension we have these right-wing
groups and the interest groups of the expellees – the leader of which, by the way, was
only one year old when she was expelled from Poland and, moreover, she wasn’t born
there but was the daughter of a German officer who had occupied Poland. I wouldn’t
overstress the importance of those groups. For example, the claim for property com-
pensation, which they have brought up, has been clearly rejected by all political parties,
by the German government and by the Polish government. They are acting jointly to
make this impossible.
Much more important however is the question of memory. In the 1950s the
memory of expulsion was very strong and it was part of post-war German society,
which was afraid of addressing its own role as perpetrators and was escaping into the
role of victims. But then in the 1960s–1970s the discussion of expulsion was totally
ignored, it was pushed aside. The expellees weren’t really recognised by society, they
were considered to be very right-wing and they were ignored. And what we now have
is that those people are in their 60s or 70s, and at the end of their lives they are bring-
ing up this topic of memory once again. I think we have to face it because we haven’t
taken seriously these biographic experiences. And the decisive problem for Germany
at the moment is in my view whether we will be able to integrate the memory of the
German victims into an overall memory, which nevertheless accepts the basic under-
standing of Germans as perpetrators. There is currently a tendency in the public sphere
to stress very much the role of Germans as victims, the victims of bombing, the victims
of rape, the victims of expulsion – all topics that have long been neglected. And I think
the challenge now is to integrate this memory into our historical consciousness, which
nevertheless of course has to be centred on our understanding that we were the perpe-
trators. And I think that this is the more important part: the question of memory and
not the political importance of these groups.
Zhelyu Zhelev: I would like to say something about the reasons for the ‘Renaming
Process.’ The other emigrations are usually attributed to various specific reasons. In my
opinion, this was a fiasco of the entire policy of the Communist Party. In Bulgaria there
was collectivisation, forced collectivisation, which drove the young from villages to
towns and cities, where they were supposed to build factories, industrial plants and so
on, without having the material and logistic resources or housing necessary for that.
So young families had to live long without residence permits, being denied the right
to live and work where they wanted to in their own country. So what choice did they
have – living in a rented room or bedsit, having one or two children, which they had to
send to kindergarten because both parents had to work? Birth rates fell drastically after
collectivisation and the subsequent barbaric urbanisation. Of course, Bulgaria would
have been urbanised anyway and the ratio of urban to rural population would have
been the same as it became by the late 1990s anyway. But if all that had happened in a
democratic country, then this process would have occurred in an entirely natural way,
propelled by economic mechanisms and laws – as, for example, in Greece. At the end
100 Discussion
of the Second World War both Sofia and Athens had a population of a quarter of a mil-
lion. Today the population of Athens is four million and of Sofia 1.3 to 1.4 million. My
point is that one cannot blame urbanisation as such, because it is a process that simply
cannot be stopped – the question is how urbanisation occurs. But what we had here in
communist Bulgaria was that a large part of the population and, moreover, precisely
young people, were simply brutally forced to move to the cities, where they had to build
a heavy industry that we had to give up immediately afterwards because it was neither
efficient nor competitive enough to survive and function in the conditions of market
economy. Todor Zhivkov tried to cover up all those reasons and the demographic ca-
tastrophe to which the communist regime brought the country. By then Roma had the
highest birth rate because they were in cooperative farms and were free to do what they
wanted with the land, which they couldn’t do before. Bulgarians were forced to move
to the cities, so naturally the relative weight between Muslims and Christian Bulgarians
changed quite drastically. This seriously scared the Zhivkov regime. That is why it re-
sorted to the ‘Renaming Process,’ which I view as a typical case of cultural genocide
– I’m not saying this was a case of killing people but that it was cultural genocide, to-
tal extermination of the identity of this ethnos. That was what prompted the Bulgarian
Turks to emigrate to neighbouring Turkey, their pan-homeland. Some people believed
that the ‘Renaming Process’ had been approved by Russians because they had wanted to
test this model in Bulgaria before applying it in Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
and the other Asian republics in the Soviet Union with Muslim populations. However,
I personally have asked Gorbachev twice whether that was true. Had this question been
discussed in and before his time? There was no way he couldn’t have known anything
about it. What he told me was: ‘I categorically declare that there was nothing of the sort,
nobody had committed themselves; actually, we were even surprised and a bit worried
when we saw the reaction of the West too. And we couldn’t defend Zhivkov’s policy.’
This is what I wanted to say. Thank you.
Tetsuya Sahara: I would like to respond to Prof. Hoepken’s very informative

advice. Basically, the assumption is that the phenomenon called ‘ethnic cleansing’ is a
reciprocal one; it isn’t such a one-sided story in which the genuine perpetrator attacks
the genuine victims. If the conditions change, the roles change as well. So I see the his-
tory of deportation and ethnic cleansing as a chain of events that have been repeated
in this 150-year period not only in the Balkans but also in other surrounding places. I
don’t think there is any clear watershed between the old-style, nineteenth-century eth-
nic cleansing or deportation and modern, twentieth-century atrocities. Prof. Hoepken
has advised me to think about the element of racism, which has played an important
role during and after the Balkan wars, especially during the Ustasha regime. I do agree
with your advice, but I wonder where this element of racism or the racial implication
of the Balkan nationalists came from. I’m not very sure, I only assume that the original
source of this racism may have come from the Russian side. The Russian experience
in the Caucasus, especially the wars against the Caucasian Muslims or the war against
Discussion 101
the Shamil uprisings,4 gave them some strategy to expel the Muslim element from the
lowlands of the Caucasus, thus Christianising the region. And I think that this way of
thinking was applied in the Balkans as well during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–78.
My assumption is that this Russian stimulus wasn’t a complete model for the atroci-
ties that followed. I think it was only a suggestion. And the Balkan nationalists – the
nationalist governments and also the Ottoman government and the ultra-nationalistic
wing of Turkish nationalism – imitated and innovated this war manual which was in-
troduced by Russians. In this way a new type of ethnic cleansing gradually appeared.
It began to emerge during the Balkan wars, took clearer shape in the later periods, and
culminated under the Ustasha regime.
Hidajet Repovac: Thank you, Prof. Sahara, for this interesting comment, but
I also have a comment on your comment. I am interested how this issue of reciproc-
ity of ethnic cleansing can fit into our modern times. Ethnic cleansing is conducted by
those who have the power – economic, political, and military. Those who don’t have
military and political power cannot conduct ethnic cleansing. And I think that such
nations and ethnic communities are in danger of becoming extinct. It wouldn’t be the
first time in European and world history that a nation has disappeared. You all know
how many nations have disappeared from the historical scene. This can happen again
if those who possess the political and military power to conduct ethnic cleansing don’t
stop. I again insist on mentioning that our Balkan paradigm of ethnic cleansing is being
repeated despite all the warnings. And the reason why it is being repeated is that cer-
tain military and political establishments still have the power to conduct ethnic cleans-
ing. This is what happened in the former Yugoslavia, and there are similarities, but also
one important difference, between the Ustasha movement in World War II Croatia and
what happened in Bosnia, Kosovo, Croatia, etc. There is a clear demarcation line. The
Ustashe were part of a Fascist and Nazi movement, while in Kosovo ethnic cleansing
is the result of the pain of various ethnic groups, which are trying to live there and to
remain there as ethnic and cultural communities. They are trying to save themselves
from the danger of disappearing. This is a question that philosophers, sociologists, an-
thropologists and psychologists have to ask themselves today. And finding the answer
to this question is extremely difficult. If we find this answer we will solve the problem
of ethnic cleansing and migrations in our region.
Ilona Tomova: I would like to add something to what Prof. Zhelev said about a
more general set of social and political explanations for the last expulsion campaign,
which was unquestionably a violent act of political cleansing by way of emigration. I
think that Prof. Zhelev focused on one of the socio-political aspects of why this proc-
ess of ethnic revival was launched but he didn’t draw our attention to other processes.
4
Between 1834 and 1859, the warlord Shamil led a rebellious Sufi brotherhood of
Chechens and Dagestanis in a fierce holy war of resistance against Russian rule, forestalling the
czar’s hold over the region for twenty-five years (Editor’s note).
102 Discussion
In fact, by the end of the 1970s it had become clear that the Bulgarian Communist Party
couldn’t ensure further economic progress of the country on the basis of extensive devel-
opment of the economy; nor could it cope with the task of intensifying economic devel-
opment by using the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution or main-
tain the standards of living to which the population had become accustomed by then.
At the same time, the Bulgarian Communist Party was most distrustful of the in-
telligentsia. This was due to the Communist Party’s fear of the intelligentsia, which be-
came especially obvious after 1968. There was no other country in Central and Eastern
Europe where the intelligentsia was as underpaid as in Bulgaria. There was no other
country with such serious class-based and political restrictions in the recruitment of
the intelligentsia; nowhere else was educational and administrative mobility as strong-
ly influenced by political considerations as in Bulgaria. I fully agree with Prof. Zhelev’s
opinion that the Communist Party had very strong fears about the country’s demo-
graphic development and especially about the higher birth rates among Turks. Those
fears were reinforced by the nationalistic aspiration towards homogenisation of the
country, which obviously clashed with the Muslim population’s unwillingness to be as-
similated in this way. In the late 70s and early 80s the Bulgarian Communist Party felt
threatened by something else too, and that was the growing discontent among young
people. At the beginning of the 80s our sociological surveys started showing very strong
discontent with and very strong alienation from the communist ideals, and generally
with the way in which the country was developing and was governed. This discontent
and alienation among young people was almost as strong as among the intelligentsia.
So Zhivkov decided to experiment by finding a vulnerable group to serve as a scape-
goat and to ensure cohesion around the Communist Party and support for the party’s
decisions, by pointing out the culprit for all wrongs – be they economic, demographic,
national or political. This was in fact an attempt to draw away attention, to solve the
problems in a way that had already been tried out in the Balkans and not in the Balkans
only. And an attempt to solve social and political problems by using a single scapegoat.
That is what made possible this process, which led to the emigration of 350,000 Turks.
But it also had another terrible consequence that is rarely discussed: the demor-
alisation of the Bulgarian public and society. The Bulgarian public didn’t support and
rally behind Turks because it was scared both by their demographic number and as a
result of a terrifying campaign concerning the stability of the State. Bulgarians, or at
least some of them, became forcibly or not so forcibly involved in the harassment of
the Bulgarian Turks.
Hidajet Repovac: We are at the end of our discussion on the topic of migrations
on the Balkans. I don’t think that we need to make a summary now, but I would like to
conclude that this discussion has been very fruitful and that it has presented us with a
number of new arguments about the situation in the Balkans and in Bulgaria in par-
ticular. I think it is very important to raise the correct questions, since raising correct
questions is much better than giving wrong answers. I thank all the presenters for their
very good papers. We will continue with the next session after lunch.
103
Second Session:
The Bulgarian Case:

Turks, Pomaks and Roma
Moderators:
Prof. Tetsuya Sahara

Prof. Slavka Draganova
104
105
THE ‘RENAMING’: CONSEQUENCES

AND HOW TO OVERCOME THEM
Ibrahim Yalamov
New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria
I. Reasons for and Nature of the ‘Renaming’

The so-called ‘regeneration process’ or forced name change embodies the very
essence of the totalitarian regime’s policy on minorities in the second half of the twenti-
eth century. The ‘renaming’ was an all-embracing and lengthy process. It was conduct-
ed initially only among Pomaks and Roma. It began among the Turkish population at
the beginning of the 1960s. After an interruption of about five or six years, it contin-
ued to be conducted systematically under a decision adopted in 1969 by the Politburo
of the Bulgarian Communist Party’s Central Committee. The ‘renaming’ comprised all
activities designed to obliterate the national characteristics of the ethnic minorities and
more specifically their culture, language, names, religion, way of life, customs and tra-
ditions. The term ‘renaming’ was coined and gained wide currency in the mid-1980s. It
encoded a unique assimilation policy, which caused a deep ethnic crisis.
The doctrine and practices of the ‘renaming’ reflect a deep crisis of state socialism
that began in the late 60s. By the beginning of the 80s this crisis was all-embracing.
One of the important problems facing the totalitarian authorities was the de-
mographic problem. It became a major factor shaping the policy on minorities in the
70s and 80s. Several negative trends in the demographic structure of the Bulgarian
population appeared around 1965. The birth rate of Bulgarians began to decline. In
1965 it was 5.5 per thousand, dropping to 4.83 per thousand in 1975. The same trend
was also observed in the Turkish minority. The birth rate decreased from 21.9 in 1965
to 11.7 per thousand in 1985. Among the Roma population, the birth rate continued
to be high. According to unofficial data presented to the Politburo of the Bulgarian
Communist Party’s Central Committee, Turks, Pomaks, and Roma constituted 18–
19% of Bulgaria’s population.
Another factor that led to the ‘renaming’ was the policy of ‘blocs’ or constant
confrontation between the two military and political systems. The fact that the two
neighbouring countries – Bulgaria and Turkey – belonged to opposite military blocs
generated mutual mistrust and suspicion. The leadership of the totalitarian regime was
suspicious not only of Turkey but also of the Turkish population in Bulgaria. The latter
was regarded as Turkey’s ‘fifth column’ in the country.
The ideological factor played an important role for the so-called ‘renaming.’ The
symbiosis between Marxism and nationalism, which developed in almost all commu-
106 Ibrahim Yalamov
nist parties of the former socialist countries after the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), had
developed in the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) as early as the late 1960s. It was
generated by the dominant nationalistic wing in the BCP leadership.
Under its influence an effort was made to create a unified mono-ethnic nation.
In the first years the legitimacy for the appearance of such a nation was substantiated
by the Leninist-Stalinist thesis, which stipulated that during the communist phase na-
tions would merge and a unified community would be formed. An attempt was made
to create a homogeneous ethnic, political, and cultural identity. This was expected to
happen by integrating the ethnic minorities into the Bulgarian ethnos, using mainly
coercive and forcible means. However, the social and ideological basis for such a uni-
fied ethnicity turned out to be unstable and conflicting. The idea that the different
ethnic groups should become one nation was perceived unfavourably not only by the
Turkish minority, but also by the Bulgarian ethnos. That is the reason why the theo-
ry of ‘the Bulgarian origin’ started to dominate the campaign’s climax. The authors of
this theory set out to prove that not only Pomaks but also the Turkish population in
Bulgaria – that is, all Turks – were of Bulgarian stock.
Consequently, the objective of the ‘renaming’ was to remove the ethnic bound-
aries and to assimilate particular communities. This process was centred around the
idea of supplanting ethnic consciousness by socialist consciousness and of ‘forcefully
moulding and developing a Bulgarian consciousness.’ Moreover, Bulgarian ethnic con-
sciousness was supposed to become the self-consciousness of all citizens with no ex-
ceptions. This utopian objective was motivated by the rather dubious thesis that the
ethnic consciousness of the Turkish population did not coincide with its ethnic origin.
Thus, the rewriting of history attained its ultimate goal – to manipulate ethnic memo-
ry and to transform the ethnic self-consciousness of the ethnic Turks and of the other
communities.
The ‘renaming’ began in the period of state socialism after the April 1956 Plenum
of the BCP’s Central Committee. The newly elected party leadership headed by Todor
Zhivkov began to work on ‘revising the old notions on the national question’ and to
formulate a new policy towards minorities. The nature of this new policy consisted in
shortening, even skipping the phase of the blossoming forth of national identity and
culture, and imposing total ethnic homogeneity.
At the beginning of the 60s attempts were made to rename Roma and Pomaks.
The campaign started with the practical implementation of the political measures, ap-
proved by the Politburo of the BCP’s Central Committee on 5 May 1962, ‘against the
false claims of Gypsies, Tatars and Pomaks about being Turks.’ During this campaign
one of the main ideological and political tasks was to dispute those false claims. This
was supposed to happen by eliminating the main factors – the influence of Islam, the
study of the Turkish language, and some other factors. It was emphasised that ‘citizens
of non-Bulgarian origin … of their own free will can register themselves and their chil-
dren as Bulgarians, can change their first, middle and family names without going to
court...’
The ‘renaming’: consequences and how to overcome them 107
The question of the ethnic genesis of the Turkish population in Bulgaria was
probably raised for the first time in an official document in a report to the Politburo of
the BCP’s Central Committee. The report claimed that part of the population of non-
Bulgarian origin, more specifically the population of the Ludogorie, Gerlovo, Aitos and
some other regions, was of Bulgarian ethnic origin. Thus, the foundations of the ‘re-
naming’ were laid.
The renaming of Roma and Pomaks began in the spirit of these instructions. A
large part of Roma and Pomaks were subjected to administrative pressure and coer-
cion. These measures caused widespread discontent, and in some places also set off a
chain of violent reactions. There were clashes between the peasants and the repressive
state authorities in some villages around the town of Goce Delchev in the Rhodope
Mountains. This generated serious social tensions and the campaign was temporarily
halted.
At the beginning of the 60s the totalitarian regime started conducting a system-
atic assimilation policy towards all ethnic minorities. The campaign was portrayed to
the public as ‘total inclusion’ of the ethnic minorities in the Bulgarian nationality. In
fact, however, the inclusion was reduced to assimilating the Turkish, Roma and other
minority communities into the Bulgarian ethnos. For Todor Zhivkov this was assimi-
lation from a Marxist-Leninist point of view. By Resolution No. 549 of the Secretariat
of the BCP’s Central Committee dated 17 July 1970, the district communist party com-
mittees in Blagoevgrad, Smolyan, Kurdzhali, Pazardzhik, and elsewhere were instruct-
ed ‘to organise systematic, consistent, and aggressive campaigns ... to cleanse totally
the national consciousness of Pomaks.’ In this connection, a purposeful ideological
political campaign was initiated to change their Turkish-Arabic names with Bulgarian
ones, as well as the way they dressed. The Council of Ministers in its turn created, by
Resolution No. 116 dated 4 May 1971, the preconditions stimulating this process. The
persons who changed their names were exempted from paying charges and fees, and
all expenses were covered by the state administration.
These resolutions gave an impetus to the campaign. The local authorities real-
ised that the task could not be performed by ideological and political means only. That
is why they resorted to administrative pressure and coercion, even to violence. As a
result of the massive pressure and threats, the campaign was completed within sev-
eral years. In 1970–1972 the Turkish-Arabic names of about 200,000 persons in the
Rhodope and Pirin regions were changed.
The culmination of the so-called ‘renaming’ was the forced change of the names
of the Turkish population. Since a person’s name is one of the crucial markers of their
ethnic identity, the ideologists of the ‘renaming’ considered Turkish-Arabic names to
be one of the major obstacles on the road to the ‘unified socialist Bulgarian nation’ that
they intended to create.
The campaign started at the beginning of December 1984 in Southern Bulgaria
and more specifically in the Kurdzhali region. By mid-January 1985, the campaign had
also been extended to Northern Bulgaria and it was terminated at the beginning of
108 Ibrahim Yalamov
March the same year. In a relatively short period of time about 850,000 persons were
officially registered under new Bulgarian names.
As to its objectives and nature, the ‘renaming’ was preposterous, inhumane and
reactionary. The main goal pursued by this campaign was the formation of an ‘ethni-
cally monolithic nation.’ In the first official document approved by the Politburo of the
BCP’s Central Committee the campaign’s main goal was formulated as follows: ‘to con-
solidate the unity of the Bulgarian socialist nation and its ethnic homogeneity.’ This is
closely related to the attempts to change forcibly the centuries-long ethnic self-con-
sciousness of the minority communities and to impose another consciousness, namely
a Bulgarian ethnic consciousness, as the self-consciousness of each and every citizen.
II. Social, Political, Ethnic, and Cultural Consequences

Due to its wide scale, duration and forcible nature, the ‘renaming’ caused serious
ethnic, psychological, social, economic, political, and cultural problems.
One of the most dramatic consequences of the ‘renaming’ was a compulsory and
unprecedented massive exodus. Growing discontent, especially during the forced name
change campaign, and the emergence of a democratic movement in Bulgaria and other
countries in Eastern Europe, activated the minorities’ resistance. In May 1989, on the
eve of the OSCE Paris conference on human dimensions, hunger strikes and peaceful
demonstrations were organised by the Turkish population in many regions. The dem-
onstrators’ demands were the restoration of their names, the right to use their mother
tongue, and freedom in observing their customs and traditions. The May events dem-
onstrated unambiguously the failure of the assimilation policy. The authorities reacted
to the demonstrations by using force and coercion against the demonstrators, extradit-
ing the most active protestors and, ultimately, provoking an emigration wave that was
unprecedented in scale. On 29 May 1989, Todor Zhivkov declared on Bulgarian televi-
sion that the totalitarian regime would allow the Turkish population to leave the coun-
try. This statement was followed by a massive propaganda campaign designed to per-
suade the public that the emigrants were an anti-Bulgarian and destructive community
that wanted to leave their homeland of their own free will, and that they were certainly
not being driven away by the regime. Meanwhile, however, the Interior Ministry and
other governmental bodies were using different means and mechanisms to enlarge and
accelerate the emigration wave. People felt cheated, humiliated and deeply offended by
the totalitarian state. The emigration wave, called ‘the big excursion,’ assumed menac-
ing proportions. As a result and mainly due to moral, psychological and administrative
coercion, by 21 August 1989 when Turkey was compelled by the massive immigration
flow to close its border with Bulgaria, 362,000 persons had left the country, including
about 10,000 intellectuals. Another 400,000 persons were preparing to leave. The exo-
dus was unprecedented in scale. Almost the entire Turkish population left. Entire vil-
lages were deserted and, especially in the Kurdzhali region, entire districts were de-
populated.
This was the third mass exodus in the period of state socialism. From the begin-
ning of 1950 till November 1951 about 154,393 persons left for Turkey. During the so-
called ‘emigration to relatives’ (from March 1969 till 30 November 1978) 115,240 emi-
grants left Bulgaria. Hence, as a result of the ethnic cleansing, more than 521,600 Turks
emigrated from Bulgaria.
On several occasions during this period, massive programmes of resettlement
by force in the interior of the country were carried out, affecting mainly Pomaks. In
1948 the Council of Ministers adopted several ordinances ordering the resettlement of
more than 685 families or about 3,799 persons from a band one kilometre wide along
Bulgaria’s southern border. By mid-1950, pursuant to Ordinance No. II-1-1260, anoth-
er 1,550 families had been moved inland, away from the southern and western borders.
Their houses, land, and gardens were transferred to the state land fund. Compensation
with land in their new place of residence was slow, so those people had to live and work
in severe conditions for years.
The massive emigration in 1989 was not based on a special agreement between
Bulgaria and Turkey. Thus, there was no legal framework to regulate the property claims
of the exiled persons. This gave rise to profiteering, corruption, and marauding.
As to scale, intensity and way of implementation, the ‘big excursion’ differs dras-
tically from the emigration waves after Bulgaria’s liberation in 1878. The previous emi-
gration waves were motivated by the existence of ethnic and kinship ties, by the specif-
ic economic problems facing the Turkish population, by the cooling off of inter-ethnic
relations, by inequality and unequal rights, etc.
The ‘big excursion’ had the characteristics of ethnic cleansing. Another distinc-
tive feature was its spontaneity, chaotic nature, and intensity. The lack of a special in-
ternational agreement did not allow the emigration flow to be regulated and to be dis-
tributed evenly in time.
The fact that after the closure of the border a so-called ‘back wave’ was generat-
ed also supports the claim that the exodus was coercive. By the end of 1989 more than
110,000 persons had returned to Bulgaria. The main reason was the impossibility to
find quick solutions to their life problems and, in general, the difficulties in adapting to
the new conditions.
The ‘renaming’ and more specifically the mass exodus, deepened the social and
economic crisis in the country that had begun in the mid-1980s. In practice, it disrupt-
ed the production processes in important sectors of the economy, such as agriculture,
construction, and transport. Almost all industrial plants and most of the industrial en-
terprises in the depopulated regions were closed down. Severe work force shortages ne-
cessitated restructuring of the economy and relocation of workers from other regions.
There was a shortage of goods and this intensified inflation processes.
The ‘back wave’ created new social problems. Many emigrants who came back
remained unemployed, and more than 1,300 families filed applications requiring that
their homes be returned. On 4 March 1990 the National Reconciliation Committee
for solving the social problems generated by the ‘renaming’ staged a strike in front of
110 Ibrahim Yalamov
Georgi Dimitrov’s Mausoleum in downtown Sofia. It was this protest that prompted
the adoption of Council of Ministers Ordinance No. 29 of 5 April 1990 which, howev-
er, failed to solve the problem.
The ‘renaming’ and the coercive mass exodus further complicated inter-ethnic
relations and precipitated a serious crisis. Instead of the expected unification the result
was deep disunion between the Bulgarian ethnos and the ethnic minorities. During
the forced name change campaign and the ‘big excursion’ conditions were created for
a rise of chauvinism and nationalism. The ‘renaming’ undermined not only the patri-
otic feelings of the Turkish population but it also distorted the patriotic perceptions of
Bulgarians.
The ‘renaming’ did not result in de-ethnicisation of the Turkish minority; con-
versely, it consolidated its ethnic self-consciousness. The ethnic element and its percep-
tion were boosted and they acquired new vigour at the expense of the civic element.
The Turkish population started taking a close interest in its ethnic culture, language,
religion, and customs. The consequences of this development under the existing condi-
tions were not unequivocal. It is true that the Turkish population consolidated its eth-
nic self-consciousness. Yet due to the lack of regulatory mechanisms in the first years
of the transition period this was an obstacle to the integration of the Turkish minority
into Bulgarian civil society.
The large-scale propaganda campaign describing an apocalyptic situation was,
for a certain period of time, successful in deluding part of the Bulgarian ethnos: the
communist party apparatus, the civil servants, a number of journalists, researchers, the
leaders of some professional organisations of people of the arts, and intellectuals. These
people believed that the survival of the Bulgarian nation depended on the outcome of
the ‘renaming.’ Due to the activity of some writers, journalists, and others, some stra-
ta of the Bulgarian nation were led astray. It should be borne in mind that the nation
had been subjected to ideological pressure and social deformation for years; moreover,
among Bulgarians living in mixed regions, a psychosis of fear was created during the
campaign. Given the lack of freedom of the press and freedom of speech, Bulgarians
had been unscrupulously lied to for five years. That is why the majority of the inhabit-
ants of mixed regions remained passive witnesses to the inhumane campaign and some
of them even took part in it.
The tragic campaign, especially the ‘big excursion’ had, however, a sobering effect
on a particular part of Bulgarians and more specifically on the Bulgarian intellectuals.
They started looking at the situation of the Turkish population from the perspective
of humanism and traditional good-neighbourly spirit (komşuluk in Turkish). Among
the members of the Club for the Support of Glasnost and Perestroika, the Independent
Society for Human Rights Protection (ISHRP), and the Podkrepa trade union, a discus-
sion was initiated with the aim of developing a clear position towards the regime with
respect to its policy on the Turkish population. Finally, in June 1989, one hundred and
twenty-one intellectuals from the Club for the Support of Glasnost and Perestroika sent
a declaration to Parliament in which they condemned the violence against the Turkish
minority and declared that it contravened the Bulgarian national tradition and human
rights principles.
On specific occasions some intellectuals stood up for the human rights of the
Turkish minority. The renowned Bulgarian poet Blaga Dimitrova stood up for the in-
dividual’s right of free choice of name. On the occasion of the internment of her col-
league Salih Bakladzhiev, the historian Antonina Zhelyazkova wrote: ‘Stop it! Come to
your senses! Give back the names, the language, the culture, and the human rights to
the Turkish minority, and I am sure these awful streams of refugees that disgrace our
country will dry up.’ Such public acts helped preserve the integrity of the traditional
sense of komşuluk.
The ‘renaming’ and the massive emigration deepened the internal contradictions
of the totalitarian system and accelerated its ultimate collapse. The coercion exerted on
Turks caused great discontent among them. From the very beginning of the forced name
change campaign, a resistance movement that took different forms arose among Turks.
Protest demonstrations were organised during the name change campaign in
several places, where demonstrators clashed with police and Interior Ministry troops.
In the mid-1980s a number of underground groups and organisations began to ap-
pear. According to Interior Ministry data, from the beginning of 1985 till the end of
1987, forty-two such formations were detected. Most of them were marginal groups
without programmes and statutes. They operated for a few months only. However, in-
dividual groups and organisations, such as the Turkish National Liberation Movement
in Bulgaria, the Long Winter Group, and the Democratic League, had a longer life and
achieved some practical results.
In the spring of 1989 the resistance of the Turkish population entered a new
phase. It had grown into a genuine mass movement, becoming an important constit-
uent of the emerging democratic opposition in Bulgaria. Thus, the activities of the
Turkish organisations were combined objectively with the efforts of the legal and open
democratic organisations. As a result, the protest movement of the Turkish minority
expanded and became massive, and a number of protest actions were organised.
The totalitarian regime’s policy on the ethnic question placed Bulgaria in a very
difficult international situation. The coercive actions of the Bulgarian government gen-
uinely perplexed the country’s allies, and many Western states condemned them open-
ly. The West not only did not support Bulgaria but perceived it as an insufficiently civi-
lised state. Bulgaria found itself in international isolation.
In brief, the ‘renaming’ deepened the internal contradictions of the totalitarian
system and accelerated its ultimate demise.
III. Gradual Overcoming of the Consequences

The transition period marked the beginning of a process of gradual and painful
overcoming of the negative ethno-psychological and socio-political consequences of
the ‘renaming.’ Komşuluk (the sense of neighbourhood), a centuries-old tradition, fa-
112 Ibrahim Yalamov
cilitated this process. On the other hand, most of the leaders of the main political par-
ties, such as the Union of Democratic Forces and the Bulgarian Socialist Party, realised
in good time that playing with anti-Turkish and anti-Muslim nationalism was some-
thing for which Bulgaria might have to pay a heavy price.
In the first months of the transition period, when ethnic confrontation was full-
scale in the mixed regions, civil society took measures to calm and consolidate citizens.
The National Reconciliation Committee, established at the end of 1989, united main-
ly intellectuals and representatives of different ethnic and religious communities. Its
main target was reconciliation and tolerance in inter-ethnic relations. The Committee
brought the demands of Turks and the rest of the Muslim population to the knowledge
of international organisations.
At the proposal of the Public Council on National Problems, on 15 January 1990
Parliament adopted a special declaration condemning the ‘renaming.’
In November 1990, the Grand National Assembly adopted an Act to Amend
the Bulgarian Citizens’ Names Act (adopted in March of the same year), which sim-
plified the procedure of restoring the names of Bulgarian Muslims. People could now
restore their names by an administrative procedure, without going to court. Those
who wanted to could also restore their patronymic (middle) and family names and,
moreover, without the affixes ‘-ov,’ ‘-ev’ or ‘-ova’ and ‘-eva’ (the typical Bulgarian af-
fixes for names).
The Republic of Bulgaria has already ratified a number of international treaties.
The 1991 Constitution does not use the terms ‘national’ or ‘ethnic minorities’; however,
it guarantees the main rights of persons belonging to ethnic, linguistic, and religious
groups. Equality before the law and ban on discrimination are stipulated in Article 6 of
the Constitution. Article 29 bans categorically any forcible assimilation. Article 44 safe-
guards the political rights, and Articles 13 and 37 the religious rights of all Bulgarian
citizens. Article 36 grants members of ethnic groups the right to study and use their
own language, and Article 54 entitles them to develop their own culture in accordance
with their ethnic self-identification, which is recognised and guaranteed by law.
All this has created an adequate legal and political framework guaranteeing
equal rights of the minorities in Bulgaria.
The Turkish population is now participating actively in the legislative and execu-
tive branches of government. In the June 1990 elections for a Grand National Assembly,
the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) won 418,000 votes and twenty-three
seats. In the June 2001 general elections, it won twenty-one seats in the regular national
assembly. The MRF had two ministers and five deputy ministers in the coalition gov-
ernment with the Simeon II National Movement (SSNM), as well as two regional gov-
ernors. As a result of the 2003 local elections, the MRF has 27 municipal and more than
550 village mayors.
Although slowly, minority cultural rights have also been recognised. Turks,
Roma, and the other minorities are now entitled to mother-tongue tuition. For exam-
ple, the Turkish language was introduced in school curricula as an elective subject in
November 1991, and it was made a compulsory elective subject by the Education Act
of December 1998.
Although on a rather limited scale, the Turkish language has also been intro-
duced in the mass media. Since 1993 the Bulgarian National Radio has had morn-
ing and evening half-hour broadcasts for the Turkish population in Bulgaria. News,
Turkish and Bulgarian folk songs are included in the broadcasts. In the spring of 2001
the Bulgarian National Television also began broadcasting ten-minute programmes in
Turkish.
In the transition period attempts were also made to restore the Turkish press. At
present there are three weeklies published in Sofia (Sabah, Zaman and Müslümanlar),
and a children’s newspaper Filiz and a children’s magazine called Balon. There are an-
other two magazines, Kaynak and Ümit, but they do not come out regularly.
Religious rights were also gradually recognised during this period. The Muslims,
who according to the 1992 census were about one million and one hundred thousand
people, have 1,100 mosques and mescits (small mosques) with approximately 1,160 im-
ams (chief prelates) and hatibs (preachers). In the early 90s three secondary theological
schools and a religious Islamic college were established. At the beginning of the 1998/
99 academic year, the Islamic college was transformed into a Higher Islamic Institute.
About five hundred boys and girls attend the four theological schools on a yearly basis.
By the middle of the 1999/2000 academic year Islam had been introduced as an elective
subject in municipal schools in the regions with a compact Muslim population.
Parallel to this, the attitudes of the Bulgarian ethnos have started changing sub-
stantially. Prejudices against and stereotypes of ‘the other ethnos,’ ‘the alien’ are weak-
ening, and this is an optimistic trend. The traditional komşuluk (the spirit of neigh-
bourhood) is being restored in everyday life and in the mass consciousness.
A study on the problem of ‘Compatibility and Incompatibility among Christians
and Muslims in Bulgaria’ conducted in 1994 showed that in about five years a consider-
able step had been taken towards overcoming the negative consequences of the ‘renam-
ing.’ The majority of the Christian Bulgarian respondents in an opinion poll, which was
a part of the study, defined the ‘renaming’ as ‘a crime.’ Those who thought that it was
not a crime were 29%.
The political responsibility for the ‘renaming’ has not been transformed into eth-
nic blame of all Bulgarians. Turks in particular attribute the responsibility for this proc-
ess to Todor Zhivkov and his circle. The exceptions in the above-mentioned study were
only two percent.
The ‘renaming’ has not destroyed the spirit of neighbourhood. As studies in
mixed regions show, relations between Christians and Muslims are quite intense.
Sociological studies confirm the existence of a prevalent trend towards living togeth-
er. They show that 97% of Turks and 94.3% of Roma would like to have Bulgarians as
neighbours. Conversely, 63.7% of Bulgarians would accept a Turk and more than 25%
would accept a Roma as a neighbour. A similar trend is observed as regards friend-
ship: 92.4% of Turks and 92.5% of Roma would like to have a Bulgarian friend. As re-
114 Ibrahim Yalamov
gards Bulgarians, 57.6% would accept a Turk as a friend and about 25% would accept
a Roma as a friend.
Religious tolerance prevails in relations among the religious communities.
People of a different religion are perceived normally – as human beings like anyone
else. This is categorically expressed by the Muslims. Intolerance is manifested as an ex-
ception among them (3– 5%) and among a small group of Bulgarians (10%).
Consequently, positive trends have emerged and are dominant in the pub-
lic sphere. The relations between Bulgarians and Turks, especially in North-eastern
Bulgaria, are improving; the spirit of neighbourhood is being restored. Religious toler-
ance is becoming part of people’s way of thinking.
The thesis that there is a specific Bulgarian ethnic model has been advanced in
the public sphere, and its nature and role are being discussed. The MRF leader Ahmed
Dogan says that there is a Bulgarian ethnic model for solving minority problems. Many
Bulgarian politicians and experts regard this model as a tool for regulating inter-eth-
nic relations and for avoiding confrontation. This last interpretation corresponds more
closely to the development of the natural processes in Bulgaria in the past few years.
The ethnic conflict, which occurred as a result of the ‘renaming,’ was overcome be-
fore it could deteriorate into an armed clash. That was mainly due to the deep-root-
ed tradition of good neighbourhood spirit, i.e. good-neighbourly relations between
the Bulgarian and the Turkish population. In this sense one may speak about a model
that essentially consists in avoiding problems that divide and focusing on interests that
unite people.
However, after overcoming the conflict the problem of the future of the eth-
nic minorities has acquired crucial proportions. According to the Human Rights
Committee, the aim of minority rights protection is not only the survival of minorities
but also the further development of their cultural, religious, and social identity.
The preservation and development of identity require not only short-term po-
litical solutions but also a long-term strategy for social, economic, and cultural devel-
opment. The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, which
Bulgaria has ratified, recommends the adoption of specific measures in the field of cul-
ture and education – the study of the minorities’ native languages, their history, and
related research work. However, very little has been done in this field over the last dec-
ade, when the MRF has been participating in government. Most of all, in regions with
compact Turkish and Roma populations, the educational system is not in keeping with
the contemporary needs of society. The schools do not have the necessary facilities and
equipment, there are few teachers who are university graduates, etc. In these schools
children cannot become computer literate, nor do they learn foreign languages ade-
quately. Not even mother-tongue tuition is compulsory; it is only a compulsory elective
foreign-language course coming after languages such as English, German, French, or
Russian. That is why few Turkish boys and girls are studying their mother tongue. Their
number is decreasing every year. Many Roma and Turkish children drop out before
completing even primary school. Only 3.1% of the young Turks graduate from higher
educational institutions, and the percentage of the young Roma who do so tends to-
wards zero. The percentage of children of school age, abandoned by their parents, is
gradually growing. Illiteracy is thus being reproduced.
The newspapers and magazines in Turkish are published mainly with the sup-
port of foreign foundations. The respective state institutions have distanced themselves
from the publishing houses and provide no financial aid. The publications cannot meet
the demands of the Turkish minority either in terms of circulation rate or of quality. The
Turkish-language broadcasts of the Bulgarian National Television are rather limited.
Research on Turkish literature, culture, and history is virtually non-existent.
There are no more than two or three Turks who are senior researchers. The state ad-
ministration is not taking the necessary steps to prepare researchers and experts in the
field of science and culture. The number of doctoral students in the country and abroad
is less than five or six and they are postgraduate students only in Turkish language and
literature and Islamic theology. For this reason the courses in Turkish language and lit-
erature at the Sofia, Plovdiv and Shumen universities, as well as at the Higher Islamic
Institute in Sofia, and the newly established Turkish theatres in Kurdzhali and Razgrad
are in great need of highly qualified experts.
In this situation one could hardly expect that the original ethnic culture would
survive and thrive. Not only the respective state institutions but also the MRF leader-
ship are continuing to underestimate the ethnic culture. In the latter’s opinion cultural
activities have no place in ‘high politics’ in which ‘they are called upon’ to be involved.
It should be specially emphasised that the ethnic model does not have the nec-
essary socio-economic basis. This threatens the model’s future. The attempts of the
SSNM and MRF coalition government to develop a programme for the economic re-
vival of some regions populated by ethnic Turks have not brought about any tangible
changes so far. These regions continue to be characterised by an underdeveloped pro-
duction structure, unemployment and poverty. During the transition period, hundred
of thousands of peasants and workers from those regions were isolated from the labour
market. According to data of Alpha Research (a sociological agency), only 26.3% of
Roma and 54.6% of Turks are employed in the state and private sectors. The income of
60.5% of Roma family members is less than 50 BGN and that of 52.6% of the Turkish
families is between 50 and 100 BGN a month. In fact 64.3% of Roma and approximate-
ly one quarter of the Turkish families should be classified as poor considering that their
monthly income is less than 102 BGN.
According to Ahmed Dogan, the essence of the Bulgarian ethnic model is equal
participation of the ethnic and religious communities in the country’s public, political,
and cultural life. Experts hold similar views. As in most cases, this refers to the par-
ticipation in national government of representatives mainly of the Turkish ethnic mi-
nority. From a formal point of view considerable progress has been made in this field.
However, as some researchers maintain, this should be more correctly termed as pres-
ence rather than representation. The ultimate objective of political representation is the
expression and defence of the specific interests of the respective ethnic minority. The
116 Ibrahim Yalamov
politicians emphasise only the common interests: ‘common values,’ ‘European values,’
‘integration,’ ‘togetherness,’ but the specific interests are neglected. An understanding
has emerged in the public sphere that the special programmes targeting minorities rep-
resent privileges and that they contravene the principle of equality.
The model’s nature as characterised by its defenders is reduced to a balance be-
tween the principle of integration and the defence of the ethnic and religious identity.
Political practice, however, reveals that the necessity of integration is always pointed
out. The way to self-identification is not always clearly delineated. It has repeatedly
been stressed that the first priority is the integration of the ethnic minorities into civil
society, the formation of a unified Bulgarian and European nation on the basis of com-
mon national and European values.
Undoubtedly, in the age of globalisation emphasis on the common values should
be mandatory in a society that has lived through the trauma of the so-called ‘renam-
ing,’ in a region where the fire of ethnic conflicts is still smouldering, in a period when
the country is preparing to integrate into the European community. But don’t the eth-
nic minorities possess their own values, which could enrich the common system of
values?
Integration does not require that differences should be obliterated; on the con-
trary they should acquire stable characteristics. Integration should be achieved by pre-
serving people’s identity in order to avoid its transformation into a form of quiet and
creeping assimilation. In Bulgaria, due to its more conservative nature, identity is a
priori taken for granted, whereas integration is qualified as a goal or as a process. It is
a well known fact that the goal can be attained through definite conscientious activi-
ties. This, however, does not imply that identity should be left to its own development
and oblivion.
Undoubtedly, a biased interpretation of the ‘Bulgarian Ethnic Model’ is dictated
also by the political conjuncture. Such an approach, however, belittles the creative and
regulatory functions of the model and attributes to it manipulative powers. The mod-
el should not be rejected. It should be filled with real content and it should be trans-
formed into a working model. It must be consistently implemented as a state policy,
which embraces all minorities.
117
THE ‘RENAMING PROCESS’ AMONG THE

