[izzytcp]

I lived in the Balkans for 30 years. Serbs have great culture and kafanas, but they are extremely political. It’s so hard to hold a normal conversation without them mentioning Russia, Yugoslavia, Kosovo/Albanians, NATO la-la-la. Especially in kafanas, I can confidently say that a majority of them still live in the past and can’t move on and it’s really sad.

[racketcon2089]

I've also lived in the balkans and my work involved tourism, I have to say this does sound like a complaint made primarily by germans and americans. I'm not sure if it's because germans and americans are the ones who get an earful of it most often due to heavier national involvement in the yugoslav wars and/or if we take it as a more of a personal affront.

The triumphal liberal cosmopolitanism of the 90s is starting to fade in Europe and the US, what's left looks more and more like cynical window dressing for brutal realpolitik. Nationalism, irredentist attitudes, ethnic cleansing and military conflict seem to be very much back on the menu as of late.

I see all of those as negative developments, but it's maybe time to wonder who's living in the past, them or us.

[pjmlp]

As the first generation out of the Portuguese dictorship, I really feel we are slowly back to the days before the Wall fell down.

How everything used to be during the first decade of EU is really going away, and I have no hurry to live under the same kind of goverments that my parents had to endure.

Many of the "nationalists" have no clue what it actually means, when the folks that vote on them as protest, discover the real meaning it will be too late.

[FirmwareBurner]

>Nationalism, irredentist attitudes, ethnic cleansing and military conflict seem to be very much back on the menu as of late

Hardly surprising when the last 3+ years saw the biggest wealth transfer and biggest erosion of the middle class in history. And the average people who suffered that decline aren't comforted by the typical "ackchyually, the economy's great, look how well the stock market is doing" when they have too much month left at the end of their paychecks and no chance of getting out of the serfdom cycle.

[racketcon2089]

The ownership class will do anything to stop fascism except allow the public to vote on the continuous upward transfer of wealth from the workforce to the already wealthy. War and nationalism are a surefire way to distract the public and muzzle critics, to tell a story about national greatness stolen by outsiders instead of by your very own titans of industry and politicians who have more in common with their opposite number in other countries than with anyone foolish or unlucky enough to be born outside of the circles of capital and access to capital.

[OfSanguineFire]

The parent comment is ridiculous hyperbole. I spend several months every year cycling around the Western Balkans, largely for the sake of maintaining my knowledge of the languages and therefore I spend a lot of my time in cafes chatting with whoever’s around. Sure, Serbs sometimes bring up politics like any people would, but it isn’t at all “hard to hold a normal conversation”. I can and have talked with them about everything under the sun.

[acadapter]

Some people seem to deliberately change the topic to war, whenever there is a thread about anything in the Balkans. This phenomenon also happens on Reddit and other places.

[otto2]

I don't know where are you from, but imagine your country being under devastating economic sanctions, then bombarded by enormously more powerful armies, then annexing a part of the country, all of that against international law. Make that process displace hundreds of thousands of people. Now when you imagine that, be honest with yourself and see if you would keep conversations at weather and sport.

[nezirus]

You coveniently ignore the events leading to and the reasons for sanctions and bombardment:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

This was actually the second time NATO has bombarded serbian forces, the first time was in Bosnia, which eventually led to Dayton peace agreement later that year:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Deliberate_Force

[zigman1]

Sounds like talk in the kafanas

[blago]

Have you been to Vietnam? There is no comparison between what was done to them and Serbia, yet Vietnam has moved on. Victimhood is strong in the Balkans, it's a way of life. I know because I was born there.

[racketcon2089]

Vietnam won decisively and Serbia lost decisively; measured in destruction it was incomparably worse for Vietnam, but they have no outstanding border conflicts while experiencing peaceful economic development and national sovereignty since the last war in 1979. When your story has a happy ending (and your government needs the US to counterbalance China) it's a lot easier to move on.

This is essentially the reverse of former Yugoslavia where things were fairly placid from 1945-1980 then fell apart.

There's a tendency to equate the grievances of a generation with immutable national character because it makes analysis easy and change impossible. But this gets used for purposes of denigration of peoples or excuses for policy failures, if not by race and culture, then by economic class and individual good fortune.

I'm guessing you were born to educated professionals who immigrated or helped you do so, rather than say, grew up in a refugee camp with a non-citizen passport.

[blago]

It sounds like you are from the West. Thank you for explaining the psychology of my people so clearly to me. I think I understand it better now but it looks like I can use some book reading. Any recommendations?

[racketcon2089]

[flagged]

[blago]

> Sorry your genetic ancestral memory of the Balkans doesn’t stack up to...

Ah, we have a serial West-splainer. I emigrated when I was 24 and I speak for pretty much everybody I've known in those years. I've studied and wrote essays on the literature and the history of the region daily through high school and college. I speak the language and the customs.

You on the other hand seem completely oblivious to the cultural significance of Kafana, or its different incarnations throughout the region, to recognize that arguing about politics, whining about history, the Great Powers, life, and the Universe, has and still is pretty much the purpose of their existence.

> PS. Was I right about the educated professionals part, or were you a displaced person whose village was razed?

I'm having a hard time comprehending the relevance. Did the displaced people in Yugoslavia 30 years ago define the pathos of the region, which BTW is more than just former Yugoslavia, in the last 600+ years?

[golergka]

> Vietnam won decisively

Northern, communist Vietnam won. It wasn't a war between a Vietnam and USA, but rather between a communist and pro-western regimes.

[racketcon2089]

At no point did it exist as an independent entity with popular support, it was first created by the French and propped up by the US. It’s about as credible as saying the Soviet war in Afghanistan was between two competing regimes or that the liberation of France in WW2 was a conflict between pro-German and pro-American regimes.

Formally true, but not a meaningful distinction given the massive disparity in capabilities and supporters.

[charlysl]

You are very articulate but you don't have a clue of what you are talking about, no matter how many books you have read. The southern vietnamese have a very distinct identity, and they haven't moved on at all, if they had a chance they would declare independence from the north in a split second.

Source: I have lived in Saigon for a decade, which beats hands down the many books I had read about the subject before that

[blago]

For much of history (i.e. millennia) the north and the south of Vietnam have experienced different degrees of voluntary and involuntary separation. For hundreds and hundreds of years they existed as different countries and even tried to conquer each other. The vast majority of south Vietnamese people today have more sympathy for the US than for Hanoi.

Source: half my family is Vietnamese and I lived there for 3 years.

[thsksbd]

Vietnam didn't move on! That's the one thing they most certainly did not do. For decades the Viet refused to move on until they won. After they won, they then fought a war with China and another proxy war with America.

The Viet do not move on. They stick to their guns. Or feces covered bamboo sticks, or any weaponizable itsm they have on hand.

Nor did the Afghanis. They just kept at it until they won.

In fact, giving up and moving on is what just about only the peace loving Serbs did.

[golergka]

> your country being under devastating economic sanctions, then bombarded by enormously more powerful armies, then annexing a part of the country

All of that just out of a sudden, without anything else occurring to trigger these events, right? No genocides, no invasions, no massive civilian casualties? No war criminals walking around free doing DJ gigs 30 years later?

[mydriasis]

No, none of that is forgotten either. It's hell as far back as anyone alive can remember, from the 90s to the 40s to WWI and the Balkan wars, and all of the fighting with the Ottoman empire throughout the 19th century.

But you knew all of that.

[yakshaving_jgt]

Are you suggesting that because other genocides have happened, the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats is just business as usual?

Perhaps NATO should have just left them to it. Sure, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, but I suppose that pales in comparison to the millions killed in WW2.

[thriftwy]

> the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats

We've just seen a massive, 150k people ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and nobody in the whole world went so far as lifting a finger to stop it. Except Russia, which did lift one of its fingers but that was it.

It happened this autumn.

But yeah, let's pretend that NATO is in business of preventing ethnic cleansings around the world, as opposed to ruining countries it doesn't like for profit. And BTW, what happened to Krajina Srpska?

[yakshaving_jgt]

Sorry, how many died? Where are you getting your figures?

The implied defence of russia is particularly inappropriate, given the russians have raped, tortured, and massacred tens of thousands of Ukrainians just in the past couple of years. If you're taking ethnic cleansing to simply mean displaced, then russia is guilty of ethnic cleansing to the tune of millions of civilians.

[stickfigure]

I don't think you're arguing in good faith, but for anyone else that takes this kind of commentary serious:

Take a look at a map. Even if there was political will, "The West" has extremely limited options for military intervention in a landlocked country surrounded by non-aligned states. It's not like the US is going to fly sorties through Iran or Russia. Armenia is in a tough spot.

[mydriasis]

No, and don't put words in my mouth. There's nothing business as usual about genocide. Neither are the people of the Balkans so flippant, none of this is forgotten. There's an awful lot of talk about "moving on" here, though, which is radically unsympathetic to the people who live across the Balkans who, for the last century, have had their lives and livelihood threatened seemingly every 30 years or so, one way or another.

[golergka]

Not really. Yugoslavia, especially after the end of 50s was pretty decent by standards of socialist countries.

[foverzar]

> All of that just out of a sudden, without anything else occurring to trigger these events, right? No genocides, no invasions, no massive civilian casualties?

Do you also support Russia's invasion in Ukraine?

Because you are clearly rationalizing involving a larger military power whose brutality ends up hurting orders of magnitudes more innocent people than the actual bad actors. Thus, bringing ever more people into the cycle of hatered.

Do you really imagine that some random person whose house was bombed and family was killed saying "yeah, that is totally just, thank you, good guys!"

Obviously, they won't.

[golergka]

> Do you also support Russia's invasion in Ukraine?

No, because any Russian claims about civilians attacked in Ukraine are lies. If we lived in an alternative reality where those claims were true, I would support it — but in a much limited capacity. Like an aerial campaign.

> whose brutality ends up hurting orders of magnitudes more innocent people than the actual bad actors

That's patently false. US military involvement in Serbia was limited and hurt much less innocents that would be slaughtered otherwise.

> Do you really imagine that some random person whose house was bombed and family was killed saying "yeah, that is totally just, thank you, good guys!"

That's a tragedy. Why was his family living in a military installation? Whoever settled them there, or set up a military installation under his house is to blame — that's what he should be angry against.

It's like criticising Israel for bombing Hamas installations in civilian areas — that's not the actor who's responsible for breaking the rules or war and resulting casualties.

[brnt]

Welcome to understanding small countries.

We're not all stuck in our pasts.

[paganel]

This comment is so ridiculous and so orientalist, it has all the stereotypes.

And to add something more constructive, the Americans made a big strategic mistake in bombing out Serbia/Yugoslavia, as many of the people there were some of the most Westernised populace East of Dover. I'm from nearby Romania and somehow I got to listen to one of their national radio stations last week (Radio Belgrade 202 I think), and I have to say that the music there was profoundly Westernised, as in R.E.M. songs and the like in the middle of the day, and we're talking about a State-run radio station. We don't have that here in Romania, where half of the pop music (and more) is now local/Romanian.

Of course that dropping uranium enriched bombs on people's heads, as the US has done, might have changed the opinions of some of them.

[Ygg2]

It's depleted uranium projectiles. It's anti-tank because uranium is way more dense than iron.

[boffinAudio]

.. and, as it subsequently produces deformed babies at an alarming rate for generations after its use on the battlefield, it should be 100% banned and its usage treated as a crime against humanity.

[MagnumOpus]

The alternative for the toxic teratogenic heavy metal that is depleted uranium is the toxic teratogenic heavy metal that is lead.

Banning depleted uranium doesn’t solve anything.

[boffinAudio]

>Banning depleted uranium doesn’t solve anything.

