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Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States
Reporting from the heartland of Yugoslavia in the 1970s, Washington Post correspondent Dusko Doder described "a landscape of Gothic spires, Islamic mosques, and Byzantine domes." A quarter century later, this landscape lay in ruins. In addition to claiming tens of thousands of lives, the former Yugoslavia's four wars ravaged over a thousand religious buildings, many purposefully destroyed by Serbs, Albanians, and Croats alike, providing an apt architectural metaphor for the region's recent history.
Rarely has the human impulse toward monocausality--the need for a single explanation--been in greater evidence than in Western attempts to make sense of the country's bloody dissolution. From Robert Kaplan's controversial Balkan Ghosts, which identified entrenched ethnic hatreds as the driving force behind Yugoslavia's demise to NATO's dogged pursuit and arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, the quest for easy answers has frequently served to obscure the Balkans' complex history. Perhaps most surprisingly, no book has focused explicitly on the role religion has played in the conflicts that continue to torment southeastern Europe.
Based on a wide range of South Slav sources and previously unpublished, often confidential documents from communist state archives, as well as on the author's own on-the-ground experience, Balkan Idols explores the political role and influence of Serbian Orthodox, Croatian Catholic, and Yugoslav Muslim religious organizations over the course of the last century. Vjekoslav Perica emphatically rejects the notion that a "clash of civilizations" has played a central role in fomenting aggression. He finds no compelling evidence of an upsurge in religious fervor among the general population. Rather, he concludes, the primary religious players in the conflicts have been activist clergy. This activism, Perica argues, allowed the clergy to assume political power without the accountability faced by democratically-elected officials.
What emerges from Perica's account is a deeply nuanced understanding of the history and troubled future of one of Europes most volatile regions.
Rarely has the human impulse toward monocausality--the need for a single explanation--been in greater evidence than in Western attempts to make sense of the country's bloody dissolution. From Robert Kaplan's controversial Balkan Ghosts, which identified entrenched ethnic hatreds as the driving force behind Yugoslavia's demise to NATO's dogged pursuit and arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, the quest for easy answers has frequently served to obscure the Balkans' complex history. Perhaps most surprisingly, no book has focused explicitly on the role religion has played in the conflicts that continue to torment southeastern Europe.
Based on a wide range of South Slav sources and previously unpublished, often confidential documents from communist state archives, as well as on the author's own on-the-ground experience, Balkan Idols explores the political role and influence of Serbian Orthodox, Croatian Catholic, and Yugoslav Muslim religious organizations over the course of the last century. Vjekoslav Perica emphatically rejects the notion that a "clash of civilizations" has played a central role in fomenting aggression. He finds no compelling evidence of an upsurge in religious fervor among the general population. Rather, he concludes, the primary religious players in the conflicts have been activist clergy. This activism, Perica argues, allowed the clergy to assume political power without the accountability faced by democratically-elected officials.
What emerges from Perica's account is a deeply nuanced understanding of the history and troubled future of one of Europes most volatile regions.
- GenresReligionNonfiction
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
2 people are currently reading
69 people want to read
About the author
Vjekoslav Perica
7 booksDr. sc. Vjekoslav Perica (Split, 1955.), američko-hrvatski povjesničar i sveučilišni profesor. Završio je Pravni fakultet u Splitu, radio u Slobodnoj Dalmaciji i u Gradu Splitu. Pred rat 1991. odlazi u SAD gdje je na University of Minnesota – Twin Cities magistrirao politologiju i doktorirao modernu svjetsku povijest. Radio je na nekoliko američkih sveučilišta i istraživačkih instituta. Bio je Fulbrightov stipendist SAD-a u Srbiji 2007., te dobitnik stipendije Nizozemskog kraljevskog instituta (NIAS) 2012. godine. Na Filozofskom fakultetu Sveučilišta u Rijeci predavao je svjetsku povijest od 2007. do 2020. Fokus je njegova interesa u većini objavljenih radova fenomen modernih nacionalizama i odnos religije prema njima.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 24, 2022
I want to update my review. Perica provides *amazing* work on Croatia's troubling past and (Serbia's troubling past)- their revisionism and their respective church's involvement in that. He discusses how Tudjman institutionalized his own myths by overturning a Yugoslav verdict which resulted in some of the worst fascists (the Ustasha) getting absolved and emerging as "innocent victims and Croatian patriots." I can't express just how impactful that verdict was as it is equivalent to Germany in the 1990s absolving the Nazis and rewriting them as innocent victims and German patriots.