POMAKS: THIRTY YEARS LATER
Evgenia Ivanova
New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria
I shall start with a case that at first sight has nothing to do with the ‘Renaming
Process’:
Some time ago (3 April 2004), Svetla Petrova’s otherwise interesting TV talk
show Seismograph featured a discussion on the possibility of Islamic terrorism appear-
ing in Bulgaria. Among the common statements by official and unofficial muftis moti-
vated by the degree of success in their aspirations to this position, the two ‘arbitrators’
in the discussion – a well-known journalist (a Turk) and a research centre director (a
Bulgarian) – took a stance that was, at least for me, rather unexpected.
‘Terrorist acts by Bulgarian Turks are inconceivable,’ the journalist said categori-
cally. ‘Well, such acts can be committed by Pomaks because they have problems with
their identity. Besides, they are poor and can be tempted with 1,000 US dollars...’
‘This is precisely the case with Chechnya,’ added the director. ‘The Chechens
also have problems with their identity and we have seen the result...’
The ‘arbitrators’ looked convincingly competent in their desire to explain ter-
rorism as potentially inherent in an entire community. The link between ‘problematic
identity’ and terrorism was presented as self-evident.
I am recalling the Seismograph case not only because I still feel guilty about not
having reacted immediately as I intended to. I am mentioning this case because it dem-
onstrates a distinct tendency (identical to the one during the ‘Renaming Process’) to
problematise (and compartmentalise) social, economic, or political categories on an
ethnic basis.1
In fact, the success of the ‘Renaming Process,’ taken to mean primarily the events
in 1984–1985, was not due to its ‘sudden’ or ‘blitz’ nature resulting from the spontane-
ous decision of a satanic mind but precisely to compartmentalisation – at that, not only
into ethnic but also into regional and even family categories. This compartmentalisa-
tion, implemented by the authorities with consistent accuracy, was based on the hith-
erto existing – but deepened by the process itself – disintegration between the com-
munities.
1
I use the term ‘ethnic’ also about the relations between Christian Bulgarians and Muslim
Bulgarians insofar as (despite the incantations that ‘ Pomaks are pure Bulgarians’) these rela-
tions are most commonly interpreted mechanically precisely as ethnic.
118 Evgenia Ivanova
The present discourse on the ‘Renaming Process’ and its recurrences focuses (in
most cases) on the subsequent relations between Christians and Muslims, and especial-
ly on the relations between Bulgarians and Turks. The relations between the Muslims
themselves or between Turks and Pomaks are very rarely2 or hardly ever considered as
a problem. The Seismograph case is indicative precisely of these relations.
Inter-community compartmentalisation was tested and had proved to be a rath-
er efficient tool as early as 1964, when the abortive attempt to change the names of the
Pomaks in Ribnovo, which led to a revolt in the village, was presented as an ‘isolated,
autonomous’ decision of the authorities in the Blagoevgrad region. The end of the re-
volt, climaxing in slogans like ‘Long live comrade Zhivkov!’ (who had cancelled the
‘isolated’ decision), was the first warning signal of the policy that would be followed
in the next twenty years. After Ribnovo, every renaming act would be presumed to be
‘isolated’ and every community affected – be it regional or ethnic – would live with the
illusion that ‘this could not possibly be done to us...’
The compartmentalisation grew in scale during the first half of the 1970s when
the names of all Pomaks were changed. The very few Pomaks who succeeded in ‘hid-
ing’ in regions with a compact Turkish population were tracked down and turned back
to ‘their own’ places of residence to be renamed there or ‘to be left in peace’ in the plac-
es of ‘the others.’ The fact that not a single Pomak who had ‘hidden’ in a Turkish region
had ever been renamed on the spot fostered the illusion among Turks that ‘this would
not be done to us...’
The first, once again ‘isolated,’ attempt to rename Turks was made in 1975 in the
Smolyan region, populated mostly by already ‘renamed’ Pomaks. This marked the be-
ginning of a sinister process of compartmentalisation into ‘pure Turks,’ ‘purer Turks,’
and ‘purest Turks,’ whose natural end (and not an independent decision) were the
events in 1984–1985.
After the mid-70s, compartmentalisation – which had already assumed an eth-
nic form – again become regional in character. In the eyes of the power-holders and
their subservient scientists who were engaged in digging out ‘the Bulgarian root,’ the
classification (from the point of view of Turks themselves) into ‘pure Turks,’ ‘purer
Turks’ and ‘purest Turks’ appeared as inverted: so there were ‘purest Bulgarians,’ ‘al-
most Bulgarians,’ and ‘least Bulgarians.’.. The Smolyan ‘expertise’ was first applied to the
mixed regions and mixed marriages, to cover – in early 1985 – also ‘the purest Turks’
or ‘the least Bulgarians’ from the Shumen region.
By then compartmentalisation was becoming more and more detailed. It was no
longer simply ethnic and even not regional; it also forcibly penetrated the ‘private’ ter-
ritory of the family. There were cases when married couples from two neighbouring re-
2
See Ivanova, E. 2002. Отхвърлените “приобщени” или Процеса, наречен “възро-
дителен” (1912-1989), (The Rejected ‘Integrated’ People or the Process Called ‘Renaming’ [1912–
1989])], Sofia.
The ‘renaming process’ among the Pomaks: thirty years later 119
gions (Ruse and Silistra, for example) were renamed at intervals of several weeks only
because ‘the time for “her” (or “his”) region had not yet come.’
When the process picked up breakneck speed between 1984 and 1985, there
were still people who consoled themselves that ‘this would not be done to us...’
Thus, the paranoiac proliferation of identities, in which Pomaks were not the
only victims, was ‘specified’ – at the end of the 80s – into several ‘calendar’ categories:
‘Bulgarians ’72,’ ‘Bulgarians ’82,’ ‘Bulgarians ’84,’ ‘Bulgarians ’85.’ Whereas the 1989 de-
cision to issue passports en masse, which later came to be known as the ‘Big Excursion,’
excluded ‘the 1972 Bulgarians.’
When collecting field material for my book The Rejected ‘Integrated’ People about
the renaming of Pomaks, I was horrified not only by the personal tragedies of the re-
spondents. What probably shocked me most was the behaviour of the communities to
each other. Most of Pomaks were even surprised when I said that I would have expect-
ed more empathy from Turks with their tragedy in 1972. A not insignificant part of
Turks (just as the authors of the renaming, who later wrote copious memoirs) thought
that the renaming of Pomaks (and even that of the Smolyan Turks) was ‘in the order of
things’ – after all, they are ‘to some extent’ Bulgarians, aren’t they? In both communi-
ties there were people who (like the communist party functionaries from the Smolyan
region in the 80s) were sorry that the process had not continued with the renaming of
Jews, Armenians and Greeks... In both communities there were people who thought
they were and who really were friends. When speaking about ‘the others’ they thought
of them as a community, not as friends who had specific names.
I am sure that the Seismograph journalist has friends among Pomaks. I don’t
know about the director.
In the years after the ‘Renaming Process’ the majority of both Turks and Pomaks
were able to draw the distinction between the ‘renamers’ and Bulgarians at large.
Inside the Muslim community itself, however, such a distinction has never been made.
Pomaks are still bitter about the indifference of all Turks to the events from the early
70s, whereas Turks regard to this very day all Pomaks as ‘renamers.’ The statement that
‘we get on with Bulgarians better’ is remarkably common in both communities.
The notorious ‘self-identification as Turks’ of part of Pomaks, which triggered
a heated debate (including in the Bulgarian Parliament) after the 1992 census, does
not disprove this statement in the least. Pomaks who ‘identify themselves as Turks’ are
mostly from the Yakoruda and Goce Delchev districts (Blagoevgrad region). Moreover,
their number had visibly decreased between the last two censuses.3 The ‘Turkish’ self-
identification of Pomaks from the two districts is directly related to the traumas from
the ‘Renaming Process.’ It was precisely in the area of Yakoruda and Goce Delchev that
the repressions were the most severe and the number of victims was the highest. What
3
See Results from the 1992 Census. Demographic and Socioeconomic Characteristics,
1995. Sofia; and http://www.nsi.bg/Census/EthnosMV.htm
120 Evgenia Ivanova
prompts many people to opt for this self-identity is the wish to ‘overinsure’ themselves
which, naturally, weakens as the trauma recedes into the past.
The effect of ‘overinsurance,’ as well as the demonstration of religious zeal that
occasionally assumes overblown proportions in the Western Rhodope Mountains, has
been repeatedly noted by researchers.4 Observations on the dependence of the ‘assumed
Turkish self-identity’ on the ethnic composition of one region or another are compara-
tively less frequent (but nevertheless are being discussed too). Turkish self-identifica-
tion of Pomaks is definitely more common in the Western Rhodopes where there are
few, if any Turks. Conversely, in the regions (the boundary between the Central and
Eastern, and the Southeastern Rhodope Mountains) where Pomaks and Turks live in
neighbouring or mixed population centres, there is no ‘assumed Turkish self-identity.’
The compartmentalised space is most visible precisely along the boundary between
the Smolyan and Kurdzhali regions, which is the ethnic boundary between Turks and
Pomaks. The same holds for the Kirkovo municipality (Kurdzhali region), where the
two communities are mixed. Precisely these were the regions of the ‘stage-by-stage’
‘Renaming Process,’ i.e. the regions that shaped ‘the calendar identities’: ‘Bulgarians
’72,’ ‘Bulgarians ’82,’ etc. And precisely in them the disintegration between the two
communities most often took the form of conflict.
The Pomaks from the ‘compartmentalised’ spaces rarely refer to their neigh-
bours by the ethnonym ‘Turks.’ They call them by derisive names, such as Chitatsi,
Koynari or Alucha (Yaluchi). The ethnonym Koynari (settled Yuruks5), which is com-
mon along the boundary between the Smolyan and Kurdzhali regions, is derived from
koyun (‘sheep’ in Turkish) in the mind of Pomaks, whereas Turks themselves associ-
ate it with the city of Konya – the capital of the Seljuks and a present-day stronghold
of Islam in secular Turkey. The name Yaluchi is found only in the Kirkovo area and is
‘explained’ by local residents in rather interesting ways, which I am tempted to discuss
in more detail.
According to some of my informants, the word is a combination of yol üç (‘three
roads’ in Turkish) and refers to the three different directions, which the ‘tribes’ of
Pomaks, the Turks from the Podkova region, and the Turks from the Benkovski region
(who are indeed different from one another) had followed. In other versions it ‘origi-
4
See, for example, Планината Родопи - усилията на прехода. Обобщени резултати
от ПСИ “Планината Родопи - модел за толерантност на Балканите” (The Rhodope
Mountains: Efforts in the Transition. Summarised Results of a Representative Sociological Survey
on ‘The Rhodope Mountains: A Model of Tolerance in the Balkans’). 1998. Sofia: Institute for East
European Humanities.
5
See Ivanova, E. 2001. ‘Родопите като път и граница’ (‘The Rhodopes as a Road and
Boundary), in Аспекти на етнокултурната ситуация. Осем години по-късно (Aspects of
the Ethno-Cultural Situation. Eight Years Later). Sofia.
nates’ from yol uç (‘end of the road’) – because the Turkish settlements in Kirkovo are
‘the last ones,’ those coming after them being Pomak only.6
Regardless of the variety of interpretations, whose analysis – although quite
tempting – will be the subject of another study, all clearly imply a pejoratively marked
otherness. Here the road, whose main function is to link spaces, in fact compartmen-
talises them because it is both a road and a boundary. For the two communities the
road ends in ‘nowhere.’7 Beyond it are ‘the others,’ who – if not hated – are usually ex-
cluded and forgotten.
Unlike the northern regions (the municipalities of Asenovgrad, Banité, Ardino,
Nedelino, and Dzhebel) where the ethnic boundary is clear and runs along the moun-
tain ridge, compartmentalising the Pomaks in the west (in the Smolyan region) and
the Turks in the east (in the Kurdzhali region), in the Kirkovo area this boundary is
blurred, even though it again follows to some extent the changes in altitude. As a rule,
Pomaks live on the high southern ‘collar’ of the Eastern Rhodopes (though there are
numerous exceptions as a result of inter-regional migrations), whereas Turks live on
the lower northern territories. One can find there also several mixed villages, which
are almost absent in the other regions. Thus, from a territorial point of view, the ethnic
spaces in Kirkovo could hardly rival by ‘purity of compartmentalisation’ the clearly di-
vided Pomak and Turkish ‘zones’ to the north.
In fact, this ethnic ‘mix’ is largely an artificial product resulting precisely from
the ‘Renaming Process’ and the tragic events at the end of 1984 (the death of Tyurkyan,
a baby girl aged 17 months, which is commemorated by a fountain, occurred on the
territory of Kirkovo near the village of Mogilyané). It was not until 1987 that today’s
Kirkovo Municipality, whose centre has far fewer residents (none of them Turkish!)
than other villages, was established to unite the three ‘tribes’ from the areas of Kirkovo
itself (Pomaks), Podkova (Turks), and Benkovski (mixed). However, the semi-official,
internal compartmentalisation into ‘micro-regions’ has continued to this very day.
If the main principles in everyday administrative coexistence of the ‘tribes’ are
‘exclusion’ and ‘forgetfulness’ (the owners of the few enterprises in the region, for ex-
ample, usually ‘forget’ to employ workers from ‘the others’), the periods of parliamen-
tary and especially of local elections transform municipal life into an ‘intertribal’ war.
Election results are rarely not contested in court and the two main political forces –
the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF, supported by Turks) and the Union
of Democratic Forces (UDF, supported by Pomaks) – frequently resort to not entirely
6
The interviews were conducted in the villages of Dolno Kapinovo, Druzhentsi, and
Domishte. Archives of the Institute for East European Humanities. Another possible inter-
pretation could be uç el (‘the people from the border’). (Cf. Venedikova, K. 2003. Българи,
арменци и караманци в средновековна Мала Азия [Bulgarians, Armenians and Karamantsi
in Mediaeval Asia Minor], Sofia, p. 73.)
7
The other community’s territory is quite frequently denoted as ‘Beyond there is noth-
ing’ or ‘Beyond is Canada.’
122 Evgenia Ivanova
delicate methods in their campaigns. That is probably the reason why in the remote
Kirkovo Municipality, forgotten by God, Allah, and some mobile phone operators,
elections as a rule attract media and research interest. And the results justify this inter-
est: in the 2001 parliamentary elections the national favourite, the Simeon II National
Movement (SSNM), won in Kirkovo just 5%, while in the 2003 local elections Kirkovo
was the only municipality in the Kurdzhali region in which the MRF failed to win the
mayor’s office in the first round.
The last local elections brought yet another surprise to the media and research-
ers. For the first time in the history not only of Kirkovo but also of the MRF, there was
an independent candidate whose supporters otherwise voted for councillors from the
MRF. In this way each ‘tribe,’ hitherto compartmentalised along strictly ethnic lines –
irrespective of the differences between the Podkova and Benkovski districts – had its
own candidate: Kirkovo a Pomak from the UDF, Podkova a Turkish woman from the
MRF, and Benkovski an independent Turk.
The main campaign tool in every rural municipality, rumours, are unmistaka-
bly ethnoreligious in character in Kirkovo (and in other mixed regions). The MRF, for
example, tried to convince Pomaks that their candidate had converted to Christianity,
whilst the UDF intimidated them by declaring that if Turks won, Greece would never
open the Makaza border crossing checkpoint.
After the MRF won in the second round of voting, the economic fears common
to every municipality were transformed into ethnic fears:
– ‘Now “we” (us Pomaks, not the UDF or BSP or X-supporters) will be dismissed
from work.’
– ‘Now “we” (us Pomaks, not the UDF or BSP or X-supporters) will have our
pastures taken away.’
– ‘Now “we” (us Pomaks, not the UDF or BSP or X-supporters) won’t be granted
building permits.’8
These quotations are from field interviews, and they are quite similar to those
which I recorded during the previous elections (won by the UDF) and which were
voiced by the opposite side.9
The ethnicisation of political and economic categories (elections, job dismissals
or pastures in the Kirkovo case; terrorist acts in the Seismograph case) will probably be
concomitant with life in Bulgarian society for a long time yet. Any hypertrophy – be
8
See Ivanova, E. 2004. ‘Местни избори 2003 - етнически или политически вот?
Община Кирково, област Кърджали’ (‘Local Elections 2003: Ethnic or Political Vote?
Municipality of Kirkovo, Kurdzhali Region’), in Социологически проблеми, No. 1/2, 2004.
Results from a New Bulgarian University project implemented with the participation of stu-
dents from the departments of Anthropology and Political Sciences.
9
See Ivanova, E. 1999. ‘Изборът на Родопите - етнически или политически?’ (‘The
Choice of the Rhodopes: Ethnic or Political?), in Култура, 10 December 1999.
it forced ‘homogenisation’ such as the ‘production’ of ‘Bulgarians’ from a specific year,
or forced segregation such as the Roma ghettos – will intensify this process. If any sad
logic could be found in the arguments of the ‘arbitrators’ from Seismograph, it would
be motivated by the ethnicisation of poverty. Unfortunately, the horrifying possibil-
ity – that starving people may agree to perform terrorist acts in order to earn a thou-
sand dollars – threatens quite a few circles in Bulgarian society. To those people ethnic
identity, be it ‘problematic’ or ‘non-problematic,’ hardly matters.
124
MIGRATION OF ROMA IN BULGARIA

Ilona Tomova
Institute of Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Science, Bulgaria
Number and Relative Share of the Large Ethnic Communi-

ties in Bulgaria
According to the last census (March 2001), the population of the Republic of
Bulgaria amounts to 7,928,901 persons. A total of 6,655,210 or 83.9% of the entire
population identified themselves as ethnic Bulgarians, 746,664 (9.4%) as Turks, and
370,908 (4.7%) as Roma. The number of Bulgarian citizens who identified themselves
as Roma/Gypsies in 2001 was 57,512 (18.4%) more than in 1992. This ‘increase’ of the
Roma community is due both to the high birth rate in the group and to a change in the
declared identity among part of these people, whom their neighbours call ‘Roma’ al-
though they prefer to identify themselves as Bulgarians, Turks or Vlachs. Based on ex-
pert assessments using the so-called ‘objective criteria’ and the opinion of their neigh-
bours, the number of the Roma in Bulgaria is estimated to be 600,000 – 800,000 per-
sons, or eight to ten percent of Bulgaria’s population.1
Scope, Intensity and Direction of Roma Internal Migrations

Traditionally Roma are perceived by their neighbours as the most mobile com-
munity in Bulgaria. At the same time, the data of the National Statistical Institute (NSI)
from censuses comprising the entire population as well as data from different socio-
logical studies reveal a very complex picture of Roma’s territorial mobility and migra-
tions.
In fact Roma are very mobile. This mobility is however related to finding sea-
sonal jobs, transnational or intercity trade, to their occupations, to collecting scrap
metal or odds and ends, or the opportunity to receive social welfare. It does not pro-
duce lasting changes in their place of residence, which is conventionally considered as
1
Marushiakova, Elena, and Veselin Popov. 1993. The Gypsies in Bulgaria, Sofia: Club
90 (Марушиакова, Елена, Веселин Попов, 1993. Циганите в България. София: Клуб 90);
Liegeois, Jean-Pierre. 1995. Roma, Gypsies, Travellers, Strasbourg: Council of Europe; Ringold,
D. 2000. Roma and the Transition in Central and Eastern Europe: Trends and Challenges,
Washington D.C.: The World Bank; Tomova, Ilona. 1995. The Gypsies in the Transition Period,
Sofia: IMIR (Томова, Илона, 1995. Циганите в преходния период. София: МЦПМКВ).
Migration of Roma in Bulgaria 125
migration. Moreover, mobility is not characteristic of all Roma alike. It continues to be
observed more frequently among the groups and families who had led a nomadic or
semi-nomadic way of life until the mid-twentieth century and among the Roma from
the border regions. It is weaker among the population settled long ago in the interior
of the country, particularly among the poorest and marginalised part of the Roma who
live in large ghettos, the majority of whom have never left the neighbourhood where
they were born. Similarly to the processes among the rest of the population, the Roma
with higher education or those with some qualification or skills are more mobile. The
illiterate and functionally illiterate unskilled Roma, especially those living in large city
ghettos, are not in a position to risk their established survival modes by moving to
another population centre, especially if they cannot rely on the support of their rela-
tives in the new place. Sociological studies show that the Roma women, like the wom-
en from the other groups, are more mobile. This is related to the tradition of married
women moving over to their husbands’ families and to the widely practised serial mo-
nogamy in many Roma sub-groups.2
The data from the two last censuses and a sample study of the territorial mobil-
ity of the population conducted by the NSI in 2001 enable us to identify the parameters
of mobility of the large ethnic groups inside the country.
Table 1
Mobility of the Different Ethnic Communities Inside the Country (%)
Bulgarians Turks Roma Others
Stationary population 55.9 70.0 79.4 55.0
Migration in the country to 1992 33.9 20.1 13.4 33.5
Ethnic structure of the migrants up 87.7 7.7 2.5 1.7
to 1992 (share of the total number of
migrants)
Intensity of mobility up to 1992 44 30 21 45
Migration in the country after 1992 10.2 9.9 7.2 11.5
Ethnic structure of the migrants after 81.4 11.8 4.2 1.8
1992 (share of the total number of
migrants)
Intensity of mobility after 1992 10 10 7 11
Source: NSI3
2
Tomova, The Gypsies in the Transition Period; Tomova, Ilona. 2000. Poverty and
Ethnicity. The Formation of ‘Underclass’ Among the Bulgarian Roma, Sofia: IMIR Archives
(Томова, Илона, 2000. Бедност и етничност. Формиране на ‘underclass’ сред българските
роми. София: Архив на МЦПМКВ).
3
NSI. 2002. Vol. 6, issue 3, Sample Studies. Territorial Mobility of the Population, Sofia:
National Statistical Institute (2002. т. 6, кн. 3, Извадкови изследвания. Териториална
мобилност на населението, София: НСИ).
126 Ilona Tomova
If we try to decipher the data in Table 1, it becomes clear that Roma are the
community with the highest share of the stationary population in Bulgaria. Four fifths
of Gypsies have never left their birthplace, as compared with two thirds of Turks and
slightly more than half of the ethnic Bulgarians. The intensity of mobility is the low-
est among Roma both before and after the transition, but the difference with respect
to the remaining ethnic communities is decreasing. Before 1992 Roma, to a greater
extent than Turks, had been moving in the village-to-city direction, but the urbanisa-
tion process was weaker in their community than among the ethnic Bulgarians. After
1992 the main direction of the Roma migrations is village-to-village, whereas among
Turks it is village-to-small town, and among Bulgarians – small town-to-large town
(the capital).4
For all ethnic communities in Bulgaria, the years of most intense migrations in-
side the country are the years of intense industrialisation and urbanisation – from the
beginning of the 1950s to the end of the 1970s. However, internal migration is much
more intensive among the ethnic Bulgarians than among Turks and Roma. As a result
of urbanisation and the intensive migration of young people from the villages to the
towns, the share of the rural population in Bulgaria had gradually decreased by the end
of the 70s.
Sociological studies show that in the 1960–1989 period, the processes of inte-
gration of the rural Roma population were quite intensive and successful, especially
among long-settled Roma with experience in different agricultural jobs or services de-
signed for the traditional subsistence farming, as well as among small Roma commu-
nities in villages. In the cities, Roma found jobs in industry and services mainly as un-
skilled workers. Many of Roma were able to get a better education and acquire some
qualification in order to increase their income. This happened in the sphere of trade,
or through well-paid, albeit unattractive, difficult and hazardous jobs in large metal-
lurgical plants, chemical works, hazardous productions, in construction or the service
sector. The majority of Roma lost their jobs after the start of the structural economic
changes at the beginning of the 90s. The high mobility, particularly among male Roma
who tried to make a more decent living, has led only partly to stable resettlement in
other locations or outside the country.
After 1992 the internal migrations of the rural Roma population are also relat-
ed mainly to the search for better working and living conditions. However, unlike the
previous period the most intensive migration was that from village to village. The mi-
gration flow from cities to villages was intensified particularly during the critical 1995–
1997 period. A relatively high migration from villages to cities continued predomi-
nantly in the regions with a relatively small rural population, located near well-devel-
oped economic centres.5
4
UNDP. 2004. The Rural Regions: Overcoming the Unequal Development (UNDP, 2004.
Селските райони: преодоляване на неравнопоставеното развитие), p. 40.
5
Tomova, Poverty and Ethnicity, UNDP, The Rural Regions.
The different intensity of the migration processes from villages to cities among
the large ethnic communities within the country has produced serious changes in the
ethnic structure of the urban and rural populations.
Table 2
Population by Location and Ethnic Group (%)
Location – ethnic group 1900 1920 1946 1965 1975 1992 2001
In cities – total 19.8 19.9 24.7 46.5 58.0 67.2 69.0
– Bulgarians 18.2 19.2 24.8 49.4 61.2 71.6 73.5
– Turks 16.1 13.5 13.7 17.8 21.8 31.6 37.0
– Roma 20.5 25.4 29.2 38.4 44.6 52.3 53.8
In villages – total 80.2 80.1 75.3 53.5 42.0 32.8 31.0
– Bulgarians 81.8 80.8 75.2 50.6 38.8 28.4 26.5
– Turks 83.9 86.5 86.3 82.2 78.2 68.4 63.0
– Roma 79.5 74.6 70.8 61.6 55.4 47.7 46.2
Source: NSI 1994 (recalculated data), NSI 20046
In the 1992–2001 period the most massive resettlements of Turks were from vil-
lage to city and from city to city. Among Roma more intensive were the regroupings of
the rural population in the villages with initially high Roma concentration. The con-
centration of the urban Roma intensified in the segregated Roma neighbourhoods. No
particularly intensive stable resettlements from villages to cities were observed. As a re-
sult of these migrations the territorial isolation and spatial segregation of Roma in-
creased sharply. Parallel to the enlargement of the already existing Roma urban ghettos,
Roma rural ghettos were established. According to data from the representative study
The Consolidation of the Socialist Way of Life Among the Bulgarian Citizens of Gypsy
Origin, at the beginning of the 80s a total 49% of the Roma in Bulgaria were living in
segregated neighbourhoods.7 Studies have shown that at present three quarters of Roma
are living in segregated locations. Spatial segregation is both the result of and a condi-
tion for deepening the social exclusion of this vulnerable minority group.
6
NSI. 1994. Results from the Census, Volume 1, Demographic Characteristics, Sofia:
National Statistical Institute (1994. Резултати от преброяването на населението. Т.1,
Демографски характеристики, София: НСИ); NSI. 2004. Vol. 1, Population, issue 1,
Demographic and Social Characteristics of the Population, Sofia: National Statistical Institute
(2004. т. 1, Население, кн. 1, Демографски и социални характеристики на населението,
София: НСИ).
7
Chakalov, Boris, Ivanichka Georgieva et al. 1980. The Consolidation of the Socialist
Way of Life Among the Bulgarian Citizens of Gypsy Origin, Sofia (Чакалов, Борис, Георгиева,
Иваничка и др. 1980. Утвърждаването на социалистическия начин на живот сред
българските граждани от цигански произход. София).
128 Ilona Tomova
Social Exclusion and Ethno-Territorial Concentration

After decades of decreasing social differences and of relative social homogeneity of
socialist society, the transition to a market economy was accompanied by many changes:
increasing social inequality, complex stratification processes, and impoverishment of signif-
icant parts of the population. There was also mass social exclusion of the poorly-educated,
unskilled inhabitants of the underdeveloped rural/mountainous and semi-mountainous
regions, of the vulnerable persons with health, family and age problems, who were forsaken
and sent to institutions. The social exclusion of all these people began with their massive
dropout from the labour market and it gradually spread to the remaining social spheres.
Social exclusion among Roma is particularly disturbing – during the last ten
years an ethno-class or sub-class has started to be formed among them, for which so-
cial and ethnic exclusion are coincident. The Roma’s territorial segregation and con-
centration play a very important role in this process.
The territorial segregation of Roma in separate neighbourhoods has long-lasting
traditions in Bulgaria. For centuries during Ottoman rule, the different ethnic and con-
fessional communities in Bulgaria lived in segregated neighbourhoods in the cities. After
an independent Bulgarian state was established, there were consistent attempts to over-
come this segregation. Today the members of the small ethnic communities, and to a large
extent Turks, live in mixed neighbourhoods with Bulgarians. However, in most places
‘the Gypsy neighbourhoods’ have remained. Largely, this is also due to the negative at-
titude towards this community and to its long social separation from the other groups.
However, the preservation of the Gypsy neighbourhoods is also due to factors existing
within the group, as well as to social and economic factors. After 1989 self-segregation
processes among Roma became more noticeable. These processes were generated by nu-
merous internal and external factors. On the one hand, Roma who lived in urban residen-
tial complexes but who had dropped out of the labour market or were rapidly impover-
ished felt compelled to move, joining their relatives in segregated neighbourhoods. There
they could add a room to a hovel without a building permit, architectural and technical
plan, or move in with relatives where the lack of amenities was offset by low utility bills
and where they could rely on assistance and support. Thus, at the beginning of the 90s, a
large percentage of the urban Roma sold or moved out of their flats in the mixed residen-
tial complexes and settled in urban Roma neighbourhoods. Roma from other population
centres joined them there, relying on better opportunities for a livelihood in the city, on
the anonymity in Roma neighbourhoods, or on the possibility to receive social welfare.
With the increase in the number of Roma who were living permanently or temporarily in
large Roma neighbourhoods, there was an increase in the number of Bulgarians and Turks
who had been their neighbours and who started leaving the Roma neighbourhoods or the
houses in the immediate vicinity. The mass concentration of poor Roma, however, led to
the accumulation of negative processes in the segregated neighbourhoods – unemploy-
ment, poverty, deteriorating living conditions, early dropout of children from school, low
social control over adolescents, the spread of deviant forms of behaviour, and the forma-
tion of cultural models obstructing Roma integration into the macro-society.
After the collective and state farms were closed down and the land was restored
to its previous owners, the rural Gypsies remained without subsistence, with no rights to
participate in the newly established cooperatives. For this reason and due to the increas-
ing conflicts with their fellow peasants related to frequent thefts of agricultural products,
Roma started to concentrate in villages with a relatively high percentage of Roma fami-
lies. The Roma who lived in villages near cities, where they were traditionally employed as
low-skilled workers in industry and services, lost their jobs and tried to earn their living
in seasonal farming, in felling trees in forest areas or in picking fruit. Relatives from other
villages or cities frequently moved over to live with such families. The increased concen-
tration of Roma in the villages-satellites to the cities or in villages along the main intercity
roads facilitated the tactics of survival on theft of ready agricultural produce, burglary
of summerhouses in city suburbs, road robbery and illegal tree felling. At the same time
this Roma concentration was counter-productive to those families which relied mainly
on agricultural jobs (permanent or seasonal) or seasonal work in the cities. There were
frequent conflicts with the local community. The rest of the population usually blamed all
thefts on the local Roma. Roma were punished collectively by being refused the services
they were offering. Thus, Roma were compelled to search for work in increasingly remot-
er settlements. They encountered serious difficulties when they applied for land from the
municipal or national agricultural funds. It was also difficult for them to find a market for
the goods and services, which they traditionally offered to the peasants.
Along with the Roma concentration in segregated neighbourhoods, there was
an increasing isolation of their inhabitants. Most of the adult Roma dropped out of
the legal labour market in the 1990–1992 period. More than 90% of the young Roma
who should have started work after this period never found a permanent job. The pre-
vious social networks including non-Roma co-workers and friends no longer existed.
This made finding even a temporary or seasonal job extremely difficult – in the con-
text of a huge labour market shrinkage, vacant jobs are frequently filled through social
networks of friends, colleagues, community and relatives. At present a large part of the
Roma depend on finding low-paid jobs in the grey economy where they run the risk of
not being paid and not getting any social security benefits. Table 3 shows NSI data from
the last census in 2001 on the distribution of employment, unemployment and indi-
rectly of the dropouts from the labour market of large ethnic communities.
Table 3
Population by Economic Activity and Ethnic Group as of 1 March 2001 (%)
Economic activity Bulgarians Turks Roma
Active – employed 34.9 25.9 11.1
Active – unemployed 13.6 25.4 37.0
Inactive 51.5 48.7 51.9
Source: NSI8
8
NSI. 2004. Vol. 1. Population.
130 Ilona Tomova
As a result of the massive and long-term unemployment of adult Roma, as well

as of the underdeveloped system of social assistance and/or shortage of funds for effec-
tive aid to needy persons, poverty in the Roma neighbourhoods has become a mass
phenomenon. It usually assumes severe forms. Undernourishment of children and
adults is a standard for about three quarters of the segregated neighbourhoods.9 The
mortality rate is growing sharply. Even when a medical doctor is available, four fifths of
Roma are not in a position to buy medication for the treatment.10 More than half of the
children and adolescents have dropped out of school or have never started their formal
education.11 All these factors lead to extreme poverty, which is transferred to future
generations. The data on the incidence and depth of poverty among the main ethnic
communities in the country are given in Table 4, and the comparative data on the pov-
erty in Central and Eastern Europe are given in Table 5.
Table 4
Poverty Incidence by Ethnic Group (%)
Ethnic group % of the % of poor Share of the Depth
population poor
Bulgarians 82.3 5.6 39.6 0.4
Turks 7.1 20.9 12.8 2.2
Roma* 8.8 61.8 46.5 13.6
Others 1.8 7.6 1.2 0.2
Total 100.0 11.7 100 1.7
Source: World Bank 200212
9
UNICEF. 2003. Situational Analysis of the Situation of Children and Women in
Bulgaria. (УНИЦЕФ, 2003. Ситуационен анализ на положението на децата и жените в
България).
10
FACT – Marketing. 2003. Ensuring Access to Healthcare for the Minorities. (ФАКТ-
Маркетинг, 2003. Осигуряване на достъп на малцинствата до здравеопазване).
11
Tomova, The Gypsies in the Transition Period; Tomova, Poverty and Ethnicity; Tomova,
Ilona. 2000. ‘Social Change and Ethno-Religious Relations,’ in Fotev, Georgi (ed.). Neighbourhood
of the Religious Communities in Bulgaria, Sofia: Institute of Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences (Томова, Илона (2000), ‘Социална промяна и етнорелигиозни отношения’ във
Георги Фотев, съст., Съседство на религиозните общности в България, Институт по
социология при БАН, София).
12
World Bank. 2002. Bulgaria: The Changing Profile of Poverty, Sofia (Световна банка,
2002. България: Променящият се профил на бедността. София). The World Bank study is
based on expert assessments of the number of Roma in the country using objective criteria (8–
10%); 8.8 % of the persons from the sample have been identified as Roma, regardless of the way
in which they identify themselves.
Table 5
Poverty Incidence in Central and Eastern Europe (%)
Country Year of Study 2.15 USD 4.30 USD
per person daily per person daily
Bulgaria 1995 3.1 18.2
Bulgaria 2001 7.9 31.9
Romania 1998 6.8 44.5
Latvia 1998 6.6 34.8
Ukraine 1999 3.0 29.4
Hungary 1997 1.3 15.4
Poland 1998 1.2 18.4
Source: World Bank 200213
According to data of the World Bank and a number of representative sociolog-

ical studies, the average monthly income per person in Roma households in recent
years has varied in the range of 31 to 38 BGN. A considerable part of the Roma fami-
lies buy clothing and shoes from second-hand stores or use old clothes given to them
by their neighbours (sometimes against small services). According to studies by UNDP
and UNICEF from 2000, the Roma in the country most frequently suffer from severe
shortage of staple foods.14
Table 6
Staple Foods in the Daily Diet of Poor Families:
Percentage of the Standards for Adequate Nutrition
Products Christian Muslim Turks Roma Total
Bulgarians Bulgarians
Meat 41.0 20.6 15.2 13.6 27.7
Vegetables 80.9 61.8 70.9 69.8 75.0
Fruit 42.5 32.4 34.2 22.1 33.7
Cheese 43.9 29.4 39.2 25.0 35.8
Yoghurt 62.0 82.4 57.0 49.0 58.1
Milk 27.6 38.2 24.1 18.2 24.6
Source: UNICEF 200315
Ibid.
13
UNDP. 2002. Outside the Dependency Trap. The Roma in Central and Eastern Europe, Sofia
14
(ПРООН, 2002. Извън капана на зависимостта. Ромите в Централна и Източна Европа.

София); UNICEF, Situational Analysis of the Situation of Children and Women in Bulgaria.
15
UNICEF, Situational Analysis of the Situation of Children and Women in Bulgaria.
132 Ilona Tomova
The US Census Bureau defines neighbourhoods that are populated mainly by

members of vulnerable minority communities, more than 40% of which are poor, as
ghettos. In Bulgaria the percentage of the Roma who are below the official poverty
line for the country and live in the large Roma neighbourhoods in the towns and
villages with considerable Roma concentration, usually exceeds 80%.16 It is true that
in these same ghettos there are also extremely rich families. However, a steady tenden-
cy has been observed towards permanent impoverishment of the majority of ghetto
residents.
Ghetto residents suffer not only from the social isolation they live in but also
from institutional isolation, which was particularly devastating after the second half
of the 90s. Despite the increased number of people living in such quarters, many of
the public institutions (schools, kindergartens and crèches, children’s kitchens, medi-
cal centres or polyclinics, social assistance offices, police departments, youth and cul-
tural centres, etc.) providing different services were closed, moved elsewhere in the
same town or village, or moved to another town or village. Considering that less than
10% of the Roma households have telephones and that most of the public telephones
in the Roma neighbourhoods are out of order, and that Roma often live in neighbour-
hoods with undeveloped street networks and no access to local public transport, the
chances of the residents of the Roma neighbourhoods to rely on emergency aid, police
protection, garbage collection, sanitation, and all other social services, are decreasing
drastically.
The difference in the social status of the residents of segregated neighbour-

hoods and the rest of the population is growing. Sociological studies from the mid-
90s show an increasing tendency by members of the other ethnic communities to leave
these neighbourhoods. The residents of such neighbourhoods are constantly labelled
as ‘Gypsies’ and the negative stereotypes and acts of discrimination against them are
reinforced.17 The residents of segregated neighbourhoods frequently complain that
they become victims of discrimination simply because of the fact that they live in the
so-called ‘Gypsy neighbourhoods.’ They are discriminated against when they look for a
job, when they try to enrol their children in better schools, when they apply for medi-
cal services, or when they ask for police protection. As a result, a considerable part of
Roma live with the perception that nothing in their lives depends on their own efforts
and qualities – they are doomed to misery and discrimination due to their minority
origin and the impossibility to leave the ghetto. One of the most severe consequences is
the gradual formation of behavioural models and psychological attitudes that are typi-
cal of ghettos. They additionally accelerate the processes of social isolation of their in-
habitants, increase the social distances from the remaining population and the risk of
discrimination, and lessen the chances of personal success and winning recognition by
the standards of the macro-society.
16
Tomova, Poverty and Ethnicity.
The social organisation in the Roma neighbourhoods is deteriorating. This
means that the extent to which their residents are in a position to achieve common
goals, to solve community problems and effectively control the social behaviour of
community members, particularly that of adolescents, is decreasing. Since 1997 drug
addiction and trafficking, as well as drug-related violence and prostitution have in-
creased in some of the largest Roma ghettos in the capital and in other cities. Crime
(most frequently related to thefts, still less frequently to violence against the person)
has increased. Access to elementary services and utilities has also decreased.
The parameters of the living environment in the ghettos are deteriorating.

Most of the ghettos are entirely or partly built outside the town planning schemes and
this fact predetermines the lack or insufficiency of infrastructure. Three quarters of
the residents of Roma ghettos have no access to sewerage or even to septic pits; half of
them have no running water in their homes. A considerable part of their houses are
not connected to the electric mains or they are cut off from the mains supply because
of unpaid bills. The share of the families with unpaid electricity bills is even larger. Two
thirds of the houses in the Roma neighbourhoods are overcrowded and in poor con-
dition. A large part of the houses in the Roma neighbourhoods are made of materials
at hand and do not meet elementary sanitary requirements. The average floorage per
person in the Roma ghettos is 7.1 square meters. The overpopulation and the poor hy-
gienic conditions in Roma neighbourhoods generate a high risk of epidemics and fre-
quent skin and allergic diseases, as well as parasite-inflicted illnesses.
Table 7
Share of Residents of Houses with Amenities by Ethnic Origin (%)
Amenities Bulgarians Turks Roma
Electricity, water supply, central sewerage 71.7 30.9 25.0
Electricity, water supply, septic pit 20.9 40.4 20.5
Electricity, water supply 3.2 6.9 8.9
Electricity 3.3 19.8 35.9
None 0.6 2.0 9.7
Source: NSI18
17
Tomova, The Gypsies in the Transition Period; Tomova, Poverty and Ethnicity; World
Bank, Bulgaria, Gyurova, Elena, and Ilona Tomova. 1995. Anti-Ghetto. Living Conditions and
Roma Preferences in Sliven and Asenovgrad, Sofia: Inter Ethnic Initiative for Human Rights
Foundation (IEIHRF) (Гюрова, Елена, Илона Томова. Антигето. Жилищни условия и
предпочитания на ромите в Сливен и Асеновград. Архив на МИЧП).
18
NSI. 2004. Vol. 1. Population.
134 Ilona Tomova
Roma are the only community in Bulgaria with a decreasing level of edu-
cational attainment during the transition period. More than half of the Roma chil-
dren and young people in ghettos drop out of school in their first years or have never
attended school. According to NSI data from the 2001 census, 23% of the Roma aged
over twenty are illiterate, and another 28% have completed only elementary school.
For the majority of the Roma the Bulgarian language is not native, as a result of which
they usually cannot acquire stable reading and writing skills in the elementary educa-
tional course or they rapidly lose those skills after leaving school. Thus, practically the
predominant part of the Roma who have finished elementary school only are function-
ally illiterate. The quality of education in Roma ghetto schools is much lower than the
average in the country. Illiteracy among Roma women is three times higher than that
among men and usually has a negative impact on their children’s motivation to study.
The low level of educational attainment of adult Roma is an obstacle to finding a job
and dooms them to low-paid jobs and poverty. Poverty is the main reason for school
dropout. Thus, the vicious circle low qualification – unemployment – poverty – drop-
out is closed and passed on to the next generations. Low education is an essential factor
in the reproduction of poverty and the social isolation of the group.
Table 8
Educational Attainment of the Large Ethnic Communities
(Persons Aged over 20, in %)
Educational Attainment Bulgarians Turks Roma
Higher (incl. specialist) education 19.1 2.4 0.2
Secondary school 47.7 21.9 6.5
Primary school 24.9 46.9 41.8
Elementary school 7.0 18.6 28.3
Illiterate 1.3 10.1 23.2
Source: NSI 2004 (recalculated data)19
In the last fifteen years one of the consequences of early dropout from school
and of Roma concentration in segregated neighbourhoods has been a declining age
of marriage and a destabilised family structure. According to data from representative
studies that are also indirectly verified by the NSI, four fifths of Roma marry before
coming of age. The result are numerous teenage births; more wives and children being
abandoned by young men; increased serial monogamy. These processes reflect partic-
ularly unfavourably on women and children, who live in dire poverty, frequently for
life. The early and numerous births account for the high infant and maternal mortality
among Roma. A considerable part of the children are subject to poor parenting or are
left in state institutions. Many children are forced to work or to beg, to become pros-
19
Ibid.
titutes or to steal in order to survive and provide for their families. This contributes to
Roma’s social isolation.
Roma External Migration

The ban on free movement of people outside Bulgaria imposed by the com-
munist regime for more than forty years is the reason for the absence of demograph-
ic changes in the Roma group caused by external migration until 1989. It is true that
small groups of Turkish-speaking Muslim Roma joined the emigration waves of the
Turkish population in the 1950s and 60s – as a result of which Turkey cancelled uni-
laterally both emigration agreements in protest against the inclusion of Roma in the
emigration groups – but there are no grounds to presume that the number of emigrant
Roma was considerable. In the 1989–2000 period, 691,000 persons left Bulgaria. But it
is practically impossible to estimate how many of them were Roma.20 The lack of data
on the ethnic composition of emigrants makes it impossible to estimate quantitatively
emigration in this ethnic group even on the basis of indirect indicators. The only data
at our disposal are those on the strong inclination among Roma to emigrate and infor-
mation about emigration from different studies, the majority of which are qualitative. It
should be noted that Roma are reluctant to discuss the emigration of relatives or their
unsuccessful attempts to emigrate. The reasons are different – mistrust in the research-
ers of social processes, fear that the information may be misused which may result in
social welfare cuts for the families of emigrants, fear of ridicule and humiliation be-
cause of the nature of their jobs abroad, etc.
The rapid and sharp deterioration of living conditions made many Roma eager
to leave the country. Even in the first years of the transition period, the share of those
wishing to emigrate was on the increase. Comparative data on the dynamics of emigra-
tion inclinations among the large ethnic communities are given in Table 9.
Table 9
Dynamics of Emigration Inclinations among the Large Ethnic Communities (%)
Roma Bulgarians Turks
1992 1994 1997 2001 1992 1997 2001 1992 1997 2001
Would not 70.5 67.2 63.1 - 68.0 62.6 - 41.9 34.4 -
emigrate
Kalchev, Yordan. 2001. External Migration of the Population in Bulgaria, Russe: Danube
20
Press AD (Калчев, Йордан, 2001. Външната миграция на населението в България. Русе:

Дунав прес АД).
136 Ilona Tomova
Long to 26.9 16.1 5.9 - 21.6 16.0 - 49.0 32.6 -

emigrate
Want to - 12.2 18.7 9.5 - 13.8 6.5 - 15.3 7.2
make money
abroad and
come back
(labour
emigrants)
Definitely 2.6 4.5 12.3 3.4 3.4 9.6 8.7 9.1 17.7 9.5
determined
to emigrate
(potential
emigrants)
Source:21
The factors that mostly motivate potential emigrants from the different ethnic
communities to leave the country are different. For Bulgarians and Turks they are the
following: the wish to live and work in a country with higher living standards; the wish
to earn fast money to solve important family problems; the wish to live with relatives
and work (particularly strong among Turks, 77% of which claim that they have rela-
tives abroad, mainly in Turkey); the wish for better education or professional realisa-
tion. As far as Roma are concerned, the push factors are very strong: unemployment,
poverty, and discrimination. They were pointed out by one in nine Roma. Roma also
attach great importance to the possibility of living and working in a country with high-
er living standards; however, for them this reason is cited twice less frequently than it is
by Bulgarians and Turks. Conversely, they cite relatively more frequently their wish to
travel abroad to earn fast money in order to solve important family problems.
The main desired destinations for emigration among the large ethnic commu-
nities are different too. Roma cite most frequently Germany, Greece, the USA, Turkey,
Poland and, recently, Spain, Italy, and Portugal. Their choice is pragmatic and it is based
on information about opportunities for finding a job, about difficulties in overcoming
immigration barriers and/or police control, about possibilities to earn income outside
the labour market. The Bulgarian Turks most frequently travel to countries where there
are already considerable colonies of Turkish immigrants, which seriously facilitate their
initial adaptation and the possibility to find a job. These are above all Turkey, Germany,
21
Tomova, The Gypsies in the Transition Period; Георгиев, Ж., И.Томова, М.Грекова,
К.Кънев, 1992. Етнокултурната ситуация в България. София: Архив на МЦПМКВ;
Zhelyazkova Antonina et al, eds. 1995. Relations of Compatibility and Incompatibility between
Christians and Muslims. A Collection of Articles. Sofia: IMIR; NSI. 2002. Vol. 6, issue 1, Sample
Studies. Demographic Characteristics. Sofia: National Statistical Institute (НСИ, 2002. т. 6, кн. 1,
Извадкови изследвания. Демографска характеристика, София: НСИ.
the Netherlands, Sweden, and the USA. After 2001 Spain and Portugal were added to
the list with an ever growing number of potential emigrants. The ethnic Bulgarians cite
most frequently Germany, USA, Austria, Canada, and Britain. In the last few years the
greater possibilities of finding seasonal work in Spain and Portugal have increased the
attractiveness of these two countries.
Most frequently Roma declare that they have relatives or friends in Germany,
Greece, Austria, Turkey, Spain, the Netherlands, and Poland. According to different so-
ciological studies, a large part of the Roma from the Vlach groups have already emigrat-
ed to Greece. Quite a few sedentary Roma from the Sliven district have been working
for years in Israel under contracts with various building companies. Many male Roma
are working illegally on construction sites in Germany and Austria. Having gained ex-
perience in seasonal farm work in Greece, thousands of Roma families have emigrated
to that country. A considerable number of young women are working as prostitutes in
the countries of Central and Western Europe. In the last few years, the flow of illegal
immigrants from all ethnic communities to Spain and Portugal has increased. These
immigrants usually work in agriculture, the construction industry, and hotels.
According to NSI data, the Roma are the least frequent travellers abroad as com-
pared to other ethnic communities. This needs to be explained. A large part of the
Roma travel frequently to neighbouring countries to trade and/or seek temporary em-
ployment. Such travel was particularly intensive during the embargo on the former
Yugoslavia. But it is comparatively short-term and cannot be defined as temporary em-
igration. At the same time the large majority of the Roma are too poor to afford to trav-
el abroad. This explains why 79.3% of the Roma belong to the non-travelling abroad
groups, versus 71.8% of the Bulgarian Turks, and 68.3% of the ethnic Bulgarians.
Another unfavourable factor is the policy of West European countries, which have
tightened immigration regulations and are extraditing illegal immigrants, especially
those without education and qualifications who have problems finding a job even in
the grey economy. Thus, many of the Roma who went to the West have been returned
to Bulgaria. The low education and qualification of the predominant part of Roma is
a major obstacle to successful emigration. At the same time there is a small group of
Roma emigrants with high education who are doing well, in some cases even better
than Bulgarians in the same position. Early marriage in the group is an additional ob-
stacle to the young male Roma’s desire to emigrate. Divorced or abandoned wives be-
come victims of international women trafficking quite often. Trafficking of children
from poor Roma families is on the rise too.
138
TRACES OF THE ‘RENAMING PROCESS’

AMONG POMAKS IN BULGARIA
--- AN ANALYSIS OF THEIR DISCOURSE ---
Moyuru Matsumae
Last spring I saw on the Bulgarian National TV news the rally commemorating
the incident that happened in a village near Goce Delchev, Southern Bulgaria, about
thirty years ago. Many people had gathered around the new monument, dedicated
to the victims of the resistance to the name-changing campaign in the 1970s, and
the guests made speeches praising today’s religious and ethnic tolerance in Bulgaria.
However, what impressed me more was that some villagers expressed a wish to sue a
person responsible for the incident.
This shows that the campaign that marked the beginning of what the authorities
would later call the ‘Renaming Process,’ is not mere bygones for the people at whom
it was directed. We should reconsider those campaigns from the perspective of these
people. How did they experience this process? And how do they see it at present? In
this paper I shall analyse discourses of Pomaks or Bulgarian-speaking Muslims main-
ly in the region of Teteven,1 Northern Bulgaria, and examine their own view on the
‘Renaming Process.’ Through this work, moreover, I wish to look for a clue to social
reconstruction after a conflict.
After the end of Ottoman rule in Bulgaria, Pomaks were often pressured to as-
similate into mainstream Bulgarian culture. Governments resorted to this policy in
an attempt to solve the minority problem and to integrate the nation although their
policies towards Pomaks were sometimes inconsistent. Several name-changing cam-
paigns were conducted during the twentieth century, the most massive one being that
in the 1960s and 1970s. Pomaks were forced to change their Muslim/Turkish names
to Bulgarian ones in order to assimilate, or to ‘revive’ their original Bulgarian identity.
After that and for the same purpose, they were compelled to give up some traditional/
religious rituals and some styles of dress such as veils, shalvari (baggy pants of wom-
en), and fez hats that were considered typical Islamic.
1
I have been carrying out research in this region since 1997. There are only a few villages
in this region where Pomaks live today; the majority of them are in the Rhodope Mountains,
Southern Bulgaria.
Traces of the ‘renaming process’ among Pomaks in Bulgaria 139
These campaigns conducted since the 1970s have driven a wedge between
Pomaks and Christian Bulgarians. This is the view of both sides in the region of
Teteven. One Christian Bulgarian said that since then Pomaks have kept them at a
distance, while some Pomaks said that this campaign was a terrible experience. Part
of them refused to change their names at first, and they were summoned to the village
police office again and again.
It is often noted, however, that the name-changing campaign proceeded more
smoothly here than in the Rhodope Mountains, and the restrictions on dress were im-
posed later. Although there were people who resisted renaming at first, the officials
began to replace their names with Bulgarian ones. The name changes proceeded grad-
ually, because Pomaks also changed their second names, which are derived from their
fathers’ first names. In addition, new-borns could be registered only with Bulgarian
names, and it was impossible to leave a maternity hospital without naming a child. At
the same time, people continued to use their old names in daily life, no matter what
names they were officially registered under. They were called sometimes by their new
Bulgarian names and at other times by their old ones. A lot of nicknames were used
too. This usage of names was one of their responses to the name-changing campaign.
As for the whole process, an informant explained that it was uncomfortable for
regional communist party officials or civil servants to implement the policy severely,
because they knew each other well as neighbours. All the neighbours in the region,
including the Christian Bulgarians, were ‘our fellows’ (nashi hora), so they could ne-
gotiate on part of the regulations. For example, calling a cleric to funerals was prohib-
ited according to the socialist instructions on rituals, but people often asked an imam
to pray in the latter half of the funeral after party officials had left.
Here we can see a sense of local identity that transcends the boundary between
religions (or customs). In a village where Pomaks and Christian Bulgarians cohabit I
have sometimes heard that Christians also refer to their neighbour Pomaks as ‘ours’
(nashi). At other times, of course, the word ‘our,’ or rather the ‘us/them’ dichotomy is
used to express the contrast between Pomaks and Christian Bulgarians. So people feel
senses of belonging on various levels and they are expressed depending on the con-
text. A sense of local identity is one of them, but the examples mentioned above il-
lustrate that this common local identity has provided a ground for negotiation, which
enables villagers to compromise on acts in everyday life.
On the other hand, we are well aware that national policies are carried out in
a way that prevents local identity from functioning and damages it. Regarding the
‘Renaming Process’ too, informants say that police from other regions had been
brought in to enforce it. In the case of the region of Teteven, a lot of policemen had
been stationed in the villages where women usually wear shalvari, and they inspected
peoples’ dress-style in the mid-1980s. Women started dressing in working smocks and
long skirts instead, but at times wore shalvari under them; even so, it was a frighten-
ing experience for them that the police had stayed for a while and checked their dress
strictly. The fact that daily acts were closely monitored made them feel oppressed,
140 Moyuru Matsumae
and many people remember clearly how the police came to their village to inspect the
dress-style on holidays.
Furthermore, this example suggests the gendered nature of the ‘Renaming
Process’ and Bulgarian national policies towards Muslims. As Neuburger points out
in her latest study,2 these policies were also an attempt of modern states to control
‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’ of the nation. Therefore men and women, in particular
women who had worn shalvari until the prohibition, often talk about the process dif-
ferently. We need to draw more attention to the intersection of nation and gender in
considering social reconstruction after these attempts.
After the reversal of these policies in 1989–1990, Pomaks were given the op-
portunity to restore their Muslim names and dress-style. In the region of Teteven
many Pomaks have not restored their old names, at least not formally, and continue
to use two names in daily life. Mainly Bulgarian names are given to new-borns and
the younger generation is called by new names, but an informant in his 30s said half
in jest, ‘I’m sometimes called A but at other times B, so I myself don’t know who I
am.’ Concerning social memory, Connerton argues that we preserve versions of the
past by representing it in words and images – commemorative ceremonies are typi-
cal instances of this, and also keep the past in our bodies.3 Through practices the
past is sedimented in the body as a habit. His study is suggestive, when we consider
Pomaks’ practices of naming. Their everyday practices of being called by two (new
and old) names are already habitual, but the ‘Renaming Process’ is preserved precisely
in them.
As for the dress-style, quite a number of women have begun wearing shalvari
again. Most of them, however, rarely go to big and distant cities like Sofia or Lovech
in shalvari. They explain the reasons as follows: ‘People in the town keep staring at
me if I am wearing shalvari,’ or ‘we must wear dresses as civilised people in the town.’
This indicates that the campaign to eliminate their dress-style as a mark of ‘backward-
ness’ and ‘otherness’ still affects their choice of dress. As they state, ‘without shalvari
we are not different from Bulgarians’; they are aware that shalvari are seen as a marker
of ‘Pomaks’ in this region and choose whether to wear shalvari or not depending on
the circumstances.
We have to note, in addition, that people have other codes of dress in the vil-
lages. Certainly shalvari have come to be seen as a symbol of Muslims in the modern
period, and so the government and its institutions wanted to prohibit them in order
to assimilate Muslims. Whether women wear shalvari is, however, relevant also to
their position inside the community -- for example, age, marital status, occupation,
the details of work, and so on. Although the difference between religions, or ethnic
2
Neuburger, Mary. 2004. The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of
Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
3
Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Traces of the ‘renaming process’ among Pomaks in Bulgaria 141
groups, attracts attention especially from the outside, we must not ignore the ambigu-
ity arising from the fact that each person embraces identities derived not only from
religious/ethnic belonging, but also from other factors, such as localities, gender, and
classes.
Several recent studies show the importance of the research on Pomaks’ identi-
ties in everyday life.4 Many of them point out multi-level identities of Pomaks. For ex-
ample, Konstantinov notes that their identity tends to be composed of two main lay-
ers. One is a vernacular imitation of official nation-state discourses and another is a
real-life enactment of identity. Todorova discusses the problem of an ascriptive iden-
tity designated by out-groups and a self-identity. The ‘Renaming Process’ and nation-
al policies on identity-affairs made Pomaks (minorities) to create an imitation of of-
ficial discourses and to try to control their group identity through an ascriptive one.
However, there was discrepancy between (quasi-)official identity and their daily one.
Of course, they influence each other. Pomaks have reacted to the ascription by out-
groups, in particular the nation state, and enacted in everyday life, as our earlier ex-
amples suggest.
After the end of the communist regime it is said that the economy plays a cru-
cial role in the formation of people’s cultural identity.5 The (ex- and quasi-) official dis-
courses on ethnic identity, however, are still influential especially when some people
try to form a stable group identity. It seems that some of them feel a sense of insecurity
after a retreat of national regulation concerning group identity. All these things make
it clear that the ‘Renaming Process’ is not mere bygones. It may be worth researching
daily practices among Pomaks and examining further how they view the traces of the
‘Renaming Process’ under the present circumstances.
Finally, it should be added that these arguments concerning identity contain
a more general theme. The concept of ‘identity’ has undergone a paradigmatic shift
in the recent decade. The view that identity is essentially consistent and unchanging
has been reconsidered. So hereafter studying identity formation of Pomaks from this
point of view would suggest an interesting and important illustration to us.
4
See, for example, Konstantinov, Yulian. 1997. ‘Strategies for Sustaining a Vulnerable
Identity: The Case of Bulgarian Pomaks,’ in Poulton, Hugh & Suha Taji-Farouki (eds.). Muslim
Identity and the Balkan States, London: Hurst & Company, pp. 33–58; Todorova, Maria. 1997.
‘Identity (Trans)formation among Pomaks in Bulgaria,’ in Kürti, László & Juliet Langman (eds.).
Beyond Borders: Remaking Cultural Identities in the New East and Central Europe, Boulder:
Westview Press, pp. 63–82.
5
Todorova reports that under economic, international and geopolitical pressures Pomaks
are being forced to identify along either Bulgarian or Turkish lines, although this new economic
and political situation enables them to enjoy diversity. See Todorova, p. 76.
142
TEN ESSAYS FROM TODAY’S