Tell that to the mothers in Iraq giving birth to deformed babies every single day.

[quotz]

People love talking about politics and history in the balkans, and its because the balkans have been politically and militarily torn apart hundreds of times in the past 200 years. History and politics are a big topic of discussion. I think its much better to have this than the random americans on youtube who dont know who their president is or why they invaded iraq or any basic fact about their country. Its like they live in this tiny bubble of just going to work and back and not belonging to any community out there besides a costco membership.

[foverzar]

> but they are extremely political. It’s so hard to hold a normal conversation without them mentioning Russia, Yugoslavia, Kosovo/Albanians, NATO la-la-la

> them still live in the past and can’t move on and it’s really sad.

Heh, but that's exactly my experience with Americans and their Cold War mentality, and that very specific idea they have about "fighting tyranny", "bringing democracy" and the whole childish image of good guys (tm) vs bad guys dichotomy. (And yes, also Russia, Nato, Ukraine and yada-yada these days)

I think it's just a matter of contrast.

[nradov]

I've spent a lot of time in Serbia. They're not all obsessed with politics. Most of the younger generation are resolved to the reality that Kosovo is lost forever (and never really mattered much anyway). Unfortunately, the political ruling class is still trying to maintain support from hard-core nationalists and maintain their distance from the EU and NATO; this won't work out well for such a small, poor country.

Some foreigners criticize Americans for being ignorant of history, and they're correct. But ignorance is also a strength in that it allows us to move on without holding grudges. It's not a perfect analogy but to some extent Americans have found it easier to get over the Civil War that ended in 1865 than Serbs have from the Battle of Kosovo in 1389.

[thsksbd]

Well U-238 half life is 4E9 years so there might be some remnant ill feelings for a while.

[mantas]

It's still important in the present. History did not end.

It's much worse when people in West avoid elephant-in-the-room topics because they're politically incorrect or whatever.

[atoav]

As someone who knows the people and the place, I have to say that a lot of the political takes I ever heard from regular Serbians have either been of a fatalistic self-defeating kind ("everything is shit and it cannot be changed") or of a nationalist self-defearing kind ("everything is shit and it is the fault of $other_nations").

I can emotionally understand why the stances are often so fatalistic — it has to do with the way society in Serbia works on a daily basis — but as a foreigner who worked there once and has friends living there I could witness myself that a lot of the problems there are home grown. The focus on the unfair outside world is a great way to ignore the shit that goes on at home.

That being said I have been talking about regular Serbs. Like everywhere you will also find sharp analytical minds with singular positions in Serbia and it is well worth listening to them.

I don't believe any serious intellectual position in the west still believes the myth of the end of history.

[mantas]

Cafe discussions are not about „serious intellectual position“ though. And I've a feeling that lots of regular Westerners still believe in this myth. Or at least want to believe.

All-in-all, I think the most important part is to keep talking about what is in one's head. Pushing people to just get over it and change what is in their heads does not exactly work.

[atoav]

Nowhere did I say it was about serious intellectual positions. That is why I specifically made the distinction between regular people and academics.

Also it feel funny to be called a westerner based on a city that is actually a 6 hour car drive from where I grew up. And I grew up next to a couple that fled the war, he was a Serb, she was a Bosnian. My parents took them in and gave them our cellar, he got a job at my fathers company (and works there to this day).

[mantas]

I didn't call you a westerner. I said that in my experience a lot of regular westerners still believe in that myth. And that this crowd is closer to Cafe crowd.

As for „serious intelectual position“ as a split between academia and regular crowd, I'd argue that many people in academia today are con artists at best. And boy do they have end-of-history-ish views. But yes, that's not „serious intelectual position“.

[xomodo]

So true. Even small children are having same attitude. This is why many of us had to move abroad.

[babuskov]

Can't blame the children. They only learn from their parents. If people like you decide to leave, the majority of people with that attitude only grows. In my experience, people don't leave because of political discourse. People leave because of economic situation and lack of opportunities.