He also discusses the intertwinement of the Catholic Church and the new Croatian state (which is also exactly what happened in the NDH when the genocide was happening.) In other words, Perica is shining a light on plenty of extremely important and obviously disturbing happenings in the Balkans which can prove useful for anyone really who wants to understand it. He's essentially explaining how Tudjman rewrote Croatia's past to absolve the Ustasha and instil Croatian solidarity and (ultra)nationalism. For this reason alone, it is a must-read.
He discusses the myth of Stepinac's martyrdom and the myth of Bleiburg martyrdom and how the latter was invented by two Ustasha who inflated the numbers from around 30 000 to 550 000 as a way to match those killed by the Ustasha.
He discusses the lack of freedom of religion in Croatia during the 1990s which again mirrored what happened in WWII.
He calls the Genocide of the Serbs a myth however he is referring to the *inflated* numbers provided by the Serbian Orthodox Church in which they stated that 800 000 Serbs were killed and sometimes they state that 800 000 Serbs were killed at Jasenovac alone. It is clear that the Serbian Orthodox Church just like the Catholic Church was revising history to suit their own political needs.
Why this is problematic though is because a less aware reader may get the false impression that the brutal genocide which took the live of 300 000- 500 000 Serbs, 26 000-40 000 Roma and over 30 000 Jews was a myth which it absolutely was not- making such a claim is genocide denial. (The aforementioned death tolls are based on a consensus from the USHMM, Yad Vashem and Rory Yeomans.) Moreover, I have seen many people attempt to deny the genocide on the basis of inflated numbers which is abhorrent and evil. In other words, *great* care needs to be placed in discussing the genocide, the real numbers before discussing the inflated ones- aka the myth.
Even still, this is a must-read book for anyone wanting to learn more about the Balkans.
He also discusses the intertwinement of the Catholic Church and the new Croatian state (which is also exactly what happened in the NDH when the genocide was happening.) In other words, Perica is shining a light on plenty of extremely important and obviously disturbing happenings in the Balkans which can prove useful for anyone really who wants to understand it. He's essentially explaining how Tudjman rewrote Croatia's past to absolve the Ustasha and instil Croatian solidarity and (ultra)nationalism. For this reason alone, it is a must-read.
He discusses the myth of Stepinac's martyrdom and the myth of Bleiburg martyrdom and how the latter was invented by two Ustasha who inflated the numbers from around 30 000 to 550 000 as a way to match those killed by the Ustasha.
He discusses the lack of freedom of religion in Croatia during the 1990s which again mirrored what happened in WWII.
He calls the Genocide of the Serbs a myth however he is referring to the *inflated* numbers provided by the Serbian Orthodox Church in which they stated that 800 000 Serbs were killed and sometimes they state that 800 000 Serbs were killed at Jasenovac alone. It is clear that the Serbian Orthodox Church just like the Catholic Church was revising history to suit their own political needs.
Why this is problematic though is because a less aware reader may get the false impression that the brutal genocide which took the live of 300 000- 500 000 Serbs, 26 000-40 000 Roma and over 30 000 Jews was a myth which it absolutely was not- making such a claim is genocide denial. (The aforementioned death tolls are based on a consensus from the USHMM, Yad Vashem and Rory Yeomans.) Moreover, I have seen many people attempt to deny the genocide on the basis of inflated numbers which is abhorrent and evil. In other words, *great* care needs to be placed in discussing the genocide, the real numbers before discussing the inflated ones- aka the myth.
Even still, this is a must-read book for anyone wanting to learn more about the Balkans.
September 27, 2020
Very informative. Thank you for giving me the background for my essay!
July 28, 2025
read it for class, amazing
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews