Detalji predmeta

• Stanje Polovno

Vrlo dobro očuvano, tvrde korice
Serbia and Montenegro in transitionm Michael Schuman

Аутор - особа Schuman, Michael A.
Наслов Serbia and Montenegro / Michael A. Schuman
Врста грађе књига
Језик енглески
Година 2004
Издавање и производња New York : Facts on File, 2004
Физички опис XII, 164 str. : ilustr. ; 24 cm
Збирка Nations in transition
ISBN 0-8160-5054-6
Напомене Napomene i bibliografske reference uz svako poglavlje.
Предметне одреднице Србија
Црна Гора
УДК 908(497.11)
908(497.16)
COBISS.SR-ID 128692492

CONTENTS
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INTRODUCTION vii
PART I: HISTORY 1
1. From Prehistory to 1903 3
2. 1903 through the Death of Tito 23
3. From the Death of Tito to the Present 43
PART II: SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO TODAY 67
4. Government 69
5. Religion 81
6. Economy 93
7. Culture 103
8. Daily Life 119
9. Cities 133
10. Present Problems and Future Solutions 141
CHRONOLOGY 149
FURTHER READING 156
INDEX 157

INTRODUCTION
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The country known today as Serbia and Montenegro can be perceived as
two nations loosely joined together to make one entity. Serbia and Montenegro were once separate republics of a substantially larger nation,
Yugoslavia, which consisted of six republics and existed in one form or
another from 1918–92. Of the six republics—Slovenia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro—Serbia and
Montenegro were the closest allies. After the other four Yugoslav
republics declared their independence in 1992, Serbia and Montenegro
existed as residual Yugoslavia. It was not until 2002 that what remained
of Yugoslavia changed its name and became the nation of Serbia and
Montenegro.
While the two republics share a common ancestry, there are many differences between them, a major one being size. Serbia has roughly 10 million residents. The much smaller Montenegro has a population of about
650,000. Serbia, consisting of about 54,800 square miles, is about the size
of the state of Iowa. Montenegro, with about 8,600 square miles, is similar in size to Massachusetts. Serbia has always been a much more urbane
republic than Montenegro, whose residents are rural-based and perceived
by most residents of the Balkans as provincial. Serbia’s economy, while
not the strongest of the former Yugoslav republics, was always much
healthier than that of Montenegro, long considered the poorest of the
bigger nation’s six republics.
In addition, the republic of Serbia includes two autonomous regions,
or provinces. One, in the northernmost part of the republic, is Vojvodina.
It borders Romania, Croatia, and Hungary. Vojvodina is about 13,300
square miles in size and has about 2 million inhabitants, about 20 percent
viii ■ SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO
of Serbia’s total population. While about half the population of Vojvodina consists of ethnic Serbs, a sizable minority—about 340,000 people—
are of Hungarian descent and identify much more with Hungary than
with Serbia.
The other autonomous province is officially called Kosovo and Metohija, but is more familiarly known as Kosovo, and will be referred to as
such in this book. The political situation in Kosovo has been the source
of heated disputes and savage violence with Serbia proper for years.
Located in the extreme southwest of Serbia, along the borders of Albania
and Macedonia, Kosovo is only 6,740 square miles, about the size of metropolitan Los Angeles. However, like Vojvodina, Kosovo is home to
roughly 2 million people, making it the most densely populated region of
Serbia and Montenegro.
About 1.6 million, or roughly 80 percent of Kosovo’s population, are
ethnic Albanians who believe in Sunni Islam, as opposed to the Serbs
and Montenegrins, who are Orthodox Christian. Only about 194,000
Kosovans are ethnic Serbs. For that reason some think that Kosovo
should belong to Albania. However, Serbs have strong emotional ties to
Kosovo, as explained further in the history and religion chapters. Some
might even say that Kosovo is the emotional, if not the geographic, heart
of Serbia. It is no surprise that Kosovo has been a source of conflict
among Christian Serbs and Muslim ethnic Albanians.
The people of Serbia and Montenegro—or at least those of Serbia—
have had an image problem since the early 1990s. After four of the
Yugoslav republics declared their independence in 1992, Serbia, under
the leadership of Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c, allegedly aided a campaign of ethnic cleansing by Serbs in the two neighboring republics, Croatia and
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ethnic cleansing in this case involved clearing
out non-Serbs in areas with a large ethnic Serb population. The Serbs’
manner of conducting this campaign involved military action, concentration camps, and alleged genocide, causing many observers to compare
Serbia in the 1990s to Nazi Germany during World War II. While other
parties involved in the civil war have also been accused of ethnic cleansing, Miloˇsevi´c is thought to have been at the forefront of some of the
most severe incidents.
Then in 1998 Serbia, again under Miloˇsevi´c, attempted to wipe out
the Kosovo Liberation Army, a group of armed Kosovan Albanians who
INTRODUCTION ■ ix
were seeking independence for Kosovo. Many observers felt the military
campaign, in which hundreds were killed and hundreds of thousands
lost their homes, was inhumane. Although Serbia and Montenegro are
today governed by a respected democracy, Serbs have had a hard time
shaking their reputation of brutality from the 1990s. There is an irony
in this, since in World War I and especially in World War II, Serbs
were the victims of the same types of cruelty their government is said
to have been guilty of in the 1990s. Until the breakup of Yugoslavia
and the ensuing civil war, Serbs had been viewed by the world’s citizens as unfortunate victims of and heroes in the resistance against Nazi
Germany.
The Serbo-Croatian Language
One thing Serbia and Montenegro do have in common is language. To
the citizens of the rest of the world, the language spoken here is called
Serbo-Croatian, which was the name of the official language of
Yugoslavia. Since the breakup of Yugoslavia, there is technically no such
language. In the name of ethnic pride, residents of Serbia now refer to
the language as Serbian, while citizens of Croatia call it Croatian. In
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SPEAKING SERBO-CROATIAN
A few Cyrillic characters are written and pronounced as they are in the
Latin alphabet, including a, m, and k. There are several exceptions,
however. The letter j is pronounced like the consonant y, as in young.
The letters lj together sound like the “lli” in million. The letters nj
together take the sound of “ny,” as in canyon, and the letter ˇs is pronounced like “sh,” as in shoe.
The most complex Latin character of Serbo-Croatian is the letter c.
In Cyrillic, the character c takes the sound of the Latin character s, as in
snow. In the Latin transliteration of Serbo-Croatian, the character c can
take on three sounds depending how it is written. A c with no diacritical mark above it sounds like “ts,” as in bats. A “´c” takes on the “ch”
sound as in itch. A single “ˇc” sounds like “ch,” as in church.
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x ■ SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO
multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina, the same Serbo-Croatian language is referred to by three different names: Bosnian Serbs call it Serbian, Bosnian Croats call it as Croatian, and Bosnian Muslims, known as
Bosniaks, call it Bosnian.
To confuse matters even more, the former Yugoslavs do not write the
language with the same alphabet. Croats use the Latin alphabet, with the
same 26 letters used in English and four additional letters. Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and ethnic Hungarians in Vojvodina also write in the
Latin alphabet. Serbs, however, write in a 30-letter Cyrillic alphabet,
while Montenegrins write using both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.
Interestingly, if you should browse through a book or magazine published from 1945 to 1980, it will likely be written in the Latin alphabet.
Yugoslavia’s leader at that time was Josip Broz, Marshal Tito, who thought
it would be beneficial for his compatriots to use a single alphabet. His
logic was that it would help unify the different people of a country with
so many different nationalities. Sarajevo’s leading newspaper, Oslobodenje
(famous for its uninterrupted publication during the civil war), however,
was printed in one language but with both alphabets. Street signs were
also often stamped in both alphabets.
As with English family names, Serbo-Croatian surnames utilize suffixes and prefixes to denote various meanings. The most common SerboCroatian family names end in i´c, pronounced like itch and translated as
“child of.” This is analogous to the English -son. Women’s first names
almost always end in either a or ica, which is pronounced “eet-sa.”
In addition, many ethnic minorities shun the Serbo-Croatian language. It is common for many Albanians to speak Albanian and ethnic
Hungarians to write and converse in Hungarian.
The Lay of the Land
Because of its location, the southeastern corner of the European continent, Serbia and Montenegro is referred to as the “crossroads of Europe.”
With main trade routes forged, then railroad lines and highways built
through natural river valleys, the nation, especially the Serbian republic,
has long been the site of the shortest routes between Europe and the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
INTRODUCTION ■ xi
There are numerous important rivers flowing through Serbia and
Montenegro. The most famous is the Danube, the second longest river
in Europe (the Volga River in Russia is the longest), and immortalized
in Johann Strauss’s “The Blue Danube” waltz. Its source is in southwestern Germany, and it flows 1,770 miles southeast, with 365 of those
miles through Serbia. The Danube forms part of the border between
Serbia and Romania before it empties into the Black Sea. It has always
had a major connection to Serbia’s economic well-being and today
serves one of the largest hydroelectric power plants in Europe.
The two other important rivers in Serbia are