An Historical Fable of a Country That Is No More

Abstract

The key question, if one speaks about the siege of Sarajevo and other horrific consequences of the Yugoslav disintegration at the end of the 20th century, is where to begin? Should I begin the narrative with the migrations of South Slav tribes on the Balkan Peninsula and their mingling with the Peninsula’s indigenous populations since the 7th century of the Common Era? I also might choose to emphasise the creation of the several medieval feudal kingdoms, named after those Slavic tribes, as the focal point in a narrative about Yugoslavia or the land of the South Slavs. Or, perhaps, I could begin from the historical point when the national state formed solely for South Slavs was mentioned for the first time. As Ivo Banac (1992)—one of the most prominent scholars on Yugoslav history—emphasises, it is a simultaneously burdensome and onerous necessity to tell the Yugoslav story from the beginning. But regardless of the starting point for any discussion of the Yugoslav demise, one must avoid the preposterous ‘audacity of the grand simplifiers’ (Banac 1992, p. 142). To avoid the simplification of grand narrative, any history should cover the middle of the 19th century. That is the time when the formation of nations, as one of the major creations of modernity, was almost fully realised throughout Europe. Also, it is the time when Yugoslavia, as the common state for all South Slavs, was mentioned and imagined for the first time.