Ethnic Nationalism: The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia

by Bogdan Denis Denitch

Book Overview

This essential resource provides a cogent, comprehensive historical analysis of Yugoslavia's demise, one that clearly identifies events and trends that urgently demand the world's attention.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816624593
• ISBN13: 9780816624591
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Passionate, usparing

Despite its title, Denitch's analysis of the Yugoslav collapse is not so much a study of ethnic nationalism as such as it is a thorough, passionate and often personal look into the causes and consequences of Yugoslavia's break-up. Since he was a citizen of Yugoslavia, and also actively involved to some extent in the political events of the early 1990s, Denitch generally discards with the customary cold, academic aloofness and feigned impartiality and tells the reader squarely where he stands on issues such as nationalism, the war in Yugoslavia, the events that led to the country's destruction, etc. This makes the text all the more interesting, as he offers very fascinating, if not sometimes controversial, views and insights into recent Yugoslav history and the ethic politics which hold sway in the Yugoslav successor states. His analysis of Yugoslavia's failure to progress into a pluralist democracy, despite being THE European socialist state most likely to do so in the late 1980s, is very interesting: he notes that the fatal flaw made by Tito and the ruling communists was to decentralize the country's decision-making processes rather than democratizing its political scene. His opinion of nationalism is, needless to say, very disparaging, and his intent in this book is to warn that ethnic nationalism and identity politics in today's world are an enemy to democracy everywhere, not just in the former Yugoslavia or the formerly communist Eastern Europe, but throughout the world, including the developed, allegedly rational and post-nationalist West. Regardless of what one thinks of Denitch's standpoint, this is definitely an important book to read for a better understanding of Yugoslavia's break-up and the problems that still plague the region today.