Balkan History

The twentieth century for people in Eastern Europe has been a tremendous time of turmoil, war, and revolution.  East and West values, both reli-gious and political had come to a head in the heart of Europe.  The communists had done some things right, but it didn’t last.  Many great buildings were built during the period between the two World Wars but after the brief peace many buildings were destroyed.  Here we will focus mainly on the influences of the 20th century on the conditions that exist today, although certainly the historic context dates much farther back.  Most territories in Europe developed their own response to modernism and, in the Eastern Bloc, being controlled by the state, they developed also their own responses to communism.  Basically people were provided for, but they weren’t free.  This persecution seemed to be reflected in most of the building types and also in construction methodolo-gies of the communist leadership.  Although, when executed they did not fulfill the utopian ideal that they were meant to represent, these structures did stand for ability and competence on behalf of the state to provide for its people. 

As a response to war and conflict that continues to exist into the present day, this thesis will identify three sites in the cities of Sarajevo, Belgrade, and Pristina which will network together and serve as Centers for Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Intercultural Competence between the countries of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, and Kosovo respectively.  These buildings will be state funded multi-use Civic projects that provide places to host interna-tional diplomacy conferences, galleries that include national and cultural art and artifact exhibits, and offices for the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), and Urban Planning and Environmental Studies under the auspices of the European Center for Peace and Development (ECPP).  The expected outcome is that through contemporary architecture a liberal agenda can unfold that allows for diplomacy, social innovation, and sustainable post-war redevelopment against architectural backgrounds that provide cultural, ethnic, and national identities.

Refik Nevzad became familiar with the idea of “liberty” while he was studying at Kuleli İdadisi (Secondary School) and Military Medical School. He got closer to the Committee of Union and Progress of the future years through the agency of İbrahim Temo and he was sent to Paris with a task to invite Ahmed Rıza Bey to the committee. After a while, he settled in Paris and was impressed by French socialists. Meanwhile, he got in contact with İştirakçı Hilmi’s (Socialist Hilmi) entourage in İstanbul. As a result of this connection, he founded a branch office of Ottoman Socialist Party in Paris and he started to publish a newspaper named Beşeriyet (Humanity- inspired by L'Humanité formerly the daily newspaper linked to the French Communist Party) in the autumn of 1911. However, only six issues of the newspaper could be published. After the publication of the last issue of Beşeriyet, Dr. Refik Nevzad adjourned publishing business for a long time. In 1913 he published three booklets at once. The two of them, Invitation to the Public! dated February 1st and Why Wait!, are about the causes of the Balkan Wars and the political developments in the Ottoman State during the same period. He wrote his booklet titled Invitation to the Public! right after Bâb-ı Âlî Coup on 23rd of January, 1913 and he calls all Ottoman people to unite against the Unionists who were responsible for the coup. At the same time, he claims that first Edirne and then the remaining territories of the Empire in Asia will be lost if people do not overthrow the Union and Progress government which came to power recently during the hardest days of the Siege of Edirne. In his pamphlet that he wrote after the surrender of Edirne to the Bulgarian Army, Why Wait! dated May 1st, his voice became much louder. He blamed the policies of the Unionists not only for the developments that led to the Balkan Wars but also for the defeat in the war. However, it can be seen that Dr. Refik Nevzad saw the developments from a narrow standpoint comparing his ideology with his attitude and analyses regarding the Balkan War. Contrary to what is expected from a socialist observer, he did not touch upon the socio-political causes of the war or military and intellectual war preparations of the Balkan states which gained their independence recently; he only blamed the actions of Union and Progress governments after 1908. Moreover, despite the fact that he used his newspaper Beşeriyet to help end the war and set a meeting with the members of the Second International in Paris during the Trablusgarb Harbi (Tripolitanian War – Turco – Italian War), he did not make such attempts during the Balkan Wars. As he underlined in his other works, he recommends that Union and Progress government and the relations with Germany, the ally of Union and Progress, should be terminated and people should unite and take action for an alliance with France and England in order to enable the Ottoman State to overcome the negative outcomes of the Balkan Wars.

Influences of the Ukrainian Elite on the National Awakening of the Serbs: Publishing of Ukrainian Brotherhoods in the Culture of Slavic Peoples in Habsburg Empire
Впливи української еліти на національне відродження сербів: книжкові видання українських братств у культурі слов’янських народів Габсбурзької імперії
We can speak about the evolving of the Ukrainian elite and its special activities also international contacts in the 17th cent. According to great findings of passed academician Y. Isaievich, the brotherhoods (Confraternities) were enlightened civil organizations and their activity in the field of the book-printing (not only, but we must be limited on it due to the frameworks of the paper) – it was the evolving the national Ukrainian culture representing by national elite. This enlightened elite provided the national awakening of the others as of the Serbs, too. Living in the Hungarian Kingdom, the Serbs could use their Slavic language in local administration and Church Slavonic in the liturgy which was denied on the Balkans. Neither the Turkish rulers nor the Greek Church elite permitted any way of neither the Serbian national service nor the keeping their Slavic national heritage. Moving to Hungary, Serbs had chances to contact the East Slavic cultural centers and these were Ukrainian but not Russian. The Tsarist Empire interfered into the things of Balkan peoples since the last quarter of the 18th cent., after the dividing of Poland. Before this the Serbian-Ukrainian contacts were strong, which was reflected by the book-import. Thus the findings of the author on the recent book-collections held in Hungary contribute new data to the international role of the Ukrainian elite even in the time it was burn.