BULGARIAN JOURNALISM
Savcho Savchev
‘Andral’ Journal, Bulgaria
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you for inviting me to participate in this conference. I could have written
the next pages in a style better suited for such a meeting. However, I hope you may agree
that for a writer, journalese is more appropriate. The following essays may be known to
some of you. But I do not consider their presentation here as either superfluous or ‘out-
of-place.’ Academic style examines, investigates, and informs. Conversely, journalese
tries to soften up, to smooth out, and to overcome trends, which could be subsequently
studied by researchers. These essays are about Bulgaria. I have no doubt that as regards
the problems and attitudes discussed, they refer to the Balkans as a whole.
Essay One
The attitude towards the Roma in Bulgaria does not differ essentially from that
in any other European country. Generally speaking, it varies from sweet, romantic loft-
iness to angry rejection. At the two extreme points of the swinging pendulum, we ‘look
at ourselves, and look, and look’ but – we cannot recognise ourselves at all. We create
an impression with our way of life, with our typical appearance and language, which
is strange to ‘the natives.’ They have built ‘an image’ of us – the one they were able to
build, the easiest way. (And if by chance you cannot be ‘accommodated into’ their a pri-
ori conceptions, God take pity on you...). In other words, in both cases, these are only
mental pictures, or rather ‘substitutes of mental pictures.’ One hundred and twenty-six
years after the establishment of a new Bulgarian state, the level of knowledge about
Roma is almost the same as it was at its birth. In the last few years, studies have been
published, which try to look at things from more angles. Well, I should say that in those
books, reports and articles the authors stay frequently within their empirical findings
and display a superficial (to say the least) and manipulative attitude towards the prob-
lems. Pseudo-scholars, publicists and researchers pop up everywhere! They have noth-
ing against dipping into the European purse full of money for modern Roma topics.
There are many questions – so who shall provide the answers, and when? We are
unshaven, shall we shave? Shall we pick up a new razor or shall we use the rusty one?
Let us ask some of the questions:
Ten essays from today’s bulgarian journalism 143
– Is ‘historical’ knowledge in line with the centuries-long ‘residence’ of Roma on
these lands?
– What is Bulgaria to us?
– What are we to Bulgaria?
– What is the attitude of the ordinary citizen towards his/her co-nationals?
– What has the attitude of the Bulgarian authorities been towards us throughout
all these 126 years?
– What is our attitude towards the Bulgarian national destiny?
– What is our attitude towards ourselves?
– What is the attitude of Bulgarian humanities towards us and towards our des-
tiny?
– What is our place in Bulgaria’s history and has science given an answer to this
question?
– What knowledge have the press, the other media, the arts provided about us as
a whole?
– What do our children learn: mutual respect, tolerance, an attempt to look into
the nature of the other, or hatred and racism, spiritual dirt and elementary
human stupidity?
Well, we cannot answer those questions and a lot of other questions... And if we
do answer them, what difference will it make...
Essay Two
In the centre of Sofia, right behind the Palace of Justice (what irony! showing
quite visibly the impotence and carelessness of our judicial system and the govern-
ment), skinheads threw a homeless and defenceless child from a high building and
killed him. A lot of time has passed since this event, which the newspapers used only
for a single day, just to increase their circulation! They never returned to this symbol-
ic event. No one cares whether the perpetrator was identified, and if he was, whether
there were any consequences or not… And why has he remained unidentified? Society
is in a state of blissful slumber. People have enclosed themselves in a shell, submerged
in poverty, in their own physical and spiritual misery. So much have they become used
to bad news that the only thing they say to themselves is ‘pray this won’t happen to
me’… And the picture which some people saw in the scenarios is already there – to
frighten the public, to scare non-stop, if there is something you can use. And if there
is nothing – do invent something, whatever it is, but don’t leave in peace the ordinary
person, the taxpayer, the one who fills the public coffers. Twenty years ago, Bulgarians
were scared with Turks, today they are being scared with Roma, tomorrow… Well, by
the time tomorrow comes we may invent something else. Society lives in permanent
fear. Manipulate it in any way you can! If there is no threat simply invent one, but never
leave the public in peace. This is a philosophy of cynicism, political cynicism of all rul-
144 Savcho Savchev
ers, of the nouveau riches who live on our backs. This is a philosophy of impotence, of
total lack of capacity to rule your own country; this is a philosophy of hatred towards
Bulgaria and of everything Bulgarian. Yes, it is precisely their lackeys who support the
thesis that ‘we are the only ones who are concerned about the country.’ And that is why
they raise the ‘big’ question about ‘the Gypsy threat,’ claiming for example that after
ten years Roma will be three million… These people quote so many results of ‘studies’
that they are more than enough to make ordinary people dizzy… But this, precisely, is
their goal! Today they will release a short article, tomorrow a statement on a private TV
channel, next day another on mainstream TV, then on Friday a half-hour radio broad-
cast… Public opinion is manipulated, hooked, minds are framed, brains are washed.
Somebody pays for that. With money stolen from the banks – with our money. With
money that disappeared before 10 November 1989 – our money!
The truth is different: never in their history have Roma raised a hand against an-
other people! In the not so distant past we lived at latitudes where many languages and
dialects were spoken, we lived together with many nationalities and national groups,
there were many religions and heresies (professed completely freely and in a democrat-
ic way that we may dream of even today). Back in those days we lived in tolerance with
all our neighbours. When one lives in such a mixed community one has no choice but
to assume the principles of respect for the others – respect for their religion, language,
culture, for their rights to profess them freely, to live freely, and to think freely. We are
not greedy for power; we do not aspire for a state or for a territory of our own. We are
wiser than many think we are. For thousands of years, we have been living and working
for none other than the country we live in. It wasn’t us who robbed the banks. It wasn’t
us who ruined the state – the levers were in other hands. We were mere onlookers, 98%
of us being unemployed.
Essay Three
For many years I have avoided reading the papers. This has been my reaction
to all journalistic and solvent people’s outrages. Well, now and then someone will try
to pass me over something idiotic to read. And being a professional reader, somehow
I simply cannot ignore it. This was what happened some time ago when a newspaper
was pushed under my nose and I was told to ‘take and read this.’ I opened the news-
paper and started looking. And I found ‘it.’ A rather renowned cartoonist was hitting
out at, surprisingly, Bulgarians – to make them wiser. Strange, I told myself. What is
this mania for hitting out at somebody, whoever they might be?! Some twenty years
ago a poet, very famous at the time, metaphorically killed Bulgarians. In time, some-
body else will hit out at and ‘kill’ Bulgarians, and a few days later another person in
another newspaper will hit out at them for nothing. Ouch, so much hitting and kill-
ing will befall the damned Bulgarian – so to hell with it, I said to myself! Pushing these
fancy thoughts aside, I started reading the great article. I read it and I admit there was
so much nonsense that... I must be out of my mind, I said to myself. It must be me and
not the cartoonist who’s nuts. After all, it’s never too late to make a fool of yourself. And
to be amazed by your own stupidity. Simply because you are already of an age when it
is quite embarrassing to be surprised by somebody in such an inexcusably stupid way.
Inexcusably because somebody pretends they are wise and you believe them. But...
mind your own business! One cannot pretend every minute to be wiser than one ‘is.’..
From this article I learned that ‘America is not a state but a continent, a mixture of as-
sorted riffraff.’ That Switzerland is not a state either but ‘a laundry.’ What’s laundered
there isn’t money but ‘dough.’ I understood also that Bulgaria is not considered as a sov-
ereign state. For the writer, Bulgaria is ‘a misunderstanding in the world ocean, some
reef.’ Further on, the big wise man makes a greater discovery: that to become a Nobel
Prize winner you need to be no more than a tailor. It is sufficient to know languages; the
rest is as easy as a wink. So far, crap after crap. But let it go, you say to yourself, a man
of age, with hair lost and not only hair but brain cells gone too. It is strange that to the
question ‘what should be feared most,’ the great man goes directly to, well... to Gypsies.
How come indeed – Gypsies? And the man makes... a proposal. Czechs were right to
isolate Gypsies in ghettos. We should follow suit. And after a brief historical overview
in which he repeats ‘truths’ he sees as appropriate, he considers himself a great expert
on the topic...
Having read something here and there, he thinks he is so clever that he can give
advice to the statesmen who dare not voice that proposal. You read on and on and start
getting angry that you speak Bulgarian! And you wonder where to start with this great
Balkan wise man! With the fact that it isn’t ‘the Czechs’ but some small municipality
somewhere in the backyard of Europe that has voted to raise a wall between people?
Those who voted for the wall seem to have forgotten what the Nazis did to them fifty
years ago...
You might also suggest, for example, that those municipal councillors should
have thought about how to create new jobs for these people in order to avoid possible
trouble. Because these people are hungry and starving. ‘Gypsies, not Turks, were the
scourge of Bulgaria.’ Great, another discovery. Twenty years ago another 700,000 peo-
ple were deported – back then they were ‘the scourge,’ but now new ones have been
chosen to take the blame. And this ‘highly tolerant’ person, as he declares himself,
seems incapable of realising that this is not the cause and that he should start looking
for the roots of evil in himself. Because it is very easy to put the blame on the other,
it is very convenient, it’s never you... Because I don’t know a Gypsy banker, for exam-
ple, who has been robbing poor people, but I’ve seen Bulgarian bankers on TV. My
childhood friend Borko stole wire, but he did it as a man, and he was left hanging on
the wire forever. And he did it not because he liked hanging very much but because
his three children, already grown-up men and women, were and are still unemployed.
And they have families in which no one has found a job to date! Yet, just look around
and tell me if you can see a banker hanging somewhere out of shame or a banker dy-
ing of hunger – I haven’t. Has the writer ever seen such a banker?! But then, some-
where in the US Bulgarian bankers have built themselves an entire suburbs! Also in
146 Savcho Savchev
Johannesburg and in Vienna! And there is no force that can bring them – or the peo-
ple’s money – back. Because it seems that the reason for the catastrophic situation
lies there, not in Gypsies. And elsewhere, of course, but let us stop here and contin-
ue with historical data. Long ago Persians invited 10,000 Gypsies to play music and
they gave them land and seed, but Gypsies squandered it all... Ladies and gentlemen,
when you read Firdausi, you aren’t obliged to believe every fabrication of his – after
all, he is a poet! Just imagine! Could there really be a nation that was so short of peas-
ants and workers and servants and singers and musicians and what have you, that it
would have been forced to invite so many people from abroad? Isn’t such a proposi-
tion both exaggerated and stupid?! Isn’t it preposterous to presume that such a na-
tion could have given birth to Firdausi, but couldn’t raise musicians?! Good gracious,
such a nation must have been very stupid then, and I personally don’t believe a word
of that story!!! Firdausi wants to make his king look very silly too! Which shah, king
or whatever, would be stupid enough to bring 10,000 people, a whole army into his
land! Never mind the instruments, to... supposedly entertain his people! Because, you
see, they were supposedly unable to entertain themselves!? Well, when I read Firdausi
I draw completely different conclusions! The ‘historical’ story is guided generally by
its author’s clearly ‘political’ considerations, considerations that we should try to ‘de-
cipher’ today. But there is also something else. Well, let this piece of information be
true: Don’t you think it is rather vulgar to invite somebody for something and then
to compel them to do something else?! The Louvre may invite a master cartoonist to
draw in Paris for a certain time and then buy part of his paintings at a price worthy of
the Louvre and the painter. Then, all of a sudden, someone buys ten cows, a piece of
land and seed and compels our buddy to breed cows, to plant and reap because, say,
at that particular moment there is something wrong with French agriculture. Well,
don’t you think our buddy will start swearing like a trooper, using colourful Bulgarian
swear words, and promptly pack and return to Bulgaria?! Then just imagine that some
French newspaper starts to speak foully about that gentleman, accusing him of being
very lazy – you see, the entire French nation was giving him a livelihood but he didn’t
care and had spurned its generous hospitality… In general, where is the criterion?!?
Who gives an intellectual the right to speak in such a way about a whole nation?! And
doesn’t the Bulgarian intellectual realise that such a tone is, to say the least, vulgar?!?
Who and what are we teaching, educating? Here I will take the liberty to repeat some-
thing I told a former ambassador years ago: I am very glad that it was my father, not
people like you, who educated me. My father wasn’t the kind of man who would be
chased for interviews. But I assure you that he was a highly educated and genuinely
tolerant man. If this is supposed to be tolerance, pity our state!!! I doubt very much
that if 500,000 Bulgarians had been killed by Hitler – that’s the number of Gypsies
Hitler killed without any reason – a Bulgarian intellectual would have had the insolent
perversity to claim that Fuehrer is ... shining.
Essay Four
A senior state official is good-mannered (or at least is supposed to be). A senior
state official smiles, he is polite to everybody, he listens attentively (or at least is sup-
posed to).
The senior university official is with grey hair (exactly as you imagine him). The
senior university official gives advice (well, who else should do that?!).
And we listen (obey).
The senior state official listens attentively to the senior university official.
Sometimes he smiles in a stately manner, and at other times semi-condescendingly.
There are no quarrels – we pretend to be well-educated and good-mannered people.
I understand that the senior university official is in fact a lecturer – an associate
professor, PhD holder, dean; the fellow delivers very wise lectures to an audience ea-
ger for knowledge. Students listen (obey) attentively to his wise stories, sit for examina-
tions and possibly fail. The students depend on him. He educates future teachers; they
in their turn educate our children. He shapes public opinion. He participates in map-
ping out the government’s strategies and tactics on certain problems. Here is one of his
wisecrack statements (I quote literally): ‘The government should take the necessary
steps to make the minorities start loving Bulgaria at least a little.’ The academic feels
helpless – he asks the government to help science make those minorities start loving
his beloved homeland at least a little. Because the teacher feels that the minorities don’t
love his homeland. And at this moment I saw the associate professor, the PhD holder,
the dean, the professor and whatever. I saw him as a teacher in a small monastic school
one hundred and fifty years ago. I imagined him walking up and down in the mid-
dle of the classroom in his homespun full-bottomed breeches, surrounded by children
with shaven heads. The teacher, cornel stick in hand, enforcing obedience and pouring
knowledge into the pupils’ empty pumpkin heads... The state official nods understand-
ingly. He hasn’t forgotten that he is a diplomat but I know that his way of thinking is the
same. We, the poor ones, we keep mum. We are school kids. We went to school to buy
brains. ‘Science is a sun that shines in our souls...’
Ask the teacher whether if this is a homeland for him, it is a pigsty for me! Ask
the teacher how come he entered my soul and didn’t find there a drop of love towards
his beloved homeland. Ask him what measuring gauge he uses to determine those mi-
norities’ love of his beloved homeland. The teacher must know much, otherwise he
wouldn’t have been hired as a teacher, would he? But he definitely doesn’t know that
both my great-grandfathers died ‘valiantly’ (as written in an official document that has
survived purely by chance) in the Balkan wars. They died defending the teacher’s be-
loved homeland, the homeland that he categorically seems to deny me the right to call
my own too (I wouldn’t be surprised if he denied my great-grandfathers Nicola and
Mincho that right too). Even though for all I know, his great-grandfather might have
died from an apoplectic stroke near his wife’s stinking behind. For all I know, his head
might be full of 6% millet-ale instead of brain – otherwise how could he possibly think
148 Savcho Savchev
that anyone, be it a senior state official or the entire government, could make those eth-
noses start loving Bulgaria at least a little... In a word, sheer nonsense...
Essay Five
‘Gypsies are the scourge of Bulgaria’: What have we come to if we can hear that
on the Bulgarian National Television... (After the gutter daily Trud, the BNT has been
quick to follow suit…) A slight revision of this great idea of some genius will show
you straight away how stupid this claim is. For instance: ‘Armenians are the scourge
of Byzantium.’ Or: ‘Bulgarians are the scourge of Europe.’ All these ‘revelations’ are
worm-eaten or moderately stupid. Someone had voiced them somewhere, either in
Constantinople a thousand years ago or in Rome while trying to kill the Pope some
twenty years ago. True or false, they exist in the speaker’s head. If you are given the op-
portunity to voice such a piece of idiocy, the television station is to blame. And if you
avail yourself of this opportunity, the idiocy is ... personally yours.
Essay Six
In the age of the so-called ‘Great Discoveries’ Columbus set out to discover
India. He didn’t discover India. He discovered another continent, later named America
after another discoverer who actually didn’t ‘discover’ it. No doubt, this was an injus-
tice. Yet even so, America kept the name of the man who didn’t discover it. The sec-
ond injustice was that although Columbus realised that he hadn’t discovered India,
he named (he or somebody else – it hardly matters considering that the name is used
even today!) the local people ‘Indians.’ (In English ‘Indian’ refers both to the American
Indians and to India’s people. American Indians are sometimes called ‘Red Indians,’ but
this name was obviously coined rather late!) The name has stuck even though the civi-
lised Europeans and civilised Europe could have asked the local people: Hey you, how
do you call yourselves? Tell us so that we will call you by your own name! Because you
can’t meet Christopher Columbus in the street and without knowing his name start
calling him Ivan just because you’ve met and said hello to somebody else whose name
is Ivan. But the Europeans didn’t ask. And the native Americans had names, names
that differed widely because they came from different tribes, different people with their
own traditions, customs, language and culture, achievements and history, worthy of
respect. Some called themselves Mayas, others Incas, Cherokees, Apaches, and so on.
And they shouldn’t have been called ‘Indians’ because they were not Indians! In fact,
Europe did not respect them. During the many years of conquests, massacres or to use
a modern word, genocide, Europe behaved as a civilisation of barbarians. Europe was
determined to educate the world with blood and fire and to make it learn to live ac-
cording to European standards. The Europeans are the greatest egoists (possibly) in the
entire world. They think that they are the only ones in the universe and that the tastes
they indulge are the best. They are intoxicated only with the smell of their own divine
sweat, their lips are the only ones that utter sacred truths, and they alone have the right
to determine anything and everything...
Strange as it may seem, this reflex is alive even today – look at what the USA
has done over the years in Vietnam, Panama, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq and else-
where. And not only the USA; the same has also been done by England, France, Spain,
Portugal, the Netherlands, Russia – all highly civilised states and nations... They were
the right ones. The others were wrong... It was no accident that in the past some ‘right’
conquerors and many ‘great’ persons got themselves eaten alive or boiled on some is-
land or in the impenetrable hinterland. It is no accident that today civilised people are
confused when they encounter ‘barbarians’ with bomb belts. Things are clearer than
that: evil for evil, blood for blood, inhumane attitude in retaliation for inhumane atti-
tude. But civilised people aren’t losing their reflexes so easily – first they will kill the lo-
cal population, then build museums in its honour and study its indigenous culture and
history... That’s it; long live the dominant culture of the European ‘civilisation.’…
Essay Seven
It seems that Bulgarian journalism has been left to its own conscience for four-
teen years now. It has had to overcome a number of ‘painful’ notions, ideas, formats,
and mentality. Don’t ask me why; just open any newspaper or magazine, turn on the
TV or tune in to any radio programme and listen carefully. If you are not prejudiced,
you will realise this for yourself. I can give many examples; in fact we are virtually
drowned in them. Every new day brings new information so it is hardly appropriate
to burden you with my memories or facts... Not that there are no noble people in the
journalistic community. There are noble people and that is good. Some of them obey
their own conscience – they take into account also ‘other’ points of view and observe
‘other’ worldly principles and philosophy. But here I am not talking about those jour-
nalists. I am talking about the others. They have adopted a model of public behaviour
that is not positive for the Bulgarian nation and that pollutes Bulgaria’s air instead of
purifying it. Bulgarian journalism is light years away from Western journalism. Not so
much in terms of, say, talent and skills, technical and financial resources, although they
count too. But more as regards the journalist’s mission to inform civil society and build
the nation’s future. By ‘civil’ here I don’t mean in the sense of ‘civil’ as it was understood
ten years ago – that is, a term associated with purely partisan goals, with a specific po-
litical party directive. I am talking about the truly creative person’s state of conscience.
This conscience compels truly creative persons to seek and comply with other points of
view, to have an in-depth understanding of topical problems, to avoid cheap manipu-
lations by ‘ideas,’ political parties, movements or by individual self-sufficient political
or financial gurus.
Conscience: that’s what contemporary Bulgarian journalism lacks! Regretfully,
journalists are concerned much more with ostentation (appearance!), top-of-the-range
150 Savcho Savchev
clothes, format, than with the essence of events, their depth... They aim to amaze.
Instead of seeking the roots of a given phenomenon, they are interested only in facts
which, needless to say, are no doubt very important too. Instead of looking beyond the
facts, they dream of sensations and ‘find’ them even where there are none. Journalists
are running around after the powers that be, after the gurus, after money and, regretful-
ly, will not consider any opposite point of view. Journalists are not interested in learn-
ing such points of view. ‘Opposite views’ bring no money, no ‘clout,’ no self-esteem or
‘prestige.’ It doesn’t matter that this so-called prestige is self-sufficient, that it is the pres-
tige of scum, of the nouveau riches, and the like. Alas, such prestige turns out to be the
coveted one in our times... In this sense, Bulgarian journalists, ‘left to themselves,’ will
need a long, long time to change. Hopefully, this time won’t be unbearably long…
Essay Eight
What is racism? Here is a specific example.
During the Iraq war, the wonderful Bulgarian journalist Elena Yoncheva was
attacked and robbed; something even worse could have happened to her. In her live
broadcasts from Iraq she talked not only about what had happened to her, but she
mentioned also the person who saved her. Next day a high-circulation daily printed
on its front page in huge letters that she had been robbed and maltreated by… Arabs.
Considering that the piece was published by a newspaper that has contributed heav-
ily to brainwashing in Bulgaria in the last thirteen years, it could be argued that the
facts were rendered objectively. Yes, she was indeed robbed and beaten by Arabs. But
she was saved also by Arabs. On that point the daily was reticent. The article may have
mentioned this detail too. This, however, is in no way sufficient. After reading the bi-
ased headline I ignored the article and threw the great global newspaper in the garbage
bin. This act of mine was a direct consequence of the specific manipulation that literally
incites one race against another, one people against another people. I hope other peo-
ple did the same as me. I shunned this newspaper for a couple of months at least. There
is no other way to oppose today’s public situation. The prosecution authorities, which
in such circumstances cannot pretend that nothing has happened, that nothing can be
seen, have no right to remain deaf and blind to the obvious bias, racism, and journal-
istic and human idiocy.
That’s it. Some guys are playing on the dark instincts of people in order to sell
gutter press information. Other people also join the game by pretending that nothing
has happened and that they can see nothing. I shall not continue here to present the
many distorted questions and problems. I shall not speak about what Roma have been
living through for more than thirteen years as a result of such publications by many
other media in bright and beautiful Bulgaria...
Essay Nine
The manipulations can be of all sorts. They can be deliberate and unintentional,
big and small, clever and stupid… And who knows what else. I shall not speak about
the deliberate, big and clever manipulations – one can see there other things, much
deeper than one could perceive at first sight. But even the ‘small’ manipulations, if
one thinks more deeply about it, turn out to be not so small. They affect the masses
by nourishing their false self-esteem. The small manipulations are consonant with the
masses’ moods, opinions and principles. And there’s more to it.
Bulgarian National Television, Channel 1. The TV camera closes in on a clump
of shrubs, we see an open fire on which is a large tin vessel with boiling water. Children
hop around. A nylon tent is pitched; the father calls it ‘the palace.’ Elementary ques-
tions are asked and the answers are just as elementary. The producer makes ‘a show,’
and Roma father ‘performs’ in the show. To put it in other words, television offers a ‘cir-
cus show’ and people love going to the circus. The respondent is answering the ques-
tions exactly as you want him to: ‘Do you feel good here?’ ‘Yes, this here is my palace,
if I have a place to lay my head on, take a bite and drink a couple of beers, what more
would I need? Look, my wife is pregnant again, we are happy.’ In between the TV cam-
era tours around the Gypsy camp, an unshaven man assumes the role of a great lov-
er, well, as a young man he gave pleasure to so many ladies. He raises the beer bottle,
probably bought by the TV crew, well, ‘we must make people feel good.’ A small boy
pops up, takes the bottle from the bearded man, raises it, the TV camera won’t miss the
moment: ‘Well, they’re all like this, this is so typical of them, and TV must catch typi-
cal moments…’ The cameraman approaches the woman, asking the same stupid ques-
tions. The only difference in the answers is that as a measure of human happiness she
needs at least five beers… Meanwhile, we hear typical music in the background. My
goodness, could they play Brahms or Paganini? And all this is garnished with the deep
thoughts of the interviewer, who not infrequently also shows his good feelings for this
different world probably because he himself is different too, hey, ‘there are also wise
men.’ The interview is over.
But where are those people from? Why are they precisely here and not else-
where? What made them go to the public square? Do they have a permanent roof over
their heads? Have this man and woman ever worked? What kind of job? Are they now
employed? Why are they unemployed? Those kids, do they go to school? Why not?
How do they see their tomorrow? In fact, do they see it at all? What do they think
about their life, about life in general? Is there any alternative for them? Why not? What
did their parents do, their grandfathers and grandmothers? What did they do for a liv-
ing? And why don’t you follow their trade? Do you have to steal? Why do you have to?
Where would you like to live? What do you want to work? Why don’t you do some-
thing to start working what you want to? What do you think about the state – after all,
you, too, are citizens of this state? And so on and so forth…
152 Savcho Savchev
The reporter is not interested at all in asking such questions. Our Roma fellows
pretend to have kept their human dignity, they are not complaining. But I know very
well that they answer out of spite towards themselves and towards the man with the
mike. This is an unconscious psychological reaction – that not everything in your life
is lost and squandered. The truth will shine again late at night. When ‘those’ from the
apartment buildings behind the shrubs fall asleep, and the music will blare out loud
enough to enter your soul. Raise the bottle. And the tears, unwillingly, and in conso-
nance with the true melody that breaks your heart, start rolling down your unshaven
cheeks until the booze makes you fall down next to the glowing embers. There is no es-
cape, deliverance is in heaven. That’s good, it’s the soma. You forget everything at least
until dawn…
Essay Ten and Last

I like the idea of Atanas Dalchev about the Homeland and how Roma feel about
it! In recent years I have found stinking patriotism (even that of some professors,
journalists and patriots) deeply repulsive. When my two great-grandfathers died for
Bulgaria during the Balkan wars, they must have hardly thought of hoisting the banner
of empty fake patriotism. Although they must have certainly cried ‘Five on each bayo-
net’ when they were called to attack. They did well because they gave their lives for the
Homeland, unlike the professors, journalists and lazy-bone patriots who, an inch be-
yond the borders of Bulgaria, are absolutely unknown to the world and who have been
eating, drinking and profiting all their lives from invoking the Homeland’ name!
Not long ago I was deeply impressed by a boy called Svetlin Nakov. He was in-
vited by some big corporations to work across the Atlantic but he refused to go. A
highly qualified computer specialist working at the University of Sofia as a lecturer, this
young man aged 24 amazed me in a TV interview not only with his achievements but
also with his big patriotism that was so different from the small talk of many older and
much-titled men. This is genuine patriotism, indeed everything else is from the devil...
And this is by no means accidental! A great mind can be seen ‘immediately,’ it is great
in everything it touches!
I take great satisfaction in knowing that such people exist. I pray (to whom?)
that society and the media may give the go-ahead to such people, not to others...
In one of his novels Thomas Mann, half-seriously, half-ironically, speaks of ‘man
as friend.’ His hero Tonio Krueger confesses that he would feel proud and happy if
he found a friend among men. So far, he says, I have found friends only among the
demons, the goblins, the evil spirits and ghosts, who were speechless and still before
knowledge, in other words: literary creatures. If I were naïve enough and could have
been reincarnated as a literary character just for a moment, then I would not have
taken the liberty to draw such a modest analogy with today’s event. I would have re-
peated that I would feel proud and happy if I could find a friend among men, even if
they were demons, goblins, evil spirits and ghosts, who would stand speechless before
knowledge, in other words: researchers, historians, ethnologists or, in brief, intellectu-
als. They are fated to be humanists and to seek and find ‘the friend in man.’ That is the
only way they could be elevated to the lofty position of men and creators.
In conclusion: A fundamental change, which I hope is the true objective of such

a meeting, should not be the result of our joint efforts only. I do not doubt the absolute
necessity for such a change. I hope that the persons, who develop and cultivate the re-
lations between the different Balkan nations, shall hear their suggestions and conclu-
sions.
154
DISCUSSION
Slavka Draganova: As a moderator, I would like to point to the fact that the
genocide against the Turkish culture had already started at the beginning of the 1960s,
when I was a student in Turkish Philology at the University of Sofia. I have learned
only recently that the Faculty of Turkish Philology had to follow instructions accord-
ing to which students weren’t supposed to learn the Turkish language. Our exams were
in Bulgarian. We didn’t know this at the time and we simply thought that our profes-
sors were incompetent, but they were actually following orders from above that we
shouldn’t learn Turkish properly. The more ambitious students educated themselves by
using Ottoman Turkish, and I dare say that some of us really made progress. However,
at the same time people working at the Ministry of Interior were provided with a very
good knowledge of Turkish. That was the policy back in those days.
Who would like to take the floor now? Please go ahead.
Jorgen Nielsen: May I ask a naïve question regarding Roma? In Northwestern

Europe we occasionally get our own semi-artificial immigration crises, fears of getting
flooded by Roma coming out of the Czech Republic, Slovakia or occasionally Romania.
So why are we never presented with fears of Roma coming out of Bulgaria?
Ilona Tomova: From the very beginning of the 1990s onwards, the West
European country that was the least favoured destination of potential emigrants from
Bulgaria was Britain. It was firmly believed that the barriers, which Britain erected to
immigration, were so strong that it wasn’t worth even trying to go there. This belief,
which was very common among Bulgarians and the Bulgarian Turks, was passed on
to Roma too. And indeed it is only in the last few years that there have been more sys-
tematic and mass attempts on the part of Bulgarian citizens to enter the UK. We have
had a change in migration flows, including in minority emigration flows, in this fif-
teen-year period. In the case of Turks, at the very beginning the most favoured desti-
nation was Turkey, especially for people aged over forty-five. The young and best-edu-
cated people preferred to go to Western Europe rather than Turkey. The main country
that they wanted to emigrate to at the beginning of the 90s was Germany and, to a less-
er extent, Austria. But in the case of Turks, in particular, also Sweden and some other
Scandinavian countries plus the Netherlands – in other words, countries that already
had large Turkish immigrant communities, which could possibly be mobilised to ac-
cept the emigrants.
For Roma, the main destination was Germany too. After Germany started creat-
ing difficulties for potential immigrants, Poland became increasingly attractive for the
Discussion 155
Bulgarian Roma who were now trying to gain illegal entry into Austria and Germany
from Poland. The sub-group division of emigration waves among the minority com-
munities is very interesting too. For example, Muslim Bulgarians emigrate to Greece.
And almost all Vlach groups among Bulgaria’s Roma/Gypsies have already emigrated
to Greece. So much so that we researchers say that we simply cannot find any Vlach
Gypsies to include in our studies. Men were the first to emigrate, but they were eventu-
ally followed by women, elderly people and children. Among the Kaldarash communi-
ties, and especially those in which the traditional occupation of women is pickpocket-
ing, the main targets of the emigration wave were Italy, the Netherlands, Austria and
Spain – and moreover, from the very beginning. But theirs was labour migration; in
other words, they would go there in the busy tourist season and come back here when
the season was less busy. At present mass labour migration among Bulgarians as well
as the Muslim Bulgarians, Turks, and Roma is to Spain and Portugal, where the oppor-
tunity to find a job and reside illegally for a longer period of time has grown dramati-
cally. The other country that is undoubtedly very attractive for all ethnic communities
is the USA, as well as Canada. But to gain entry there you need a green card. At present
it is very interesting that we have a purely regional distribution of labour migration
among Roma. For example, the Roma from Sliven and Yambol have been traditionally
going to work for more than a year in Israel, where they are employed by construction
companies. For years, the most common type of migration was labour and cross-bor-
der migration, with Roma going to trade in various goods that were in shortage in the
countries from the former Yugoslavia during the embargo or finding seasonal jobs in
Greece. But these aren’t long-term migrations. So the strong perception of all Bulgarian
citizens, including Roma, that Great Britain is a country to which it is difficult to emi-
grate, have started to break up only in recent years, and that is the reason why so few
people from Bulgaria have emigrated there.
Slavka Draganova: I only want to add something about the Roma in the
Ottoman Empire. Strict description of the Roma population dates back to the period
after the Tanzimat reforms,1 and in the registers I work with, Muslim Gypsies and non-
Muslim Gypsies are identified clearly. They were employed in both crop husbandry
and sheep-breeding, and there were also wandering Roma. It is most interesting that
those who were employed in crop husbandry never worked poor-quality land. The as-
sessed value of their land was higher than that of the land of Bulgarians and Turks alike,
whereas the wandering Roma were classified in four groups and they were exempted
from military tax or from an income tax called vergi. They paid Gypsy vergi, divided
into four groups – poor, richer, slightly more rich, and richest. So by the second half of
1
Reform program in the Ottoman Empire from 1839 till 1876. Tanzimat is Turkish for
‘reorganisation.’ The program, which started under sultan Abdülmecid I, was initiated by re-
formists who understood why the empire was in decline. Tanzimat was opposed by numerous
conservatives, as it was based upon European ideas and ideals. (Editor’s note).
156 Discussion
the nineteenth century the Bulgarian National Revival press was literally full of regula-
tions concerning Roma, and one can truly say that some efforts to integrate Roma to-
wards Bulgarians and Turks were being made even at the time.
Hidajet Repovac: I think one cannot bring enough bitterness into the narrative
about certain nations or national minorities in today’s Europe. For me, this bitterness
is completely justified. There has always been a practice of playing music to victims.
When Jewish victims were taken away to Mauthausen and Auschwitz, they were ac-
companied by the music of Beethoven and Bach. The music was played very loudly to
hide the screams of the victims as they were taken to the gas chambers.
Music was played also to all other victims when they were led to be executed.
This was the case also when Jews and Arabs were chased out of Spain in 1493. After be-
ing driven out of Spain, the Sephardic Jews dispersed all over Europe and a large part of
them came also to Bosnia, to Sarajevo. They have survived in Sarajevo to this very day.
They are a proof that a nation can be protected if there is a will for that. That cultures
can be protected and that different cultures can communicate with each other. That
multiculturalism can be developed even when this seems impossible. For this reason
I’m not a pessimist. If we resign ourselves to pessimism, then we will give up on numer-
ous nations. I actively support international and inter-religious communication.
Despite the fact that Sarajevo was destroyed during this terrible war and despite
the Leningrad-style siege, which lasted four years, one of the first things to be done in
Sarajevo, was the construction of a Roma settlement. Italy provided the funds – it was
a huge donation – and on a very prominent location in the city beautiful houses were
built for Roma. This is one optimistic picture I would like to provide in contrast to the
pessimistic one, which I agree is necessary for understanding the situation of some eth-
nic communities that are degraded and unjustly viewed as inferior. So, despite the fact
that I have lived through a four-year siege I am an optimist. I believe that intellectual
and moral forces exist on the Balkans, which are capable of building a better world. If
we don’t build it, even those who think that they live in a better world will never live to
see a brighter future.
Tetsuya Sahara: Thank you very much. Are there any other comments? We had
two reports also on Pomaks, so I am expecting some comments about these reports
too.
Ekaterina Nikova: Prof. Yalamov, my big question about who designed the
‘Renaming Process’ and why remains, and I would like you to comment on this. The
majority of studies, especially foreign studies, represent what happened in 1984–1989
as a natural culmination of the minority policy pursued by the Bulgarian state for half
a century. There are however other scholars (myself included) who think that the true
context of the ‘Renaming Process’ isn’t so much the history of interethnic relations
but the political history of Bulgarian communism, the political situation in this pe-
Discussion 157
riod. Wasn’t this simply one of the madnesses of communism, such as the systemati-
sation in Romania or the intention to reverse the flow of Siberian rivers? This was, so
to speak, ‘worse than a crime, it was simply a blunder,’ a terrible political blunder that
was possible because of the structure of government. That is why my question to you
is, do you think that the ‘Renaming Process’ was unavoidable? Haven’t you found in-
dications of the contrary in the recently published memoirs of some Communist Party
functionaries? That there was a group of people who simply gained the upper hand in
the Communist Party leadership, whispered in Todor Zhivkov’s ear, and succeeded in
persuading him?
Ibrahim Yalamov: To answer your question I must divide it into two parts: first,
was this ‘Renaming Process’ unavoidable and second, who imposed it and how. As I
point out in my book, in most memoirs, including Todor Zhivkov’s, you won’t find a
rational answer about the reason for launching the ‘Renaming Process’ and there is
some mystification. Todor Zhivkov declared on several occasions that if he revealed
the true reasons for the ‘Renaming Process’ that would spark off civil war in Bulgaria.
This was also what his granddaughter Zheni Zhivkova said in an interview. I think that
the ‘Renaming Process’ wasn’t unavoidable. On the contrary, in my opinion it was a de-
viation from the natural course of historical development. Nothing necessitated it and,
most importantly, it didn’t resolve any ethnic or other questions.
You heard President Zhelyu Zhelev who shed light on this question. It is ob-
vious, I will repeat too, that the ‘Renaming Process’ was launched because of the re-
gime’s difficulties and helplessness to find solutions to actually existing social and de-
mographic problems. The fall in Bulgarian birth rates was a fact and all Bulgarians
were concerned about it. Why did the regime take this particular decision? Outside the
realm of strictly scientific methodology, I believe that the following hypothesis is pos-
sible. By the 1980s, the leadership of the totalitarian regime had realised that socialism
was at a dead end. Todor Zhivkov was absolutely determined to go down in Bulgarian
history spanning 1,300 years if not as the first then at least as the second most impor-
tant figure, and he passed from socialist to nationalist positions. You might have no-
ticed that he declared in the press several times that ‘if they put me on trial they will
make me a national hero.’ In other words, he wanted to represent himself as a saviour of
the Bulgarian nation. I am certain that Todor Zhivkov’s so-called ‘hunting band,’ which
he also writes about in his memoirs, played an important role in the making of this de-
cision – Zhivkov’s ‘hunting band’ was a close circle of people, of several academicians
starting with the President of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; I won’t list the oth-
ers. It was they who suggested this idea to him. Did it have opponents? Yes, this policy
line always had opponents at the top echelons of power. I will note two moments only.
The first was when they were discussing the decision in 1969 and the question came up
whether to include the term ‘assimilation’ in it. Some were in favour of including the
term but Zhivko Zhivkov, who was minister of education at the time, declared: ‘Even
if we want to, we cannot assimilate them. That’s why we shouldn’t hurt their national
158 Discussion
feelings.’ The second moment I had only heard rumours about, but I eventually found
proof of it in the archives. Alexander Lilov2 wrote a memorandum in 1978 in which he
outlines two stances, two tendencies concerning the ethnic question. One tendency is
to expel them. ‘But this,’ says he, ‘is impossible, and even if it is possible it won’t be of
benefit to Bulgaria because we will lose manpower.’ The other tendency is to assimilate
them but that is impossible, he goes on to say, because national self-consciousness is
something that takes centuries to develop. So he proposes a third way: to raise the so-
cio-economic level, to equalise the social status of this population, and to naturally in-
tensify its communist reconditioning.
So there were forces that disagreed with the general policy line to one extent or
another, even though it is well known that those forces disappeared – if not immediate-
ly, then at least eventually. The question was raised here of the still existing deep trauma
from the ‘Renaming Process,’ and I think this is very true. But in my view the problem
isn’t whether this trauma has been overcome, how many individuals have kept their
Bulgarian names, dual nationality, and so on. In my view what is important now is to
create the necessary preconditions for the preservation and development of the ethnic
and cultural identity of the minorities in Bulgaria. Even our people, who claim to be
representing us, invariably speak in public of universal human values. That is why I ask:
Don’t ethnic minorities have any values that would enrich the general cultural situation
in Europe? Who will speak for them? Who will preserve them? For example, the ques-
tion of mother-tongue tuition hasn’t been resolved yet. In my opinion, having a ten-
minute broadcast in Turkish on Bulgarian television is simply incongruous. In Bulgaria
there are several Turkish-language newspapers; they are published with the help of for-
eign foundations but cannot satisfy the needs of this population in either quantitative
or qualitative terms. So I don’t see any solid reasons why I shouldn’t be sceptical about
the future of ethnic communities in Bulgaria. Back in the past we were quite enthusi-
astic about internationalism. Now our latest enthusiasm is globalisation and integra-
tion. Even the leader of the party,3 which not even the party bosses know if it is ethnic
or not, declares that our top-priority task is to build a unified Bulgarian nation and a
unified European nation. I am fully aware that what is being referred to here is the so-
called ‘etatic’ or ‘political’ nation, but what strikes me strongly is that nobody points out
the other side of the coin. Namely, that within this etatic nation exist separate ethnic
communities with their own culture, language, literature. In my paper I quote articles
from the Constitution that provide for development of the culture of minorities. Here I
can tell you a lot about how I proposed those articles myself, about what form they had
originally and what form they acquired. Despite that, however, I am happy that at the
time we nevertheless succeeded in including them in Bulgaria’s Constitution. But as my
colleague, I too have some concerns about the future of ethnic minorities in Bulgaria.
2
Chairman of the Bulgarian Socialist Party from 1990 to 1991 (Editor’s note).
3
The Movement for Rights and Freedoms, commonly seen as an ethnic Turkish party in
Bulgaria (Editor’s note).
Discussion 159
Slavka Draganova: Something is bothering me. Why are our fellow Ottomanists
and historians, who actively participated in the ‘Renaming Process’ and were even re-
warded for it, again the Number One in the country? Some who couldn’t or didn’t want
to actively condemn this process in the press and on radio at least stood silently aside,
but those who were touring the Rhodope Mountains and helping the government are
again the Number One. Well, this is Bulgaria after all.
Boyko Marinkov: I suggest we return to the academic subject that we have been
discussing so far. I would like to go back to a problem raised earlier in Prof. Turan’s pa-
per as well as in the papers we heard this afternoon. This is the problem of Turkish em-
igration from Bulgaria. The attempt to identify a general tendency in the last 125 years
is interesting in itself but, unfortunately, it compels the researcher to cross out specific
events in history that we simply cannot ignore. Here I won’t comment on the emigra-
tion processes before the Second World War, even though they are more or less un-
derstandable and familiar to me. But if we try to connect the three big migrations after
World War II we will come upon facts that we are trying if not to ignore than at least
not to mention.
Let us take the first emigration wave in 1950–51. This was the year of complete
Sovietisation; there was a team of Soviet advisors in every Bulgarian government min-
istry, and the two big trials connected with purges in the ruling forces were over, in-
cluding the big trial of Traicho Kostov.4 The two traditional leaders of the Communist
Party, Georgi Dimitrov5 and Vasil Kolarov,6 had died, and a new team was taking over.
In Turkey meanwhile, the Kemalists fell from power on 14 May 1950. After ruling the
country for twenty-seven years, the Republican People’s Party lost the parliamenta-
ry elections and the Democratic Party came to power for the first time since the es-
tablishment of a multiparty regime. But they had little time to enjoy their victory –
two months later, they were faced with an avalanche-like immigration wave. Given
the capacity of Turkish society in 1950, having to deal with 150,000 immigrants was
a huge, awesome problem. And if we must connect events, then it is obvious that this
first migration wave in 1950–51 was an open, clear form of pressure from the Soviet
4
Traicho Kostov was a deputy Prime Minister of Bulgaria. He was arrested and charged
with ideological deviation and treason. Together with ten associates, he was found guilty and
executed on 16 December 1948. (Editor’s note)
5
Dimitrov co-founded the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1919. In 1920s he became
a member of the executive committee of the Comintern and in 1934, a secretary-general of
Comintern. In 1946 he became Prime Minister of Bulgaria and held the post until his death on
2 July, 1949. (Editor’s note)
6
Kolarov became provisional president of Bulgaria in 1946. He remained president un-
til 1947, and then became foreign minister in the Dimitrov government. After Dimitrov died
in 1949, Kolarov became a Prime Minister, but died only a few months later in January 1950.
(Editor’s note)
160 Discussion
Union aimed at continuing the 1945 policy line on changing the status of the Straits,
the demand concerning military bases, the demand for territorial concessions in the
Caucasian republics, and so on. In other words, the Bulgarian Turks, the emigration
wave, was used directly as a tool to exercise pressure on Turkey. Why am I stressing
this? Because what we see next is the opposite variant of events. The second emigra-
tion wave from 1968–78 started in 1964 as a negotiation process aimed at finding a
new scheme for Bulgaria’s Balkan policy. And this is a fact. This is part of the process of
normalising Bulgaria’s relations with the two NATO member countries in the Balkans,
Greece and Turkey. And the emigration campaign was part of this process of normali-
sation, of trying to formulate a foreign policy that was adequate to the new times.
The context of the events in 1984–85 was entirely different. I have long been tell-
ing my colleagues that I think what actually happened is what President Zhelev said
this morning from his point of view. In my opinion, there was no Soviet plan and the
‘Renaming Process’ was given a serious initial impetus by the lack of stability and pre-
dictability of the situation in Moscow. The great ideologue Mikhail Suslov died in 1981,
Leonid Brezhnev passed away in 1982, and then Konstantin Chernenko died in 1983.
There was very serious destabilisation at the top. This is the important factor. And not
only wasn’t there a Soviet plan but, conversely, the absence of serious Soviet pressure on
foreign political processes after the Polish crisis in 1980 allowed the specific type of ac-
tions that took place in Bulgaria. On this point I more or less agree with Prof. Yalamov
that the battle between the different groups in the leadership at the time was not so
much over the question of what national policy the Communist Party should pursue
from now on, but of who would be the successor of Zhivkov, who was by then 74. The
question of succession had already been raised and was on the agenda. And who was it
who normally had the strongest cards in this battle? The law enforcement bodies, the
secret services, the ‘people behind the screen.’ Those people played an extremely im-
portant and crucial role in provoking the ‘Renaming Process.’ It isn’t difficult to iden-
tify those people if you look at, for example, Dimitar Stoyanov’s7 memoirs, which are
called The Threat [Zaplahata]. The process originated as a battle for succession, but the
final result was horrifying. I would even say that they themselves watched on in horror
because they saw that the process was slipping out of their control. Until then they had
been given guarantees that this process was controllable: we hold power, we have sent
such and such forces, we have the support of the Turkish intelligentsia. All this turned
out to be nothing but hot air. And they remained hesitant what to do until the very last
moment. Then the different groups in power suddenly started looking to the army for
7
Dimitar Stoyanov, who died in 2000, served as interior minister under late commu-
nist dictator Todor Zhivkov from 1973 until 1988. One document from the Interior Ministry
archives shows that Dimitar Stoyanov ordered a campaign in December 1984 to force ethnic
Turks in Bulgaria to adopt Slavic names. The document reveals Stoyanov instructed senior se-
curity officers “to start renaming all Bulgarian citizens of Turkish origin in all districts where
such populations exist.” (Editor’s note)
Discussion 161
support. The army was never included in this operation. And this is no accident. The
major special units in the Bulgarian Army – I am talking about the Red Berets, the
‘Commandos’ and ‘Granite’ groups – weren’t allowed to go in action. Despite the un-
rest, despite the sense of weakness, those units remained in the barracks. Consequently,
the thesis connecting all those three emigration waves in a single, consistent line and
saying ‘this is Bulgarian nationalism, which started from the Russo-Turkish War and
can be traced to this very day’ can be questioned on quite serious grounds. It is obvious
that the events were very specific although they undoubtedly had roots in the past.
Today we are in a situation, which Prof. Yalamov has defined very delicately (in
some Bulgarian texts the definition is much more critical), in which on the whole the
political representation of the Bulgarian Turks has been appropriated, monopolised,
privatised. Regrettably, all big Bulgarian parties are practically ethnic parties; neither
the Bulgarian Socialist Party nor the Union of Democratic Forces have strong represen-
tation of ethnic Turks in their leaderships, and this is the first indicator that can tell you
immediately who seeks whose votes, who has cleared what ground for other players.
Ibrahim Yalamov: At such forums we never have enough time, we are always in
a hurry, but we shouldn’t oversimplify things. First and foremost, it is imperative to say
that ever since the Liberation, the Bulgarian state has been constantly trying to rid it-
self especially of the Turkish ethnic community. I have written a book, which is due to
come out shortly, where I describe the 30s in greater detail. Even during the very first
talks after the Russo-Turkish War, the Russian delegation openly declared that the pres-
ence of Turks in Bulgaria was temporary, that it shouldn’t be discussed at those talks,
that they would leave. The influence of Russian and of Soviet policy was different.
Let me give you several concrete examples from documents. In 1949, after the
death of Georgi Dimitrov, the new leadership headed by Vulko Chervenkov8 went to
the Soviet Union and met Stalin. They raised three questions, one of which was, ‘What
shall we do with the Turkish population in Bulgaria?’ Stalin said, ‘Let them go, this
population is hopeless.’ But he nevertheless asked, ‘Why don’t you Christianise them?’
Chervenkov said, ‘We think that won’t work.’ Stalin said, ‘We’ve tried it out in Georgia,
it works!’ So Stalin gave them permission to let them emigrate. Here you are right
about one thing. When in the 40s Turkey made attempts to join NATO, the Soviet
Union exercised pressure on Turkey, wanting to complicate the situation there, and one
of the levers was precisely migration. But only one year later, at their second meeting,
Stalin told Chervenkov: ‘You’ve done well to let Turks go. But this won’t solve the ques-
tion. Divide them. In other words, let those who are hopeless, who we can’t use for the
8
Chervenkov became minister of culture in 1947, deputy Prime Minister in 1949, gener-
al secretary of the party in 1949 and Prime Minister of Bulgaria in 1950. Being a Stalinist hard-
liner, he lost much of his support after Stalin’s death in 1953. He had to resign as general secre-
tary in March 1954 and as Prime Minister in April 1956. He retired from politics after loosing
also a position of a deputy Prime Minister in 1961. (Editor’s note)
162 Discussion
cause of socialism, go, and let’s win over the others for the cause of socialism. I will send
you an Azerbaijani delegation.’ The decisions made in 1951 were to the same effect. By
then the Bulgarian side had become adamant that emigration was out of the question.
Approximately 154,000 had already emigrated as it was. And in 1956 the friend of the
Turkish population Pencho Kubadinski9 told Todor Zhivkov in a private conversation,
‘Comrade Zhivkov, what you are doing about Bulgaria’s democratisation is very good!
But what about the Turkish question, which is fateful for Bulgaria?’ And they imme-
diately started looking for contacts with Turkey to arrange emigration. There are per-
haps a hundred pages of reports with economic analyses of the potential losses to the
Bulgarian economy and how they could be compensated for if Turks were allowed to
emigrate.
The question of the attitude of the Soviet Union emerged once again during the
‘Renaming Process’ and the struggle for Todor Zhivkov’s succession, a question that
you have raised. First let me tell you a quote from the memoirs of General Kasabov,
who was deputy chief of police in Shumen, and later became chief of police in Razgrad:
‘I felt that there was some hesitancy, some reservations in the Soviet position, and one
day I dropped in at the next-door office of the interior minister and told the Soviet ad-
visor: “In Turgovishte, our people went to change Hassan’s name to Asen. Hassan said
he had nothing against being renamed but he wanted his new name to be Sergey. Why,
they asked him. Because I don’t want to be renamed a second time.”’ And the Soviet
general said, ‘So that’s what he said, is it?’ The documents show that the Soviet Union
and Soviet diplomacy supported us for some time. At the same time, however, off the
record they would admit to being ‘very worried about the problems in the humanitari-
an sphere in Bulgaria.’ And Gorbachev finally said, ‘I’ve told them to tell Todor Zhivkov
that, at the end of the day, the attitude to the Turkish population in Bulgaria is unjust.’
This is also what President Zhelyu Zhelev said about his conversations with Gorbachev.
In my opinion, the right way to put it is as follows: ‘There was some Soviet pressure, but
it intertwined with the internal desire to homogenise the nation.’
Next, I don’t see why you are underestimating the role of the ideological factor,
which I was trying to point out. All of us were almost completely convinced that the
future of humanity lies in a communist nation. It was being said that the sooner this
happened the better.
And the last thing you were saying, which you didn’t say openly and which I
won’t say openly either, you associated with the threat of Dimitar Stoyanov, whom
I’ve know well since youth. This brings us to the other factor that is too sensitive to be
discussed: the role of the special services in preparing and conducting the ‘Renaming
Process.’ By simply using carefully selected information, slanted information, they pre-
pared the preconditions for the ‘Renaming Process.’ Their role was big and that is why
the papers wrote: Politburo starts it, State Security completes it. Thank you.
Member of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party (1966-1989)

