One of the fascinating things about Serbian history is just how mixed up it is with the history of its neighbors. That can be good or bad, but it always takes responsible and meticulous untangling as one attempts to get any kind of broad view of Serbian society in operation. One variant of this “bigger picture” analysis, as this reviewer terms this historiographical approach, leads us to ascribe many Serbian (and Balkan) problems to the misdeeds or at least miscalculations of the Great Powers, while another variant focuses on the dynamic, clashing cultural alignments to the north, south, and west of Belgrade. Even more familiar, of late, is the belief that nationalism (however defined) and expansionism are the main operational code of every Serbian state. None of these variants, however, gives us the most cogent explanation of Serbian political developments since the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, according to Marko Attila Hoare. It is his goal in this lengthy, erudite study to identify and track the effect of an unresolved, long-term domestic (how very domestic! one is tempted to add) power conflict between prominent and durable political groupings. Hoare makes his case very carefully in this worthy addition to the last couple of decades of big histories of Serbia.
As Hoare argues, it is “mutual power struggles and conflicting visions” (2) among elites that drives Serbian history. There are plenty of conflicts that fit the bill for fueling internal discord and ideological diversification, and part of the historian’s task is to try to figure out what is a cause and what is an effect. Some of the conflicts hinge on basic definitions: who is a Serb (transnational ethnic consideration) and who is properly a Serbian (a subject or citizen of a Serb state). Others inject minority or post-colonial considerations into the political scene, such as the communal life of Albanians and Turks. There are foreign policy considerations, of course, as well: should Serbia hew to a Russian or Habsburg line? And there are immensely important, if largely local, disputes between the Karadjordjevic and Obrenovic families, Serbia’s two dynasties.
The period under study properly begins with 1804, when the First Serbian Uprising started. Hoare takes the narrative up to 1941, when the first Yugoslav state, and Serbia’s independent polity with it, is buried by the outbreak of World War II in the Balkans. There is some introductory material, mostly political, on Serbia’s medieval and Ottoman periods; Hoare also plans to write another volume on post-1941 Serbia. The source base is large and varied, and includes archival holdings in Belgrade and also published primary sources. The maps are excellent and the index is a work of art!
As befits a book of this scope, there are many vignettes and side-arguments that emerge while reading. These are made relevant by the author and are instructive to the reader. For instance, religious institutions, railroad development, and censuses find their place in the narrative. Hoare also makes use of many opportunities to dethrone, pithily and in responsible, scholarly (though not unimpeachable—for how can that be?) fashion certain stereotypes and conventional wisdoms, such as the myth of Serbian closeness to, reliance on, and rewards from Russia. Although one might wish for the inclusion of more cultural and literary history in this volume, that is only a minor consideration given the sharp focus of the argument.
Another worthy sub-topic in the narrative is the growth of Serbian socialist ideas and the social democratic movement. Politicians and intellectuals like Svetozar Marković, Dimitrije Cenić, and Dimitrije Tucović were, fittingly, inspired by a mixture of western (the 1848 revolutions, for instance) and Russian nihilism, while most of the political parties in the country, having only weak social bases, got deeply mixed up in court and constitutional politics. The founding proposition of the early Serbian “left wing,” that a politically active populace was essential for Serbia’s survival, fits nicely into a general, pre-Bolshevik European understanding of socialism. If capitalism is foreign and the establishment is corrupt, then social strength and health come through voluntarism and a quixotic mixture of xenophobia, spontaneous military action, rural virtue, and dreams of regional federation. This is just one of the confusing, but very original, political legacies bedeviling Serbia today, where Cold War and post-Wende political alignments seem to have little to do with new parties or popular opinions. Arguably, this is increasingly the case in other countries, too.
This skillful and thorough exploration of recent Serbian political history argues persuasively for a fresh explanatory model based on “a struggle of two Serbias—a struggle between the state and peasant masses” (233). While the use of phrase “two Serbias” is widespread and polyvalent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and even outside the realm of culture and civil society can be invoked as an analytical lens to shed light on how Serbia has navigated foreign policy crises, the interplay of regional forces and loyalties in the Serbian-speaking lands, the post-World War I unification of Yugoslavia, and economic and social modernization in general, it best signifies the rivalry between the two dominant elites in the country: the state (and military and court) and the chief political party (usually the Radicals). Hoare is convinced that the decisions made by individual persons in these two elites have shaped much of the political history of Serbia in the republican era. One might ask whether or not, in today’s Serbia, the realms of these two elites are not merging, painfully and ominously. But, at any rate, the world of possibilities for other Serbs remains painfully dependent on similar groupings and forces today.