Highlighting the significance of counterinsurgencies fought in the aftermath of the Second World War for contemporary theory and practice, this thesis is a comparative analysis of the campaigns fought in Malaya, Algeria and Romania between 1944 and 1962. The case selection allows an engagement both with Western and non-Western patterns of anti-guerrilla warfare, allowing this work to conceive counterinsurgency as a coherent object of study across time and cultures. The research question at the heart of the thesis is what accounts for success in counterinsurgency? Considering that the government’s main tasks in dealing with armed rebellion are to prevent the spread of rebellion, to identify, find and eliminate the rebels, this work analyses the three campaigns on three dimensions: population control, intelligence and intelligence operations and military operations. In relation to population control, the findings
point to the hollowness of the prevalent narrative concerning “hearts and minds” approaches and instead highlight the centrality of massive deportations and physical and psychological intimidation and control of targeted populations. The study of intelligence engages with the relative merits of centralized and decentralized organization for counterinsurgency campaigns, evaluates the use of interrogation and torture and assesses the role of infiltration and countergangs. Military approaches such as patrols, cordoning, garrisoning, raids, special forces operations are analysed in relation to achieving success in the campaigns. The concluding comparison section discusses the three cases in connection to contemporary counterinsurgencies. In answering the research question, the thesis argues that population control is the strategic-level answer in counterinsurgency, which makes it problematic for present-day contingencies. It also points out the tactical-level relevance of intelligence and military operations.

ÖZET
1912 Edeköy Katliamı, Birinci Balkan Savaşı’nda yaşanan en büyük katliamlardan biridir. Katliam, savaşın ilk günlerinde, 13-20 Kasım tarihleri arasında yaşanmıştır. Bir hafta süren olaylar sırasında binlerce kişi öldürülmüştür. Katliamı yapanlar, Edeköy yakınlarındaki Sofulu kasabası ve çevresindeki köylerin Rum çeteleridir. Katliamın sorumlusu Rumların bir çoğu, işkencelerle öldürdükleri Edeköylüleri yakından tanıyan, yıllarca Edeköy Müslümanları ile birlikte yaşamış, çalışmış kişilerdir. Katliam sırasında bölgede hakim olan Bulgar askerinin de olaylarda sorumluluğu bulunmaktadır.
Bu makale, Edeköy Katliamı üzerine hazırlanmış ilk geniş çaplı araştırma kitabının, Birinci Balkan Savaşı'nın 100. yılında Atlas Tarih Dergisi tarafından hazırlanan özel sayısı için hazırlanmış kısa bir özetidir.
Görseller, dergi yayınından alınmıştır.

ABSTRACT
1912 Edeköy Massacre, is one of the biggest massacres of the First Balkan War.
The incident happened in the first days of the war, between 13-20th of November.
During this time period, thousands of Muslim Turk people were killed, many women and children raped and Edeköy was plundered.
Greek gangs from Soufli town and other nearby Greek villages were responsible for the massacre.
Most of the members of the gangs had been working and living with the victims of the massacre, for long years.
Bulgarian Army, who was ruling the region these days, also had played a role in the incident.
This article is a shorter version of the first wide-scale study over the Edeköy Massacre; and was published in the Atlas History Magazine’s special issue for the 100th year of the Balkan Wars.

Βιβλιοκρισία για το βιβλίο της Βέσνα Goldsworthy για τα στερεότυπα της αγγλικής λογοτεχνίας για τα Βαλκάνια και τους ανθρώπους τους, που γράφθηκε πάνω στη λογική του Οριενταλισμού του Εντουαρντ Σαΐντ, αλλά δεν ασχολείται με την επιρροή των λογοτεχνικών έργων στη βρετανική κοινωνία.

The abandonment of Communism in Yugoslavia in 1990 was followed shortly afterwards by the break-up of the Yugoslav federal state and the establishment of new more or less national states out of the formerly federal republics. The establishment of formally democratic nation states led to new demands to history: The class based histories of the Communist period were reputed, and new national histories were to be written. How were these histories to deal with the common Yugoslav socialist past?
  This question was often a delicate one, as several of the republics had only distant experiences of independent statehood. The period as fairly independent republics within Yugoslavia therefore constitutes an essential part of their history as states. On the other hand, the new national histories were to contribute to the consolidation of the new states by legitimising both the establishment of new ideological regimes and new national borders. Yugoslavia’s dissolution process was accompanied by years of warfare in various parts of the former federation. Indeed, the replacing of the Yugoslav federation by national states had cost dearly in most post-Yugoslav republics, though in some states much more so than in others. Thus the new histories had to explain a discontinuous and troublesome very recent past.
  This article investigates how the common Yugoslav socialist state was represented in the new histories of Croatia, Serbia and, more briefly, Bosnia in the 1990s and early 2000s. The article is based on analyses of schoolbooks of contemporary history and history writing, especially historical syntheses, in Croatia, Serbia and, more briefly, Bosnia. I argue that the early post-Yugoslav representations of Yugoslav history were enveloped in descriptions of internal conflicts, while periods of peaceful coexistence and relative prosperity were downplayed. History writing and education thus contributed to explaining and legitimising the break-up of the Yugoslav federation and to naturalising new national borders.