9
and Chairman of the Fatherland Front (1974-1989). Died in 1995. (Editor’s note)
Discussion 163
Slavka Draganova: I would like to add that the emigration of Turks in 1878
was during a war – it was a consequence of war. But the ‘Renaming Process’ was such
a shameful affair. It was really something terrible and it was a huge shame for the
Bulgarian nation.
Ibrahim Yalamov: I wouldn’t agree with your thesis about collective shame for
the Bulgarian nation. In my book I have tried to point out a series of instances of wor-
thy conduct of Bulgarians, of entire creative unions – more particularly, I have in mind
the Union of Artists in Bulgaria – which took the right position on the ‘Renaming
Process.’ Or we shouldn’t forget that on the everyday level, ordinary people generally
behaved well too. Although there were some tensions, there were also sparks of light
in that darkness. Here we shouldn’t forget the mass disinformation campaign that was
launched and that washed brains, and I sincerely point out that it is a success for us that
we aren’t ascribing the blame for the ‘Renaming Process’ to the entire Bulgarian na-
tion. And I always try to point out that what we had was precisely a policy of the pow-
er-holders.
Slavka Draganova: I didn’t express myself correctly. I wanted to say that the
government made the whole nation feel ashamed before the rest of the world. The gov-
ernment disgraced us in the eyes of the whole world. In 1985 eight of us from Bulgaria
were in Munich for a congress on the socio-economic development of Turkey and of
the Ottoman Empire. You cannot imagine how they treated us, they were collecting
signatures against us. We were subjected to such isolation and contempt! This is what I
meant by saying that it was a shame for the Bulgarian nation.
Thank you. If there are no other comments, I am closing this session.
164
165
Third Session:
Former Yugoslavia:
Warq State-Building and
Demographic fears
Moderators:
Prof. Jorgen Nielsen

Prof. Ivan Ilchev
166
167
GETTING AWAY WITH ADMINISTRATIVE

MURDER: ETHNIC CLEANSING IN SLOVENIA
Marko Hajdinjak
International Centre for Minority Studies and
Intercultural Relations (IMIR), Bulgaria
The events of the 1990s have brought a very bad reputation to the former
Yugoslavia and its successor states (or, although quite undeservedly, to the whole
Balkans). Interethnic and inter-religious hatred and wars, instability, organised crime,
corruption, underdevelopment, poverty and the like have become terms that are in-
separably associated with the region. Among them, one term has become almost syn-
onymous with ‘the Balkans’1 – ethnic cleansing. Despite the fact that forced population
transfers often involving genocide on an even far greater scale than the one witnessed
in Bosnia have happened all over the world throughout history, ethnic cleansing has
come to be regarded as a ‘trademark’ of the nations populating the territory of the
former Yugoslavia.
None of the above, however, was in any way associated with Slovenia until very
recently – except perhaps by Slobodan Milosevic who, sitting in the dock in the Hague,
has been trying persistently to convince the judges and the world that it was ‘Slovenes
who started it all.’ Although he is anything but a person whose statements may be taken
for granted, in this case Milosevic is not that far from the truth.
Several months before the first gun was fired in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the
Slovenian authorities had already concluded their own campaign of ethnic cleans-
ing conducted in full secrecy, quietly, without guns and fire. If one is cynical enough,
one would be tempted to say that ethnic cleansing in Slovenia was performed in a
civilised, ‘European’ manner. The setting for this crime was prepared in May 1991, a
month before the secession of Slovenia and Croatia. When it occurred, it affected some
30,000 people, legal residents of Slovenia whose only ‘crime’ was improper ethnic ori-
gin. Compared with the more than three million people who could be considered as
victims of ethnic cleansing in other parts of the former Yugoslavia, this number seems
1
For most of the previous decade, the war-ridden former Yugoslavia was superficially
referred to as ‘the Balkans’ even by people claiming to be experts. An attempt to correct this in-
accuracy, which completely ignored the fact that a large part of the peninsula failed to engage
in the ‘Balkanisation’ of the 1990s, was the introduction of the clumsy term ‘Western Balkans,’ a
formula which read: the former Yugoslavia minus Slovenia plus Albania.
168 Marko Hajdinjak
to pale in significance. In Slovenia’s case, however, this number comprises 1.5% of the
population, which makes ‘the erased,’ as the victims of ethnic cleansing in Slovenia be-
came known later, one of the largest minorities in the country.
This paper intends to describe the process that in recent years has finally started
to receive international attention and that has become known as ‘administrative eth-
nic cleansing.’ It will look briefly into recent history to search for the reasons for the
development of a rather specific Slovenian type of xenophobia aimed, above all, at the
people originating from the other parts of the former Yugoslavia. The political agen-
da aimed at Slovenian independence and adopted both by the Slovene Communist
Party and the emerging opposition was largely built on extreme negative propaganda
against federal institutions, other republics and other nations of the former Yugoslavia.
Consequently, the people from other parts of Yugoslavia who lived in Slovenia came to
be generally regarded as unwanted and unneeded economic immigrants who were not
entitled to the rights reserved for the ethnic Slovenes.
The Parliament of Slovenia proclaimed independence of the republic on 25 June
1991. This was the culmination of events that had started roughly in 1986, when Milan
Kucan became the leader of the Slovenian communists. Numerous parallels may be
drawn between the rise of nationalism in Serbia in Slovenia. First was the ascent of
Kucan and Milosevic, relatively young but exceptionally ambitious communist appa-
ratchiks, to the very top of the party ranks in 1986. Both Kucan and Milosevic initially
strongly upheld the official ‘brotherhood and unity’ policy but soon realised the poten-
tial and the power of nationalism, which promised to be the card that could bring them
the richest political dividends, at least in the short term.
The next parallel is the role of some of the most prominent Serbian and Slovenian
intellectuals in igniting the nationalist fire. The 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian
Academy of Arts and Sciences, a blueprint of the Serbian national programme later
adopted by Milosevic, has received much attention in scholarly works on the Yugoslav
conflict.2 Much less attention has been paid to its Slovenian ‘version.’ In February 1987
the journal Nova revija published an article called ‘The Contributions to the Slovene
National Programme.’ Nova revija was a gathering place for most of the prominent fig-
ures from the opposition who later formed the first post-communist government in
Slovenia. ‘The Contributions’ argued that Slovenes should return to their Catholic tradi-
tions and should unite their national ranks behind one crucial goal: leaving Yugoslavia.
The article caused a major uproar all over Yugoslavia, but the Slovene communists un-
der Kucan dismissed it as ‘insignificant’ and took no action against the authors.3
2
For a very good and extensive analysis of the Memorandum and its consequences, see
Milosavljevic, Olivera. 2000. ‘The Abuse of the Authority of Science,’ in Popov, Nebojsa (ed.). The
Road to War in Serbia: Trauma and Catharsis, Budapest: Central European University Press.
3
Silber, Laura and Allan Little. 1997. Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation, New York: Penguin
Books, pp. 49–53.
Getting away with administrative murder: ethnic cleansing in slovenia 169
The democratisation of Slovenia was in itself of course a positive development.
The problem is that just as in other republics (although the consequences were not
equally appalling), this democratisation was transformed into ethnically-defined au-
thoritarianism. Soon after the publication of ‘The Contributions’ the Slovenian com-
munist authorities started to cooperate with the emerging opposition on the ‘protec-
tion of the Slovenian national interests’ as defined by ‘The Contributions.’ As Niko
Grafenauer, one of their authors, stated, these interests (including democracy, human
rights, and independence) could not be realised within ‘a nationally, religiously, cultur-
ally, economically and politically diverse state’ such as the former Yugoslavia.4
Just as in Serbia, the fact that the Slovenian Communist Party hijacked the na-
tionalist agenda caused a long-lasting contamination of political discourse. Slovenian
communists shared the view of the emerging opposition that Slovenes as a nation were
under a double threat – from the outside (the federal government and Yugoslav army)
and from the inside (the presence of around 180,000 ‘immigrants’ from other parts
of Yugoslavia). The perception of being under threat is crucial in any attempt to ra-
tionalise the exceptionally negative attitude of Slovenes towards the other ‘Yugoslavs.’
Slovenes are a very small nation, which has always been dominated by stronger neigh-
bours and its survival, together with its language, and culture, have always been under
threat. It was not until 1945 that a majority of Slovenes5 was finally united in an admin-
istrative unit and granted a fairly wide degree of self-government. Milosevic’s national-
ist revolution aiming at re-centralisation of the federation was rightfully perceived by
Slovenes as a threat, and the Slovenian communists responded with the famous walk-
out from the Fourteenth Extraordinary Congress of the Yugoslav Communist League,
which was practically the first step towards secession. With the first elections only a few
months away, the majority of opposition parties played even more nationalistic cards
in order to be able to successfully compete with the reforming Communists at a time
when ‘the fate of the nation was at stake.’ This created a social and political atmosphere
in which it was perceived as permissible for the majority to deny various minorities
their rights. This perception was intensified after the so-called ‘ten-day war’ following
the proclamation of Slovene independence. The myth of the ‘heroic victory’ over the
Federal Army transformed the eternal underdogs into lords. The quick international
recognition of Slovenia and the praise the republic received as the most economical-
ly developed ex-communist country intensified the ‘drunkenness of the victors.’ The
hangover caused by this drunkenness is still troubling Slovenia today – today perhaps
more than ever.
As already mentioned, the independence of Slovenia was proclaimed on 25 June
1991. The precondition for the creation of a new state was redefinition of the citizen-
ship concept, which became, as in other former Yugoslav republics, based on ethnic-
4
Grafenauer, Niko. 1991. ‘Foreword,’ in Grafenauer, Niko (ed.). The Case of Slovenia,
Ljubljana: Nova Revija, p. 5.
5
A sizeable Slovene population remained in Austria and Italy.
170 Marko Hajdinjak
ity. In addition to the pejorative term ‘Southerners’ for other Yugoslav nations, a new
term was coined: ‘Non-Slovenes,’ referring exclusively to those ‘Southerners’ who were
living in Slovenia.
In this redefinition of citizenship and the division on Slovenes and Non-Slovenes
the central role was played by the imaginary line that supposedly clearly separated
the ‘Western,’ ‘Central European’ and ‘Catholic’ Slovenes from the ‘Eastern,’ ‘Balkan,’
‘Ottoman’ and ‘Byzantine’ others. The fact that historically and geographically, if we
for a moment accept this logic of separation, Croats should be placed on the Slovenian
side of the line, was deliberately neglected. A number of stereotypes and prejudices
were recruited to justify the placement of Croats on the ‘other’ side. Needless to men-
tion, Croats themselves used exactly the same language, criteria and division lines as
Slovenes to separate themselves from the other former Yugoslavs. In the words of one
typical Slovene ‘intellectual,’ ‘Central European and Catholic Slovenia could not find
a common language with the Orthodox and East European Serbia and Montenegro’
whose people were always ready to ‘draw the knife’ and in which ‘Byzantine servility
and Levantine cunning [were] carefully cultivated for a millennium.’6 The Slovenian
Parliament issued a statement, which claimed that human rights, national rights, and
rights of republics and provinces in Yugoslavia were ‘grossly violated,’ thus leaving
the Slovenian authorities no other option but to secede.7 Slovenian foreign minister
Dimitrij Rupel added that Slovenes were ‘fed up with suffering all of Yugoslavia’s woes’
and that democracy in Yugoslavia’s northwest was incompatible with communism in
the country’s southeast.8 On another occasion, Rupel added that Slovenes ‘simply [did]
not want to enter Europe via Belgrade’ and had ‘no intention to wait for the rest of
Yugoslavia to catch up’ with them.9
In May 1991, a month before the proclamation of independence, the Parliament
adopted a new Law on Foreigners. Metka Mencin of the Liberal Democratic Party (suc-
cessor to the Union of Socialist Youth) proposed an amendment, which stipulated that
‘the citizens of the SFRY, who are citizens of other republics and do not apply for the
acquisition of citizenship of the Republic of Slovenia, and have registered permanent
residence or are employed in the Republic of Slovenia on the day of entry into force of
this law, shall be issued a permit for permanent residence in the Republic of Slovenia.’10
6
Jezernik, Mišo. 1991. ‘The Awkward Coexistence,’ in The Case of Slovenia, pp. 57–58.
7
‘Republic of Slovenia Assembly Basic Constitutional Charter,’ in Trifunovska, Snezana.
1994. Yugoslavia Through Documents: From its Creation to its Dissolution, Dordrecht: Martinus
Nijhoff, pp. 290–291.
8
Rupel, Dimitrij. 1991. ‘Slovenia – A New Member of the International Community,’ in
The Case of Slovenia, pp. 88–90.
9
Cohen, Lenard J. 1993. Broken Bonds: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia, Boulder:
Westview Press, p. 120.
10
Unofficial translation. See Mekina, Borut. 2002. ‘Izbrisani: Birokratska samovolja ali
politična odločitev?’ (The Erased: Bureaucratic Arbitrariness or Political Decision?), Večer, 26
November 2002, http://www.dostje.org/Izbrisani/vecer1.htm.
The Parliament rejected this amendment. Mencin believes that there were no legal ar-
guments for the rejection of her amendment. The reasons were strictly political. A sig-
nificant fear of foreigners was present within the then-ruling Demos coalition, which
motivated its parliamentary majority to reject the amendment that would have pre-
vented the most shameful violation of human rights in independent Slovenia.11
When independence was proclaimed on 25 June 1991, the new Law on
Citizenship and the new Law on Foreigners entered into force.12 Article 40 (1) of the
Law on Citizenship gave the citizens of other republics, who had permanent residence
in the Republic of Slovenia on 23 December 1990 (the day of the Referendum) a pos-
sibility to apply for Slovene citizenship within a term of six months. Approximately
100,000 people used this opportunity and acquired citizenship. A large number how-
ever did not, either unaware that they were supposed to apply for citizenship, or will-
ingly choosing not to do so because they were content with having permanent resi-
dency status. The deadline expired on 26 December 1991. Article 81 (2) of the Law on
Foreigners stated that those citizens of other republics living in Slovenia who had not
applied for Slovenian citizenship within the deadline or whose application had been
rejected, would become subject to the Law on Foreigners two months after the expi-
ration of the deadline. Exactly two months later, on 26 February 1992, the Ministry of
Interior erased an estimated 30,000 legal residents of Slovenia, who had not applied for
Slovenian citizenship, from the Register of permanent residents of Slovenia. The vic-
tims of this unlawful and shameful act later became known as ‘the erased’ (izbrisani).
The erased, many of whom had legally resided in Slovenia for decades, became
illegally residing foreigners overnight. The erasure was conducted in full secrecy and
in violation of the existing legislation. The erased were not even notified that their resi-
dency status had been annulled, so they were deprived of their right to legally object to
the government’s action. Loss of permanent residence status meant that the erased lost
their right to employment, social and health protection, housing, and free movement,
as well as that their children lost the right to education in state schools. The erasure di-
vided numerous families and destroyed many lives. There are at least seven document-
ed cases of victims of the erasure committing suicide out of desperation.13
The erasure has been termed by critics ‘soft’ or ‘administrative ethnic cleans-
ing.’ This term is more than appropriate since this policy indeed targeted specific eth-
nic groups with the obvious intention of removing as many of their members as pos-
sible from the territory of Slovenia. The erased were not hunted down one by one by
the police and expelled from their homes at gunpoint. As the former interior minis-
ter of Slovenia, Ivo Bizjak (who later, in a rather perverse turn of events, became the
11
Ibid.
12
Official Gazette of RS, No. 1/91.
13
Dedić, Jasminka. 2003. ‘The Erasure: Eleven Years After,’ Public lecture organised by
the Association of the Erased Residents of the Republic of Slovenia and the Faculty for Social
Work, 27 February 2003, http://www.mirovni-institut.si/eng_html/publications/Erasure.doc
172 Marko Hajdinjak
first Slovenian ombudsman!) said, the Slovenian state faced the erased ‘in an unobtru-
sive manner with the possibility to decide whether they preferred to leave the country
and their families, or not.’14 More than one third of the erased (around 12,000 people)
eventually left Slovenia, either expelled by the authorities or because of the intolerable
conditions in which they were put. Many were intentionally tricked by public officials.
When victims of the erasure, absolutely unaware of their condition, wanted to extend
their driving license or identity card, or if they sought medical assistance, public offi-
cials asked for their documents and instantly invalidated them. The person would then
be told that they had to go to their ‘native’ republic to acquire certain documents. In al-
most all such cases, persons following those instructions were not allowed to re-enter
Slovenia once they had crossed the border.15
The erasure was performed by the Demos government, dominated by centre-
right parties. Although it, too, was a coalition of four parties, the government that came
to power after the 1992 parliamentary elections was dominated by two centre-left par-
ties, the Liberal Democratic Party (successor of the Union of Socialist Youth) and the
United List of Social Democrats (formed after the merger of the former Communist
Party with three other leftist parties). The new Prime Minister was the Liberal Democrat
Janez Drnovsek. Drnovsek was aware of the problem of the erased at least since 1994,
when he was informed about the situation by Dr. Ljubo Bavcon, head of the Council
for Protection of Human Rights. Drnovsek promised Dr. Bavcon that the government
would look into the matter and correct any injustices, but none of the governments
headed by Drnovsek, who remained prime minister after the 1996 and 2000 elections
too, did anything to resolve the issue of the erased.16 During this period the post of in-
terior minister, the official who was the most directly responsible for taking concrete
steps to restore the lawful rights to the erased, was held in succession by a Christian
Democrat, a Liberal Democrat and a Social Democrat. None of them paid any atten-
tion to the problem.
On 4 February 1999, the Constitutional Court of Slovenia ruled that the eras-
ure was unconstitutional and constituted a violation of human rights. In response, the
Parliament adopted on 8 July 1999 a Law on Settlement of the Status of Citizens of
Other Succession Countries of Former Yugoslavia. The Law gave those nationals of
other republics living permanently in Slovenia on 23 December 1990, and who contin-
ued to live in Slovenia until the present time, a three-month deadline to apply for a per-
manent residence permit. Around 14,000 persons filed applications, of which around
14
Mekina, Igor. 2003. ‘Janezfašizem’ (Janez-Fascism), Mladina, 3 June 2003, http://www.
mladina.si/tednik/200322/clanek/izbris/
15
Fussel, Jim. ‘The Izbrisani (Erased Residents) Issue in Slovenia,’ News Monitor for
Slovenia, 1998 – 2004, http://www.preventgenocide.org/europe/slovenia
16
Mekina, Igor. 2003. ‘Pihal je ksenofobni veter – Pogovor z Dr. Ljubom Bavconom’ (A
Xenophobic Wind Was Blowing – Interview with Dr. Ljubo Bavcon.), Mladina, 3 June 2003.
http://www.mladina.si/tednik/200322/clanek/izbris/
1,000 were denied residence permits, many of them with the explanation that they had
interrupted their stay in Slovenia. This ‘interruption’ was in most cases the result of de-
portation on the basis of the illegal erasure. According to official data, around 7,000
people acquired citizenship and around 4,800 obtained permanent residence under the
provisions of the Law. However, critics objected to the three-month deadline, which
was often insufficient to obtain the necessary documents from the slow Slovenian bu-
reaucratic apparatus. The Law also failed to address those of the erased who were forced
to leave Slovenia.17
On 3 April 2003, the Constitutional Court made another landmark ruling.
It declared that the Law on Settlement of the Status of Citizens of Other Succession
Countries of Former Yugoslavia was unconstitutional because it did not recognise the
permanent residence status of the erased persons from the day of erasure, 26 February
1992, and because it did not resolve the issue of persons who had been deported or oth-
erwise forced to leave Slovenia because of the erasure. The Court ordered the govern-
ment to restore the illegally revoked rights to the erased within six months.18
The Court’s decision caused an instant reaction from the Slovenian right-wing
opposition, which continued to claim that the erasure never happened and that the so-
called ‘erased’ had willingly and deliberately opted to become foreigners and refused to
apply for Slovenian citizenship or residence offered to them. The erased were accused
of being speculators whose only motivation were the allegedly astronomic compensa-
tions they wanted to extract from the Slovenian state.
The Ministry of Interior, headed by a Social Democrat, Rado Bohinc, started
dragging its feet over the fulfilment of the clear directive of the Constitutional Court. On
its website, the Ministry acknowledged that the erasure was illegal and unconstitutional
for a number of reasons.19 In spite of that, the Ministry initially refused to start issuing
decrees on restoration of permanent residency on the basis of the Court ruling. Instead,
it started to prepare a so-called Technical Law, which would retroactively recognise the
status of those erased who had in the meantime managed to acquire either a residence
permit or citizenship. Opposition parties categorically opposed this law and demanded
a referendum to block it. The Ministry started preparing one more law, called the System
Law, which was supposed to deal with those people who had not managed to resolve
their situation. From a legal point of view, both laws were absolutely unnecessary, and
the government was just postponing an unpopular action with them.
17
Reindl, Donald F. 2003. ‘Restoring the Erased in Slovenia,’ Radio Free Europe / Radio
Liberty, 3 November 2003.
18
Dedić, ‘The Erasure: Eleven Years After.’
Constitutional Court Decision No. U-I-246/02 (3 April 2003), Official Gazette of Republic
of Slovenia, No. 36/2003.
19
‘Reševanje problematike izbrisanih’ (Solving the Problem of the Erased), Ministrstvo
za notranje zadeve, http://www.mnz.si/si/1202.php
174 Marko Hajdinjak
Public opinion polls showed that the majority of Slovenian citizens shared the
view of the opposition regarding the erased, which pushed the two ruling parties, the
Liberal and the Social Democrats, on the defensive. Both parties repeatedly expressed
their full support for the restoration of all rights to the erased and for the respect of the
Constitutional Court ruling. However, few concrete measures were taken. Furthermore,
interior minister Bohinc resorted to the populist and legally impermissible language
used by the opposition, explaining on the evening news on the National TV channel
that the Technical Law, which his ministry was preparing, would take into account
whether the erased had been for or against the independence of Slovenia. Bohinc ex-
pressed similar views in an interview for one of the leading dailies in the country. He
said that the demand of those people who believed that permanent residence could not
be given to people who had acted against the interests of Slovenian state and its citi-
zens, was justified, and that legal means should be found to exclude such people from
those who would have their rights restored.20
On its website, the Ministry of Interior tried to pacify its opponents with cyni-
cal remarks that the erased would not be able to claim any compensations from the
Slovenian state due to the fact that their cases were older than five years and as such
were no longer eligible. The ministry also stated that the persons who had left Slovenia
for more than one year would not receive residence status, except in cases when they
had been sent abroad by a legal person from Slovenia for work, education or health
treatment. To make matters even worse, the erased themselves were obliged to prove
that they had been living in Slovenia without interruption, a task which was rather dif-
ficult to accomplish if you had no identity card, no passport, no driving license, no
health insurance and had been legally non-existent for twelve years.21 This is another
case of unbelievable cynicism, since for the erased the most common reason for leav-
ing Slovenia was the erasure itself.
On 29 October 2003, almost two weeks after the deadline set by the Constitutional
Court for restoring the rights to all of the erased, the Parliament finally passed the so-
called Technical Law, which dealt only with those of the erased who had already man-
aged to resolve their situation. The opposition parties in response initiated a proce-
dure for a referendum on the Technical Law. Arguing that such a referendum would be
unconstitutional, the parliamentary majority decided to ask the Constitutional Court
to assess whether the referendum question, as defined by the opposition, was in ac-
cordance with the Constitution. The Constitutional Court ruled that it could not give
any opinion on the matter. The reason was that the seven-day deadline by which the
Parliament may approach the Court on questions regarding referendums had been
20
Krivic, Matevž. ‘Mediji o izbrisanih’ (Media about the Erased), Mediawatch Mirovni
Inštitut, http://www.mediawatch.mirovni-institut.si/bilten/seznam/17/analiza
21
‘Reševanje problematike izbrisanih’ (Solving the Problem of the Erased), Ministrstvo
za notranje zadeve.
missed. The only explanation one can give for this inexcusable bureaucratic blunder
is that the official mail from Parliament to the Constitutional Court must have been
deliberately delayed by Borut Pahor, the president of the Parliament and the presi-
dent of the United List of Social Democrats. The reason for Pahor’s action can again
be found in the reluctance of the ruling parties to resolutely support an unpopular is-
sue in an election year. In January 2004, Anton Rop, who succeeded Janez Drnovsek as
prime minister and as head of the Liberal Democratic Party after the latter was elected
President, declared that the outcome of the referendum would not be legally binding as
human rights issues could not be subject to a referendum.
The referendum was held on 4 April 2004. The question asked of voters was
the following: ‘Do you agree that the Law on implementation of Paragraph 8 of
Constitutional Court Ruling No. U-I-246/02-28 should be enforced?’ The voter turn-
out in the referendum was 31.5%. Of those who cast a ballot, 94.68% voted against the
Law.22 In other words, they voted that the illegally revoked rights of the erased should
not be restored.
The year 2004 was an election year in Slovenia and the erased became one of the
hottest pre-election topics. Public opinion polls showed that the majority of Slovenian
voters viewed the erased as unwanted foreigners who opposed Slovenian independ-
ence and who had come to Slovenia when they realised that life here was much better
than in their native republics.23 Internet forums can give an interesting picture of public
opinion in a country. Analysing the opinions posted on a site dealing with the issue of
the erased, one can come to the following conclusion: The majority of Slovenes believe
that the erasure was rightful and justified. It is possible that several injustices might
have occurred, and that some illiterate and uneducated ‘Southerners’ might have really
not understood that they were supposed to apply for the citizenship, which was offered
to them, and they may have their status restored after proving that they deserve it. As
for the rest, they are either former aggressors or opportunists, and instead of helping
them, the Slovenian state should take care of ‘our own people’ (= ethnic Slovenes) who
are unemployed or live in poverty. A widespread opinion was that the Slovenian state
was granting ‘foreigners’ too many rights and that the Slovenian nation was becoming
a minority ‘on its own soil.’24
22
‘Referendum 2004 – Tehnični zakon’ (Referendum 2004 – Technical Law). 2004.
Republiška volilna komisija, http://www.rvk.si/tz/index3.html
23
A typical example is an internet poll conducted on the most popular Slovene search
engine, Najdi.si. A total of 16,648 people cast their votes, which is an exceptionally high number
for a poll of this kind in Slovenia. Of those voting, 57% said that the erased were ‘supporters of
the Yugoslav Army and antagonists of our independence,’ 23% viewed them as ‘speculators who
did not believe in the success of Slovenian secession,’ and only 8% believed that they were ‘peo-
ple who were the victims of injustice.’ http://www.najdi.si/ankete/arhiv_anket.jsp?pollId=432
24
http://users.volja.net/ref04/
176 Marko Hajdinjak
For right-wing and nationalist parties, this was naturally an opportunity that
was not to be missed. Janez Jansa, then the leader of the largest opposition party, the
Slovene Democratic Party, and since the victory in the October 2004 elections the new
Prime Minister, said in a TV debate that the erased were the people who tried to ‘de-
stroy our country.’ Zmago Jelincic of the ultra-right Slovene National Party said in the
same debate that rewarding those who were firing at us would be a mockery of all ‘hon-
est Slovenian citizens.’25 On another occasion Jansa added that the erased were in fact
xenophobic, for ‘they were intolerant towards independence and towards everything
that is Slovene.’26
Both Jansa and Jelincic were rewarded for their staunch support of the ‘Slovene
cause’ in the elections. Jansa’s Slovene Democrats scored their best result ever and de-
feated the Liberal Democrats who, together with various coalition partners, had ruled
the country for twelve years. Jelincic’s National Party, which in the previous parlia-
ment had four MPs, won six seats. Jansa thus became the new Prime Minister and
formed a government together with his pre-election conservative coalition partners,
New Slovenia and the Slovene People’s Party. As they held exactly 50% of the parlia-
mentary seats, they needed the support of another party, but instead of inviting the
National Party, which is too extreme even by the standards of the new government, the
small Democratic Party of Pensioners joined the coalition. Jelincic, however, offered
his support to the new government, and in return his party was given the post of vice
chairman of the Parliament.
Soon after the elections, the new prime minister Jansa declared that the issue
of the erased would be resolved by the Constitutional Law that his government would
prepare sometime in the future. The Constitutional Law is the only legal means that
Jansa can use to bypass the Constitutional Court ruling.27 However, for such a law to be
approved, a two-third majority is required, which means that it can only be passed if it
is supported either by the Liberal or by the Social Democrats. As this is less than like-
ly, it is obvious that Jansa’s intention is to prolong the status quo for as long as possible
and thus to leave the issue unresolved. The erased have been thus once again brushed
under the carpet.
25
Kovačič, Gorazd. ‘Izbrisani prikazani kot problem, ne kot oškodovanci’ (The Erased
Presented as a Problem, Not as Victims), Mediawatch Mirovni Inštitut, http://www.mediawatch.
mirovni-institut.si/bilten/seznam/19/analiza
26
‘Janez Janša o današnjem zborovanju Društva izbrisanih prebivalcev Slovenije in
društva Dostje v parku Zvezda’ (Janez Jansa on Today’s Meeting of the Society of the Erased
Residents of Slovenia and Society Enough in Zvezda Park). 2004. Slovene Democratic Party
Web Site, 26 February 2004, http://www.sds.si/displayarticles_novice_baza.php?mode=view_
entry&entry=040226_173911.txt
27
‘Janša in Hanžek o Romih in izbrisanih’ (Jansa and Hanzek on Roma and the
Erased), 24 ur, 26 January 2005, http://24ur.com/bin/article.php?article_id=2051742&show_
media=6030628
Hopefully, the issue has received enough international attention in the last few
years. The shameful referendum was ironically the best favour the Slovenian right
could have done to the erased. The international community, and most importantly,
European institutions cannot claim anymore that ‘they did not know’ that the ‘champi-
on among the post-communist states’ was hiding skeletons in its closet. The Slovenian
authorities have committed a crime. It cannot be compared in scale to the crimes com-
mitted in other republics and provinces of the former Yugoslavia, but a crime it was.
Those who have committed it must be held accountable, and the victims of this crime
must have their rights restored. The erased are not a shame for Slovenia alone anymore.
Since May 2004, the erased are a shame for the European Union.
178
THE CASE OF CROATIA

Toni Petkovic
Central European University, Hungary
Novi Sad Humanitarian Centre, Serbia and Montenegro
In this presentation I will attempt to recapitulate the main events during the
1991-1995 war in Croatia, as well as to provide some input about their reception
among the Serbian public and on the Serbian political scene. Since it is often hard for
analysts from different sides to agree about an objective description of events, I will use
for this presentation some excerpts from the paper Dr. Mile Bjelajac of the Institute
for Recent History of Serbia and Prof. Dr. Ozren Zunec of the Faculty of Philosophy,
Zagreb University, wrote jointly for the Scholars Initiative Project. I will try to highlight
some of the still unresolved controversies over the causes and nature of the war, as well
as other main points of dispute and disagreement between Croatian and Serbian schol-
ars. I will also present the context of Serbian political and public debates at the time by
using the daily newspaper Borba from the period, in order to shed some light on the
various influences and apparent motives driving the politicians in Serbia to engage in
what turned out to be a perilous war for Croatian Serbs.1
The War in 1991

1. Causes of the War
The Croat interpretation of the causes of the war includes an elaborated plan for
establishing a Greater Serbia. According to this belief, this plan originates in various
nineteenth- (Garasanin) and twentieth-century political theories and programmes and
was lately accepted by Serbian intellectuals (the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy
of Sciences and Arts is underlined as the prime example of this) and Milosevic. The
main cause of the war is therefore Serbia’s territorial expansion.
The Serbian interpretation holds that the main cause of the war was the treat-
ment of Serbs by the new Croatian government that came to power after the first mul-
tiparty elections in 1990. Serbs claimed that the situation was similar to the situation in
1
According to John Lampe, the number of Serbs in Croatia was reduced from 580,000
or 12% of the total population in 1991 to an estimated 280,000 or 6% in 1997. See Lampe, John
R. 2000. Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, p. 368.
The case of Croatia 179
1941–1945 when Serbs were the victims of persecution tantamount to genocide; their
fears amplified when the HDZ government changed the status of Serbs in the 1990
Croatian Constitution from ‘people’ (narod) to national minority, introduced nation-
al symbols similar to those from the 1941–1945 period, and laid off many Serbs from
state services. Their point is that they were trying to defend their existence and terri-
tory, and that they had conducted a purely defensive war.
The plan for establishment of a Greater Serbia, if it had been engineered pri-
or to the war – and had thus been its primary cause – certainly did not function later
during the war. The evidence for that is that many declarations and plans for unifica-
tion of ‘Serb lands’ (Republika Srpska Krajina, Republika Srpska, Serbia proper, and
Montenegro) were never realised; furthermore, other ‘Serb lands’ did not come to the
rescue of Republika Srpska Krajina during the final Croat operations in the war.
Some foreign scholars proposed the theory that the real cause of the war was in
the disintegration of governmental authority and the breakdown of a political and civil
order, and argued, like Susan Woodward, that ‘the conflict is not a result of historical
animosities and it is not a return to the pre-communist past; it is a result of the politics
of transforming a socialist society to a market economy and democracy’; the situation
was aggravated by declining social standards and an unfavourable international situa-
tion in which the former Yugoslavia was of no importance.
2. Nature of the War

Croatia has insisted and insists that the armed conflict in Croatia falls into
the category of international war, with Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and the
Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) as the aggressors.
Croatian Serbs and Serbia claimed that the conflict was a classic instance of
non-international or civil (internal) war. The main evidence for the former is the report
of the so-called Badinter Commission, and for the latter the phenomenology of the war
and the fact that the insurgent Serbs were citizens of Croatia who rebelled against the
central government.
It is obvious that both claims are designed to serve for attaining a more favour-
able status of the ‘victim’ for the respective claimants (Croatia as the victim of external
aggression, Croatian Serbs as the victims of the Croatian government), which could
in turn ameliorate their overall status and attract sympathy. The solution to this point
might be to distinguish between the situation in 1991 when the JNA actually conduct-
ed military operations in Croatia, and in 1992–1995 when the Croatian Serbs were left
to their own devices.
3. The Recognition of Croatia as an Expedient of the War

The recognition of Croatia in December 1991 – January 1992 by the interna-
tional community, and especially by the European Community, is frequently pointed
out, especially by Serbs and some international scholars and politicians, as a powerful
expedient of the war and its spread to Bosnia-Herzegovina.
180 Toni Petkovic
4. The Performance of the JNA

The performance of the JNA in the opening stages of the war is usually rat-
ed as very poor. This is evident in the colossal fiasco in Slovenia (June 1991); in the
JNA’s inability to conduct successful mobilisation in, among other places, Serbia
proper, which had critical operational consequences due to the lack of personnel;
in conducting unfocused operations that were either unsuccessful although op-
posed by much weaker forces or stopped before attaining objectives that were al-
ready at hand; in conducting operations contrary to all and every military logic
(e.g. Vukovar); and, above all, in the JNA’s inability to fulfil its role of protecting the
population against violence and of assisting a peaceful solution of the Yugoslav cri-
sis in 1990–1991.
The reorganisation of the JNA after 1985 and the formation of a new organisa-
tional format with three theatres of war instead of five or six Army Districts that were
more or less identical with the republican boundaries, is frequently considered as a
timely preparation of the JNA for internal armed conflict and amputation of Slovenia
and parts of Croatia where Serbs are not a majority (and thus a part of the plans for
establishment of a Greater Serbia). It is evident that in 1991 the JNA tried to deline-
ate new boundaries by use of force, and thus the reorganisation of the late 1980s could
be part of the plan of territorial expansion of Serbia; on the other hand, the strong
Yugoslav sentiment of the JNA prior to the debacle in Slovenia suggests the opposite
conclusion.
5. Individual Episodes
There are many individual events and episodes in the war in Croatia in 1990–
1991 that are either undocumented or have no logical explanation of their course.
Among these the most important are:
a) The Borovo Selo incident (2 May 1991). According to official Croatian re-
ports, the Croatian police convoy that entered Borovo Selo in a law enforce-
ment operation was shot at and twelve police officers were killed. According
to the Serb account, Croatian police attacked in order to instigate fighting and
eventually provoke an all-out war; according to these sources more than one
hundred Croatian police officers were killed.
b) The Battle of Vukovar (August–November 1991). The JNA and paramilitary
units from Serbia attacked this eastern Croatian town, and after three months
of siege and total devastation they entered the town, giving way to the most
horrible atrocities of the entire war. Why was Vukovar put under prolonged
siege when military logic would dictate that the town should have been left
isolated and attacks should have continued on towns and other targets further
west? In this siege the JNA used armour and infantry contrary to all princi-
ples of the art of war, suffering thousands of casualties and losing more than
four hundred pieces of armour. The Serbs offer a somewhat different view on
the causes and course of events. The JNA added its view, too. In his memoirs
Veljko Kadijević (former Yugoslav Minister of Defence) boasts that the battle
of Vukovar was a victory over the main force of the Croatian Army, although
the town was being defended by fewer than two thousand Croats. (The ques-
tion of numbers is a delicate one.)
c) The attack on Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik was surrounded and attacked by the
JNA in October 1991 apparently with no military justification; in addition to
that there was no Serb population to defend. The consequence of this attack
was a public relations catastrophe and complete loss of any credibility that the
JNA might still have had.
d) Halted operations. Some Serb sources, mainly from or close to the military,
claim that the JNA had been able to take Zadar in 1991 but had halted opera-
tions upon reaching the entrances of the town. The same is said about the at-
tack on Šibenik in September 1991. Croats claim that Šibenik had been de-
fended vigorously, but are silent about Zadar.
The chronology of events suggests that the response of the Krajina Serbs esca-
lated as regards demands concerning their status in Croatia. They sought cultural au-
tonomy at first, then proceeded to claim territorial autonomy within Croatia and so on,
up to secession.
The Reactions on the Serbian Political Scene to the Events in

Croatia in 1991
Milosevic
On 10 May 1991 Milosevic declared that what was happening in Croatia rep-
resented acts of ‘state terror’ against the Serbs in Croatia aimed at violent and uncon-
stitutional creation of an independent and sovereign Croatia and the destruction of
Yugoslavia.2 According to Milosevic, the war that was starting had the character of a
civil war provoked by separatist and nationalist forces in separatist republics. He said
that he did not oppose this creation of new states according to the right to self-deter-
mination, but that he would insist that the Serbs in these republics had the same right
to secession. On 8 August he stated that Serbs were not a minority in Croatia and in
Yugoslavia in general, and that while Croats had the right to secede this right did not
apply to Croatia’s administrative borders and that Croats must be prepared to accept
different borders if they wished secession.
2
Borba, 10 May 1995, p. 3.
182 Toni Petkovic
The Opposition
I could find only one strong public protest against the Croatian war made by the
joint opposition, publicly stated at the beginning of the crisis on 8 May.3 Vuk Draskovic’s
Serbian Renewal Movement (Srpski pokret obnove, SPO) was the strongest among the
parties supporting the protest, while the Democratic Party (Demokratska stranka, DS)
did not support it. Curiously enough, though, on 30 May it was precisely Draskovic’s
SPO that made an appeal before the Serbian Parliament to annex ‘Serbian Krajina’ to
Serbia, but Milosevic’s ruling Socialists refused to put the proposal on the agenda. The
next significant initiative concerning Croatia also came from Draskovic, who on 30
July proposed a plan to rearrange the borders and presented it in the talks with Stjepan
Mesic, the then Yugoslav (and incumbent Croatian) President. It is obvious that the
two strongest opposition parties (the SPO and the DS) did not take a clear stand for or
against the war, but rather often made conflicting and confusing statements. They did
not wish to portray themselves as ‘traitors,’ as Milosevic so often accused them of be-
ing. Dragoljub Micunovic (DS) for instance said that ‘all the blame (for the war) lies
with the secessionist politics of Croatia and Slovenia’4 and Vuk Draskovic said that ‘war
is something to be ashamed of, but that it is mostly Croats that should be ashamed, for
they started it.’5 Even the DS at the time attributed the causes of the war to ‘the charac-
ter of the emerging Croatian state, which is planned as a nation state of the Croatian
people that cannot legitimately hold on to the Serbian territories.’ The DS at the time
also proposed ethnic separation of the two peoples as the solution to the crisis.6 The
most laudable appeals against the war (but with no proposals for a resolution) came
from some NGOs, such as the Centre for Anti-War Action and Women in Black, which
organised several rallies in Belgrade, most notably after the attack on Dubrovnik.
3
On 8 May 1991, after the first fighting in Croatia had already taken place, most of the
opposition parties in Serbia (except the DS) made an ‘Appeal to the Serbian and the Croatian
Nation.’ “Presidents Milosevic and Tudjman have brought you to civil war,” stated the Appeal.
“Their regimes can survive only by feeding on the blood that you are going to spill. Since they
have destroyed the national economies, they have both turned to arms and ghosts from the
past. The flames of hatred that they are spreading are terrifying results of the politics of political
and national intolerance. They are blaming everything on the ‘others,’ and pushing us towards
collective suicide and mutual destruction. Be wiser than the ones you have elected and declare
peace,” stated this Appeal of the opposition of Serbia. “Our common interest is to live in peace
and democracy, as free, tolerant and reasonable people, inside a free and united Europe,” it con-
cluded.
4
Borba, 2 October 1991, p. 10.
5
Ibid.
6
Borba, 4 November 1994, p. 8.
The War in 1995

The main controversy after the end of the second round of war still remains:
Was it liberation of occupied territories (the Croatian view) or occupation of Republika
Srpska Krajina and final exodus of the almost entire Serbian population from Croatia
(the Serb view)? There is also a controversy about the character of the exodus. The
Croat side (politically dominant circles and media at the time) claimed that Serbs had
fled willingly in spite of the invitations made by President Tudjman to remain; fur-
ther on there were speculations that Serbs had fled because they ‘knew what they had
done to us.’ On the other hand, Serbs claimed that after what they had experienced
in Gospic, Medak or Western Slavonia they could not wait for the same fate to befall
them. In addition, they noted that from the very beginning of the hostilities in 1991
they had been regarded collectively as ‘chetniks’ and war criminals.
The Reactions on the Serbian Political Scene to the Events in

Croatia in 1995
Milosevic
Unlike 1991, in 1995 Milosevic was much slower to react to the downfall of
Srpska Krajina in Croatia. He placed the blame entirely on the local Croatian Serb
leadership for the military defeat and their refusal to accept his ‘politics of peace.’ ‘If the
peace plans and initiatives had been accepted a year ago, that would have brought peace
to the Serbian people and all tensions could have been resolved peacefully,’ Milosevic
declared in August 1995.7
The Opposition
The opposition parties, however, reacted to the Croat offensive much more rap-
idly and were almost unanimous in laying the blame on Milosevic and his politics. A
statement signed by Vojislav Kostunica, Zoran Djindjic and several others on 5 May
1995 blamed Milosevic for abandoning the Serbs in Croatia to ethnic cleansing. The
statement suggested re-establishing cooperation between Croatian and Bosnian Serbs,
and Serbs from Serbia and strengthening the military instead of the police forces in
Serbia. After the fall of Knin in August, some opposition parties issued statements
blaming the Milosevic regime as well as the international community for failing to pre-
vent it (Kostunica)8; others blamed the blockade of Croatian and Bosnian Serbs by the
Milosevic regime and the lack of cooperation among Serbs (Djindjic).9 Vuk Draskovic
7
Borba, 10 August 1995, p. 2.
8
Borba, 6 August 1995, pp. 7–8.
9
184 Toni Petkovic
noted that the main problem lay in the ‘politics of nationalistic hysteria’ that was being
promoted by the Milosevic and the Tudjman regimes,10 and called on the internation-
al community to force the end of the Croatian attack. Draskovic warned that ‘judge-
ment day for Krajina came with the attack on Srebrenica and Zepa,’ and pointed out
that Karadzic should have defended the Serbs in Croatia instead of attacking Muslim
towns in Bosnia.11 Vojislav Seselj from the Radical Party (RS, Radikalna stranka) called
Milosevic a traitor because of his failure to interfere, and asked for his removal from
power.12 In August,13 after the fall of Knin he demanded a military retaliation against
Croatia by a Luna missile attack on Zagreb, as well as an offensive to take Osijek. One
of the few party leaders who actually went to Western Slavonia after the Croatian attack
was Vesna Pesic, head of the Civic Alliance of Serbia (Gradjanski savez Srbije, GSS.14
She blamed the entire event on Milosevic, demanded that the international commu-
nity stops the exodus and punishes Croatia, and directed most of their attention to
the suffering of the refugees.15 Finally, it should be mentioned that the Holy Synod of
the Serbian Orthodox Church issued a statement that the ‘genocide that is happening,
which is worse than the one committed by the fascists in the Second World War, is en-
tirely the fault of the leadership of Serbia, which abandoned its people, proved its com-
plete incompetence and should step down from power’.16
10
11
12
Borba, 5 May 1995, p. 4.
13
Borba, 5–6 August 1995, p. 6.
14
Borba, 24 May 1995, p. 1.
15
Borba, 6 August 1995, p. 6, and 17 August 1995, p. 6.
16
185
WOMEN AND WAR IN THE BALKANS:

UNACCOMMODATED DIFFERENCE AND
(SOME OF) ITS SCAPEGOATS*
Dobrinka Parusheva
Institute of Balkan Studies, Bulgaria
We live in the borderland between two worlds,

on the border between nations, within
everyone’s reach, always someone’s scapegoat.
Against us the waves of history break, as if
against a cliff.
Meša Selimović, Dervish and Death
The 1990s Yugoslav wars entered our living rooms very often through the mil-
lions of TV screens, which depicted the events in the region and the international ef-
forts to resolve the problems. Some authors claim these wars were to some extent me-
dia-wars. Others use the term postmodern war to describe how postmodernity has af-
fected the interweaving of the waging and writing of war. However, it is not necessar-
ily a substantive difference that distinguishes postmodern wars from previous conflicts
but a representational one. The media have been focusing on the ‘age-old hatreds’ in the
Balkans: people have always hated each other and whatever tolerance and coexistence
there used to be, it was imposed by the communist regime.1 At the other extreme is the
myth insisting on Yugoslavia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, in particular, being the ideal ex-
ample of a harmonious and tolerant multicultural society where people did not classify
each other in terms of Serb, Muslim, or Croat. Abstract formulas frequently mask the ab-
sence of adequate knowledge of complex situations. In fact, there were coexistence and
conflict, tolerance and prejudice, suspicion and friendship at the same time.
*
This paper is partly based on the research I carried out during my stay at the Institute for
Human Sciences in Vienna as an Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Fellow (January–March 1999).
1
The myth of ancient hatreds can be seen as one of the fig leaves created in response to
the need to justify the passivity of the people who knew – and saw – what was happening. One
of the most enthusiastic propagators of this thesis is Robert Kaplan. See Kaplan, Robert. 1994.
Balkan Ghosts. A Journey Through History, New York: Vintage Books, A Division of Random
House, Inc.
186 Dobrinka Parusheva
Some Introductory Remarks

The war scenes of today are rooted in the region’s turbulent past. The centuries-
long Ottoman domination of the Eastern Balkans, the West European (particularly
Venetian and Austrian) political and cultural presence in the Western Balkans, and
the historical divisions between the East and West, the Orthodox and Roman Catholic
Church, and the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets have all left their impact. I would high-
light the difference between Eastern and Western Christian cultures in particular, and
not simply the difference between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church, be-
cause we are dealing with ethnically and linguistically very similar peoples who have
developed distinct national identities through exposure to different civilisations.2
The war(s) began in the summer of 1991. It started in Slovenia, and then moved
to Croatia. As of 1992 Bosnia became the battlefield of the heaviest bloodshed on
European territory since World War II. This was a war that inflicted terrible casual-
ties on civilians. Then there were the problems in Kosovo and the NATO bombings in
Serbia in the spring of 1999. After that military operations on the territory of Kosovo
and Macedonia started once again, and so forth. These regions are still in turbulence,
facing various problems that are yet to be resolved.
At first glance, it seems that these wars were an outburst of modernity. Modern
history – in particular Balkan history, with its post-Ottoman or post-Habsburg and
post-Tito conflict potential – was returning with a vengeance. The conflicts demon-
strated that the cherished ideal characteristics of the nineteenth- and twentieth-cen-
tury European state – that is, ethnic and religious homogeneity – have not yet been
achieved. Each of the three (main) groups engaged in the wars that marked the disinte-
gration of Yugoslavia (except for the very brief war in Slovenia) has a different religion.
This fact has led some observers to believe that we are dealing here with religious wars.
However, while religion is undoubtedly a very important marker for Serbs, Croats, and
Bosnian Muslims, the persons most responsible for the outbreak of the wars may be
described as totally lacking religious convictions rather than as having religious zeal.
The socialist regimes claimed they were above national and religious problems, which
were alleged to be a relict from the ‘bourgeois’ past. In reality the problems were far
from solved. New ones also accumulated. This came as no surprise to those who were
familiar with the history of the region.
2
This point is also made by Maria Todorova in her ‘Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans.’
She argues that the unbridgeable division between Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs can
be explained not only by irreconcilable religious differences but also by the different histori-
cal traditions within which the two communities have developed, Croats essentially outside the
Ottoman sphere. See Todorova, Maria. 1996. ‘The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans,’ in Brown, L.
Carl (ed.). Imperial Legacy. The Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East, New York:
Columbia University Press, pp. 45–77 (67–68).
Women and war in the Balkans: unaccommodated difference and (some of) its scapegoats 187
Ottoman society constituted a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional and multi-cul-
tural empire. Its population was classified into institutionalised religious communities
(millet) and fractured into multiple professional corporations, territorial communities,
privileged family clans and tribal groups, each one of which imposed on its members
a particular identity. Thus, there was no common identity that could command or pre-
tend to command a primary and invisible allegiance from all (as a national identity re-
quires in our time).
Nations and nationalisms in the Balkans were constructed in the nineteenth cen-
tury. All these various antagonistic nationalisms have since been shaping both them-
selves and others by excluding and exploiting difference. There is an ‘end-of-empire’
matrix for this complicated transformation of millets into nationalities and nations.
Religion was (and still is) one of the core elements cited when speaking of national
identities in the Balkans. What we actually have is a long process of subordination and
use of the religious by the national. The modern Balkan states strengthened their na-
tional identities by using religion and language. Political authorities used organised re-
ligious communities as channels for the promotion of cultural and political identity.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, nationalism was a rising force through-
out the Balkans. In the 1910s the Balkans were thrown into a war marathon.3 This tur-
bulent period saw profound changes in Balkan political geography. Between 1913 and
1926 major exchanges of population took place as ethnic groups were accommodated
to the new national borders.
The established in 1918 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes proved an un-
easy union. Rivalry grew between Catholic Zagreb and Orthodox Belgrade, with non-
Serbs in the Kingdom resentful of Serb power over the government and army. During
World War II a bitter civil war broke out. All sides committed atrocities, with Serb
Chetnik irregulars and Josip Broz Tito’s partisans taking revenge for the dreadful car-
nage wrought by Pavelić’s Ustasha terrorists, etc. The number of victims has never been
estimated fully (or accurately). But the burden of the hidden past remains a burden in
the present and an obstacle to the future.
The crisis became visible in the 1980s. Pandora’s Box opened immediately after
Tito’s death. As communism declined, nationalism re-emerged. The battle for political
control of Yugoslavia took place against a background of rising unemployment in the
domestic economy and growing instability in Eastern Europe. In this context, blaming
ethnic injustices was an easy route to political power. Every ethnic group could find
grievances – Serbs were too predominant in the army and government, Slovenes and
3
The first Balkan war broke out in 1912. The states, which had restored their independ-
ence in the nineteenth century, fought against Turkey. A few months later Greece and Serbia
sided with Turkey against their recent ally, Bulgaria. In 1914 the Great European War (as termed
by its contemporaries) or World War I broke out. It ended in 1918. Barely out of the world con-
flagration, Greece and Turkey engaged in a battle against each other (1921/22).
Croats had a better standard of living, and so on. But Serb nationalists, led by Slobodan
Milošević, took such complaints to new levels of hysteria, conducting a vicious prop-
aganda war against the ‘enemies’ of Serbs, namely Muslims, Croats and Albanians.
Milošević deliberately poisoned the air, reversing the Titoist policy of Yugoslav ‘broth-
erhood and unity.’ When Soviet communism collapsed, the nationalist cries became
louder. The secession of Slovenia and of Croatia, in particular, led to the violent unrav-
elling of Yugoslavia in the wars of 1991–95. More than 200,000 people were killed in
the former Yugoslavia and millions of other lives have been ruined by the wars started
by extreme nationalists – and then waged by all sides in a dreadful cycle of bloodlust
and revenge.
National/Ethnoreligous and Gender Identity

It is high time we came to the main purpose of this paper, namely to observe the
intersection of national or ethnoreligious – which, in my opinion, is the more appropri-
ate term when referring to the main actors in the Yugoslav wars – and gendered iden-
tity in all their complexity after the socialist experiments in both the redefinition of na-
tional identity and the social organisation of gender failed.
I will focus mainly on Bosnia-Herzegovina because Bosnia-Herzegovina is, on
the one hand, the most complicated in terms of ethnoreligious identities yet, on the
other, the most illustrative of the attempts to accommodate differences and their fail-
ure. Moreover, the presence of Islam there has produced additional aspects of gendered
difference.
I take nation and gender to be cultural constructs used both in academic writing
and in everyday life. As constructs, they are made up but through their utilisation in
social life they have become socially real and seemingly natural. Each designates a par-
ticular way of organising social difference, a dimension along which categories indicat-
ing difference (male, female; Serbian, Croatian, Muslim, Albanian) are arrayed. Each
also implies simultaneously both homogeneity and difference.
***
National and ethnic identity depends on ascription and description. People lo-
cally define and construct their identity according to their own experiences and per-
ceptions, in interaction with and in relation to members of neighbouring groups, and
in relation to the official state definitions.
Bosnia-Herzegovina is an example of a society where collective cultural (eth-
nic or national) identity has been and continues to be contested by one or more par-
ties. This lack of consensus in defining nationality is particularly salient in the case of
Muslim Bosnians and is reflected in the ambiguity of the official ethnonym Muslim
which, in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia, refers to an ethnic group, a nationality,
and a religious community. In Serbo-Croat official orthography the potential ambi-
guity of the term Muslim was avoided by writing the noun designating a person’s na-
tionality with an initial capital (Muslimani) and the term referring to a member of the
religious community with a small letter (muslimani). Official Yugoslav policy implic-
itly denied that the category Muslim was dependent on religious identity. However, in
Bosnia religious identity overlaps with national or ethnic identity for all three groups.
Thus, Muslims adhere to Sunni Islam, Croats to Roman Catholicism, and Serbs to
Orthodoxy. Religion is part of a person’s cultural identity, whether or not one is a be-
liever. This is as true for a Muslim as it is for a Catholic or Orthodox Christian.4 In the
case of Orthodox and Catholic Bosnians, this ambiguity escapes Western observers
because their official ethnonym refers not to their religion but to their ethnic and reli-
gious ties with peoples outside Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Serbia and Croatia respectively.
In peacetime, however, especially in rural areas the terms for religious identity, name-
ly Catholic (katolik) and Orthodox (pravoslav), rather than the official national terms
Croat and Serb were used.
Considering the above, I find that using the term ethnoreligious to describe the
identity of all three nationalities would be a more accurate reflection of local under-
standing of national identity as determined by religious allegiance. The official term
Muslim to denote a cultural identity is thus in accordance with local parlance, which re-
flects the overlap between religion and collective cultural identity. This tendency is very
well illustrated in Tone Bringa’s book Being Muslim the Bosnian Way.5 She shows how
the lack of any clearly defined physical or geographical boundaries between the differ-
ent communities is counteracted by drawing boundaries between two clearly defined
and different moral worlds in the village of ‘Dolina’ (author’s pseudonym for a mixed
Muslim-Catholic village in central Bosnia). The separate identities of the Muslim and
Catholic communities are ultimately maintained by the disapproval of intermarriage
between their members. Bringa’s book as well as other studies carried out in the former
Yugoslavia provide enough evidence that in rural Bosnia before the wars villagers saw
the household as the only safe sphere for the expression of an exclusive, unaccommo-
dated ethnoreligious identity. They feared that the presence of a non-member would
threaten this exclusivity.
By examining attitudes toward mixed marriages, we can learn about the inter-
play between ethnoreligious identity and gender. The opposition to mixed marriages
is typically explained in terms of possible everyday practical conflicts. Women in par-
ticular worry about getting a daughter-in-law from a ‘different religion’ and the conse-
quences that might have for the everyday running of her household. For example, the
mother of a marriageable girl explained her reluctance to see her daughter marrying a
Catholic by saying, ‘We respect their [Catholic] holidays, their churches, their prayers
and we see it as a sin to blaspheme against their sacred symbols, but we do not marry
4
This attitude is not unique for Bosnia. Secular Jews in the US, for instance, and Catholics
and Protestants in Ireland are other examples of such ethnoreligious identities.
5
Bringa, Tone. 1995. Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a
Central Bosnian Village, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
them.’ The problem of food was cited as one of the obstacles to intermarriage between a
Muslim and a Catholic. ‘We get along well and we have a good time together, but this is
one thing. It is another to have somebody from a different religion together with you in
the kitchen. When two who prepare different foods and keep different holy days share
the same house many problems arise.’6 That the negative attitude toward mixed mar-
riages is understood in terms of problems in the daily running of the household rein-
forces the argument that the kuca (house) is seen as the primary environment where
ethnoreligious membership and identity are formed.
It is not surprising that girls should pay more attention to such issues than boys.
After all it is the girl, not the boy, who as a rule must adapt to new ways when she goes
to join her husband in his parents’ household. Because ethnoreligious identity is be-
lieved to be formed by the child’s environment, villagers aver that a mother from a dif-
ferent ethnoreligious background will inevitably bring with her the knowledge of her
own religious traditions. Furthermore, an ‘outsider’ in religious terms (a non-Muslim
or a non-Catholic or a non-Orthodox) cannot teach her children religious and cultural
values she never learned herself.7 Since religious rituals and values are the main distin-
guishing factor between the three Bosnian ‘peoples,’ this is obviously less of an issue for
non-practising Muslims or Catholics or Orthodox.
As I already said at the beginning, there were at the same time coexistence and
conflict, tolerance and prejudice, suspicion and friendship between the nationalities
in the former Yugoslavia. In Bosnia there were many different ways in which people
from different ethnic, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds would live together
and side by side. These varied between town and country, sometimes from one village
to the next, from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, and from family to family. While
in villages people of different ethnoreligious backgrounds would live side by side and
often have close friendships, they would rarely intermarry. In some neighbourhoods
they would not even live side by side and would know little about each other. And
while some families would have a long tradition of friendships across ethnoreligious
communities others would not. In towns, especially among the urban-educated class,
intermarriage would be quite common, and would sometimes go back several genera-
tions in a single family. Here the socio-economic strata to which a person belonged was
more important than was his or her nationality.
War changes people and it changes their perceptions of who they are. As a re-
action to and part of the process of the war and the politics behind it, many Bosnian
Muslims are re-defining both the content and function of their collective identities,
and identifying with a wider world community of Muslims more than before. The dis-
course on Bosnian Muslim identity in war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina was a response
to the re-definition and polarisation of the categories ‘Catholic Croat’ and ‘Orthodox
Serb.’ In Bosnia, therefore, the discourse on Islam should be understood in terms of
6
Bringa, Ch. 2: A Bosnian Village, pp. 79-80.
7
Bringa, Ch. 4: Marriage and Marriage Procedures.
the construction of a Bosnian Muslim identity as opposed to a non-Muslim Bosnian
one that is either Catholic or Orthodox Christian (and ultimately either Croat or Serb).
The notion that Catholic and Orthodox Bosnians belong to the Croat and Serb nation
states was accentuated during the exchange of nationalist rhetoric between Croatia
and Serbia before and certainly during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (when catego-
ries of cultural identity hardened and became transfixed and monomial). It was within
this framework that a plan for canonisation along ethnic lines was understood locally
and therefore embraced by Serbia and Croatia while being fiercely opposed by Bosnia-
Herzegovina and the majority of its Muslims. They, together with some Bosnian Croats
and Serbs (mainly from the intelligentsia), were committed to a multi-ethnic and mul-
ti-religious unitary Bosnian state built on the principles of democracy and pluralism.
Women and War: Symbolism and Reality

‘War is men’s business, not ladies,’ we are told in Margaret Mitchell’s American
Civil War novel Gone With the Wind. Such stereotypical identification of men with
war and women with peace is as old as human culture. Despite this stereotype, war can
be a time when women develop a ‘national awareness.’ During the outbreak of World
War I, for example, most of the organised women’s movements in Europe backed their
governments and focused their activities on supporting their countries. Who were all
these women primarily: women or members of the nation? War and nationalism were
used as arguments to give up feminism, claiming that women had to choose between
their identity as women and as members of the nation state.
A similar situation occurred after the fall of socialism. The women’s movement
in some of the former socialist countries likewise lost its drive because of more ‘urgent’
political goals. Some East European women were overpowered by a more primary an-
ticommunist orientation, and some became involved, and for much the same reason,
with overt nationalist movements. Others remained committed to ‘socialist’ ideals that
can be aggressively nationalist. At the same time, it is overwhelmingly women who run
pacifist movements in countries at war. However, all women mentioned are the organ-
ised ones, and they are a minority. The huge majority of women usually (and in Bosnia-
Herzegovina in particular) did not appear in the public sphere at all, except when jour-
nalists made them visible (or rather made their personal tragedies visible).
The wars of the 1990s are called bratoubilacki rat, Bruderkrieg, guerre fratricide.
As far as it is brothers who are supposed to be waging war, there seems to be no space
for women within fratricidal wars. Nevertheless, there are interpretations of the 1990s
Balkan wars as wars against women.8 However, I am more inclined to agree with Rada
8
On 26 November 1992 the German weekly magazine Stern featured the heading
‘Vergewaltigung als Waffe – Der Krieg gegen die Frauen – Opfer berichten.’ Red colour domi-
nated the page. In the centre of the picture was a weeping young woman, wearing a red blouse
and with eyes red from crying. The text read: ‘Ordered mass violence: After having had lots
Iveković on this point: they were not necessarily wars against women, although they are
wars in which atrocities against women are particularly brutal and conspicuous, as was
the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Perhaps one can say that these wars were anti-women
in symbolic terms. But none of this should lead us to believe that women were the only
victims. The whole population was victimised, irrespective of sex and nationality.9
To understand the situation it is necessary to analyse what is symbolically at
stake for women and men within the war machine, because gender is one of its main
organising principles. At the symbolic level, cultural and social stereotypes used in the
militarist ideology, in the dominant propaganda of the war machine, and in the war
mythology are all ‘gendered.’10 It is characteristic of the symbolic order and of social re-
lationships that every power complex uses as its model other pre-existing power com-
plexes, projecting itself onto those models where possible. This projection ‘legitimises’
practices and domination. One could argue that the extreme cases of war and national-
ism take over and adopt the models of gender difference, using them as justifying refer-
ences. The appropriation of gender in nationalism does not mean that there is one-to-
one correspondence between gender roles and roles in war. But the political and sym-
bolic systems, which permit or call for war are ‘male’ because the historically dominant
gender is male. The brotherhood is articulated and group identity constructed by ex-
cluding the ‘other’ – the enemy (‘the Outside Other’) and women (the ‘Inside Other’).
The image of woman is a split one: ‘our’ women are ‘good’ ones; the enemy’s are the
‘bad’ ones.11 These brotherhoods, indeed, operate in nationalist conflicts and this ‘mas-
culinisation’ of war impacts of course on the individuals who are identified as female
but more generally contributes to the reconstruction of gender identities.
How does the symbolic order, however, affect the lives of real women? It is im-
portant not to forget that there is no univocal position of women in relation to war.
Ethnic, religious, and geographical factors profoundly mark the fate of women in the
former Yugoslavia. So it is self-evident that gender cannot be isolated from race, eth-
of conversations with maltreated and raped women and young girls in Croatia and Bosnia,
Stern journalist Alexandra Stiglmayer does not doubt anymore: Serbs are systematically us-
ing abuse and violence against women in their war against Bosnians.’ There are many examples
of interpreting the Yugoslav wars as wars against women: See e.g. Stiglmayer, Al. (Hg.) 1993.
Massenvergewaltigung. Krieg gegen die Frauen, Freiburg i. Br.: Kore; Kappeler, Susanne, Mira
Renka, Melanie Beyer (Hg.Innen). 1994. Vergewaltigung - Krieg - Nationalismus. Eine feminis-
tische Kritik, München: Frauenoffensive.
9
See her articles ‘Women, Nationalism and War: “Make Love Not War”,’ in Hypatia,
Vol. 8, No. 4 (Fall 1993), pp. 113–128, and ‘Nationalism and War as They Affect Women,’ in
Krieg/War. Eine philosophische Ausenandersetzung aus feministischer Sicht, herausgegeben vom
Wiener Philosophinnen Club. München: Wilchelm Fink Verlag, 1997, pp. 117–124.
10
Every term, utterance, and concept is given a gender ‘value’ with a distinct preference
for the male-identified form.
11
Iveković, Rada. ‘Women, Nationalism and War,’ p. 116.
nicity, religion, nationality, age, and so forth. Nevertheless, as real and not only sym-
bolic victims (and they are most often real victims), women were ‘entitled’ to specific
types of suffering, atrocities, rape, etc.
***
The wars of the 1990s created the most severe refugee crisis in Europe in the last
fifty years, with women and children constituting the majority of refugees who had to
flee their homes and countries. Of some 380,000 refugees living in Croatia in the au-
tumn of 1994, eighty percent were women and children. This is a contingent whose hu-
man rights are often violated. Refugee women face three potential forms of discrimina-
tion in the communities where they have taken refuge: as women, because of their na-
tionality or ethnicity, and as refugees. The refugees from Bosnia, who were not Croats,
had no civil rights (for example, the right to work, the right to legal defence). Although
an international fund paid the Croatian government DM 5 to 6 a day for every refugee,
the health services for these people were extremely poor. Women refugees often suf-
fered violence (including by police officers) or were raped. Many of these women were
unprepared for their new roles as single heads of households. Even those whose hus-
bands or other male relatives were with them had to adjust to altered role expectations
in a new context. Identities based on culturally defined gendered roles, or on work or
occupations, often had to be reconstructed in the changed circumstances.
A lot of surveys were carried out among displaced persons and refugees12 in
Croatia in 1992–1994. Some of them addressed ‘the often ambivalent feelings of refu-
gee groups towards each other in refugee centres, and the by no means uniform proc-
ess of ethnogenesis, by which communities in the former Yugoslavia are reconstruct-
ed along the lines of ethnic and religious affiliation.’13 Some refugees found themselves
living among, or accepting refuge from people they defined at the time as ‘the enemy,’
a situation which can only give rise to ambivalence and confusion. Others, however,
resolutely denied that the war had anything to do with religion or ethnicity at all. They
had found ways to maintain relationships and friendships across ethnic lines, and to
make a distinction between those who caused them harm and members of those same
ethnic groups, who may, indeed, be relatives, neighbours or friends, or who may sim-
ply be innocent victims.14
12
‘Displaced persons’ came from other parts of Croatia; ‘refugees’ came from elsewhere,
mostly Bosnia.
13
See Gilliland, Mary. 1995. ‘Reclaiming Lives: Variable Effects of War on Gender and
Ethnic Identities in the Narratives of Bosnian and Croatian Refugees,’ in Anthropology of East
Europe Review. Special Issue: Refugee Women of the Balkans, Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring 1995.
14
See on this topic Plejić, Irena. 1992. ‘All that we had, all that we were, reduced to mem-
ories,’ in Feldman, Lada, Ines Prica and Rejana Snjković (eds.). Fear, Death and Resistance: An
Ethnography of War. Croatia 1991–1992, Zagreb, Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research:
Matrix Croatica, X-Press, pp. 229–240.
For women in the former Yugoslavia, of whatever nationality, reputation in a

community and self-worth were largely tied to hard work and self-sacrifice for the
sake of family. Women in cities also shared these values, perhaps to a lesser degree but
still significantly. But in the refugee centres, women (as well as men) no longer had
work and no longer had traditional family roles to define themselves to others around
them or to themselves. They no longer had reputations to care about (or at least in this
new setting their reputations were not firmly established). They had become uncertain
about who they were.
Being a woman alone is, for a married woman, both an emotional loss and a loss
of personal identity. For adult women in villages and small towns, the married status
is a prime marker of identity. As refugees, they found themselves making decisions for
their families and contemplating futures without the economic and emotional assist-
ance of a husband. Some of them were already widows; others faced the possibility of
being widowed. At the same time all these women in the refugee camps were consid-
ered among the ‘lucky’ ones in the war because they had not been raped, maimed or
physically hurt.
Rape has been used as a tactic of terror in many wars: when the German army
marched through Belgium in World War I, when the Russian army marched to Berlin
in World War II, when Japanese raped Chinese women in the city of Nanking, to men-
tion only a few cases. But in these wars, rape did not receive the widespread publicity it
had in the 1990s Yugoslav wars.
On the other hand, the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Croatia provid-
ed a broader socio-cultural context of conflict between different groups of men. Acts
of rape in this context attacked not only women; they also humiliated the husbands,
brothers, fathers, and sons of the victims because they demonstrated the men’s inability
to protect their women. This humiliation is especially intense in the Balkans where the
honour/shame complex is so strong and female chastity is central to family and com-
munity honour.15
In Bosnia-Herzegovina there have been horrifying stories about the rape and
deliberate impregnation of women (mostly Muslims violated by Serbian soldiers). A
European Community fact-finding mission states that 20,000 women have been raped
by Bosnian Serb soldiers as ‘part of a deliberate pattern of abuse’ where ‘rapes cannot
be seen as incidental to the main purposes of the aggression but as serving a strategic
purpose in itself.’ War rapes are defined as a form of ethnic cleansing or genocide.16
However, I do not think ethnic cleansing needs rape – a gun and threats will suffice.
15
One example of interpreting rape as connected to patriarchal culture is the book
Women, Violence and War by Vesna Nikolić-Ristanović, Natasa Mrvić-Petrović, Slobodanka
Konstantinović-Vilić and Ivana Stefanović. See its review: Grujić, Jelena. ‘Female Side of War,’
in Vreme, Belgrade, 12/4/1995.
16
European Community Report 1992.
What one of the victims says makes me think that the speculations on patriarchal cul-
ture may be closer to the truth. Her statement reflects both the feelings of women and
the mentality of men in the Balkans: ‘To feel the rapist’s child in your womb and be
convinced that everyone will know that this is a child of the enemy, and to know at
the same time that the child is yours as well is one of the most cruel types of torture…
Moreover, they suggest to the husbands of the raped women that these women are
worthless since they are giving birth to their enemies’ children. The most horrible thing
is that the husbands really feel that way.’17
Many mass rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina occurred in what the Bosnian govern-
ment terms ‘rape camps.’ The names and locations of rape camps reflect pre-existing at-
titudes toward sexuality and courtship but in a cruel new context. They were situated in
former coffee houses and restaurants. Their names symbolise both the traditional and
the modern. At one end of the spectrum were places called ‘Vilina Vlas’ (Nymph’s Hair/
Tresses) and ‘Kafana Sonja’ (Coffee House Sonja). These names symbolise the tradi-
tional place of pleasure and this symbolism contributes to blaming the women for their
own victimisation. On the other end of the spectrum, places with names such as ‘Laser’
and ‘Fast Food Restaurant’ suggest the modern, Western lifestyle to the people from the
Balkans. Such names were correlated with perceived Western promiscuity and sexual
permissiveness. Both types of names suggest sexual license to men who believe that they
can do any kind of violent sexual act with impunity. For women, these places were pa-
kao na zemlji (hell on earth). In many camps, the majority of the female victims died, ei-
ther from gunshots, bleeding as a consequence of gang rape, or by suicide motivated by
shame.18 Most of the stories of rape have come from women forced by their experience
to choose isolation (divorced women, widows, or unmarried women). This is not sur-
prising in a culture where female and male honour depend on woman’s chastity. If the
woman was ‘lucky’ and did not get pregnant, she will bury her story to spare her fam-
ily the dishonour. Anything that forces her to go public will be her further tragedy. The
sexual violence perpetrated against women during wartime is one indicator that gender
identity is a pivotal factor in women’s fates both during and after wars.19
Violence was not directed at women refugees or enemy’s women only. For in-
stance, Croatian women often were victims of Croatian men. According to the stud-
ies of the Women’s Human Rights Group ‘B.a.B.e.,’20 violence against women in gen-
eral had grown considerably. Men were psychologically traumatised by the war and
frustrated by the loss of economic power. They expressed their anger (or helplessness)
through violence by verbally or physically abusing their wives, girlfriends or other
17
See Grujić, Jelena. ‘Female Side of War.’
18
Olujić, Maria. 1995. ‘Women, Rape, and War: The Continued Trauma of Refugees and
Displaced Persons in Croatia,’ in Anthropology of East Europe Review. Special Issue: Refugee
Women of the Balkans, Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring 1995.
19
See Schott, R.M. ‘Gender and “Postmodern War”,’ in Krieg/War, pp. 51–58 (54).
20
The acronym stands for ‘Be active, be emancipated.’
women. This expression of male domination found its justification in the institutions
of the Church and the government of Croatia, both of which had tried recently to pro-
claim motherhood as the worthiest occupation for women. In October 1994, a special
state institute was established for the protection of the family, motherhood and youth
to counteract the republic’s negative demographic growth, falling birth and marriage
rates, high abortion rate, family disintegration and low morality.21
Conclusion
The data presented corroborate the tenet that the role of war is a conservative
one and that the militarisation of masculinity is coupled with domestication of femi-
ninity, i.e. with women again becoming invisible. Thus, gender is a defining condition
of how war affects individuals. But analyses of gender are of course inadequate to com-
prehend the way in which war shatters the private worlds of everyday life. War may
mean, as it did in Sarajevo, that children cannot go out for two years for fear of bom-
bardments, that families are separated, that a person might be shot to death while go-
ing out to visit relatives, etc. For those of us sitting far away war poses different chal-
lenges than for those whose lives are in tumult because of it. In the summer of 1992, the
Croatian writer and journalist Slavenka Drakulić wrote: ‘As the war goes on you create
a parallel reality: on the one hand, you neurotically cling to what used to be your eve-
ryday routine, pretending normality, ignoring the war. On the other hand, you are un-
able to deny the deep changes in your life and yourself, the shift in your values, emo-
tions, reactions and behaviour. (Can I buy shoes, does it make any sense? Am I allowed
to fall in love?) In war, the way you think of your life and what is essential to it totally
changes. The simplest things no longer have the same weight or meaning. That is when
you really know the war is on, that it has got to you too.’22
This quotation makes me think, finally, of the different ways of perceiving the
war and the place of the different women within it. Drakulić is an intellectual, i.e. she
is one of the women who express their attitude to the events in the region in written or
other (audio-) visual form. There are a lot of other similar examples: Dubravka Ugrešić,
Jasmina Tešanović, Rada Ivecović, Biljana Jovanović, Maruša Krese, Radmila Lazić, to
mention but a few. However, these women are a small minority; the huge majority ei-
ther do not want or are unable, for one or another reason, to share their feelings and to
make statements. Thus, we cannot get ‘the whole picture’; moreover, it is impossible to
expect that we would. The reasons: firstly, not every woman could use the press, media,
and so on, to express herself. Secondly, the majority of women who were hurt much
more badly (either physically or psychologically) do not want to maintain and, thus, to
reinforce the memory of what has happened to them at all – on the contrary, they want
See Status of Women’s Rights in Croatia.

21
See Drakulić, Slavenka. 1993. The Balkan Express. Fragments from the Other Side of
22
War, New York: HarperPerennial, p. 2.

to forget and that is why they avoid publicity (or at least try to). Thirdly, we should not
forget the fact that in Bosnia, for instance, many more than half of all women are still
either illiterate or of low literacy. All these factors influence the thoroughness of the
picture we are trying to reconstruct.
When the Yugoslav wars started in 1991 and especially when in 1992 Bosnia-
Herzegovina was torn apart by ethnopolitical conflict and war, I was shocked as was
every normal human being. At the same time, I felt there was something wrong: all
these women and those from Bosnia-Herzegovina in particular had become too vis-
ible, which contrasted completely with their normal life… The question may be asked:
How can gender be relevant when life and death are at stake? Of course, one could
choose to resist gender dualism, but in this way the violence of rape and sexual abuse
certainly would not diminish. In my view, the more we can understand how hostilities
and aggression are catalysed along gender lines, the more we can explore strategies for
diffusing this aggression. It is in this spirit that inquiries into the intersection of gender
and war (as an apotheosis of nationalism) may serve peace.
198
DEALING WITH SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN THE

YUGOSLAV WAR: LEARNING FROM THE LESSON
OF THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN SERBIA
Ryoji Momose
More than ten years have passed since the outbreak of the Yugoslav civil war,
in which various forms of violence were committed. The brutality of the violence has
deeply shocked the world and stimulated the appearance of many works about the war.
Although these recently appearing works have been offering new approaches and new
insight into the war and violence, many difficult questions still remain, especially re-
garding wartime violence against women. It is necessary to deal with this issue seri-
ously and some scholars have actually started studying it, but the issue is still difficult
to research. Through this paper, I will attempt to present a perspective for dealing with
wartime sexual violence and other forms of violence in the Yugoslav civil war. To do so,
I will start with a study of the feminist movement in Serbia. Their movement has been
engaged in fighting violence against women since the pre-war period, so it will give us
some keys to understanding sexual violence.
The contemporary feminist movement in the Socialist Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia was revived at the end of the 1970s. Influenced by the radical feminism that
had emerged in Europe and the USA in the 1960s, academic feminists started to criti-
cise Yugoslav socialism’s failure to liberate women. In this period, they formed a theo-
retical framework for their own activity.
In the second half of the 1980s, feminists shifted their work from discourse to
practice. They launched ‘SOS Hotlines for Women and Children Victims of Violence,’
which was designed to assist women victims of domestic violence and rape in Zagreb,
Ljubljana, and Belgrade. Through SOS Hotlines, feminists provided victims with medi-
cal services, legal aid, and shelters. It was important that SOS revealed the reality of vio-
lence toward women and children, which had been concealed within private homes.
SOS succeeded as a grass-roots movement. Some members, however, started to
be dissatisfied because their group refused to enter the political scene. Finally, they de-
cided to form new groups for political activities; one of them was the Belgrade Women’s
Lobby. This group aimed to cooperate with other parties and movements in order to
form a pressure group for improving women’s status. In September 1990 they submit-
ted a programme that dealt with basic women’s issues. Feminists were to tackle these
issues afterwards. In these ways, SOS and the Women’s Lobby provided a base for sub-
sequent feminist movements.
Dealing with sexual violence in the Yugoslav war: learning from the lesson ... 199
In 1990, omens of Yugoslavia’s disintegration became more and more visible.
Feminists felt that they had to get personally involved in political issues in their coun-
try. At that time, there were no organisations, which could gather women’s voices from
all spheres of society. When it was decided that the first multiparty elections would
be held on 9 December, feminists decided to form a Women’s Party. The aims of the
Women’s Party were to establish solidarity among women at all levels, and to organise
the struggle not only for women’s rights but also for social reform. In order to achieve
the former aim, they called on women’s grass-roots movements to form cooperative
networks together. They made women the representatives of social minorities, and
then sought to cooperate with them. In addition, they developed active contacts with
other opposition parties, yet there were still gaps in the party. Their intention was to
utilise political campaigns to promote consciousness about women’s issues.
As the result of the elections, women representatives made up only 1.6% of the
Serbian Parliament. Therefore, a Women’s Parliament was formed on 8 March 1991.
The purpose of the Women’s Parliament was to monitor and respond to all new laws
that discriminated against women. Although it owed its basic ideas to the Women’s
Party, the Women’s Parliament succeeded in functioning more efficiently as an opposi-
tion influence. Various alternative movements participated in the Women’s Parliament,
and thus had the opportunity to become the nucleus of subsequent social movements.
When armed conflict broke out in Slovenia, hundreds of mothers organised a
protest against the war. The mothers’ protest movement spread to Croatia and Bosnia-
Herzegovina. Feminists supported the mothers’ protest, and joined the antiwar move-
ment. The mothers’ protest, however, faded due to manipulation by the regimes, al-
though it had had a great influence throughout the former Yugoslavia.
On 9 October 1991, the ‘Women in Black’ started to protest against the war. They
protested against the war by standing in the street in silence, dressed in black. They
held an international feminist conference in order to create international solidarity
among women, and then to resist nationalistic politics in Serbia. Other feminist groups
set out to work against the war. SOS in particular showed that violence against women
and children became more pronounced and drastic during the war.
The Yugoslav feminist movement developed into a movement for social reform
as a whole through the practices of SOS and other political activities. Feminists shift-
ed their own primary interests toward the antiwar movement after the outbreak of the
conflict in Slovenia, supporting women, children, the elderly, and deserters. It seemed
meaningful to protest against the war, to attempt to change the traditional gender or-
der, and, through the work of SOS, to point out the patriarchal tendencies existing in
Yugoslav urban society.
The feminist movement will be evaluated in the following points. First, it has
practically provided various kinds of aid for survivors of sexual violence in the war.
For example, SOS telephone activity was started for the victims of domestic violence
before the war, and was also able to give important support for survivors during the
war. Secondly, they made visible male violence against women, a kind of violence that
200 Ryoji Momose
had been excluded from public space. Thirdly, they made a common place for opposi-
tions that were located outside ethnic-nationalist politics. The practice of the Women’s
Parliament indicates this well.
On the other hand, it is true that their movement was not able to function as a
peace movement that would sufficiently deter people from taking part in ethnic con-
flict. It was quite difficult to form an interethnic peace movement. It is partly because the
feminist movement was essentially an academic one that it was not able to have enough
far-reaching influence on every woman, especially in rural populations. Another cause
of their inability to function as a deterrent may be located in their own theoretical
framework. As early as the 1960s, feminism started trying to discover the gender order
that exists behind our way of thinking and behaving, and it has since had some success.
In the peace movement against the Yugoslav civil war, they defined ‘peaceful women’
as the main core of their peace movement, which implicitly entailed ‘violent men.’ This
resulted in admitting the existing ‘patriarchal’ gender order and failed to develop to-
ward reconstruction of the gender order.
What can we learn from the lesson of the feminist movement? How should we
understand sexual violence in the Yugoslav war today? Admitting the extreme brutal-
ity of sexual violence in the Yugoslav war and the importance of taking gender aspects
into consideration, I think that it would now be useful to temporarily distance oneself
from gender studies on sexual violence; it is necessary to place sexual violence into the
whole context of the Yugoslav war. Overemphasising the gender aspects of violence
brings the danger of fundamentalism, of reducing exclusively all causes of violence to
patriarchal phallocentrism. To avoid this, it would be useful to minutely examine what
the Yugoslav war is, what characterised the war, how the war developed, then to study
what kind of the meaning sexual violence had in the war. This point of view may be im-
portant to deal with another kind of violence.
As a point of view, I will temporarily see the Yugoslav war as a process of making
of nation states. Modern nation states were made through war, in which process state
systems are masculinised, i.e. require a strict gender order as well as ethnic distinction.
As a result, individuals were distinguished from others based on ethnic/gender iden-
tity politics. I think that there is a similar tendency of identity politics in the Yugoslav
civil war. The war was stimulated by exclusive ethnic nationalism. In the meantime,
the process of establishing the patriarchal gender order, or masculinising of the com-
munity, became widespread all over the region. I assume that a result of that process
was wide-ranging sexual violence. The exposure of brutal masculinity in the Yugoslav
war – as a most horrible example, we can mention wide-ranging sexual violence – can
be seen through this perspective. By doing so, I believe it is possible to obtain another
explanation of violence in the war.
201
MUSLIM NATIONALISM IN BOSNIA-

HERZEGOVINA: THE ELITE-LED NATIONAL
MOVEMENTS AMONG BOSNIAN MUSLIMS
Daisuke Nagashima
Belgrade University, Serbia and Montenegro
In this short paper, I will deal with Muslim national movements in Bosnia-
Herzegovina in communist Yugoslavia: How they strove to acquire national status (as
the sixth constituent nation); and who played what role in expressing (often unsuccess-
fully) their national claim. The focus of analysis will also be on communist policy to-
ward the Muslim national question during this period.
From 1945 to the Early 1960s

With a few exceptions among its cadres, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia
(Komunistička partija Jugoslavije, KPJ, later Savez komunista Jugoslavije, SKJ) did not
recognise Muslims as a nation or as an ethnic group, but instead as a religious group.1
After the end of World War II and until the early 60s, the KPJ’s stand was that Muslims
were not yet nationally defined, and that they could only be defined as either Serbs or
Croats. Some attempts were made by the political, cultural and religious elites of the
Muslims to be recognised as a nation, but they proved futile.2 The other Muslim lead-
ers did not go so far as demanding the status of nation for two reasons. Firstly, despite
the strong calls that Bosnia should be an autonomous province under the direct juris-
diction of the federation, Bosnian party leaders had succeeded in having Bosnia rec-
ognised as a single republic on the basis of ‘full equality of Serbs, Croats and Bosnian
Muslims,’ and secondly, because they were not considering national status as an option
due to an undeveloped sense of national identity. Also, there were not enough influen-
tial leaders to insist upon it, either in the communist ranks or beyond.
1
Höpken, Wolfgang. 1994. ‘Yugoslavia’s Communists and the Bosnian Muslims,’ in
Allworth, Edward (ed.). Muslim Community Reemerge: Historical Perspectives on Nationality,
Politics, and Opposition in the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, Durham/London: Duke
University Press., pp. 222–223, 227–228; Redžić, Enver. 2000. Sto godina Muslimanske politike u
tezama i kontroverzama istorijske nauke: Geneza ideje bosanske, bošnjačke nacije, Sarajevo, pp.
66–70. For opposite opinions by some Bošnjak historians, see, for example, Bojić, Mehmedalija.
2001. Historija Bosne i Bošnjaka (VII-XX vijek), Sarajevo: Sahinpasic, pp. 225–226; Filandra,
Šaćir. 1998. Bošnjačka politika u XX. stoljeću, Sarajevo: Sejtarija, pp. 199ff.
202 Daisuke Nagashima
As in the case of other nations in Yugoslavia, soon after the war Muslims lost
most of their political leaders as well as those intellectuals who had been active before
the end of the war. Most of the leaders of the pre-war Yugoslav Muslim Organisation,
the clerics of the Islamic Community, and other intellectuals who were considered to
have cooperated with the fascists, were excluded in the postwar years.3 In addition,
institutions like ‘Preporod,’ medresas and mektebs (madrasas and maktabs, schools of
Muslims for mainly religious but also secular education), and the Sharia court, which
were considered to be the last bastion of their Muslim identity, were closed down soon
after the war.
During this period, Muslim communists considered themselves to be Serbs, most
probably as a result of pressure from Belgrade but also because they expected that this
would give them greater political possibilities.4 In addition to this, until the end of the
1960s Bosnian communists had been under the strong influence of the KPJ even after
the foundation of their own Communist Party of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Komunistička
partija BiH, KPBiH, later Savez komunista BiH, SKBiH) in November 1948.
In this way Muslim leaders continued to incline towards Belgrade or Zagreb.
Some of them believed that they could ‘overcome backwardness’ by ‘declaring to be
Serbs or Croats.’5
The Recognition Process from 1961 to 1968

The 1960s were a decade of confrontation between centralism (etatism) and de-
centralism (self-management), and also of a gradual political shift from the former
to the latter. Political decentralisation, especially after the economic reforms of 1965,
paved the way for recognition of the Muslim nation. The process, however, went for-
ward step by step, first in Bosnia and then in the whole of Yugoslavia.6 It was not until
1967 that Tito officially declared the Muslims the sixth constituent nation of Yugoslavia;
2
See examples of Husaga Čišić and others in Bojić, Historija Bosne i Bošnjaka, p. 227;
Firandra, Bošnjačka politika u XX. stoljeću, pp. 199-205.
3
In 1947 the Muslim Committee in the People’s Front was abolished, the Young Muslims
(Mladi muslimani) were persecuted, and the disobedient clerics in the Islamic community were
expelled. In 1946 an agrarian reform was carried out, etc.
4
Redžić, Enver. 1970. Tokovi i otpori, Sarajevo: Akademija nauka i umjetnosti BiH,
Institut za istoriju, p. 109; Istorija Saveza komunista Bosne i Hercegovine (Tom II). 1990. Sarajevo:
Institut za istoriju u Sarajevo, p. 32. A total 61.5% of Muslim intellectuals in ‘Who’s who for the
year 1956’ were listed as ‘Serbs,’ 16.6 % as Croats, 8.6% as Yugoslavs, and 12.6% ‘No nationality’:
see Dyker, David A. 1972. ‘The Ethnic Muslims of Bosnia: Some Basic Socio-Economic Data,’
The Slavonic and East European Review, No. 50, p. 245.
5
Redžić, Sto godina Muslimanske politike u tezama i kontroverzama istorijske nauke, p. 70.
6
For details of this process, see Höpken, ‘Yugoslavia’s Communists and the Bosnian
Muslims,’ pp. 228–234.
Muslim nationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina: the elite-led national movements among ... 203
just as it was not until 1968 that the Central Committee of SKBiH recognised, at its sev-
enteenth congress, the Muslim nationality.
Early in the 60s, the leaders of the party gradually admitted that its policy of
Muslim national identification with Serbs or Croats had been a mistake, since they
had realised that ‘only those who are more dependent on the political realities of the
present had identified themselves (as Serbs or Croats), and frequently only for prag-
matic reasons, while the great majority of people remained undecided.’7 Communists
from SKBiH comprised only 3.7% of the total population (in 1960). Only party mem-
bers identified themselves as Serbs or Croats;8 non-members who made up the vast
majority of the population simply chose ‘Muslim in the ethnic sense’ or ‘Yugoslav.’
In 1965 and 1966, in the course of the policy change, political leaders of SKBiH
were also gradually replaced. After Đilas (1954), Pijade (1957) and Ranković (1966) left
the Central Committee of Belgrade, Pucar Stari, a leading loyal Bosnian communist
since the World War II and throughout the postwar years, was also replaced as secre-
tary of the Central Committee of SKBiH (1965), and young Hamdija Pozderac, Nijaz
Dizdarević and Džemal Bijedić were elected to senior positions in the party. The first
two were to remain in office until the last years of the 1980s. The position of SKBiH in
the SKJ itself improved too; later on, in the course of decentralisation, the influence of
the SKJ gradually declined.9 It must be noted that since the recognition of the Muslim
nation was a prerequisite for fuller independence of the Bosnian party organisations
from the centre in Belgrade, it was thus favoured also by Serb communist leaders in
Bosnia. Cvijetin Mijatović, former ambassador to the USSR, was elected secretary after
Pucar Stari. Along with Croatian Branko Mikulić, he held the highest position within
the party in the 70s and 80s.
The 1970s and 80s

Following recognition, Muslim nationalism developed amongst a limited number
of communist leaders. The Muslim national affirmation could not but remain within the
realm of the communist elites and communist intellectuals close to the party leadership.
Other opportunities were strictly suppressed or kept within the limits of ‘positive na-
tionalism’ in favour of ‘Brotherhood and Unity.’ Let us take some examples.
In 1972, Avdo Humo, Osman Karabegović and Hajro Kapetanović were dis-
missed because of ‘discord with the party line.’ Humo insisted on ‘more national rights for
7
Stated by Andria Krešić at the Third Congress of SKBiH in 1959: see Höpken,
‘Yugoslavia’s Communists and the Bosnian Muslims,’ p. 231.
8
Dyker, ‘The Ethnic Muslims of Bosnia,’ p. 245.
9
In 1969, the Fifth Congress of SKBiH adopted the party’s first Statute. The Statute em-
phasised the ‘independence and responsibility’ of SKBiH in the ‘monolithic organisation of the
SKJ’: see Istorija Saveza komunista Bosne i Hercegovine, pp. 198–199.
Muslims’ in the amendment of the Federal Constitution.10 Three years later, in 1975, six
Muslim communists were declared guilty. One of them was Pašaga Mandić, a member
of the Executive Committee of the Central Committee of SKBiH and a representative in
the Federal and Republic Parliament. The dispute over the interpretation of the Partisan
movement during the war and its collaboration with the Chetniks led to a crucial con-
frontation with the then party leadership, who were persecuted as ‘centralist, nationalist,
and anti-self-management.’ Just a few years before the collapse of Yugoslavia, in 1988, the
so-called ‘Agrokomerc Affair’ brought about the dismissal of Hamdija Pozderac.
These three affairs are often explained as a ‘political purge’ conducted by Serbian
nationalists in their anti-Muslim campaign.
The SKBiH undertook a number of initiatives to promote the official perception
about the status of the Muslim nation. Under the leadership of SKBiH, a research project
called ‘The Attitude of Muslims in BiH with regard to National Identification’ was organ-
ised. It began in 1967 and ended in 1970. The project was organised by the Centre for
Social Research and the Faculty of Politics in Sarajevo. But it was practically initiated by
the Central Committee of SKBiH, and strongly influenced the party’s later policy toward
Muslims. The project dealt with the development of Muslim identity in Bosnian history.11
In 1971, the first population census after the recognition was taken. Purivatra and
a young historian, Kasim Suljević, wrote a political pamphlet titled ‘The National Aspect
of the Population Census in 1971.’12 They explained that Muslims were a South-Slavic na-
tion of Islamic faith in Bosnia whose identity stemmed from the fourteenth-century Ban
Tvrtko and developed during the Ottoman period. They also explained that ‘Yugoslavism’
was not a national category but a ‘patriotic member of Yugoslavia’s socialist communi-
ties of nations and nationhoods.’ They aimed at encouraging those ‘Yugoslavs’ and ‘unde-
clared’ in the 1961 census to declare themselves ‘Muslims’ in the 1971 census.
Other Muslim historians also tried to take this opportunity – namely, recog-
nition – to encourage their national identification, but except for a few cases such as
Enver Redžić13 and Salim Ćerić,14 they did not dare come out against official opinion.
10
Bojić, Historija Bosne i Bošnjaka, p. 248; Firandra, Bošnjačka politika u XX. stoljeću,
pp. 306–316.
11
Among the main members of the project were Hamdija Ćemerlić, Atif Purivatra,
Muhamed Hadžijahić, and Mustafa Imamović: see Redžić, Sto godina Muslimanske politike u
tezama i kontroverzama istorijske nauke, p. 90.
12
Purivatra, Atif and Kasim Suljević. 1971. Nacionalni aspekt popisa stanovništva u 1971.
godini, Sarajevo, pp. 9ff.
13
Redžić insisted that the name ‘Muslim’ was inadequate because it meant nothing but a
religious community, and that despite the significant role of Islam ‘they are not a muslim com-
munity in the ethnic sense but Bosnian’: see Redžić, Tokovi i otpori, p. 117. About critics against
Redžić’s concept, see Redžić, Sto godina Muslimanske politike u tezama i kontroverzama istori-
jske nauke, p. 87.
14
In 1971, Ćerić proposed to the party leadership that ‘Muslimanska matica’ should be-
come national institution of Muslims, but his proposal was rejected: see Filandra, Bošnjačka
politika u XX. Stoljeću, pp. 316–325.
Muslim nationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina: the elite-led national movements among ... 205
Alija Isaković was regarded as an example of ‘negative nationalism,’ which was
seen as inconsistent with ‘ethnic unity’ by the authorities. Isaković took the leading part
in the affirmation of ‘Muslim literature’ (Muslimanska književnost). He compiled sev-
eral bibliographies of Muslim writers, and as an editor published classics of Muslim lit-
erature. His work Biserje – Izbor iz muslimanske književnosti (Pearls: A Selection from
Muslim Literature) aroused criticism from party leaders as an obstacle to the develop-
ment of zajedništvo naroda (people’s unity).15
The Islamic Community of Bosnia totally ignored the recognition of Muslims
mainly because, from an official viewpoint, the Muslim national identity was separat-
ed from the religious component described by the term ‘muslim.’ The only exception
was Husein Đozo, the then chairman of the Ulama Association BiH (Udruženje Ilmije
BiH) and the chief editor of the Islamic biweekly magazine Preporod (Renaissance or
Revival). Đozo went so far as to insist that the Muslim national identity should be based
on Islam, and that all Muslims should ‘return to the Sharia.’ Đozo strove to spread his
Islamic movement among imams and ulamas in the field through education, but was
dismissed from his posts in 1979. The authorities accused Đozo of intentionally mixing
up ‘muslims’ with ‘Muslims’ and, in short, of abusing Islam for encouraging Muslim
nationalism.
The most serious affair was the case of the trials of Muslim intellectuals in 1983.
Alija Izetbegović, the author of the ‘Islamic Declaration,’ and thirteen others were pros-
ecuted as Muslim nationalists; three of those on trial were members of ‘Young Muslims,’
a pan-Islamic organisation that was active in Bosnia during World War II. It is worth
noting that the ‘Islamic Declaration’ was written in 1970, a year before the first national
census after recognition. Although its contents are purely Islamic and the party leaders
knew that, the authorities in their political campaign accused them of being Muslim
nationalists. This seems to be merely because their claim of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’
and their alleged activity in foreign countries would lead to disruption of the ethnic
balance in Bosnia and was, in a word, outside the limits of ‘positive nationalism.’ Some
ten years later, this affair was utilised by the Serbian nationalist camp as ‘Muslims’ en-
thusiasm for an Islamic Bosnia.’
Certainly the Muslim national movements were repeatedly suppressed, but we
must not conclude that it was only the Muslim national movements that were unjustly
and unfairly suppressed. It may be argued that the authorities strove to suppress them
simply in order to maintain the status quo of an increasingly fragile ethnic balance
in Bosnia, and that is why the suppression against those most recently jumping onto
the national bandwagon stood out so sharply. But, the question still remains: Could
Muslims fully enjoy their national status as equal to Serbs and Croats, or was their na-
tional status purely nominal?16
15
Firandra, Bošnjačka politika u XX. stoljeću, pp. 271–275.
16
Filipović, Muhamed. 1996. Bošnjačka politika: Politički razvoj u Bosni u 19. i 20.
stoljeću, Sarajevo, pp. 83–107.
Conclusion
I would conclude that:
1) Muslim nationalism, controlled by new party elites since the mid-1960s, had
been limited within the framework of ‘positive nationalism’ which favoured
‘brotherhood and unity,’ ‘development of self-management on the basis of full
equality of nations and nationhoods in Yugoslavia’ or, at least not contrary to
these mottoes.17 It could be argued that after 1970, Muslim nationalism was,
in a sense, a similar version of ‘national communism(s)’ as seen in the other
Balkan communist states. Conversely, ‘negative nationalism’ was described as
hegemonism, separatism, and anti-Yugoslav-communism (anti-self-manage-
ment). It often appeared in the form of Islamic movements, which were con-
sidered to be phenomena of ‘Muslim nationalisms.’ Since the 1990s, Muslims’
‘positive nationalism,’ this time without communist terminology in their po-
litical programmes, merged into another stream, Bosnianism (Bošnjaštvo).
Throughout the communist period, before and after recognition, nationalism
was controlled to a great extent by a small number of party leaders. Some at-
tempts were made to develop their national interests, their own culture, his-
tory, religious identity, and so on, by some political, academic, cultural and
religious intellectuals. But most of those attempts were in vain.
2) Even so, their leaders strove to achieve equal national rights to those of Serbs
and Croats. They reconfirmed their own Muslim ethnic literature, history,
culture, and religious ethical norms, choosing from the until then so-called
‘serbian-muslim’ or ‘croatian-muslim’ literature, history, culture, etc., and
claiming that Serbian and Croatian hegemonists unjustly discredited their
existence. The Muslim national movements were repeatedly suppressed but,
I would repeat, we must not conclude that it was only the Muslim national
movements that were unjustly and unfairly suppressed. The national ques-
tion in Yugoslavia, especially in Bosnia, was a truly sensitive matter and it was
eliminated before it became a political issue. The mere tendency of a nation-
al affirmation was ‘nipped in the bud’ to maintain the ethnic balance, in the
name of ‘brotherhood and unity.’
17
Zajedništvo i nacionalni odnosi u BiH: Savjetovanje oktobra 1973. godine. 1973.
Sarajevo: Studijski centar Gradske konferencije SKBiH, pp. 17–25.
207
POST-DAYTON BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Hidajet Repovac
Faculty of Criminal Justice Science,
University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina
The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was a consequence of the extreme nationalism.

The war has slowed down the development of Bosnia-Herzegovina to an extent that the
pre-war level of development will not be achieved again for another 20 years.
I believe that the Bosnian situation cannot be properly explained from a single
particular viewpoint. I am a Bosnian Muslim, born in the family of intellectuals – for
instance my great-grand father was a professor at the medresse, a school at the level of
the university. My grandfather, Ibrahim Repovac, studied law and received his Doctor’s
degree at the University of Vienna. My father continued his father’s tradition. He stud-
ied at the Vienna Faculty of Law and accomplished his doctoral studies in Zagreb. I just
continued this family tradition. I believe that the issue of Bosnia-Herzegovina is more
complex than it is believed – in cultural-civilizational, economic, as well as in politi-
cal sense.
And that is why my paper presents a critical picture of what was happening af-
ter the Dayton Peace Accords. Dayton ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but at
the same time it petrified the status quo. This situation was accepted by the people of
Bosnia-Herzegovina, for whom that country is the only homeland, as a necessity and
as the only possible outcome because they realised that unjust peace was better than
continuation of war. But, ten years later, it is obvious that this unfairness of the Dayton
peace, with the numerous additional negative resonances, has acquired the form of an
unbearable cacophony.
Bosnia-Herzegovina suffers from a number of problems. Even ten years have

proved insufficient to constitute the state institutions that would provide inviolable
guarantees of human rights and freedoms to people belonging to all ethnic communi-
ties on the whole state territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina. These rights include right of ref-
ugees to return, right to education and fulfilment of cultural needs, right to protection
and preservation of personal integrity and property, right to freedom of religion, right
to life, etc. Above all, Bosnia-Herzegovina suffers from the undefined state and the lack
of its sovereignty; undefined common projects of development, which would enable the
country to come closer to European standards; an undefined joint economic, cultural
(educational) and political sphere; slow political decision-making process, which hin-
208 Hidajet Repovac
ders the work of the state and its institutions; competing economic and political inter-
ests of both entities (Republic of Srpska and Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina); and the
fact that numerous war criminals have not been brought to justice.
In addition to that, the High Representative of the international community in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, as an exponent of colonial authority from previous historical pe-
riods, only sanctions ‘the disobedient ones,’ often in cases when it is already too late for
that, instead of supporting the development of democratic and efficient governance,
consisting of young people in whose interest would be the development of the country.
Due to all this reasons, in last ten years no considerable progress has been noted
in Bosnia-Herzegovina even in a single sector. We can even say that the country has
been regressing – a process very dangerous for preservation of unity and sovereign-
ty of the state. One of the most difficult consequences of inconsistent economic and
social state policies is a general impoverishment of the population. A second conse-
quence, which is related to the previous one, is the high unemployment rate without
prospects of improvement. There have even been cases of deliberate obstruction of all
big projects like public works, re-opening of enterprises, and road construction, which
would all absorb masses of unemployed. For example, there is obstruction of the con-
struction of the highway corridor 5C, which should lead from Sarajevo to Budapest
and from Sarajevo to the coast. Several companies from the EU and other places have
already prepared their offers for this project, but no permission has been given for
the beginning of the works, because this corridor would strengthen the link between
Bosnia and Europe. Third consequence is a migration of great number of young people
to Western European countries. The forth consequence is the absence of normal condi-
tions for the return of refugees to their homes. The fifth, and crucially important, is na-
tional and cultural ghettoization of the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which has
and will continue to have drastically negative repercussions for the unity and stability
of the state – in other words, a fragile Dayton peace.
The Dayton peace is indeed very fragile, as it only ended the war, but resolved
nothing. It seems that those who had a project for destruction of former Yugoslavia,
only had the strategy how to destroy it, and no strategy what to do after that. My
thesis is that all of the nationalisms in former Yugoslavia were paid from the same
source – from the same valet. I believe that the same source financed all national-
isms in ex-Yugoslavia and this source was geographically located much more to the
west than it was considered. If a sociological survey of Bosnian-Herzegovinian soci-
ety would be conducted, important negative changes compared to the period imme-
diately before the war would be noticed in every sphere of life. The situation related
to the internal development of the state is not optimistic at all. Bosnia-Herzegovina
has a number of problems on its own, which means that its development is far from
the requirements that would enable its accession into the European Union, but these
problems are additionally aggravated by the negative processes in the neighbouring
countries. Processes of ‘re-Nazification’ and affirmation of the Chetnik movement in
Serbia, national isolation and creation of the image of self-sufficiency, and the proc-
Post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina 209
ess of the ‘Nazification’ in Slovenia and Croatia are not a path towards stability and
to the European Union.
In all of the former Yugoslavia, national tolerance has been seriously dam-
aged, creating an atmosphere of fear and insecurity. This sense of insecurity is espe-
cially present among Bosnian-Herzegovinian Muslims, or using the new term, among
Bosniaks. They have paid dearly for every nationalistic rampage in this region because
they had no support in the additional, or spare state. Bosnian-Herzegovinian Muslims
had no spare state and their nationalism was expression of the rage for being pressed
against the wall, with their very existence and their national and cultural identity un-
der threat. I believe Bosniaks had to fight for survival, and preservation of their na-
tional identity.
Bosnian Muslims have always paid a heavy price for any nationalistic rampage,
as the following example shows. As a result of the decision of the Berlin Congress in
1878, the present day Bosnia-Herzegovina – then a Turkish vilayet – became a part of
Austria-Hungary. As a consequence, several hundred thousand Muslims left Bosnia-
Herzegovina and moved to Anatolia. Today more descendants of the Bosnian Muslims
live in Anatolia than in Bosnia. There are between 4 and 6 million Muslims in Turkey
who are of Bosnian origin. Before the coming of Austria-Hungary, people in Bosnia
spoke Turkish, which was the language of administration and government (a polit-
ical language), Arabic, which was a language of philosophy, Koran and poetry, and
Persian, which was a language of poetry and literature. When Austria-Hungary came
with German language and new culture, all the natives became automatically illiter-
ate, because German became the official language. So a large number of Muslims left
Bosnia-Herzegovina, and it was then that Aleksa Santic,1 famous Mostar poet wrote:
‘Stay here, the sun of foreign skies will not warm you as this one here does.’ But such
was the faith of Muslim in those times and that was neither the first nor the last exodus,
as the exoduses continued. During this war in 1990s, around million and a half people
left Bosnia-Herzegovina – people of all nationalities, but most of them were Muslims.
However, Bosnia-Herzegovina is not anything exceptional in the contemporary

world. What happened in Bosnia is happening also in other parts of the world. This is
a consequence of the global world politics, and even this process of destabilisation of
the Balkans was a special and deliberate goal of a special policy for the region. Nobody
could have foreseen such a beginning for the 21st century. The expectations were that
new heights of spirit and technology will be reached, and for more justice, freedom
and dignity in the world. Instead, just when the war in Bosnia stopped and we en-
tered the 21st century, it turned out that it was all just fiction and illusion. We have en-
tered the new era without idea and praxis of humanism, without socialism, because
all socialist countries have fallen – ideologically and politically –, without Marx and
Marxism. This is not because some new ideology has taken over. There is no new ide-
1
Aleksa Santic, poet, born in Mostar in 1868, died 1924.
210 Hidajet Repovac
ology. Furthermore, there is no new thought, no new philosophical system around

which people would gather. That is why this emptiness, this vacuum appeared. Apart
from Habermas, Marcuse and the Frankfurt School, Karl Popper and Jacques Derrida
in Europe, and Rorty in the USA, there are no more serious thinkers. We have thus
entered new era in this way, without critical theory of the society, without conscious-
ness, without morality, solidarity and freedom, but with the destroyed Twin Towers
of the World Trade Centre, with Dayton Bosnia, with destroyed Iraq, with the Hague
Tribunal, with Guantanamo, with a rich diversity of ways to exploit and torture people,
with AIDS and with unstoppable poverty. While one part of the world grabs more and
more capital, the other part is starving to death. Millions of casualties and destruction
are a price to be paid for this new world, since it requires oil and rivers of human blood
to maintain its selfish transient life.
211
DISCUSSION
Ivan Ilchev: Thank you Prof. Repovac. I think that the papers we heard this
morning have raised a number of important and interesting questions. In fact, as
Professor of Modern Balkan History at the University of Sofia, I have always had the
problem of defining the Balkans, and I think that this morning we have heard a number
of papers, which prove that the definition of the Balkans isn’t a geographical one, but
is rather tied very closely with imagery, attitudes, mentality, etc. I am very glad that we
heard papers on the inventing of the nations in the Balkans, and on the fruitful field for
which there is no translation in any of the Balkan languages – Gender Studies. I was
particularly interested in the last paper we heard. Many times I have asked myself the
question about the future of the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the European commu-
nity, and whether this state can conform to the already accepted models in Europe, or
maybe we are all observers of a new model of state-building in Europe.
You have the floor for questions.
Wolfgang Hoepken: Again I have many remarks and questions to all papers.
Perhaps this is the European colonial attitude Prof. Repovac spoke about. I would like
to start with your paper, Prof. Repovac. You provided a depressing picture of Bosnia-
Herzegovina. I agree with the problems you mentioned, but nevertheless I have a prob-
lem with their explanation and with ascribing those depressing results exclusively or
partly to the Dayton Peace Accords and to the international community. Dayton has
its deficits and you spoke about them very clearly. But Dayton I think did leave enough
room for manoeuvring to achieve a better integration of Bosnia. But in my opinion this
room for manoeuvring was constantly obstructed by the political interests of the local
political elites. Of course, the Office of the High Representative might be criticised for
their politics. How can you construct a democratic order if you are constantly interfer-
ing from above? But on the other hand, I think the little progress that has been made to
a great extent has exactly been made due to the international intervention. Take the tax
reform that is under way now, which for the first time is trying to overcome the entities’
borders; or the police reform, the military reform. The local elites of all the three ethnic
groups and the two entities have often waited for the decisions of the international com-
munity because they themselves have been unwilling and unable to undertake measures.
And this is I think something that also has to be taken into consideration. My Institute
for textbook research was involved for a couple of years in the change of textbooks in
Bosnia. In those days we had thirteen Bosnian ministers of education in Bosnia; ironi-
cally the number speaks for itself. But they agreed on the guidelines for the textbooks of
history and geography, and these guidelines will probably become a law. This is a very
small step, a very small progress, which is also due to international intervention.
212 Discussion
As to your final remark on the end of the great philosophies, maybe the post-
modernists are right that the time of great narratives is definitely over, but this is a dif-
ferent point.
I also have remarks on some of the other papers and particularly to the two pa-
pers dealing with gender issues, which I found very interesting and stimulating and
which are of course a very difficult topic. But Mr. Momose wrote at the end of his paper
that the process of establishing the patriarchal gender order led to sexual violence, or
that the result of this process was sexual violence. I wonder if this really is plausible. The
patriarchal order isn’t an order that necessarily provokes violence. You can easily argue
the other way round. Maybe it is the destruction of the traditional patriarchal order in
the Balkans during the twentieth century that has led to increased sexual violence in
society. So I think that we should study social change in the pre-war society in gender
terms and the actual violence before we come to such a conclusion.
Jorgen Nielsen: May I propose that we take questions and comments and then
go back to the speakers for a round of responses?
Antonina Zhelyazkova: I would like to ask Prof. Repovac a question that I al-
ways ask as a researcher: Where does the thin line run, the line that allows things to
happen in a particular way rather than in another way? We spent all day yesterday
discussing the name change in Bulgaria, the violence against Turks. Indeed, we lived
through critical moments at the end of 1989 and at the beginning of 1990. For us and
for outside observers alike, the possibility that we would start fighting in Bulgaria was
very real. But we didn’t start fighting. I remember that a few months before the out-
break of war in Bosnia, I was visited by a group from Israel. They were representa-
tives of some commission, there were also people from Intelligence, and they asked me
about my opinion: Was it possible that there would be war in Bosnia? I laughed and
said, ‘That’s absolutely impossible!’ Moreover, when we were establishing our National
Reconciliation Committee and were trying to prevent civil war in Bulgaria, we always
cited this multiethnicity in Bosnia – for us Bosnia was a role model. I even remember
telling them at the time that it was more likely that bad things would happen in Kosovo,
as they did later. But I never thought that there could be civil war in Bosnia. So I am
simply asking myself the question, why do things develop badly and lead to civil war
in some places, but not in others? What happens to set things in motion? By the way,
let me tell you that those people from Israel who spoke to me at the time heard me out
and told me I was wrong. So that is why they would take action to evacuate Jews from
Bosnia. And they did so before the beginning of the war. In other words, they knew
that there would be war in Bosnia.
Elton Skendaj: I have two question-points to Toni. The first point concerns the
major narratives we always hear in the Albanian and Kosovar press, narratives about the
Serbian and Croatian elites living somehow in parallel national realities. Basically they
Discussion 213
claim that the other elite manipulated the facts and did everything to mobilise their own
people. But at the same time they are very much mirror images of one another. So do you
think that this might be true? And secondly, considering the latest elections when the
Radicals and Socialists, aka nationalists, won a substantial vote in Serbia, what do you
think the perception of a Greater Serbia is among (a) the elites, and (b) the population?
Jorgen Nielsen: Some of the things that have been said make me speculate as
well. In particular, Antonina’s comment about her Israeli delegation. I see many par-
allels here with Lebanon and Palestine. First is the role of international peacekeep-
ing. What has international peacekeeping achieved over a period of fifty–sixty years?
I have sympathy with one of the comments that international peacekeeping at least
puts an end to the conflict, but very often it seems to freeze the conflict into place
and then eventually ends up prolonging tensions and possibly leading to further out-
breaks and repetitions of the original conflict. We have many cases to prove that: Israel
and Palestine, Cyprus, currently possibly Azerbaijan, Armenia, the examples from the
Balkans. It is interesting that your Israeli delegation didn’t accept your predictions; af-
ter all, in 1991 the Lebanese civil war had just ended and the Israeli delegation could be
making direct comparisons between Lebanon and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Lebanese
side of me would anyway suspect some conspiracy; I suspect they knew that weapons
transfers were actually taking place secretly from the Lebanese warring parties to the
Balkans at the time. It’s not an optimistic set of reflections, I’m afraid.
Antonina Zhelyazkova: I am actually asking myself this question about Bulgaria

because at the end of 1989 and the beginning of 1990 I simply felt with my skin that
we could truly start fighting at any moment. As founder of the National Reconciliation
Committee, I somehow felt this for two or three months. In those months, for example,
I personally was in danger and so was my family, and the National Bodyguard Service
offered us protection. And I’m constantly trying to understand, did somebody decide
that we wouldn’t start fighting, or was it us ourselves who did things in a way that made
sure we wouldn’t start fighting? That is why I am asking and trying to understand from
the Bosnian bitter experience how things stand.
Hidajet Repovac: Before we hear more questions we should answer some. About
Prof. Zhelyazkova’s question if somebody was interested to start the conflicts between
nations and ethnic communities, or were they generated from within: I think there was
a bit of both, but some initial spark must have come from the outside. I believe that the
conflict in Bosnia started because it was in the interest of somebody from the outside
to destabilise this space. At least I have such a feeling, because there were so many peo-
ple against the war that they were even ready to die in the streets, protesting against the
coming nationalism and war. Yet despite that the war began, and that means that some-
body organised it. I have said it before: this nationalism which appeared in all parts of
the former Yugoslavia was financed from the same purse. And a thick purse it was in-
deed! Whether this purse came from faraway Canada and the USA, or from Australia,
214 Discussion
or from some other countries, I am not certain, but I think it was from there because
you know that the Chetnik movement is exceptionally strong in Canada and the USA.
Chicago and Detroit are centres of the Chetnik movement, but also of Muslim nation-
alists. They also live there and pay heavily for what is happening around here.
So Bosnia-Herzegovina was destabilised by force because it was a model of a
multinational, multicultural and multi-religious way of life. It was the only model, be-
cause all other countries have a mono-national character. Poland is mono-national,
France – despite the immigrants from the Maghreb and the Flemish people – is also
mono-national. Just try to go against French nationalism and you will see how danger-
ous it is. Or German nationalism, or the English one.
Bosnia-Herzegovina was a small-scale Yugoslavia. It was also a geographical and
cultural centre of Yugoslavia. Sarajevo University had 60,000 students before the war,
and 26 faculties and art academies. This was a powerful force and it had to be de-
stroyed, it had to be destroyed because it had a strong construction and was on a seri-
ous path towards Europe. This is all broken up now and a semi-protectorate has been
set up, in which the High Representative decides what kind of policy should be pur-
sued. I think it is his responsibility, and here I am not talking about a concrete person
but about the office as such, that the national and nationalist establishment still runs
Bosnia-Herzegovina – Serbian, Muslim, Croatian nationalists. They have been given
the right to rule Bosnia and nobody is replacing them. The international community
wants an unstable Bosnia because Bosnia could be a model for a possible resurrection
of Yugoslavia in some way. A dangerous model because Yugoslavia was better than
what we have now. I am certain that it was also more democratic than these current
multiparty democracies are, which have cost many people their lives. I think that be-
fore the war Yugoslavia was much more democratic and European than we are now.
Now the national parties direct us what to do and how and when and what to think.
And this is a fatal situation, which is currently the norm not just in Bosnia but also in
other ex-Yugoslav states that are barely able to survive economically. And this is the es-
sence of our problem. Why should cultural or national-ethnic problems be the most
important? Trust me that it would be easy to overcome them if the wages would rise to
let’s say 3,000 or 4,000 USD, instead of being a few hundred dollars.
Bosnia-Herzegovina indeed is a cultural-civilisational space. Bosnia became a
Roman province in the year 9 AD. A Roman province can never be an uncivilised
space. So, all that which existed before has been destroyed and the answer to your ques-
tion, Antonina, is exactly this: somebody from the outside wanted it to happen. It was
in somebody’s interest to destabilise the Balkans and I think this is the same model as
the one used in Iraq and which is planned for Iran and Palestine and Syria and perhaps
for some other parts of the world. Maybe also for North Korea, but this is less likely be-
cause they have nuclear weapons. You know, it is unbelievable but sometimes nuclear
weapons can serve for humanitarian purposes. And sometimes they are used as weap-
ons of mass destruction. We in Bosnia also seem to possess weapons of mass destruc-
tion, only in our case they are called nationalism. Nationalism is the most dangerous
weapon, but I will talk more about this later if necessary.
Discussion 215
Jorgen Nielsen: I give the floor to other speakers from this morning.
Toni Petkovic: If I may reply to Elton’s questions. You asked me one very easy
question, and one very difficult. The easy question is were the Serb and Croat nation-
alisms basically mirror-images and did they support each other. And the short an-
swer is yes, of course. That is relatively obvious. It is common knowledge that during
the wars of succession on many occasions Milosevic and Tudjman actually cooperat-
ed and helped each other. To give one example, in today’s Serbia it is pretty widely if
not known than at least suspected, that even the Croatian offensive against the Serbs
of Croatia, which resulted in the Serbian exodus from Croatia, was a deal between the
two of them. Of course, there is no proof and the events are still too recent to give any
firm historical evidence, but it is at least safe to say that definitely both of these nation-
alisms fed and boosted each other.
The very difficult question is about Greater Serbia and if Greater Serbia was the
motive behind the dissolution and the wars that started. This question is extremely dif-
ficult and I can give a long answer but the short answer will, I think, probably surprise
you. I think that nobody today, and even before, not even the nationalists in Serbia
were actually guided by the ideal of achieving some Greater Serbian project, which
would encompass certain territories from many years ago. No, this wasn’t the idea. But
to explain this I should be very careful and go back to the beginning of the dissolution
of Yugoslavia. In the early 1990s there were some very interesting analyses. People like
Zoran Djindjic, Vojin Dimitrijevic and Vesna Pesic analysed the various options that
Serbs had. To give you the end result, the option finally adopted by the Serbian politi-
cal elite and Milosevic himself very much resembled the plan for establishing a Greater
Serbia, but its roots were much, much different. It would be a simplification to explain
everything by a project to establish some historical homeland.
The Yugoslav federation could be dismantled according to two principles: first,
along ethnic lines, so basically to divide the nations, and second, along administrative
lines – that is, the republican borders. So this was the big debate in the 1990s, a debate
that was going on not only in Serbia but also in Croatia, Slovenia and everywhere else:
which of those two principles were they going to adopt? Reasonable analysts like the
ones I mentioned said that whichever principle you chose it was going to be disastrous
for Serbs. If you chose ethnic lines in order to unite ethnically Serbian lands, then you
would need to attempt to dissolve Croatia, you would commit a bloody massacre in
Bosnia, but then, according to the logic of this principle, you would have to give up
Kosovo to Albanians, divide Vojvodina and give Sandjak to the ethnic Muslims. A to-
tally wrong way. But the other way – dividing Yugoslavia along republican borders –
meant that millions of Serbs would be left out of Serbia in the independent Slovenia,
Bosnia, Croatia, and Macedonia. So each way was leading to a disaster – a bloody one,
as it turned out to be, or peaceful, but in both cases the results would be catastrophic
from the point of view of Serbian national interests. What was in the end accepted, not
just in Serbia but also in Croatia, was a combination, and this combination led to an ex-
216 Discussion
plosion. When it suits us, in cases in which our ethnic kinsmen live in other republics,
we will argue for an ethnic principle, and in other areas, such as Kosovo, it will suit us
to argue for republican borders. These policies were adopted in all the republics, but es-
pecially in Serbia and Croatia. Which meant that they were aiming for the maximum.
Reasonable people argued that (a) you are going to create bloodshed in the former
Yugoslavia, and (b) you are going to lose it all. And I think now most of the prophe-
cies of Djindjic and other smart guys from that period were basically proved to be true.
Nobody achieved their goals and the whole country was dragged into a terrible night-
mare with huge human, economic and political consequences.
At the very early stages of the conflict the visionaries saw that you cannot ap-
ply these principles to try to create an ethnically unified state. The only reasonable
approach was to create a state, which would be willingly shared by several nations.
Djindjic warned that perhaps such state could exist without Slovenia, and perhaps with-
out Macedonia too. But Serbs couldn’t have a viable state without the willing participa-
tion of at least Bosnian Muslims. They argued that a war between Serbs and Muslims
would destroy both nations. The outcome was precisely that. In terms of suffering from
the war, there is no doubt that the greatest victims were the Bosnian Muslims. But in
terms of the ability to live together in a normal state, Serbs are pretty much the worst
losers in this war. This combination of the two principles that Serbs adopted created the
illusion that there was some plan for creating some kind of Greater Serbia. But it was
the completely illogical and self-destructive choice of principles that led to this totally
catastrophic result.
And I want to agree with many of the points that Prof. Repovac made, and say
that I share his hope for some coexistence (if not reintegration, which is probably
out of the question now), some form of cooperation among the states of the former
Yugoslavia. Then the only nation or state that could initiate, or mediate between all the
sides could be Bosnia and the Bosnian Muslims. And I want to ask him: Does he en-
visage any such initiative in the near or distant future at all, does he think that this is
feasible at all, or our region is condemned to wait for many years before Europe forces
the remnants of the fragmented state into some kind of cooperation and normal, civi-
lised relations?
Marko Hajdinjak: I have two comments. The first one is addressed to Prof.
Repovac. Despite the fact that I agree with most of the things you said, I completely
disagree with this idea that Yugoslavia was destroyed according to some devious plan
from the outside. This is, I think, basically wishful thinking. It is the normal psycho-
logical reaction of all of us from the former Yugoslavia – to put the blame on some-
body else in order to make it easier for ourselves. However, the truth is that Yugoslavia
was destroyed from within. If I have to point at somebody to accuse directly, it was the
Serbian and Slovenian communists who started the avalanche that later engulfed the
whole country. Of course, there were some influences from the outside. For example,
the Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian, and Muslim diasporas, which contributed enormous
Discussion 217
amounts of funds to the nationalist sides engaged in the war, but this was basically add-
ing fuel to the fire. According to my best belief, the initial spark came from the inside.
The second thing I would like to bring up is the character of the conflict. Usually
in most of the scholarly discussions about the war, and even here at this forum, we
present the war in Yugoslavia as an ethnic war or a war between different ethnic and
religious groups. And I think we tend to oversimplify what was really happening. The
conflict in the former Yugoslavia was played out on many levels. Ethnicity and religion
were only one level of the whole thing. One level I can point at was the conflict between
tradition and modernity – the patriarchal traditional clan system of the highlands, of
the Dinaric Mountains, was at war with the multiethnic, peaceful societies of the low-
lands. The second level was the war between villages and cities. Fine examples are the
sieges and bombardments of Sarajevo, Dubrovnik, and Vukovar. Well, this wasn’t ex-
actly the case with Vukovar, but Sarajevo and Dubrovnik were bombarded by villagers
positioned in the hills and mountains around the city. The third level of the conflict was
the war between newcomers and old settlers. Here the perfect case in point is Radovan
Karadzic. As some of you may know, he is a Montenegrin, born in some god-forsaken
village on the Durmitor Mountain. He came as a student to Sarajevo and settled there.
He claimed to be a poet and in one his poems he expressed his contempt for and fear
of the city. He wrote that ‘we people from the Durmitor Mountain are free-spirited’
and he compared the city, Sarajevo, to a prison constraining him. And the fourth lev-
el I want to note is the symbiosis between political elites and organised crime, which
waged war on the ordinary people of the former Yugoslavia. One of the gravest conse-
quences of this war was total criminalisation, which lasted throughout the 1990s and
still exists to a great extent in Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and to a lesser extent in Croatia.
Dobrinka Parusheva: Marko’s remarks are also relevant to what I wanted to say
in response to Wolfgang’s comment and question. The question is how should we inter-
pret sexual violence during the Yugoslav wars, could we explain the spread of violence
with the existence or, conversely, with the destruction of patriarchal order. The con-
flict between villages and cities, between highlands and lowlands is very much to the
point. What happened even before the wars can indeed be viewed as a sort of change,
as destruction of the patriarchal order and the patriarchal way of thinking. But we still
shouldn’t forget that a large part of the population in the regions we are talking about
is still rural and the patriarchal order and mentality has not only survived there but is
being reproduced and, in my opinion, sometimes even grows stronger for one reason
or another – especially in wartime. Moreover, in wartime deeper rooted, stereotypical
ways of thinking will always grow stronger at the expense of new, modern, European if
you want, ways of thinking. There will always be a regression in people’s minds that is
greater than it appears to be.
For example, let us compare the relationship between the war and women in a
historical perspective; for me it was very interesting to observe precisely this regres-
sion. Until the First World War women remained physically removed from any kind of
218 Discussion
combat operations. During the First World War – or, more precisely, even during some
of the last wars in the nineteenth century – women became involved as nurses, and so
on. In WWI men were replaced by women in the civilian sphere for the first time, with
women replacing men when the men had to go to the front, and this was a new way of
involving women in war. Next, in WWII, we see for the first time women serving on the
front not only as medical workers. Then at the end of the twentieth century, in the 1990s,
women suddenly disappeared from the battlefield. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I
personally cannot remember any photos or footage showing women ‘firing’ in any way.
This problem can be interpreted in many different ways, but in my view what
we had was retrogression. And this has quite a lot to do with the explanation involv-
ing the power of cultural codes, and the power and persistence of the patriarchal order
and the differences between villages and cities, and so on. As to the violence against
women before the war mentioned by Wolfgang, it is true that there was such violence
both before and apart from the war. There is no doubt that there was violence against
women apart from the war – domestic violence, as there was and is in Bulgaria. And
that is precisely why I think we need to focus more on the deliberate use of the tech-
niques of violence against women aimed at ethnic cleansing rather than on individual
cases of violence. By the way, a survey conducted by a Croatian organisation for wom-
en’s rights in 1994 found plenty of evidence that there was violence not only against the
other women but also against their own women. Croatian officers, Croatian service-
men abused Croatian women sexually, morally, psychologically – in other words, there
are many layers, many levels at which the problem can be discussed.
Antonina Zhelyazkova: I have a question to Ryoji and to Dobrinka, who have

studied rape. We visited refugee camps to interview victims during the Kosovo crisis,
and some Western foundations even proposed that we track down cases of rape dur-
ing this war. But we didn’t find a single case of rape. It would be interesting to compare
why there was rape in Bosnia but not in Kosovo. In Kosovo, just as in Bosnia, there are
highlands, villages, cities, patriarchal order – who can you call clan-minded and pa-
triarchal if not the Albanians in Kosovo – but Albanians didn’t rape Serbian women
nor did Serbs rape Albanian women. In others words, there might be something else.
Maybe rape is a conventional weapon, and since everybody chooses their own weapon,
men in Bosnia chose this particular weapon while the Albanians in Kosovo opted for
another type of weapon. I don’t know, I am asking you what you think.
Wolfgang Hoepken: In line with what Antonina said, I think that the question
of the cultural background of warfare for historians and anthropologists is a very fas-
cinating one. Yet I think it is terribly difficult and I have the impression that we know
very little about it and we tend to replace it sometimes with some vague hypothesis,
like for example the hypothesis of the war of the villages against the cities. I mean that
in the end the majority of victims came from the villages.
In my understanding of the patriarchal order, it is characterised by regulated
violence; by extremely regulated violence. The patriarchal order demands violence as
Discussion 219
a duty under certain circumstances but it prevents violence in others. What we had in
the Yugoslav war was a totally unregulated violence; there were no borders between
civilians and soldiers, no difference between soldiers and civilians who bear arms, no
sanctions applied, a totally sanction-free space where you could virtually do anything
without being punished. So this is a circumstance which could hardly be described in
terms of an existing patriarchal order.
Dobrinka Parusheva: Just a few words about Antonina’s question: I don’t have
an answer why there was no rape in Kosovo. But your comments reinforce the point
I was trying to make: that because there was violence both before and apart from the
war, we should concentrate on the deliberate attempts to pursue a policy of violence, on
the attempts to turn violence into a technique and tool of achieving a particular politi-
cal goal. Probably there wasn’t such a political goal in Kosovo.
Antonina Zhelyazkova: Could there be demographic reasons for the rapes?

Serbs were terrified by the demographic growth of the Albanians in Kosovo. Maybe they
didn’t want to rape Albanian women because that would mean more Albanian births.
Hidajet Repovac: I will answer Antonina’s question. I think Prof. Zhelyazkova

is partly right when she says that rape was used as a weapon in Bosnia, because among
several thousand female refugees from Srebrenica, the majority of them had been
raped. So rape was a weapon that was supposed to contribute to the destruction of one
ethnic group.
Other issues I wanted to briefly talk about are the Dayton Agreement and the
Hague Tribunal, and this is in connection with Marko’s remark that all the reasons were
internal. The setting in which the Dayton Agreement was signed was the following:
behind the table sat Franjo Tudjman, Slobodan Milosevic, who is now on trial in The
Hague, and Alija Izetbegovic; behind them stood President Clinton, Holbrooke, and
other architects of Dayton. In addition to Milosevic, Tudjman and Izetbegovic should
probably also have been in the dock in The Hague, but most likely their death saved
them from it. Nevertheless, they are the living proof that the concept [for destroying
Yugoslavia] was designed outside. The Nuremberg trial of the Nazis was very quick,
and all the accused received their verdict in a short period of time. But today in Bosnia
we say that it is better to be a Hague indictee than to live in Bosnia. The Nuremberg
trial was quick, but the trial in The Hague will go on for ten more years and the ques-
tion remains whether Karadzic and Mladic, the main executors of the Bosnian war,
will ever be taken to The Hague. Why is this so when the world has at its disposal all
possible means of bringing the criminals to justice? Why is this so? Precisely because
they don’t want to stabilise Bosnia-Herzegovina and the former Yugoslav territories. If
a genuine wish for stabilisation of this region existed, they would have been captured
and punished a long time ago. And that is why I think that not everything started from
within, but it was also directed from the outside by certain strategic goals.
220 Discussion
Ilona Tomova: It seems to me that we are still too close to the event, that it still
hurts too much, that we are still confused and want to find simple and quick expla-
nations for things very complicated. And that in this way we are mythologizing real-
ity. We are inventing a unified international community that has evil designs for the
Balkans and we are reproducing all myths of our homegrown nationalisms in which we
all saw ourselves as victims of the Great Powers – of all Great Powers at the same time.
But this is also a question of our impotence; indeed, it seems very difficult for us to say,
‘we’re decent folks and we were very strongly against this war and tried to prevent it,
but it happened despite our will and we must somehow explain this.’ Prof. Repovac is
trying to give us not simply an answer. He isn’t saying that only the international com-
munity is to blame – there is no such very mythical and very united community. I re-
member how we explained things in Bulgaria in the 80s and 90s; we, too, used the in-
ternational community as one of the main explanations for what had happened to us.
We were trying to persuade ourselves that we weren’t really so bad, that we had a good
heritage from our history which showed that we could be tolerant at times in which
others weren’t. So how did this happen to us, why didn’t we react? And then we again
saw this mythical outside community as a possible explanation. They wanted to destroy
communism, the reasoning went, and this justified all means. Nationalism as an ide-
ology proved to be a very effective means and it was used full force everywhere in the
Soviet bloc. And it succeeded, including in Bulgaria. Because I have been brought up
on the ideology of Marxism, I would like us to see many other reasons too: our failure
to cope with modernisation, with the very difficult problem of the industrialisation and
modernisation of agriculture, our total failure in the field of humanism and of lending
value and meaning to human life – the value of the individual was problematic and pri-
ority was given to the collective. That is why we cannot look for the main reason out-
side. This is an easy solution but it doesn’t help us in any way. And it seems to me that
the explanations must be so complex and multi-faceted that today we will invariably
fail to find one ‘main’ explanation. But the idea that welfare and prosperity automati-
cally solve cultural, language and national problems is an illusion too. Or some mythol-
ogized democratic order which we, unlike the West, don’t have and which, if we some-
how manage to copy quickly, will immediately help us get rid of nationalism, ethno-
centrism, chauvinism and so on – this is a myth too, it too is an attempt to find a quick
fix in a very difficult situation, to shirk responsibility and to shift responsibility onto
others. To claim that somebody else must make our decisions, that those decisions can-
not be wrong, that they must be right, as if somebody from the outside could do it in-
stead of us. It seems to me that what our discussion today shows is our impotence.
Jorgen Nielsen: Thank you very much. As it wasn’t a specific question and the
time is running out, we got to stop at somewhere and I suggest we stop on that. Thank
you very much.
221
Fourth Session:
Former Yugoslavia:
War, State-Building and
Demographic Fears – continued
Moderators:
Prof. Wolfgang Hoepken

Prof. Ekaterina Nikova
222
223
ETHNIC VIOLENCE IN KOSOVA1 AFTER THE

NATO-YUGOSLAV PEACE AGREEMENT
Elton Skendaj
Centre for Peace and Disarmament Education (CPDE), Albania
In June 1999, Yugoslavia and NATO signed a peace agreement that ended the
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, barred the Yugoslav and Serbian forces from Kosova,
and practically made Kosova an international protectorate under UN administration
and NATO protection. The UN Security Council declared that the international com-
munity would help build a multiethnic Kosova. Eighteen months after the peace agree-
ment, Kosova still remains a violence-torn place. The multiethnic idea is far from be-
coming a reality. Interethnic and intraethnic violence continues to undermine the se-
curity of Kosova. Interestingly, the context – that is, perpetuating violence after the war
has formally ended – is similar to the one in the Rwandan case portrayed by Philip
Gourevitch in his insightful book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be
Killed with Our Families.
This paper analyses the violence in Kosova after the war, its causes and possible so-
lutions. Hundreds of people have been killed in Kosova since June 1999 for various rea-
sons. The main reasons are: 1) the deep-seated animosity between Albanians, and Serbs
and Roma, (Gypsies); 2) Political violence between Albanians; 3) rise of criminality in the
context of lack of law and order; and 4) inability of international structures to deal with
the daily violence in Kosova. The future security of Kosova remains precarious.
Radicalised Interethnic Violence

Most of the violence has been caused by retaliation between different ethnic
groups. Because of the wartime insecurity many civilians and former combatants are
well armed and refuse to be demilitarised. As the International Crisis Group points
out in the Kosovo Report Card, ‘neither the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) nor
the UN were prepared to deal effectively with the violence that unfolded in Kosovo
after the war as returning Albanian refugees sought revenge against Serbs.’2 The ap-
1
The terms ‘Kosova’ and ‘Kosovo’ are used interchangeably. ‘Kosova’ is the Albanian
spelling, while ‘Kosovo’ is the Slavic and also international spelling.
2
International Crisis Group. Kosovo Report Card, 28 August 2000. http://www.crisis-
group.org/home/index.cfm?id=1587&l=1 (14 November 2005), 1.
224 Elton Skendaj
proximately 800,000 Albanian refugees that returned to Kosova had been driven away
with impunity by the Yugoslav army and Serb paramilitary forces. The general percep-
tion of Albanians was that the Kosova Serbs participated in the killing and helped the
Milosevic regime implement its chauvinistic policy. Albanians also claimed that Roma
were looting their homes and lands, allying therefore with Serbs. Albanian retaliation
against Serbs and Roma has been severe. Serbs and Roma have been forced either to
flee Kosova or to live in separate enclaves guarded by NATO forces. Serb violence af-
ter the war toward Albanians has been documented as well, but at a ratio of about one
to ten cases of Albanian violence against Serbs. A report by Amnesty International in-
sightfully claims that: ‘Although the frequency of violent incidents, particularly against
minorities, was reduced between January and June, part of the reason for this may sim-
ply have been the increased separation of the communities.’3
Systematic attacks upon the Serb population, and to a lesser extent upon the
other non-Albanian minorities, show that there are elements in the Kosova Albanian
population that want Kosova to be purely Albanian. These elements could be put in
two broad categories which are not necessarily exclusive: a) Albanian individuals who
want to pursue their personal vendettas following the decimation of their own families,
and b) the Kosova Liberation Army which, even though it claims to have been demili-
tarised, has been targeting minorities while using their wartime mentality.
The situation of the Roma people is very insecure as well. Attacks on Roma of-
ten consisted of hand grenades thrown into their yards or houses. An example cited
by the AI report is that of the 72-year-old Axhije Agush from Gjilan. She lived with her
husband in one of the former Roma quarters of the town, which most of Roma had al-
ready fled. A NATO soldier stood guard a few metres from her house, since one of the
tasks of the international mission is to protect the minorities in Kosova. A hand gre-
nade was thrown into her yard on 28 April 2000. Axhije died by the time she reached
the hospital. The murderer remains unidentified. Stories like this galvanise the minor-
ities and force them either to flee or to segregate themselves even more. The price of
both options is very high. If one flees, one becomes a refugee living at the lowest pos-
sible level of human standards. On the other hand, there is a limit to segregation, since
Kosova is a small land with little or no open spaces for frontiers.
The international forces did not predict this kind of violence well and therefore
did not have a coherent strategy for coping with it. ‘International officials, neverthe-
less, knew that Serbs who had taken an active part in the war would flee and that some
Albanians would seek revenge for the murderous campaign Serbs had waged against
them during the war.’4 The massive Serb exodus was a surprise to all but Albanians who
claimed that the criminals were the ones to leave. ‘Humanitarian officials who entered
3
Amnesty International, Concern Europe January – June 2000. Report-EUR, 21 August
2000. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engEUR010032000 (14 November 2005), 1.
4
International Crisis Group. Kosovo Report Card, 28 August 2000. http://www.crisis-
group.org/home/index.cfm?id=1587&l=1 (14 November 2005), 15.
Ethnic Violence in Kosova after the NATO-Yugoslav Peace Agreement 225
Kosova on the first day reported that some roads were already clogged with fleeing
Serbs, a phenomenon they called – comparing the Serb flight to that of Albanians go-
ing in a different direction only a few weeks previously – ‘tractors in reverse.’’5 Twenty
thousand Serbs left in the first fifteen days after the war, followed by another 130,000 in
the next fifteen months.
The Collective Guilt Concept

Balkan intellectuals attribute the radicalisation of ethnic groups during conflict
at least partly to the Collective Guilt idea. If a few Albanians did something wrong, then
all Albanians are presumed to have done the same wrong. An issue under dispute be-
comes personal first and collectivised later. Language reflects this kind of transforma-
tion. ‘All Albanians are terrorists,’ Serbian propaganda said during the 1990s. ‘All Serbs
are paramilitary and therefore murderers,’ Albanians claim after the Kosova war. ‘All
Gypsies looted and helped the occupiers, those bastards!’ is another common claim
I hear during my travels in Kosova. The individual therefore is just part of an ethnic
spectrum, not a ray of light of its own.
The other side of the coin is the inability of most Kosovars of all ethnicities to
take personal responsibility for what is happening around them. Hundreds of years of
domination by foreign powers have created a mentality that avoids personal guilt and
puts the blame for all victimisation and problems on outside impersonal systems. A
popular joke goes like this: A man is walking in the street and he stumbles upon a stone
and falls flat on his nose. ‘Damn government,’ says he, ‘when will we finally have roads
without stones?’ Scapegoating relieves everyone from guilt and produces self-right-
eousness to justify resisting and fighting the others.
Political Violence
The end of the war also lifted the lid of internal political polarisation in Kosova.
Albanian parties rely on the personality cult of their leader in order to assert them-
selves and gain legitimacy in a cultural context that fosters authoritarian masculine
values. Most of these leaders take criticism personally and a culture of in-party loyalty
fosters groupthink. Strong schisms occur when two potential leaders quarrel. The main
visible result is the lack of political dialogue between the main parties. Another visible
manifestation is the killing of senior politicians.
The Kosovar leaders play the power game in zero-sum terms. The quest for inde-
pendence united all fronts before and during the war. After the war, the differences have
become visible. According to the Kosovo Report Card, the international community
was afraid that there would be a civil war between the radical followers of the Kosova
Liberation Army and the moderate members of the majority party of the Democratic
5
Ibid. 15.
226 Elton Skendaj
League of Kosova (LDK). The leaders of these two parties, Thaci and Rugova, harbour
personal grudges toward each other. Their followers harbour collective grudges as well.
A number of local politicians have been murdered in the past year, mainly because of
their political status. An example is the killing of Xhemal Mustafa on 20 November
2000. Mr. Mustafa, according to UN reports, was a spokesman for Rugova and head of
the Kosova Information Centre. He was shot and killed outside his apartment. The kill-
ers remain unidentified.6 The political message is clear: ‘Rivals need to be silenced, and
even eliminated if they speak too much.’ Virtually all political parties have condemned
this murder, but the implicit violent message is well understood by the Kosovars.
Policing Kosova
The slowness of the process of policing Kosova has badly affected security in the
region. Serbian police fled Kosova after the war and a combination of international and
Kosovar police was supposed to fill the gaps. As a BBC news report claims, ‘Kosova was
supposed to get 4,700 international police to establish law and order, but there were
less than 2,400 as of February [2000]. This means that KFOR [Kosovo Force of NATO]
which numbers about 40,000 troops, has had to assume a police role which was never
intended.’7 The quality of the international force varies greatly, and many internation-
al policemen can speak neither English nor Balkan languages. Many local Kosovars
therefore do not regard this international force as capable of enforcing security inside
the region. Currently, international experts are training local police. A 4,000-strong
Kosovo Police Service (KPS) is under formation. Of the 350 recruits that graduated in
March 2000, fifteen percent come from the non-Albanian minorities.
As most of the crimes are related to ethnic violence, the police are reluctant to
arrest ethnic Albanians. The judges, who are also mainly Albanian, have not shown
particular interest in putting them in prison. The prisons are overcrowded as it is. Mere
criminality is fostered as well in this climate of lawlessness. If society continues to be
polarised, such double standards will go on.
Recommendations for Change

1) To counter the Albanian impatience with slow change, the international and
Kosovar community need to be convinced that change will be slow, and there-
fore short-term goals need to be differentiated from the long-term ones.
2) The short-term goal of achieving law and order has to be prioritised in
Kosova.
6
UNMIK Bringing Peace to Kosovo News Reports. UN deputy head in Kosovo condemns
murder of local politician. 24 November 2000. http://www.unmikonline.org/archives/news11_
00.htm#2411 (10 November 2004).
7
Kosovo: An Uneasy Peace. BBC news. 12 March, 2000, http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/eng-
lish/static/kosovo_fact_files/default.stm (25 October 2002), 1.
Ethnic Violence in Kosova after the NATO-Yugoslav Peace Agreement 227
3) The idea of multiethnic communities needs to be replaced in the short term
with a separative peace where both communities will have minimal contact
with each other.
4) Projects that focus on the long-term goals of building civil society mecha-
nisms and enhancing multiethnic future solutions need to be built on an or-
derly, economically better off society.
5) Workshops that include the elderly and youth leaders of the main political
parties need to be organised in order to emphasise the value of partnership
and cooperation.
6) Internally displaced minorities need to receive some remunerative help from
the government.
7) Media and civil society need to promote the doctrine of individual responsi-
bility and downplay the doctrine of collective guilt.
8) Collect more weapons from the civilian population, even if they need to be
bought.
9) Create monetary and social incentives for local policemen and judges to en-
force the law.
10) Other.
228
THE ISSUE OF KOSOVA AND THE MINORITIES

Shkelzen Maliqi
Centre for Humanitarian Studies ‘Gani Bobi,’
Serbia and Montenegro (Kosovo)
The NATO intervention in Kosova (1999) was indeed inevitable and necessary,
as was the intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina a few years earlier. If the international
community had chosen to stay on the sidelines on both of these occasions, Bosnia and
Kosova would have experienced even greater destruction and the consequences for the
international community would have been shameful and unacceptable.
Kosova was quite lucky in the sense that the decision to intervene was made
faster and the international community was more decisive than in the case of Bosnia,
where it hesitated far too long for four years. The experience of Bosnia and the quick-
ness and decisiveness of the intervention helped keep the number of victims and the
levels of destruction in Kosova on a scale ten times lower than in Bosnia.
It can also be said that the Kosova intervention was somewhat motivated by
the international community’s guilty conscience about the ethnic cleansing and vio-
lent partitions in Bosnia. After the Dayton agreement (1995) effectively legalised the
Serb aggression and the massive ethnic cleansing and the genocide against the Bosnian
Muslims, in 1998 and 1999 Serbs were not allowed to repeat the same scenario in
Kosova. NATO intervened in Kosova to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, but it
also intervened to fix the mistakes that had been made in Bosnia.
The interventions in Bosnia and Kosova ended with the establishment of two
types of ad hoc protectorates that at the time were considered unprecedented in inter-
national relations. These protectorates helped stop the conflicts, stabilise the situation,
and reconstruct social and economic life. Yet even so, in some crucial aspects both the
protectorates can be described as improvisations and experiments.
In Bosnia-Herzegovina, what was created after Dayton was a fragile union where
the ethnic entities were powerful, while the central government became rather formal
and powerless. It still remains questionable whether the international community can
impose, and how long will it need to impose, a more stable, efficient and organic func-
tioning of this composite state.
In Kosova, the protectorate has been built on the basis of an unprincipled compro-
mise between the NATO forces and the Belgrade regime. By June 1999, the NATO bom-
bardments and international political pressure forced the Milosevic regime to submit
to NATO’s demands. Milosevic withdrew his armed forces and his administration from
The Issue of Kosova and the Minorities 229
Kosova and they were replaced with the international Protectorate missions (UNMIK,
KFOR…). UN Resolution 1224 made a concession to Milosevic and the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia was still granted sovereignty over Kosova. This concession has had, and
continues to have, stagnating consequences for Kosova and the region.
***
Kosova remains hostage to its past. There are still blockades, and some problems
seem irresolvable. Probably the greatest factor in this stagnation is the ethnic perspec-
tive on the future of Kosova.
The Albanian majority believes that the only solution should be Kosova’s inde-
pendence. The Serb minority, supported by the Serb government, sees Kosova only
as part of Serbia. Serbs say that they cannot live in an independent Kosova that will
be dominated by Albanians; Albanians say that they do not want and cannot live in a
Serbia dominated by a Serb majority.
On the other hand, the international protectors insist on a model of multiethnic
democracy, but the instruments and tactics that they have been using have not helped
their cause. By leaving the issue of the final status of Kosova open, the international
community has left open and alive the two irresolvable aspirations. This has resulted in
the creation of walls of separation by dividing the Serb enclaves from the Albanian-pop-
ulated territories. For many years, UNMIK has tolerated the parallel Serb institutions in
Northern Kosova and in the enclaves, adding further confusion to the situation.
But I think that the current situation in Kosova is slightly more advanced
than the gloomy description I have just given. I think that the dilemma is no longer
Independent Kosova or Kosova part of Serbia, simply because the second option is
not wanted nor is it possible any longer. I cannot see any return to the days of Serb con-
trol over Kosova. And this is not only because Albanians say so, but also because this
solution is not preferred either by the international community or by Serbs.
In the Serb discourse on Kosova the following alternatives exist: Kosova’s inde-
pendence or its division.
In the international discourse the following alternatives exist: self-governance
(independence) or continuation of the international protectorate.
In the Albanian discourse there is no alternative to independence. The political
parties and the citizens are not considering other options or compromises.
***
Kosova, although it is not a state yet, is a strong candidate for gaining the status
of a state, and thus its independence. With the help of international factors (UNMIK,
the OSCE), Kosova has already built, or is in the process of building, the structures of
a local governance and system that has most of the elements and instruments of state-
hood. The international community has a mandate to build a system that is officially
called ‘substantial autonomy.’ This phrase means a mixed status: more than large-scale
autonomy and less than an independent state. It is a temporary system that is open but
that objectively leads towards independence, because the protectorate cannot contin-
230 Shkelzen Maliqi
ue endlessly. And of course – Kosova’s return into Serbia’s hands cannot be imagined
without the risk of a new war.
According to the international community, whatever the status of Kosova should
be, the system should be based on ‘substantial’ institutions: parliament, president, gov-
ernment, supreme court, police, etc. These institutions are surely the representatives of an
independent political and economic system. By gaining more competence, they will logi-
cally aim toward full independence from the international protectors and from Serbia.
In the past, Kosova had a similar dual status. In Tito’s Federal Yugoslavia it was an
equal federal unit, while simultaneously being autonomous within Serbia. According to
the 1974 Constitution, Kosova had all the functions and rights of a republic, but not the
name: it was called an autonomous region. This was the compromise of Tito’s regime.
In contrast to Tito, who did not want to name Kosova a Republic because of op-
position from Serbia, today’s international protectors have no reason to oppose the
Republic of Kosova. The Republic would be a logical finalisation of the aspirations of
Kosova’s majority population. In fact, there are already precedents of created republics.
In Bosnia, Serbs themselves have created Republika Srpska, and it is recognised inter-
nationally even though it was established violently, through horrendous crimes such as
the Srebrenica massacre.
Some international factors have consistently favoured the option of expanding
the Union of Serbia and Montenegro by adding Kosova to it. According to this idea,
the Republic of Kosova would be part of the Union based on the Bosnian model. Three
years ago, the European Union had insisted on the creation of the Union of Serbia and
Montenegro by giving it a three-year test-term. Now that the deadline is expiring, it
seems obvious that the experiment is not working.
The idea that Kosova should become part of the Union of Serbia and Montenegro
is a utopia. Not only is it unacceptable in Kosova, but it is also strongly opposed even by
Serbia and by Montenegro. These two countries are in fact closer to a divorce between
themselves. In Serbia there are more and more serious voices that want to get rid of the
‘untrustworthy’ Montenegro and to get rid of the burden of Kosova.
Dobrica Cosic, the main ideologue of modern Serb nationalism, published a
book about Kosova last year that has sold a lot of copies in Serbia. In the book, he warns
the Serbian state and public opinion that Kosova as a whole is lost for Serbia and that
the best option for Serbs is to achieve a compromise that would divide Kosova.
The latest boycott of the elections by Serbs, which was initiated by the Serbian
government and the Orthodox Church, was motivated by the belief that the interna-
tional protectorate in Kosova is leading Kosova towards independence. Serbia is now
attempting to build a consensual policy that would condition Kosova’s independence
with a decentralisation process that would lead to Kosova’s partition. The minimum
that the more realist forces in Serbia would agree upon would be to ensure an autono-
mous Serb unit in an independent Kosova. The maximum demand is that the northern
part of Kosova and the monasteries become part of Serbia, while the rest of Kosova can
choose its fate whether by becoming an independent state or by joining Albania.
The Issue of Kosova and the Minorities 231
There are other rather misty ideas that suggest that the direction of process-
es might change entirely if all of the places under protectorate – meaning those with
border issues and aspirations, or with problems of internal divisions, such as Bosnia,
Serbia and Montenegro, Kosova, and Macedonia – become part of the EU under a spe-
cial favouring procedure, not within the current procedures of membership. As far as
I know, there have been no attempts to build and clarify the models and procedures of
such a policy. I have heard for example the idea that Kosova should be declared a ‘ter-
ritory under the protectorate of the EU.’ Knowing what kind of problems Brussels has
with the procedures of approving new ideas and projects, this project seems unachiev-
able in the short term. The problems of the Balkans are too urgent for us to start initial-
ising the path to the EU in this problematic way.
But the EU can make precedence by overthrowing the current rigid terms for
membership. It can decide for example to create an instrument of an ad hoc limited
membership with time limits and deadlines. As such, Kosova and the other problemat-
ic territories could gain membership in the EU (not as a promise, but as a formal agree-
ment) by starting with low-scale membership that would rise each year according to
the scale of fulfilment of standards necessary and applicable to all other EU states. But,
this idea has small chances of winning support in Brussels.
***
However, the EU seems to have recently decided to move forward on the sta-
tus question. At the EU summit on 21 February, the EU issued a statement that a re-
turn back to the way things were in 1999 cannot be a solution for Kosova. This means
that after the end of the international protectorate the possibility for Kosova to return
to Serbian control is excluded. Meanwhile, it remains an open question whether it will
become a totally separate state, or whether it will have some sort of conditional inde-
pendence.
The concession made to the vast majority of Kosova’s citizens – Albanians and
other ethnic groups such as Turks, Bosnians, Gorans and Ashkali who request inde-
pendence from Serbia – is now being conditioned by a request to improve the position
of the minorities who dislike the idea of an independent Kosova. The status of Serbs,
Roma and other minorities in Kosova should be guaranteed and defended with legal
instruments and effective political measures that would create the possibility for free
movement of minorities and the unconditional realisation of their human rights and
freedoms.
The current condition of the Serb minority in Kosova is a consequence of the
NATO intervention in 1999. According to the Kumanovo agreement of 9 June 1999, all
Serbian forces, without any exception, were supposed to leave Kosova – the military,
the police, and the paramilitary groups. And since virtually the entire Serbian popu-
lation in Kosova was armed and recruited in various military and paramilitary forc-
es, this caused an initial massive retreat of Serb citizens as those who had been mobi-
lised to fight went away together with their families. The quick and massive departure
232 Shkelzen Maliqi
of Serbs and Roma who had served actively in Milosevic’s regime was catalysed even
further when the armed Albanian forces took effective control of the situation on the
ground, besides the presence of NATO troops. Also, the massive and quick return of
the Kosovar Albanians expelled to neighbouring countries – in Albania, Macedonia
and Montenegro – resulted in increased pressure on the remaining Serbs due to the
fact that a large part of the returnees had no homes or shelters of their own. Around
120,000 Albanian homes were burned or damaged by Serbian forces during the war,
and upon their return these people entered the departed Serbs’ apartments and hous-
es as well as pressured the remaining ones to leave – in extreme cases they committed
crimes.
The intervening NATO forces did not have sufficient power to establish some
order in the sheltering policy, and this resulted in the emptying of all the cities from
Serbs and Roma – the larger cities of Prishtina, Prizren, Gjakova, Peja, Gjilan were all
emptied. To prevent the total exodus of Serbs, which was not the aim of the NATO
intervention, a decision was made to create protective zones for Serbs in the regions
where they were a majority – regions such as Northern Kosova and the northern part
of the city of Mitrovica, as well as some other enclaves in Central and Southern Kosova.
This measure stopped the Serbian exodus, and later even achieved to raise the number
of Serbs residing in the enclaves. Thus, today it is calculated that around 60% of Serbs
who had lived in Kosova before the war, although internally displaced, still reside in
Kosova. However, they complain about the lack of freedom of movement and the ob-
stacles they face in achieving their right to property.
As far as the number of inhabitants of Kosova is concerned, no exact demo-
graphic data exist because the last census was in 1981. However, it is supposed that of-
ficials in Belgrade are manipulating with the figure of the number of Serbs who have
fled Kosova – their estimate is 200,000. This cannot possibly be true, since in the 1990s
the number of Serbs in Kosova in their entirety was less than 200,000.
Nevertheless, the main problem that the Serbs in Kosova are faced with today
is the issue of adapting to the position of a minority community. During the period
when Serbia administered Kosova, from 1912 until 1999, Serbs had largely consid-
ered themselves as members of the majority, a constituent majority, while they served
as instruments of the central government in Belgrade for control over the Albanians,
whom they considered a ‘constituent minority’ – regardless of the fact that the ratio of
Albanians in relation to Serbs was always 9 to 1.
The ditch that divides Serbs and Albanians continues to exist because of the lack
of a historical agreement between the two nations and the two administrations. Once
there is mutual recognition between Prishtina and Belgrade – and an agreeable solution
is found on establishing the status of the Serbs in Kosova as a minority and no longer as
a constituent majority – there will be a good chance for effective improvement in the life
conditions of the minorities. Also, this would create a generally more peaceful environ-
ment for survival, respect for political and cultural rights, and for the building of bridges
in the sense of normal communication between two nations and two states.
233
THE POLITICAL SYSTEM OF THE REPUBLIC

OF MACEDONIA AND THE FUTURE
OF MULTIETHNIC SOCIETY
(26 Theses)
Vassil Penev
Sofia University ‘St. Kliment Ohridski,’ Bulgaria
I. Background
1. Two immigrant waves, in 1903 and 1913–1914, brought between half and one
million people from Macedonia and Thrace to the then Bulgaria and made
them its citizens (subjects of the Principality and of the Kingdom).
2. The new state, the Republic of Macedonia, is of key importance for the stabil-
ity of the whole Balkan region, and especially of the Western Balkans. Albeit
blunted, ethnic contradictions are still smouldering. Conflicts based on eth-
nicity have not been overcome. They are part of everyday life.
3. In the last twelve years more than half a million citizens have emigrated from
the Republic of Macedonia, mainly to Northern and Central Europe as well as to
North America. These emigrants constitute about 20–25% of Macedonia’s pop-
ulation. The majority of them are of Albanian ethnic origin. This is a continuing
trend, although many countries are imposing restrictions on immigration.
II.A Historical and Emotional Perspective

1. Present-day Macedonia is one of the few states named directly and exactly af-
ter a territory mentioned in the Bible (see 1 Thess. 1:7).1 This same Epistle
of Apostle Paul reads: ‘And the Lord make you to increase and abound in
love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you…’
(1 Thess. 3:12).2 Further on: ‘See that none render evil for evil unto any man;
but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men’ (1
Thess. 5:15).3 And still further: ‘Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.
Abstain from all appearance of evil’ (1 Thess. 5:21–22).4
1
The Holy Bible, King James’ Version, www.beliefnet.com
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
234 Vassil Penev
2. Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) belongs to the symbols of the new
Macedonian nationality. It is good to remember that in addition to his victo-
rious campaigns, he has remained in history also as a statesman who wanted
to build an empire where one people, uniting both victors and vanquished,
would live in peace.5
Today it is obviously tragic that nobody seems to have listened to Apostle
Paul, and that nobody seems to have grasped the essence of Alexander’s im-
perial ideal.
3. On 2 August 1944 the Anti-Fascist Assembly of the National Liberation of
Macedonia (ASNOM – Antifasistickoto sobranie na narodnoto osloboduvane
na Makedonija) defined the future state as national within the framework of
Yugoslav federalism. The Assembly did not resolve the issues of self-determi-
nation, freedoms, and equality of ethnic groups.
4. After the Second World War, the Republic of Macedonia was constituted as
part of the Yugoslav federation. Its first Constitution of 31 December 1946 in-
troduced socialist centralism in all spheres of public life. The next two con-
stitutions, of 4 April 1963 and of 25 February 1974 respectively, aimed at en-
couraging a specific economic liberalisation and economic decentralisation,
Tito’s ‘workers’ self-management,’ and decrease of communist party dictate
over society.
5. In the whole period until 1991, Macedonia remained the poorest and eco-
nomically most underdeveloped republic in the former Yugoslavia. The ethnic
groups (all of them) living in it suffered the pressure – ideological, national, re-
ligious – of the political centre in Belgrade. The political regime in Yugoslavia
was more liberal than that in the Central and East European countries, but
nonetheless remained highly repressive in character even after its fall.
6. For about fifty years nobody perceived seriously the political dimension of the
demographic, ethnic and religious realities. During that period the Albanian
ethnic group turned out to be the only one in Europe to increase several-fold.
III. Nowadays
1. Macedonia is governed according to the Constitution of 8 September 1991. As
a whole, this is a modern European constitution. It proclaims that Macedonia
is a republic with a parliamentary form of government. This is the most un-
stable republican political system, but in 1991 any another system was hardly
possible. The Constitution has been amended nineteen times in accordance
with the Ohrid Framework Agreement.
The constitutionally declared pursuit of civil equality of permanently coex-
isting Macedonians (Slavs, whom many consider to be simply speakers of
5
Le Petit Larousse. 1993. Paris: Larousse, p. 1118.
The political system of the Republic of Macedonia and the future of multiethnic society 235
a Bulgarian dialect), Albanians, Roma, Turks, Vlachs, Bosniaks, and others,
proved insufficient to guarantee ethnic peace.
2. The lack of guarantees and regulation of political and civil rights and respon-
sibilities of minorities leads to violation of the internal sovereignty of the
state. On one third of its territory, taxes and fees are practically not paid. The
state monopoly de facto does not function for almost one fourth of the popu-
lation.
3. National minorities and ethnic groups are entitled to self-determination. Their
languages may be official on the local level. They enjoy cultural autonomy.6
The Ohrid Agreement has done even more in this respect, but the result re-
mains unsatisfactory to this very day.7 In practice, disintegration is deepen-
ing in a context of guaranteed identity, but insufficient integration of ethnic
groups into political and administrative structures.
4. Public opinion in Macedonia is uneasy. Slavs feel threatened and disheart-
ened. They do not see clear prospects for the state and for themselves. They
fear that they will eventually become a minority in their own country. They
think that Albanians are some sort of anarchists who are unable and unwill-
ing to build and participate in modern state institutions. All this is increas-
ing the pressure to emigrate. In Eastern Macedonia today one will rarely find
a family that does not have at least one citizen of the Republic of Bulgaria
among its members.
5. Economic and commercial contacts between the two main communities have
been minimised. The same applies to social contacts. There is virtually no in-
termarriage. There is a feeling of a sort of ‘Belgiumization’ of social contacts
(the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution gives rise to precisely such proc-
esses). New divisions and social barriers between communities hinder the
functioning of a unitary state. At the same time, attempts at overcoming these
barriers trigger nationalistic outbursts. (Let us recall Struga and Kicevo in
the autumn of 2004.) Nationalism among ethnic communities is incited from
outside as well as by serious and modern authors in Macedonia itself.8
6. Macedonia’s geographic surroundings also cause ethnic tensions. From the
south, Greece has an interest in investing in Macedonia, but for fourteen years
now it has been incapable of overcoming its own nationalism, remaining con-
cerned with its illusionary claims to names and symbols. Greeks are also anx-
ious about their Slavophone and Albanian minorities to the northwest and to
the east of Thessaloniki. From the west, Albania is reluctant to engage in com-
6
See Articles 4; 8; 16 (1), 48 of the Statute. Statute of Republic of Macedonia. www.izbori.
gov.mk/pretsedatelski2004/usavecel.php
7
See Ohrid Framework Agreement, 13 August 2001.
8
See Mitkov, Vladimir and Savo Klimovski. 1995. Политички и уставен систем – основи
(Political and Constitutional Systems: Basic Elements), Skopje: Prosvetno Delo, pp. 63–64.
236 Vassil Penev
mon economic and infrastructure projects. From the north, Kosovo will re-
main a security threat, regardless of which of the three possible solutions for
its status will be chosen. These are: full independence; autonomy as a republic
within the framework of the federation of Serbia and Montenegro; and long-
term maintenance of its present status of an autonomous province and de fac-
to a protectorate.9 Neither of the three is safe for Macedonia. Serbia remains
a source of concern with its attempts at reviving the nostalgia for Yugoslavia,
with its nationalism, and even as a transmitter of the Russian Orthodox idea.
From the east, many Bulgarians are still experiencing irrational emotions for
‘their’ Macedonia.
7. The result of the referendum held on 7 November 2004 was positive, because
it temporarily toned down national and ethnic tensions.10
8. The right-wing political space among Slavs is split among the remnants of
VMRO, the People’s Party of former prime minister Ljubcho Georgievski,
and the new party DRUM headed by Dosta Dimovska.
9. A local election campaign has already started in Macedonia.
IV. Questions to the Future

1. Will Macedonia succeed in affirming itself as a unitary nation state with guar-
antees both for individual and collective political rights and responsibilities?
Allowing the existence of parallel, ethnic-based institutions, including uni-
versities, is counter-productive. Replicating the model of Bosnia-Herzegovina
can only prove harmful.11
2. Will Macedonia be able to guarantee its borders (mainly the western and
northern ones) in order to stop the negative influences and trafficking?
Overcoming the ties with the insufficiently democratised and pro-Russian
Serbia stands in the same context. Here we should also mention the need of
regulating media influence on public opinion.
3. Is it possible to surmount the ideological, psychological and social intoler-
ance between ethnic groups and religious communities?
4. Will the Macedonian political class succeed in purging itself of traffickers and
former terrorists while observing the requirements for ethnic participation?
9
See Hinkova, Sonja. ‘Prospects of Development of the West Balkans,’ Report for the sem-
inar on ‘The Future of the West Balkans’ held at the University of Sofia on 4 December 2004.
10
See Result of the Referendum carried out on 7 November 2004. See www.Dik.mk/
?id=55
11
See Yankulova, Diyana. ‘The West Balkans Are No Longer the Powder-Keg of Europe,
But Are Still Emanating Insecurity and Tension,’ Report for the seminar on ‘The Future of the
West Balkans’ held at the University of Sofia on 4 December 2004.
The political system of the Republic of Macedonia and the future of multiethnic society 237
This is a very serious problem for all countries in the Western Balkans, be-
cause it discredits the very idea of democracy.12
5. Will the existence of overtly ethnic parties be gradually overcome? Will po-
litical representation be realised through the normal for Europe left-wing,
right-wing and unsystemic political forces?
6. Will it become clear to everybody that the attempts at federalisation and
cantonisation are neither an effective nor a well-intended solution for
Macedonia?
7. Will the Euro-Atlantic community (that is how it is called in the Ohrid
Agreement) realise that the only positive way to build a multinational soci-
ety living in peace is by giving Macedonia and its citizens a clear and specif-
ic prospect of EU and NATO integration? This is necessary in order to put
an end to national pessimism and ethnic mistrust! The fact that the peoples
of Macedonia are used to living in multinational states is an additional argu-
ment. It is no accident that they are emigrating either to federations, or to tra-
ditionally ethnically tolerant societies and welfare states with high standards
of living.
8. Will international investors realise that they stand to gain from the imple-
mentation of some major infrastructure projects in order to capitalise on the
security and geopolitical position of the countries in the Western Balkans?
And in order to involve those talented peoples in the globalising exchange of
human values?
■ In conclusion, I would like to note that when I approached the Embassy of the
Republic of Macedonia in Sofia for assistance in obtaining the new version
of the Constitution and the Ohrid Agreement, I was politely informed that a
copy of the Constitution was provided only after an official written request to-
gether with an explanation what it would be used for. That is why I thank my
colleague and friend from the Focus Agency Dimitur Mitev for giving me the
documents and materials used in this paper.
12
See Dronzina, Tatyana. ‘Global Terrorism in a Globalising World: New Threats to
Democracy in the Balkans,’ Report for the seminar on ‘The Future of the West Balkans’ held at
the University of Sofia on 4 December 2004.
238
MACEDONIA BEYOND OHRID:

CONFIDENCE, GUNS AND THE REFERENDUM
Ilija Milcevski
Euro-Balkan Institute, Macedonia
The Ohrid Framework Agreement ended the violent conflict in Macedonia in

2001. It was signed on 13 August 2001 by the leaders of the four main political parties
in Macedonia at the time and the former president, Mr. Boris Trajkovski. The main con-
cept of the Agreement was not only finding an acceptable compromise (which would
also mean that every side had to ‘sacrifice’ some of its legitimate demands); in fact, it
was much more an idea of conflict transformation, which means that the legitimate
interests of both sides were equally respected and that their fundamental rights were
equally protected. This is most obvious in Article 1 of the Agreement: Basic Principles.
The first two paragraphs of this Article (1.1. and 1.2.) aimed at addressing the fears of
the ethnic Macedonian side in the conflict and at providing protection of their vital
interests. Paragraph 1 condemns the use of violence in pursuit of political aims (both
sides rejected the use of violence ‘completely and unconditionally’), while paragraph 2
guaranteed the unitary character of the State and its sovereignty and territorial integ-
rity. This is very important, especially in the eyes of the Macedonians, as a strong reas-
surance that the Ohrid Framework Agreement would not be a first step towards fed-
eralisation and disintegration of the state (through renewed violence ‘when the time is
right’), as various pan-Albanian ethno-nationalistic programmes demand, but that it
would enhance the long-term stability of the country.
On the other hand, paragraphs 3 and 4 of Article 1 addressed the long-term de-
mands put forward by the Albanians in Macedonia in the 1990s. Paragraph 3 reaffirms
that ‘[t]he multi-ethnic character of Macedonia’s society must be preserved (which,
in fact, was never denied by Macedonians during the 1990s – there were no attempts
at assimilation or other similar policies that could endanger the multi-ethnic charac-
ter of Macedonian society) and reflected in public life’ (which was often denied under
different pretexts during the 1990s). Paragraph 4 underlined Macedonia’s need of a
‘Constitution [that] fully meets the needs of all its citizens’ (the Constitution from 1991
was adopted without the votes of ethnic Albanian members of Parliament, which was
often emphasised by the ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, and was considered as some
sort of ‘original sin’ of the state against them and as the main source of their discon-
tent). These basic principles defined in Article 1 (including paragraph 5, which calls for
development of local self-government) were to be implemented by a series of concrete
Macedonia Beyond Ohrid: Confidence, Guns and the Referendum 239
steps and measures, legal and constitutional amendments, which were specified and
timetabled in the rest of the Agreement and its annexes.
The implementation of the Agreement, however, has not proceeded as smooth-
ly as it was designed to. There are several reasons for that. The first one is the differ-
ence in the perception of the Agreement between the ethnic Macedonians and the eth-
nic Albanians. If at first the Agreement was praised by both sides as a mature step to-
wards interethnic reconciliation, ‘which stopped the war before it had even started on
a full scale, without winners or losers’ (as the vice president of the Democratic Party of
Albanians, Mr. Menduh Thaci, said) and ‘finally fulfilled all demands of Albanians in
Macedonia’ (according to Mr. Abdurahman Alliti, the former president of the ethnic
Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity), later the attitudes of ethnic Macedonians
and ethnic Albanians towards the Agreement changed in opposite directions. On the
ethnic Macedonian side, the Agreement became an object of widespread criticism
aimed not so much at the content of the Agreement, but much more at the procedure
of its creation and at the circumstances under which it was signed. The most extreme
critics even described the Agreement as ‘an act of capitulation signed under threat of
weapons and under foreign pressure.’ This shift in public opinion and in the public per-
ception of the Agreement has had its consequences for the ethnic Macedonian politi-
cal elites, which have become much more cautious about fully supporting, promoting
and implementing the Agreement. Moreover, some of the signatories of the Agreement
have changed their previous positions and have begun treating the Agreement as a
long-term death sentence for Macedonia. As a result (but also under the influence of
other factors), the process of implementation of the Agreement has been delayed, fail-
ing to meet the scheduled timetable.
On the other hand, the ethnic Albanian political elites have become more radi-
calised in their demands and rhetoric, both because of the sense of triumph that swept
through the ethnic Albanian population (largely provoked by the apathy and nihil-
ism of the ethnic Macedonians) and of the appearance of new, more radical competi-
tors within the ethnic Albanian ‘political camp’ – promotion of the Democratic Union
for Integration founded by the former political and military leaders of the National
Liberation Army, as well as the rise of the ‘Albanian National Army’ and other il-
legal paramilitary groups. This ‘new radicalism’ is expressed in two forms. The first
one (mainly expressed by some minor political parties and illegal groups, but some-
times even by politicians from the two main political parties of the ethnic Albanians
in Macedonia) is open rejection of the Agreement and demands for a federalisation of
the state, or other ‘territorial solutions to the ethnic problems.’ The second one (often
expressed by the ‘mainstream players’ in the ethnic Albanian ‘political camp’) is formal
support of the Agreement and frequent demands for its ‘full implementation,’ while
at the same time completely neglecting some of its parts and even some of the Basic
Principles (such as the complete and unconditional rejection of violence in the politi-
cal process, complete disarmament of the illegal armed groups, and return of refugees).
On the other hand, other parts of the Agreement are being subjected to ‘creative inter-
240 Ilija Milcevski
pretation’ resulting in new demands that were never agreed in Ohrid although some
of them were put forward on the ‘negotiating table.’ These processes have made the full
implementation of the Agreement as well as consolidation of the state and society (es-
pecially reconciliation and confidence building) more difficult than expected. One can
never say that it has proved unsuccessful, but it has not yet come to the point where a
repeat of the crisis would be totally impossible.
The symptoms of a possible repeat of the crisis have been present in the field
ever since the Agreement was signed. The ‘former crisis regions’ are not yet under the
full control of the government institutions. Ethnically mixed police patrols are present
there, but they are not yet fully effective in providing a satisfactory level of security in
the areas. This is not due to their ethnically mixed structure but is much more the re-
sult of an overall inefficiency of the institutions of the state. Policemen (especially the
ethnic Albanian ones) often live in those regions and thus cannot risk interfering in the
‘business’ of local crime bosses (or former and present ‘commanders’ of various armed
groups), and confronting them when they are not backed up by a fully effective state
apparatus. In such cases, police patrols are more likely to turn a blind eye to the illegal
activities in the areas of which they are in charge. The most dangerous consequence of
this growing inefficiency of the police is a further spreading of these ‘grey areas’ from
the former crisis regions to the regions that remained untouched during the conflict
in 2001. The main reason for this increase in criminal activities, violence, murders and
general level of insecurity is the very large number of illegal weapons (sometimes es-
timated at more than 100,000 pieces of different weaponry), which have remained in
the hands of civilians after the conflict. Although required to do so by the Framework
Agreement (which they praised and supported), members of the National Liberation
Army never surrendered all their weapons. The number and quality of the weapons
collected during NATO’s Operation Essential Harvest (for disarmament of the NLA
on a voluntary basis, as part of Allied support for the Framework Agreement) were far
below the previous estimates of the size and capability of the NLA reported by vari-
ous NATO officials. The operation was declared successful but the problem of illegal
weapons remained and became more and more obvious after NATO’s mission ended.
Hence, another campaign for voluntary disarmament was organised only two years af-
ter Essential Harvest, this time by the Macedonian government and on the whole ter-
ritory of the country. The results of this campaign were not much better than the pre-
vious ones, although the government declared them successful ‘in comparison with
other countries in the region.’
The general level of insecurity, the criminal activities, and the large number of
illegal weapons have created an environment conducive to the outbreak of several ‘low-
intensity’ crises, which threatened to rekindle the interethnic conflict. The most inten-
sive ones took place in the Lipkovo region in the summer of 2003 and in the village of
Kondovo at the end of 2004. They were caused by former low-level commanders of the
NLA (some of them with a criminal background), who declared their lists of political
demands at the later stages of the crises. Those situations were painfully reminiscent
of the beginning of the armed conflict in February and March 2001, especially when
some ethnic Albanian politicians declared their understanding for the actions of the
former commanders and supported some of their demands. Such actions have sent a
clear message that violence is yet to be eliminated from the political process, and have
significantly lowered the level of interethnic confidence.
The low level of interethnic confidence remains one of the main problems in
Macedonia after the Framework Agreement. Politics is still highly ‘ethnicised,’ and al-
most every important issue acquires an ethnic dimension and becomes a problem in
interethnic relations. The most telling example is the new law on the territorial organi-
sation of municipalities, which once again divided public opinion along ethnic lines.
This law was part of the new legislation designed to promote decentralisation and local
self-government, which was one of the last legislative obligations under the Framework
Agreement. While the other laws in this package were adopted by Parliament without
too many problems, the law on the new territorial organisation provoked the biggest
interethnic political crisis since the end of the conflict in 2001. The main cause was the
highly controversial negotiation procedure by which the new law proposal was drafted.
The negotiation procedure had two major flaws – its format and its main principles.
The other Ohrid-related issues and law proposals were negotiated through proce-
dures that included all major political parties (signatories of the Agreement), under the
auspices of the President and with support by the facilitators (‘special representatives’)
from the USA and the EU. This time, the composition of the negotiators was changed
to include only representatives of the parties in the ruling coalition (more precisely, the
Social Democratic Union, the main ethnic Macedonian partner, and the Democratic
Union for Integration, the ethnic Albanian partner). This new format left out two im-
portant and very influential parties, the ethnic Macedonian VMRO-DPMNE and the
ethnic Albanian DPA, which did not hesitate to show their strong discontent with the
result of the negotiations – the new law proposal on the territorial organisation of mu-
nicipalities. The other major flaw of the procedure was the main principle under which
the new municipalities were designed – the ethnic principle. The introduction of the
ethnic principle as the main principle in the negotiations turned the process of rede-
signing municipal borders into a sort of ethnically motivated ‘gerrymandering’ and led
to a ‘zero-sum game’ between the negotiators, who were also under strong time-pres-
sure as well as pressure coming from reports in the media that various armed groups
from Kosovo were crossing the Macedonian border (as a clear example of demonstra-
tion of force). The result of this zero-sum game was what the media described as a
‘0:3 loss’ for the Macedonian side, and this triggered the strongest wave of discontent
and radicalism on the ethnic-Macedonian side since the Framework Agreement was
signed. This strong dissatisfaction was manifested in the support for the civic initiative
for a referendum aimed at overthrowing the new law.
The referendum was supported by a strange-looking coalition that united even
some formerly bitter rival politicians and parties, intellectuals and civic organisations,
fierce opponents and strong supporters of the Framework Agreement. Initially, even
242 Ilija Milcevski
some ethnic Albanian politicians from the DPA pledged their support for the referen-
dum initiative (because of their own discontent with the new law proposal), but they
later withdrew their support, mainly because of the radical rhetoric used by the ethnic
Macedonian side (especially at the beginning of the campaign), but also under diplo-
matic pressure from the international community. That marked the referendum as ‘sin-
gle-ethnic,’ which was widely used by the government officials and the representatives
of the international community in their campaign against the referendum. The cam-
paign ultimately proved successful and the referendum failed because of the low voter
turnout. Probably the main factor that decided the fate of the referendum was the di-
rect support for Macedonia in its thirteen-year-long ‘name dispute’ with Greece, which
the US demonstrated by its decision to start using the constitutional name of the coun-
try (Republic of Macedonia) instead of the ‘temporary reference’ (Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia) in American documents and bilateral communication. This
decision allayed the deepest fears of ethnic Macedonians about their country’s uncer-
tain future (and even about an ‘international conspiracy’ against them), which were
sparked by the new law on territorial organisation (which was seen as a division of the
country along ethnic lines) and were therefore one of the main driving forces behind
the referendum.
The referendum failed but the problems of ‘ethnicised’ politics (including the is-
sue of the territorial organisation of local self-government) remained. In that sense, the
beginning of the local election campaign (which is still going on at the moment) does
not look promising at all. The first promise given by a senior official from the ethnic
Albanian opposition coalition (Mr. Mevlan Tahiri, the main candidate for city coun-
cil member in Skopje) was that ‘if their coalition wins the election, they will install a
system of institutional discrimination against the ethnic Macedonians in Tetovo and
Gostivar’ (sic!). Soon after, this was followed by a demand for revising the territorial or-
ganisation of local self-government (only three months after the referendum demand-
ing exactly the same thing was condemned as ‘single-ethnic’) and for introduction of
a two-tier self-government and regionalised territorial organisation, ‘which would re-
spect the particular ethnic interests of the population.’ Mr. Rafiz Halliti, the vice presi-
dent of the Democratic Union for Integration (the ethnic Albanian partner in the rul-
ing coalition) and the informal leader of the more radical faction (of the ‘commanders’)
in the party, immediately supported this proposal even though it is in direct contra-
vention of Article 1.2 of the Framework Agreement (which remains the main declared
political goal of his party). This kind of election promises do not look very promising
for the rest of the campaign. Under the circumstances, we can only wait to see which
issues ethnic Macedonian parties will use to ‘ethnicise’ their campaigns too, and what
consequences such treatment (and recycling) of ethnic issues will have for the overall
political processes in Macedonia. Or more precisely, will the ideological cleavage be the
main line of division and political confrontation between the ethnically mixed ‘politi-
cal blocs’ (as it was during the local elections in 2000, for example), or will the ethnic
cleavage prevail and thus situate the main political conflict on the line between the two
major ‘ethnic camps’ (as it was during the military conflict in 2001)?
However, the future development of the situation depends not only on the po-
litical elites in Macedonia, but also on the international support for the process of sta-
bilisation of the country, as well as on the overall situation in the region. It is very im-
portant to keep Macedonia out of the various scenarios for settling Kosovo’s final sta-
tus, especially regarding its borders and internal political organisation, by providing
international guarantees for Macedonia’s northern borders and support for their tight-
er control, and also by supporting the process of emancipation of the political elites of
the ethnic Albanians in Macedonia from the influences of their ‘elder brothers’ from
Kosovo. There are two main groups of scenarios for the future development of the po-
litical situation in Macedonia. In the positive scenario, Macedonia is an integrated and
unitary state that has resolved its major interethnic disputes under the terms of the
Framework Agreement, where the main political issues are improvement of the living
standards of its citizens and the integration of the country into the European Union. In
the negative scenario, Macedonia is a country in permanent interethnic crisis, hostage
to at least two or three unresolved ethno-national questions in the region, where eth-
nic and ethno-territorial issues dominate the political agenda, and its citizens’ security
and living standards deteriorate constantly. If the political elites in Macedonia (regard-
less of their ethnic background) and the international community prefer the positive
scenario, the Ohrid Framework Agreement must be implemented fully and in all of its
terms, Macedonia’s borders must be internationally guaranteed and controlled strictly
by the institutions of the state, and the government institutions must be strengthened
during the process of the country’s integration into the EU, which must start as soon as
possible. All delays and compromises on these strategically important issues can easily
throw Macedonia into the negative scenario.
244
DISCUSSION
Antonina Zhelyazkova: Some of us were talking a few minutes ago and we told
each other that the picture is getting ever darker and gloomier. Despite the fact that we
are, after all, good-mannered people so we don’t say half the things we think. For ex-
ample: I am very sorry that our colleague Shkelzen Maliqi isn’t here and we cannot dis-
cuss it with him, but his report spared us quite a few truths. For example, not even a
word about how a new ideology has been gradually emerging in Kosovo in the last six
or seven years, and that this is a Nazi ideology. And you can hear it everywhere: in the
University in Prishtina, in the street, among politicians, intellectuals, and so on. A self-
sufficiency – I heard this word being used also by Prof. Repovac when he was talking
about the problems in Bosnia – a contempt for absolutely everybody else. This is a the-
ory consistently justifying their wish to live alone, their wish to simply get rid of eve-
rybody else. All the persecutions, expulsions, fires, and so on, aren’t accidental. What
they want is an ethnically clean Kosovo. And all the mantras of the European Union
about a multiethnic Kosovo are simply nonsense. Let’s see what else were we spared?
That an excellent experiment is being conducted in Kosovo: how to build the perfect
variant of a mafia state. Trafficking, women, drugs, what have you – all of it in the hands
of the political class. All of Europe applauded the fact that we had democratic elections
in Kosovo, but the result was that we elected a war criminal and the guy controlling, for
example, drug trafficking in some part of Europe. And this person is prime minister at
present. Our colleague Penev is right when he says that all this discredits that which we
are trying to call ‘democracy’ – democracy is something completely different.
Hidajet Repovac: I think the Kosovo question is as complex as all the other
questions and it cannot be explained easily. There is work here for sociologists, cul-
tural anthropologists, culturologists, and also for Freud and psychologists. Before the
war, we in Bosnia used to say that Slovenia is to blame for everything because Slovenes
left the congress.1 And then another thesis was added: No, Kosovo is to blame because
it was there that the first demonstrations and opposition against the political estab-
lishment of the former Yugoslavia began. I don’t know who is really to blame, but it
seems that everybody is partly responsible because everybody did their share to de-
stroy Yugoslavia.
1
Fourteenth Extraordinary Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in
January 1990. After the Serbian-dominated majority rejected all proposals of the Slovenian del-
egation, Slovenes walked out of the Congress and the Slovenian League of Communists with-
drew from the Yugoslav one (Editor’s note).
Discussion 245
However, Mr. Elton Skendaj drew a parallel between Bosnia-Herzegovina
and Kosovo as an independent state. I think there is a substantial difference. Bosnia-
Herzegovina has been a geographically, politically and economically defined state
unit for more than 600 years. For example, Herceg Stjepan Kotromanic2 and Tvrtko I
Kotromanic3 were the kings of the largest state on the Balkans – larger than the Duchy
of Serbia and the Duchy of Susic and Zrinski in Croatia. Bosnia continued to exist and
kept its original borders even when it became a Turkish vilayet – it even had an exit to
the sea. During the Second World War, the Yugoslav Anti-Fascist Council also defined
Bosnia as a state, again with the same borders that Bosnia has today. Well, here is the
main difference between Bosnia and Kosovo, between the Bosnian statehood and the
possible statehood of Kosovo.
I don’t oppose, of course, the possibility of Kosovo becoming a state, but it
shouldn’t be compared to Republika Srpska because Republika Srpska was established
as a result of a nationalistic war and I believe none of the two entities constituting
today’s Bosnia-Herzegovina will last. We have an absurd situation where Republika
Srpska has 49% of the territory, and the Federation, with all Muslims, Croats and Serbs
who live on that side, has 51% of the territory. This is nonsense, because Muslims are
a majority population. Before the Berlin Congress, Muslims represented 77% of the
Bosnian population. All the others together were 23%. A demographic change oc-
curred after the Berlin Congress, and the share of Muslims fell to 47%. The number
of Muslims further decreased to 27% after World War II, and the others were Croats,
Serbs, Jews, Roma, etc.
But Bosnia has always kept its borders, even when it became part of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire, when it became its third element. One element was Austria, the
second Hungary, and the third Bosnia as corpus separatum. Bosnia was called like this
in Austro-Hungarian documents, and was defined as a state. That is why even today
we fight for it as a state. Do you have such arguments for Kosovo? I would like to hear
them, and would support such an idea if they existed. But I don’t think the analogy is
possible. These two cases cannot be compared.
Do you know what happened in Bosnia-Herzegovina? Those who have con-
quered the territory have only destroyed the land. There are no more houses, nor ag-
riculture, nor economy. There is nothing. They have completely destroyed the territo-
ries they have conquered, and I believe that fifty years will pass before life returns here.
This tribal war for territory has achieved nothing. That is why I am asking if this idea
of an independent Kosovo can really have some genuine and positive historical result. I
2
Stjepan II Kotromanic (1322–1353), one of the most important rulers of the medieval
Bosnian state. During his reign Bosnia achieved unprecedented territorial growth (Editor’s note).
3
King Tvrtko I Kotromanic (Bosnian ruler from 1353 to 1391, crowned as the first King
of Bosnia in 1377). During his rule Bosnia reached maximum size, stretching from the Sava
River to the islands of Korcula and Hvar, and from Zrmanja and Knin to Sjenica and Lim
(Editor’s note).
246 Discussion
have also supported this idea once, probably inspired by the principle that every nation
has the right to self-determination, to its own culture and identity. Of course, this is all
needed and it is necessary, but how can this be realised on the same territory where the
state of Raska was formed, and where the Nemanjic4 dynasty set up a huge state that
reached the Aegean to the south, and the rivers Tisa, Drava and Danube to the north.
A huge state, a huge kingdom, and Kosovo was its centre. And now we have the ques-
tion of identification of the main cultural-historical events in Kosovo, and of the way
in which the people populating it could reach an agreement on specific state-building
elements. Because a state can be created only through agreement between nations.
That is the problem of Bosnia. You can write a Constitution and cast it in gold,
but if it isn’t supported by the will of the nation no state will be built. If you want to
force the Serbs in Bosnia to follow some common will and tell them, ‘this is going to
be the Bosnian state,’ you will never build a real state unless they willingly support the
idea. When the Anti-Fascist Council of Yugoslavia was setting up Yugoslavia in 1943,
all nations – Macedonians, Albanians, Muslims, Serbs, Slovenes, Croats – agreed to
build the state together and that is why it was possible to form it. If one or two nations
had opposed the idea, I doubt that a state such as Yugoslavia could have been created.
And this is the problem of Bosnia and Kosovo. However, they are nevertheless differ-
ent in several aspects.
Elton Skendaj: I want to make a few points related to the previous papers and
comments. The first point is whether there is such a thing as the search for a Greater
Albania. I heard Ilija, our Macedonian friend, mention such a thing. Lately two major
reports have been published on this issue: one by the International Crisis Group and
the other one by the US Institute for Peace. After thorough research, they have come to
the conclusion that there is no such thing as a Greater Albania or pan-Albanian aspira-
tions. Why? Because Albania which is, as some people like to call it, the ‘mother-state,’
the state which is internationally recognised, doesn’t want to include Kosovo, or the
Albanians in Macedonia in any way. The politicians, the population, they all feel like
that. The task basically is to become part of the EU rather than to incorporate problem-
atic provinces with minorities, etc. Besides, there is a general consensus in Kosovo also
that they don’t want to be attached to Albania, which is much poorer than Kosovo itself
and has problems of its own. The Albanians in Albania don’t want to include Kosovo
with its nationalism and its problems. Kosovars don’t like Albania very much because
they consider it sometimes very unpatriotic. A drive for uniting the land is more likely
to be observed among the Kosovo elite and among some Macedonian Albanians, but it
has nothing to do with a general pan-Albanian agreement.
4
Nemanjic was a medieval Serbian ruling dynasty. The dynasty was named after Stefan
Nemanja. The House of Nemanjic gave eleven Serbian monarchs between 1166 and 1371
(Editor’s note).
Discussion 247
Two months ago Albania arrested the leader of its nationalist party, which can
never get enough votes to enter Parliament. Why? Because he had made some com-
ments in Switzerland, which were interpreted as inciting hatred in Macedonia. And to-
gether with Bulgaria Albania was the first country to recognise Macedonia, because we
believe in regional stability and we get enough bad press for our other problems.
Regarding Kosovo’s independence, what Prof. Repovac said about the list of na-
tional identifications and why Bosnia should be called a state and so on, I am not go-
ing to go through it for Kosovo. I know the list, but I don’t think it matters basically.
Two thousand years ago only Albanians and Greeks were living here, and Slavs came
800 years later. It is a very long litany of nationalistic propaganda. My belief is that
before the nineteenth century none of these nationalisms existed. Albanian national-
ism was one of the latest ones; it was basically formed during the time of the Ottoman
decline when Albanians were afraid that their neighbours, the newly emerging na-
tion states of Greece and Serbia, would spread in Albanian-speaking lands, which in-
cluded Kosovo at the time. This was a late nationalism, but there were others, such as
the Bosniak and Macedonian nationalisms, which emerged even later. I would con-
sider that many of the problems we are facing today are problems of nation-building.
Albanians in Albania usually say, ‘We don’t care whether you claim to be Macedonian
or Kosovar as long as you are comfortable with your identity and you don’t mess with
us.’ Some might call it liberal but I’d call it an indifferent approach, because we are too
busy with our own problems. Since we were very isolated during communism, we have
nobody to blame for our problems. We understand that nationalism isn’t the road to
prosperity and we have downplayed it a little bit. And this is very much in contrast to
the former Yugoslavia, where because of the conflicts it is still a paramount feeling. I do
wish we had a Kosovo-Albanian or a Macedonian-Albanian representative, who could
better present their arguments. I come from the majority of a unitary state, Albania, so
in many ways we can afford to be detached. Maybe if I came from a repressed minority
I would speak differently. But that still doesn’t qualify my statements about Macedonia
and Kosovo as untrue.
Tetsuya Sahara: I remember my personal experience in 1980 in Skopje. I met

