Granta Books, 2000, softcover, index, 726 pages, condition: as new.
Misha Glenny is a distinguished journalist and historian. As the Central Europe Correspondent first for The Guardian and then for the BBC, he chronicled the collapse of communism and the wars in the former Yugoslavia. He has won several major awards for his work, including the Sony Gold Award for outstanding contribution to broadcasting. He is the author of three books on Eastern Europe and the Balkans - The Rebirth of History, The Fall of Yugoslavia, The Balkans. He has been regularly consulted by the US and European governments on major policy issues and ran an NGO for three years, assisting with the reconstruction of Misha Glenny is a distinguished journalist and historian. As the Central Europe Correspondent first for The Guardian and then for the BBC, he chronicled the collapse of communism and the wars in the former Yugoslavia. He has won several major awards for his work, including the Sony Gold Award for outstanding contribution to broadcasting. The author of three books on Eastern Europe and the Balkans - The Rebirth of History, The Fall of Yugoslavia, The Balkans; his latest book McMafia is about international organised crime. He has been regularly consulted by the US and European governments on major policy issues and ran an NGO for three years, assisting with the reconstruction of Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo.
Nation is a group of people united by a mistaken view about their past and hatred of their neighbours Karl Deutsch wrote in "Nationalism and its alternatives" which is out of print, symptomatically of our times. This quotation was constantly in my mind when i was reading The Balkans. It is about 2 centuries of so called nation building, myths and misconceptions, realpolitiks and enormous bloodbath it has created.
This is an informative introductory history of the Balkans. As well as former Yugoslavia, it includes Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania, as well as the relevant information about the Ottoman empire.
I was not very familiar with the history of Bulgaria and Romania. This book was quite instrumental in covering this gap. For me, those countries were always satellites of Russia - totally wrong misconception on my part and very far from the truth. So for me this book was full of discoveries. I did not know, that Bulgaria has managed to save the majority of its Jews from Holocaust, in spite of being in alliance with the Nazi Germany.
It was also interesting to find out about the formation of the Greek state. Though the book is a bit sketchy on details. Albania is another country about which one hardly hear on the news. There is a brief outline about its history in the book. I was better familiar with the history of ex-Yugoslavia. And my edition of this book ends in 1999. So i found it a bit less revelatory, but still useful for the outline of the events there.
All these 200 years or so are pretty gruesome. But two episodes stood out for me even on that beak background. The first is the invasion of Asia Manor by the Greeks in 1921 and subsequent killing of Muslims by them. The second part of this awful story is better known - the Fire of Smirna and the population exchange. But the fact that the Greeks were actually initiating massacres straight after the invasion before 1923 is less well known. The most hard for me to grasp was the Second World War. I could not read more that a page or two at a time. And it is not because Himmler was determined to reduce the psychological suffering which mass murder inflicted on his executioners. by contemplating the final solution. This is the horror in its pure form. But what was also shocking in that war the Croatians were killing the Serbs; the Serbs were killing Muslims and the Croatians. And all this madness was justified by nations idea. Of course it has all got repeated in the 90s .Shocking and sad