many Albanian friends and they were very cold towards the fate of their Kosovar neigh-
bours. Such circumstances should drastically change after a certain period of time, so
I’m not headed for some sure claim that the danger of a so-called Greater Albania has
got ground.
I would like to also add a small objection to the comment of Prof. Repovac. I
agree with what you said about Bosnia during the Ottoman period. But in the same
way Kosovo was a relatively stable administrative unit as the sanjak of Prizren. And
it existed as such a very long time. I think we exaggerate too much the historical hur-
ricanes of the region in order to justify the future. Anyway, I do agree with one of
the proposals that Mr. Skendaj made: criminal acts must be individualised, not ethni-
cised. I would like to add another proposal towards the future solution: it is important
248 Discussion
to educate people in order to get rid of ethnic discrimination. But this is huge work
and it takes a lot of time. The best way is to re-educate the law-enforcing officers and
also the public employees in the administrative sections. I think it is a waste of time
to re-educate the politicians. What we often had in Kosovo and Bosnia, and also in
Macedonia, was that police officers did harm to people from other ethnic groups. This
way of thinking is very dangerous and that is why I think it is very important to edu-
cate the police officers so that they won’t apply ethnic discrimination. Re-education of
policemen and public employees is therefore among the most important tasks of the
international community.
Tanya Mangalakova: I am a journalist, my name is Tanya Mangalakova and I

am a participant in IMIR’s field studies conducted by the method of urgent anthropol-
ogy. I want to tell Elton Skendaj something he forgot to mention: there is a platform
of the Albanian Academy of Sciences that has been published in several languages.
Second, when I go for a walk in the streets of Tirana and Pristina, I can buy a map of
Greater Albania in both cities. This Albania is indeed very great – it includes Çamëria5
and reaches even Nis. In the hot summer of 2001 I was in Albania, shortly after the
census and during the elections. I asked politicians and ordinary people, ‘Okay, you are
insisting at top levels on what the census in the Republic of Macedonia should be like,
what rights the Albanian minority there should have, yet at the same time your census
forms in Albania didn’t have a column on ethnic identity. Please comment on this curi-
ous fact.’ I didn’t get a satisfactory explanation. In my opinion, there is a phenomenon
that is common to the Balkans. When you ask politicians, they have several answers
to one and the same question, depending if they are in opposition or in power. This is
typical of the Albanians. Kim Mehmeti, a prominent intellectual from the Republic of
Macedonia and translator of the Kanun [Code] of Lek Dukagjini, explains this phe-
nomenon as follows: ‘When our politician is in power he has one answer, he is very
moderate, meek, he obtains benefits. But when he is in opposition he becomes radical.’
He said this long before the statements of Ljubco Georgievski and Arben Xhaferi, who
signed the Ohrid Framework Agreement and then made interesting comments on eth-
nic division of the Republic of Macedonia. Let me tell you some things we have seen
while travelling around Kosovo. We were at the headquarters of Hashim Thaqi’s influ-
ential party, where we interviewed a leading figure. I cannot mention any names be-
cause the interviews were anonymous, but I know the name of course. We talked with
him and asked him questions, which he answered, but the answers he gave us were
predictable. Somehow he had a ready answer to every question, he is a politician well-
schooled in politics. I personally wasn’t satisfied with his answers. My point is that he
has learned to speak like all other politicians, but perhaps during the conflict his an-
swers would have been different. What happened with this person? He was arrested
5
Albanian name for the region of north-west Greece, located along the Albanian bor-
der. (Editor’s note)
Discussion 249
and sent to The Hague. In Pristina there were demonstrations in his support, but then
about ten days ago I heard that this person had made a very radical statement. The
same person who was telling us, ‘Who? Us Albanians? We’re in favour of democracy
of course! Just let us create a state in Kosovo and you’ll see perfect order and rule of
law.’ Then all of a sudden he makes a shocking statement that is quoted by news agen-
cies – moreover, a statement about the Republic of Macedonia, about some sort of Slav
population there that didn’t even have a right to a state. So you see an entirely different
line of conduct.
Another case: an interview with one of the leading figures among the Albanians
in the Republic of Macedonia. He can give all sorts of answers, he is smart enough,
well-schooled, but there is one answer he will never give to the International Crisis
Group. He would hardly suggest, as he has done to Bulgarian scholars, journalists and
analysts he has met, with whom he talks on and on and on, and then at some point he
says, ‘At the end of the day, the best solution is to divide Macedonia!’ I am not naming
names, the interviews are anonymous, I’m not allowed to. You see, sometimes things
sound horrifying when you hear them from Balkan politicians. And I am sure that the
person in question has an entirely different answer for his own electorate, for the media
in Macedonia, for foreign media. This isn’t duality, what we have are many layers.
I also want to say something about Kosovo. I am very sceptical about Kosovo, I
have been there many times but I have never touched or seen this multiethnic Kosovo.
I went to an OSCE conference where the buzzword was multiethnicity, and I asked
them, ‘Fine, but then why are you with bodyguards?’ It’s multiethnic, isn’t it, there are
pilot projects, standards before status, and so on. Yet the Kanun is fully in force, blood
feuds ceased during the conflict only, but then resurged full force. There are reconcil-
ers, authoritative elderly Albanians who go and reconcile people. We hear about mi-
nority rights in Kosovo. But in addition to the Serbs who are living in enclaves, there
are other minorities too there – for example Turks, who have demands too. There are
Gorani, who live in almost complete isolation in the mountains, and this saves them
from same sort of action against them by radical Albanian elements. They are afraid to
go to Pristina and to speak their language, which is a very interesting dialect. We have
had problems in Kosovo, you know, when somebody hears you speaking a language
close to Serb they will assume you are Serbian! At some point the difference is lost, and
this simply happens at the level of everyday life, among ordinary people.
Finally, I will quote a respondent from Prizren, a multiethnic town since the
age of the Ottoman Empire. I was taking a walk in the streets and I stopped for a cup
of coffee right next to a big Serbian church which was in ruins, fenced off with barbed
wire, and there were several coffee shops around. There are no Serbs in the town, all
are in KFOR military camps. So I decided to have a cup of coffee and asked the people
in the coffee shop if they knew what this church was called. You cannot imagine how
much the people resented being asked. They looked at me with hatred, and two girls,
Albanian, told me directly, ‘You’d better stop asking if you don’t want to be in trouble!’ I
walked round the church and there I spoke with an interesting Albanian, who told me,
250 Discussion
‘Life is so hard for the Albanians in Kosovo now that we are a protectorate, we have no
jobs, no prospects, no money. The international community come here, they are paid
huge salaries, for example 5,000 euros, while we here live on, say, 150 to 200 euros a
month. But in the days of Yugoslavia we at least had jobs and we had money.’
Ilija Milcevski: Let me just make a comment about the pan-Albanian issue.
First, I never said that the policy of Albania was Pan-Albanianism because during the
conflict in Macedonia and before, the Republic of Albania always had a very respon-
sible position according to the guidelines from the international community, as did
the Republic of Bulgaria, and also Greece and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. On
the other hand, we cannot deny the existence of pan-Albanian political programmes
in various circles. But in Albania they aren’t influential at all, I must agree with you on
this issue. But they are influential in Kosovo. Kosovo is becoming the place of vigilant
nationalism. Albania would never like to unify with Kosovo, but I’m afraid that at some
point Kosovo Albanians might want to annex Macedonia and Albania.
Tanya mentioned the platform of the Albanian Academy of Sciences. I think
that we must be honest to the end and mention it, because the events of the first half
of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia were mostly blamed on the memorandum of
the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, which in fact was never finished and was
added to the pile of unfinished documents from the second half of the 1980s. On the
other hand, we have a printed platform for the integral solution to the Albanian na-
tional question, officially published by the Albanian Academy of Sciences in 1998. This
Albanian national programme states the following: that Kosovo must be independent,
that the three municipalities in Southern Serbia – Preshevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac
– are part of historical Kosovo, as well as Skopje, which was its capital. And for that
reason Albanians must enjoy autonomy in those municipalities, and the Republic of
Macedonia must be re-designed as some sort of Austria-Hungary, which was a federal,
dual state. There are also demands for more rights for the Albanians in Montenegro,
Greece and for some Albanian-speaking people in Italy. The document is a defined
pan-Albanian programme.
The real problem is Kosovo. The nationalistic groups in Albania aren’t influen-
tial. I guess you were talking about Idajet Beqiri,6 who was arrested by the Albanian au-
thorities and wasn’t allowed to conduct his political activities in Albania. But in Kosovo
the situation is very different. We have a number of semi-legal organisations, which are
openly promoting that kind of pan-Albanian programmes and they have their roots
6
Idajet Beqiri is the leader of Albania’s right-wing Party of National Unity, and one of
the leaders of the Front of Albanian National Unity (FBKSH), a group claiming to be the po-
litical wing of the AKSH (or ANA, Albanian National Army), active since 2001 in Kosovo and
Macedonia. Beqiri was arrested in 2003 on charges of ‘incitement and support for the extrem-
ist group.’ (Editor’s note)
Discussion 251
in the Popular Movement for Kosovo, which was formed as an illegal organisation in
the 1990s. Most of its members used to be orthodox communists, supporters of the
Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha, but afterwards they changed their ideology. But the
nationalistic component of their programme remained. Later, members of that organ-
isation became leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army and the National Liberation
Army of Macedonia.
I will give you one more example. At the beginning of the conflict in Macedonia
there were three prominent commanders who were well known to the press. One was
commander Hoxha, who is originally from Macedonia and who is now a member of
the Macedonian Parliament. The other one was commander Sokolli who was born
in Kosovo and lives in Kosovo now. And the third commander was the most shad-
owy one – commander Miekra, who gave several interviews for The New York Times
and disappeared during the conflict. Yet in a strange coincidence, at the time when he
disappeared Radio B92 reported that commander Miekra of the sector South of the
Liberation Army of Preshevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac had been shot in a clash with
a Serbian police patrol.
Hidajet Repovac: I regret that my friends Veton Surroi and Shkelzen Maliqi
aren’t here because they would probably have answered those questions adequately. But
I expected a scientific discussion at this conference, and not a discussion in which some-
one has to defend their position and someone else is attacking it. We should be raising
scientific questions and formulating scientific theses about the former Yugoslavia and
the Balkans. I do believe that we have managed to do just that to a satisfactory extent.
However, a number of problems still have to be brought up in order to explain the cur-
rent situation in the Balkans.
I believe Kosovo is a very complex problem. If the late Stipe Suvar7 was here – and
I presume you all know who was Stipe Suvar, a professor from the Zagreb University
– he would have told you that all the problems were due to the fact that before the war
the gross domestic product in Slovenia was, let’s say, 5,000 USD, and in Kosovo 400, in
Montenegro 500, in Bosnia-Herzegovina 700, and so on. There is a famous joke about
the Yugoslav train, where Slovenia is represented as a locomotive followed by carriag-
es – Croatia and others. Bosnia-Herzegovina was the last carriage and we used to joke
that if we in Bosnia hadn’t been stepping on the brakes, the train would have gotten
out of control.
There is one very important sociological problem. In Kosovo, Bosnia, Montenegro
and Serbia, the quality of education has declined drastically. Fewer and fewer children
are attending school. The statistics about children not enrolling at schools in Bosnia-
Herzegovina are terrible. Especially the Muslim children in the Serbian entity, and also
7
Stipe Suvar (1936–2004), former head of the Yugoslav Communist Party, former mem-
ber of the Yugoslav Presidency and former minister of education of the Socialist Republic of
Croatia (Editor’s note).
252 Discussion
the Serbian children in the Federation. The situation is similar in other parts of the
former Yugoslavia, which were economically underdeveloped. This is the real problem.
As I have mentioned before, Bosnia isn’t allowed to construct Corridor 5C, the
modern motorway linking Budapest and Sarajevo and continuing to the Adriatic. Such
a motorway would open all economic corridors from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Europe,
but despite the fact that we have the will and the power to build it, we aren’t allowed to
do so. Because through this corridor, Bosnia-Herzegovina would enter Europe in a very
short time. Why they aren’t allowing us is another question. Someone needs nations
and states that can be pushed to the economic margins, and where all dirty and pollut-
ing industries can be dumped – and such places are Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro,
Kosovo. In such places the quality of education has been deliberately lowered so that
they would continue to lag behind in their development. This is the sociological picture
of our situation. But despite that, as I said yesterday, we shouldn’t give in to pessimism.
We have to present an optimistic picture, and why not try to present the possibility of
a new Yugoslav, or Balkan federation? But the current mediocre politicians who now
rule our countries are neither capable nor suitable for such a task. This project should
be taken up by capable people, who will be able to extract economic benefits for all
from the spiritual and traditional wealth of all the nations on the Balkans. I am not
speaking necessarily about a state. But such projects are our common necessity. We
will simply have to rebuild the economic ties again, and to build highways and railways.
Ten years after the end of the war, the railway system in Bosnia-Herzegovina still isn’t
operating. Not even a single railway track has opened. And this is another proof that
somebody deliberately keeps these regions underdeveloped and backward. I believe
this is the problem also of Kosovo and of all other places, which were on the margins of
economic development even in the former Yugoslavia.
Ekaterina Nikova: Prof. Repovac, don’t be so impatient about the railways. A

railway track between Sofia and Skopje has been in the process of construction for
120 years. And Bulgaria and Romania, two countries with very friendly relations, at
least by Balkan standards, have been trying for twelve years now to agree on where to
build a second bridge across the Danube despite the fact that the funding has already
been secured. There is only one bridge along 400 kilometres of the river banks, and in
Budapest alone there are six bridges. So you still have time.
Hidajet Repovac: Let me tell you that Austria-Hungary built 2,700 km of rail-
way tracks in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Royal Yugoslavia added 80 km between the two
world wars. And socialist Yugoslavia didn’t build a single kilometre in Bosnia.
Wolfgang Hoepken: I would like to go back to the questions that have been
raised by Tanya and others. I don’t know if it’s really worth discussing this symbol-
ic politics, there is so much symbolic politics in the Balkans. I have always argued
against overstressing the role and the importance of the memorandum of the Academy
Discussion 253
of Science. Many people have talked about it. I don’t think that it is so terribly impor-
tant that you can find a map of Greater Albania in the streets of Tirana. The last time I
was in Skopje I bought a postcard with a map of Macedonia, which incorporated most
of Greece. Maybe the Albanian Academy has written a memorandum; believe me, I
have heard terrible nonsense about Macedonian history, or the Macedonian nation.
I don’t think this question is that important. The question of Kosovo definitely won’t
be decided by the Albanian Academy of Science, nor by any other academy. It will be
decided by the international community in negotiations with others. So I think that is
more important in discussing the options.
The problem is that we have had several options that have obviously failed. We
first opted for what Michael Steiner called ‘the institutions before status,’ ‘standards be-
fore status,’ but it didn’t work. So what are the other options that we can choose now?
Maliqi has pointed out several options in his paper, but unfortunately most of them
probably aren’t very likely because the positions of the various actors are irreconcilable
on that. I think probably the only way is to strike a bargain within the proper context
of European politics. Whether Serbia will be given the clear prospect for EU integra-
tion in exchange for concessions in Kosovo. These are, I think, the issues which really
matter today and not rhetorics, symbolics or some historical justification for a Kosovo
state. The historical state of Stefan Nemanja is no legitimate justification. We should
skip all these historical arguments.
Toni Petkovic: I just want to make a short comment about what you said:
whether Serbia could be given the incentive of quickly joining the European Union in
exchange for recognising Kosovo in some form or giving up Kosovo. There has been
consensus on this issue among the wide spectrum of political parties in Serbia and I
practically don’t see any relevant political force in Serbia that would accept such a bar-
gain. This isn’t an option for Serbia. The point is well made that Serbia won’t be in a po-
sition to do anything regarding Kosovo, but although Serbia might not be a factor that
can influence the outcome, stern refusal on the Serbian side might have some value.
After all, the consensus was reached not by the ultranationalists but more importantly
by President Boris Tadic, and Zoran Djindjic before him – in other words, forces that
can hardly be called ultranationalist. They all are basically repeating the same thing.
Probably the Serbian position isn’t the most important factor when deciding the future
of Kosovo, but I think this is a factor that should be taken into consideration. I know
that it only complicates further the decision-making process of the international com-
munity when trying to find some kind of lasting and at least feasible, if not just, solu-
tion for Kosovo.
Antonina Zhelyazkova: Prof. Hoepken, not everything is virtual and not eve-
rything is symbolic. Of course the fate of Kosovo will be decided by the ‘great powers,’
but there are nevertheless some realities with which they obviously cannot cope. For
example, Prof. Sahara suggested that we should educate police officers who will operate
254 Discussion
in a multiethnic environment. Precisely which police officers should we educate? Each

political party in democratic, multiparty Kosovo has its own party police. Is it them we
should educate? And then, it might be that all of us in the Balkans aren’t particularly
fond of Serbs, but the reality is that the refugee camps have been full of Serbs for sev-
en years now. I have visited them and I have seen young people there who have mar-
ried there and who now have children – in other words, we now have a new generation
born in refugee camps. These are realities. Will anybody do something to return those
people back to where they belong, to their native land? Or will anybody undertake to
improve their status, because it is obvious that the Serbian state is weak and cannot
cope. They don’t even have status. Not even the international humanitarian organisa-
tions want to get involved with them because they are said to be displaced persons and
not refugees. This doesn’t stop them however from getting married and having chil-
dren in abject poverty. These are realities.
Jorgen Nielsen: Wolfgang, I don’t think you can dismiss history as easily as you
did. Part of the problem is the asymmetry between the different historical mythologies
of the various sides. In one sense history is irrelevant, but in another sense mytholo-
gized history is being mobilised by various parties in these kinds of conflicts and is be-
ing used as ideological ammunition. On the refugee camps that Antonina mentioned,
I know from my own experience with Palestinians that these people need something
psychologically, collectively to hold on to, and that is very likely to be a mythologized
form of history. The historical memory that appears among these various groups is a
code for what is going on in the present. One of the big problems that Britain has al-
ways had with Northern Ireland is the almost complete asymmetry between the British
views of Northern Ireland’s history and Irish republican views of Northern Ireland’s
history. For the republicans 1689 happened yesterday, for the British 1689 is water that
has long disappeared under the bridge and has no relevance whatsoever. As an aca-
demic historian, I can sit down and argue until I’m blue in the face that William of
Orange’s forces in the Battle of the Boyne in 1689 included more than 50% Catholic
troops defeating Irish forces. But that doesn’t matter. The thing is to try to figure out the
code that current necessities impose on mythologized history. I’m not saying that one
would achieve any kind of moving forward that way but it may at least contribute some
way toward immunising the present against the misuse of history.
Tsvetana Georgieva: I have listened vary carefully to the papers and the discus-
sions that we had today, which perhaps naturally concentrated on Kosovo. But hearing
the discussions and other positions on the situation there, it struck me that in Bulgaria
we have the same problems as those in Kosovo, even if they might be muted and dor-
mant and not in such an explicit and concentrated form as those in Kosovo. Although
things in Bulgaria are simply normal, this thing about the map – we have such nation-
alist organisations too. From time to time, more or less every year, a group that is like-
wise connected to the Academy of Sciences will come up with some sort of national
Discussion 255
platform and demand that it be accepted by Parliament. Not to mention the problem
of roads, of poverty, which we tend to ignore. But hearing all this, it struck me that in
the last 120 years all of us in the Balkans have been driving away everybody we could or
they have fled from us. But Turkey, the successor of the Empire, has been accepting this
population or at least the majority of this population. If in the 1980s Turkey’s popula-
tion grew by 15 million, all the rest of us are very well aware of how much our popula-
tions have decreased. At the same time, in the course of my research I have come across
many complaints in the Ottoman archives from – excuse the term – the rayah. We are
strongly inclined to see things in very dark, gloomy colours. It seems to me that a posi-
tive and pro-active attitude will help us not less than the ‘great powers’ or the European
community. Prof. Sahara, for example, has suggested a rational solution and it may be
considered in some way. Conferences like this one should propose prospects and look
towards the future, because what we’ve been doing is basically going straight to the
pub once the session is over. When conducting politological and sociological surveys,
I would very much like to see young people produce not only findings but also make
an effort to propose prospects.
Wolfgang Hoepken: I briefly have to respond. I didn’t say that history is not rel-
evant, and I didn’t by far say, Antonina, that it is virtual. As a historian myself I know
about the relevance of history and I know about the role of historical myth in national
discourses. That wasn’t my point, my point was simply: Are we really willing in such a
group to discuss the question of political solutions for these issues by jumping on the
bandwagon of these nationalist arguments or not. This is the problem. And I really
don’t think we should do it. We should look for successful examples of overcoming na-
tionalist or political conflicts in the more recent history. What I find more interesting
is going beyond the concrete issues of Bosnia and Kosovo. We should think about the
question: Do we have strategies to reconstruct a multiethnic society, which has been
destroyed by war? The Bosnian example isn’t very successful. The Kosovo example ob-
viously has failed. So is it possible to reconstruct a multiethnic community, which has
been disrupted by violence? Is there any example? I don’t know of any. So these are
much more structural questions, I think, which are more worthy to be discussed than
Albanian or Macedonian maps.
Hidajet Repovac: I have to share with you another fact, however difficult you
might find it to accept it. The international forces, despite the genuine help they provid-
ed for ending the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, have also done much harm. The inter-
national forces have brought narcotics, prostitution, trafficking of women and various
forms of cross-border smuggling. I leave it to you to conclude whether this is positive
or negative. There was no human trafficking in Bosnia before, nor were illegal drugs
and prostitution so widespread. I know for certain, because we conducted a number of
studies both before and after the war, and we at the Institute have very accurate data.
256 Discussion
Ekaterina Nikova: When discussing the different cases of ethnic cleansing and
ethnic conflicts in the Balkans we should avoid generalising too much. After all, each
case is different, and we should bear in mind the different scale and scope. For exam-
ple, compared with what happened during the Yugoslav wars that stupid euphemism,
‘the big excursion,’ suddenly becomes relevant. Because compared with what happened
to Kosovars and Bosnians, what happened to the Bulgarian Turks indeed looks al-
most like an ‘excursion.’ By comparison, the Bulgarian case seems to have had a happy
ending, with recovery from ethnic cleansing. To see this, you only have to look at the
hundreds of thousands of Bulgarian Turks who are now travelling freely between the
two countries with a Bulgarian and a Turkish passport in each pocket. Yet the trauma
remains. At our discussion here we noted how deep and constant the trauma is for
Bulgarian society too. And this trauma remains despite the efforts of Bulgarian soci-
ety, despite the purposeful policy pursued by all governments, whatever their colour,
to restore violated rights, property, and so on. So many human fates have changed for-
ever, and so many families remain divided. Numerous studies, including studies con-
ducted by IMIR, show this. When you go there to do fieldwork you are deeply moved
and shocked, you only eat and cry all the time. The emigrants welcome you in their
nice homes, they have built a new life there, but they have a strong sense of loss, they
cry – especially the older ones. Because for them leaving their native land, even if they
left with their refrigerators and mattresses as somebody said, remains a trauma. So if I
have to end on a more optimistic note, I will say that yes, recovery from ethnic cleans-
ing is possible, but it is a very slow process and the price is very high.
Tetsuya Sahara: I think there are two ways to resolve that question: How to heal
the traumas of ethnic wars? The first way is a very familiar one in this region, in the
Balkans – it is simply to forget. I am familiar with at least two examples of this. One is
the creation of socialist Yugoslavia and the other is the Bulgarian case. The creation of
Yugoslavia was accompanied by a serious ethnic war, which occurred during World
War II, and it is clear that the Yugoslav experiment has failed. Tito’s government cov-
ered up all those ethnic traumas by banning the truth about the wartime ethnic crimes.
Later it turned out that nothing was forgotten, this option didn’t work. The second op-
tion is to reveal everything, to share the truth with the perpetrators and the victims.
There are two recent examples of this option: one is South Africa and the other is
Indonesia. There they set up a public court whose only aim was to establish the truth,
not to punish the perpetrators. I don’t know whether this plan is suitable to be applied
to the Balkans, but I think it is worth trying.
Elton Skendaj: On a higher conceptual level there are several issues connected
to the formation of Balkan nation states. I consider myself to be of a Balkan identity. I
would be the first one to vote for a Balkan state. The problem is that these nation states
have been formed, just like elsewhere else, on the basis of competing narratives and
historical myths. I didn’t want to talk about all the historical myths that I have been
Discussion 257
taught in Albanian schools since the age of five. I am fed up with them, but we are all
continuing to be told these narratives. This is how our educational system, our histori-
ans are. They keep repeating the same things. Are they true? Partly, but I’m sure there
has been lots of polishing and making sure that we look good and that the other, the
neighbour, looks bad. The question is whether we continue to stick to the concept of a
nation state focused on homogenisation. Before the age of human rights, humanitarian
assistance, etc., there was for example, as Mr. Turan noted, Kemalism in Turkey where
it was basically said: ‘I don’t care about your origin, but you are going to be a Turk. If
you don’t accept it, we will make you accept that you are a Turk.’
The same approach has been often applied in other nation states. Interestingly,
our greatest national holidays are the days we fought against each other. Greece cele-
brates the day it was liberated from the Ottomans, Turkey the day it liberated itself from
Greeks, Albania and Bulgaria – from Turks, Macedonia celebrates the Ilinden uprising
which Albanians, in their own nationalistic narrative, claim that they caused. We are
fed all those conflicting stories while we are growing up. Of course when I was a child
I saw maps of Greater Albania. Just like you saw maps of Greater Bulgaria during your
education. We all have maps: maps of the empires of Alexander the Great or of Simeon.
The point is that if we follow that kind of tradition we are doomed to fight all the time.
So for me the very concept of a homogenous nation state in the Balkans is flawed. Just
like Prof. Repovac, I would like to see some supra-national institution, which will make
sure that these narratives slowly become unimportant and other, more high-level nar-
ratives start to emerge. Now the bait is the European Union. The efforts for regional
cooperation and integration are interesting only because the EU is standing behind
them, behind the Stability Pact and other initiatives. Or the US has pushed for better
communication systems, etc. It still seems that the push for integration is coming from
outsiders, and not from us.
I don’t want to go into historical parallels, but only the Romans, the Byzantines
or the Ottomans, i.e. bigger empires, have managed to integrate the Balkans. The only
solution is if we all get a ticket to the European Union. Everybody in the Balkans would
agree on that. But from the point of view of the EU diplomats, they don’t want to
include the Balkans with all their pending problems. The EU requirements are quite
clear – they want the problems to be healed and a certain economic level to be achieved.
The trick is that as long as Bosnia, Kosovo and all those other places are kept out of
the Union, their problems aren’t being solved, they are probably getting worse. So I
see here a problem that I don’t know how to solve. I know that we shouldn’t go back to
the nation state and start quarrelling again about who came first to these lands or how
many kings we had.
Antonina Zhelyazkova: Elton has reminded me, actually, that if in the last fif-
teen years there has been something positive in Bulgaria that has helped heal our
wound, it is the fact that society has reached, even if slowly and painfully, consensus on
one particular issue. We have given up the idea of ‘one people, one nation, one state.’
258 Discussion
We have given up the idea of the state-nation and have accepted the theory of the po-
litical nation or, in other words, of the civic nation. We have accepted Turks, Roma, for
the first time since Bulgaria’s liberation, which means that since the end of the nine-
teenth century it is only now, at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twen-
ty-first century that we have accepted all minorities as an inseparable part of our na-
tion. And this has helped us a lot.
Ekaterina Nikova: Let me add something to what Antonina’s just said. I too
have doubts about the so-called ‘Bulgarian ethnic model,’ but the obvious absence
of interethnic tensions in Bulgaria is a remarkable fact. Let me give you a funny and
somewhat silly example to prove it. We recently had our first and hugely successful Big
Brother show in Bulgaria. Two of the participants were Turkish. And they were just as
impudent, vulgar and ignorant as the ethnic Bulgarians. The rules are that it’s up to the
viewers to decide who will get thrown out. What people said about the Bulgarian Turk,
who remained in the game almost until the end, was that he was impudent, had filthy
personal hygiene habits but, above all, that he was a CSKA8 fan – he wore a CSKA T-
shirt for a whole month. During the three months the show lasted, nobody said ‘he is a
Turk.’ Which was truly amazing – he was attacked for being a CSKA fan, not for being
Turkish. This happened among the youngest generation, and it was a very pleasant sur-
prise for the older generation who thought that those things were forever.
Boyko Marinkov: This morning Mrs. Zhelyazkova asked the question why us
Bulgarians avoided the Yugoslav scenario, why there wasn’t an ethnic war here. Her
question came after the excellent report of Prof. Repovac, who asked another question:
Was the dissolution of Yugoslavia unavoidable? Antonina looks for the explanation in
our national identity or our national mentality. But I think that sometimes things are
much more concrete. The ethnic crisis that had started in Bulgaria before November
1989 coincided, in a paradoxical way, with the second crisis in this period – the change
of political system. In the big conflict between communism and anticommunism, the
ethnic problem suddenly became secondary, supplementary, an undoubtedly impor-
tant problem but nevertheless one that was on the periphery of the debate. The big
debate was the political debate. And if there is something such as that which is pro-
visionally and wrongly called a ‘[Bulgarian] ethnic model,’ it is that the ethnic debate
was guided by the big political debate on which direction should Bulgaria follow, by
what means, with which partners. Such a debate didn’t take place in Yugoslavia. There
they suddenly started looking for their symbols and turned to the past. The Bulgarian
debate was a debate from the end of the twentieth century, from the modern world. It
was sharp and irreconcilable, but it was never radicalised. There were several attempts
at radicalisation, which were curbed very fast – if you remember, there was a Razgrad
Republic, there were various local attempts to radicalise the ethnic conflict. But be-
8
One of the two most popular football clubs in Bulgaria (Editor’s note).
Discussion 259
cause there was such political dialogue and twentieth-century politics, the Bulgarian
governments from this period started making progress, even if it was slow and gradual.
We cannot rely, as Prof. Sahara suggests, only on bilingual police officers as a solution
to ethnic problems. In Bulgaria there was a conflict potential and the external forces
which exercised pressure on the political forces knew about this conflict potential, but
it was within the realm of the political. It wasn’t so distinctly ethnic, there was no ex-
treme ethnic hatred that we saw in Yugoslavia. So, was the dissolution of Yugoslavia
unavoidable? If we reverse the debate by using nineteenth-century arguments – yes, it
was inevitable. But if efforts had been made to resort to the kind of political dialogue
and compromises found in the political history of the twentieth century, then things
would have been different.
Ilija Milcevski: I do agree that the former Yugoslavia was a clear case of re-
vival of nineteenth-century nationalism. This happened mainly among the political
elites. There is an anecdote that during the numerous meetings held by the repre-
sentatives of the European Community with the presidents of the six Yugoslav re-
publics, at one point the former tried hard to preserve the federation and Jacques
Delors, then the president of the European Commission, offered the quick integra-
tion of Yugoslavia into the European Union and very generous financial support on
the sole condition that the presidents of the six republics find some kind of compro-
mise on a unified state, whether federal, confederate, or union of independent states.
Slovenia agreed to that, Bosnia and Macedonia also wanted to accept the offer. But
Tudjman and Milosevic were against it. Tudjman used a typical nineteenth-centu-
ry argument: he said that Croats had one chance in a thousand years to create an in-
dependent Croatian state, and this was more important than everything else. And
Milosevic used the same arguments.
Slavka Draganova: I would like to note a fact that is usually ignored, at least
in Bulgaria’s case. Turkey’s rapid development has raised the standing not only of our
neighbour Turks but also of the Bulgarian Turks. Let’s not kid ourselves, back in the days
when I was a Turkish Philology student being Turkish implied being inferior. Today
this isn’t so. I myself have seen Turkey’s remarkable economic and cultural progress
since 1981, when I went to Turkey for the first time. Over the years, when returning
from Turkey and telling my friends what I had seen in Turkey they wouldn’t believe me.
Now many Bulgarians are taking trips and holidays and have seen Turkey for them-
selves. All of them are fascinated. We Bulgarians have always looked down on Turkey
in many respects, but now this is changing fast. This is also influencing the attitude in
our country towards our Bulgarian Turks. And then, although Turks might have finan-
cial problems they are allocating funds for the cultural heritage of the Ottoman Empire
and have done so much in this respect that I myself, who am an expert in economic
history, have realised that I’d underrated Ottoman culture and civilisation.
260 Discussion
Toni Petkovic: I would just like to add to what my colleague Ilija just said about
whether the dissolution of Yugoslavia was necessary. I would distinguish two aspects.
First, was it inevitable, was it necessary? No, I would say that it was highly unlikely.
And the second question: Was the violent nature of the dissolution necessary? I would
say it was almost unbelievable. I think there was a special set of very unfortunate cir-
cumstances, all combined unfortunately at the same time, which actually led to such an
outcome. First, after the death of Tito the institutions that were supposedly controlling
the country suffered from a lack of legitimacy and lack of real political power. This was
particularly true on the federal level, which was supplemented by the republican lead-
ers. Second, there was an aggravating economic situation. Third was the sudden loss
of international importance of Yugoslavia after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yugoslavia
had been preserved not only by Tito’s internal manoeuvres, but also by its special role
during the Cold War. The republican leaders didn’t realise the fact that Yugoslavia had
suddenly lost its importance. Fourth was the negative selection within the Communist
Party, where leaders were promoted not according to their intellectual or moral quali-
ties but according to some unconditional obedience to the party. And this brought to
the fore completely mediocre leaders. Those circumstances left Yugoslavia in the hands
of people such as Tudjman and Milosevic, and that’s why I wanted to say that the con-
vergence of all those elements at the same place at the same time was actually quite un-
likely. It doesn’t mean that without all those conditions present at the same time, it is
inevitable that all other non-ethnic states or federations would end up in the same way
as Yugoslavia; maybe this is an attempt to clear up some of the other factors, but these
are, I think, the most important. And maybe in some of these factors we can look for
the differences between the Bulgarian or other cases and the former Yugoslavia, and
for an explanation why, actually, in Yugoslavia it led to where it did and not in Bulgaria
and not in the USSR, and so on.
Marko Hajdinjak: I fully agree with what Toni just said. Unlike Prof. Sahara I
don’t think that the Yugoslav experiment has failed. In fact the experiment was very
successful until it collapsed due to this set of quite unusual and unfavourable circum-
stances, which accumulated in a very short period of time. Here is one explanation
why the scenario in Bulgaria was different: In Yugoslavia we had six competing elites,
six competing semi-independent states, while Bulgaria was a uniform state with one
structure, so such violent competition between elites as was the case between Serbia
and Croatia and Slovenia, etc., wasn’t possible in Bulgaria.
For the sake of accuracy I have to disagree slightly with Ilija’s remark about the
Slovenian readiness to accept Yugoslavia and remain in the federation in exchange for
entering the European Union. By that time Slovenes had no intentions whatsoever of
remaining in any kind of Yugoslav union. The Slovenian foreign minister at that time,
Dimitrij Rupel, who is also foreign minister now in the government of Janez Jansa,
stated sometime in the spring of 1991, a few months before the secession, that Slovenes
simply had no intention or desire to enter Europe via Belgrade. Sо when they spoke of
Discussion 261
a confederation or the willingness to participate in some kind of a Yugoslav commu-
nity, it was basically to score positive points for the eventual international recognition
of Slovenian independence.
Tetsuya Sahara: I would like to defend myself a little bit. I do agree with what
Mr. Petkovic and Mr. Hajdinjak just said that the fall of Yugoslavia was accidental. I
said that the Yugoslav experiment failed because the attempt of the communist author-
ities to erase the memory failed. For example, in 1990 the attempts to recover the loss
of memory from World War II had very destructive effects on Yugoslav society. I am
afraid that Yugoslav society didn’t have the capacity to survive the abrupt revival of the
old memory.
Daisuke Nagashima: I would like to stress that ethnic tensions were linked to
the economic situation and the communist party was well aware of that. In the mid-
1960s the communist party admitted that the national question wasn’t solved and that
the economy was in a really bad and critical situation. A great amount of money went
from Slovenia and Croatia to Kosovo to develop the economy, but this wasn’t a sys-
tematic way to develop the province. Despite all the funding that had been poured into
Kosovo, there was no improvement of the economy. In this relation I would like to
point that in Bosnia, as in Kosovo, the economic, political, military or police leaders of
the communities, towns, or villages, who played a really great role in the ethnic cleans-
ing or ethnic purges, had a straight continuity with the communist period. They were
actually the same people.
Hidajet Repovac: I would like to remind you that our topic were migrations in
the Balkans, but we have covered all possible topics to a larger extent than the migra-
tions. We should have provided sociological, economic, political and other explana-
tions about migrations in the Balkans and in the former Yugoslavia. Well, it seems that
we will provide such explanations on some other occasion. But since we have brought
up all those other topics anyway, we should make some use of them. We should there-
fore at least define the starting point for our joint path towards the European Union. In
the first place, I am speaking about finding a way to put an end to migrations, to mi-
grations towards the EU countries, which are still going on. Especially the young peo-
ple from Bosnia-Herzegovina are still emigrating to various Western European coun-
tries and it seems that this process cannot be stopped. There are fewer and fewer young
people in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which has become a land of the elderly. This is the most
important question: How to stop the young from leaving? And how to bring back those
who have left?
I have read the White Paper of the European Union, where those questions
about migrations are raised. The conditions which countries, including the Balkans
countries, have to fulfil to become EU members are also listed. There are 2,700 such
conditions, or criteria. So far, Bosnia-Herzegovina has fulfilled some 250 of them. It
262 Discussion
probably won’t be able to fulfil all of them before 2020. But even Norway or Sweden
haven’t fulfilled all of them, and this is our consolation.
But the question of migrations remains a crucially important scientific ques-
tion for all of the former Yugoslavia, but also for Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Albania
and other countries. We here are trying to come up with scientific answers and one of
them is the creation of political and economic preconditions to convince those people
to stay. We cannot stop them by force, but we have to offer them a new way of life. This
is what Elton Skendaj also talked about – a better life, a higher level of cultural, eco-
nomic and political development, which those young people will be able to accept as a
satisfactory way of living. If we don’t provide this, then we can only say goodbye to the
future generations and let them go.
Our famous writer, Miroslav Krleza9 – I say ‘ours,’ but even the Hungarians
and some other European nations say that he is theirs too – once said that on the
Balkans you always need to have your suitcase packed and ready. This is what we need
to change – this situation that on the Balkans your suitcase must always be ready. We
have to secure economic and other preconditions, including religious ones. Freedom of
religion is extremely important because for example in Bosnia religious tolerance has
been destroyed. A tolerance that existed for centuries was destroyed and we have to re-
store it. We also have to restore trust among people and trust in people. This will be our
first step towards the European Union, the first of those 2,700.
Wolfgang Hoepken: I think this was a wonderful closing of our discussion. I

would like to give the floor now to the organisers.
Ekaterina Nikova: I only want to remind you and to generalise the main tasks,
papers and problems that were raised at this conference. With all due modesty, I have
to say that I think this has been a successful conference.
9
Miroslav Krleza (1893–1981) is generally considered the most significant figure in
Croatian and (former) Yugoslav literature in the twentieth century – a playwright, novelist, es-
sayist, poet and lexicographer. He was born in Zagreb (then still part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire) and was sent to study at a military academy in Budapest (Editor’s note).
263
264

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1

FORCED ETHNIC MIGRATIONS

© Antonina Zhelyazkova, Atsuko Kawakita, Dobrinka Parusheva, Dragoljub Djordjevic,

FORCED ETHNIC MIGRATIONS

22-23 February, 2005

INTERNATIONAL CENTRE MEIJI UNIVERSITY

Edited by Ekaterina Popova, Marko Hajdinjak

International Centre for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations

Tetsuya Sahara – FOREWORD .................................................................................5

FIRST SESSION: GENERAL OVERVIEW OF BALKAN MIGRATIONS ............... 11

THIRD SESSION: FORMER YUGOSLAVIA: WAR, STATE-BUILDING AND

IV SESSION: FORMER YUGOSLAVIA: WAR, STATE-BUILDING AND

The present volume is a result of an interesting cooperation – between two

General Overview of Balkan Migrations

Prof. Hidajet Repovac

MIGRATIONS IN THE HISTORY

The history of multiethnicity and multiculturalism in Bulgaria is too complex

and Kosovo (Editor’s note)

FORCED ETHNIC MIGRATIONS

Forced Migrations Before the Modern Period

The First Half of the Twentieth Century

of appeasement to that of taking preventive measures. The government intentionally

Cambridge University Press, pp. 106–107.

From the Mid-Twentieth Century to the Present Day

‘EXPULSION’ OF THE GERMAN POPULATION

1. ‘Expulsion’ of the German Population from Eastern Eu-

3) Forced migration from East Prussia

2. Forced Migrations as a Twentieth-Century European Phe-

served as a model and functioned as a standard argument of prominent statesmen

3. Reconciliation after Ethnic Conﬂicts: The German Case

The recommendation reﬁned the process generically referred to as Vertreibung

4. Commemoration of Negative Historical Heritage in the

With humanity still scarred by genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, anti-Semitism

Commemoration of ethnic cleansing and forced migrations in twentieth-cen-

THE ROMA AND ETHNOCULTURAL JUSTICE:

‘…Without recognising the importance of ethnocultural justice,

Global Multiculturalism as a Fact and the Problem of

Emigration is possible only if there is a country, which would be ready to ac-

Multiculturalism in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Serbia: The

Integration as a Way Out?

Factors Inﬂuencing Integration of Roma

Integration of Roma and attitudes of majority peoples towards Roma.

These generalisations can be interpreted in diﬀerent ways. Firstly, it can be said

Integration and the attitudes of Roma towards some integration modalities.

tion, irrespective of declarative acceptance of equality and egalitarianism, have so far

For more on Romanipe, see ‘Romi od zaboravljene do manjine u usponu. Razgovor

Dragoljuba B. Đorđevića i Osmana Balića,’ in Romi od zaboravljene od manjine u usponu, Niš:

TURKISH MIGRATIONS FROM BULGARIA

‘We are foreign press representatives gathered in Shumen. We believe that it is

‘The proceedings of Russians and Bulgarians in Bulgaria and Rumelia convinced

According to the Bulgarian oﬃcial statistics, 802,597 Muslims lived in the

The communists came to power in Bulgaria on 9 September 1944. They gave

In the framework of assimilation, a name change campaign was launched. In the

Ibrahim Yalamov: I would like to say something in connection with Tomova’s

Tetsuya Sahara: I would like to respond to Prof. Hoepken’s very informative

The Bulgarian Case:

Prof. Tetsuya Sahara

THE ‘RENAMING’: CONSEQUENCES

I. Reasons for and Nature of the ‘Renaming’

II. Social, Political, Ethnic, and Cultural Consequences

III. Gradual Overcoming of the Consequences

THE ‘RENAMING PROCESS’ AMONG THE

MIGRATION OF ROMA IN BULGARIA

Number and Relative Share of the Large Ethnic Communi-