by Robert J. Donia '76 PhD and John V.A. Fine Jr. (Columbia Univ. Press, 1994, $24.95).
The US news media have cast the story of the battling ministates and nationalities in the former Yugoslavia as a revival of ancient feuds among violence-prone peoples. The authors argue, however, that for 700 years Bosnian tradition has been one of religious and ethnic diversity,
pluralism and toleration.
The current conflict, they maintain developed over the 1980s and early '90s, with violence breaking out after Yugoslavia fell apart, with two of those parts, Serbia and Croatia and their surrogates, attacking not only Bosnia, but the ideals of a pluralistic community that Bosnia represents. By their relative inaction, the European Union, the UN and United States also have betrayed these ideals and bear some responsibility for the bloodshed in Bosnia, the book contends.
The forces of extreme nationalism that threaten Bosnia's existence represent not any distinctive aspects of Balkan or Serbo-Croatian culture, but the worst qualities of the human political animal, the authors maintain. At a forum at the U-M Center for Russian and East European Studies and in a subsequent interview, the authors underscored the significance of the Bosnian crisis for Americans.
"If you put David Duke in charge of the US news networks for five years, you'd have a violent ethnic crisis here, too," said Fine, a U-M history professor, citing an observation by the Bosnian journalist Milos Vasic. "The Bosnian conflict is portrayed as Muslims versus Christians, and that is false; it buys into the propaganda of ultra-nationalists."
Donia, a vice president of the Merrill Lynch brokerage house in Forth Worth, Texas, added, "Bosnia is not a Muslim ministate; it's a multiethnic state. Sarajevo, its capital, has 280,000 persons, about 45,000 of them Serbs, 25,000 Croats and 210,000 Muslims. The term 'Muslim' is more an ethnic than religious designation in Bosnia, much as is the term Jew in the United States or Western Europe. The identity derives from religious affiliations but the individuals identified as Muslim today are not necessarily religious."
Fine and Donia cited many examples of Bosnia's multiethnic values, pointing out that 40 percent of urban marriages since World War II in Bosnia have been mixed, and that Jovan Dijak, a Serb general, is one of the top commanders of Bosnia's defense forces.
"The Western newspapers ignore such facts," Fine said, "so the public doesn't learn of them. As a result, the conflict is being portrayed inaccurately, ludicrously and shallowly."
Presenting the war as ethnic and/or as a civil war makes intervention seem hopeless, Fine said, and it also cloaks the practice of "ethnic cleansing" in the guise of respectable "scenarios" such as partitioning the country into "cantons" which Fine sees as an intermediate phase that would likely lead to the dismemberment of Bosnia/Hercegovina, with the pieces going to Croatia and Serbia.
"This is a clash between civilization and barbarism," Fine said. "Bosnia has been committed to a multicultural society for centuries, and now it is attacked from without by self-interested politicians whipping up again the hatred and fear seen in World War II that had since been overcome."
Meanwhile, especially under the UN/European Union arms embargo that the United States recently announced it would no longer observe, the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo remains powerless to break a siege that has now lasted 100 days longer than the cruel 900-day siege of Leningrad by the Nazis in World War II.
Some people call the killing and destruction in Bosnia a natural catastrophe" said Enes Kujundzic, director of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Hercegovina, at the symposium, "but it is not. It is man-made, and can be stopped only by man."--JW.
The Making of the University of Michigan 1817-1992
by Howard H. Peckham, edited and updated by Margaret L. Steneck and Nicholas H. Steneck (U-M Bentley Historical Library $17.95).
Originally written in 1967 for the 150th anniversary celebration of the University, this history has been updated by the Stenecks, both faculty members, for the 175th anniversary. The Stenecks teach History 265, a course on the history of the U-M, and are also on the University History and Traditions Committee.
The authors combine archival evidence from the Bentley Historical Library and interviews with Presidents Robben W Fleming, Harold Shapiro and James J. Duderstadt in their interpretation of the past 25 years at U-M. Key characteristics of that era were student unrest over such issues as the Vietnam War, military research and social justice and the economic crisis of the late 1970s and early '80s.
In addition, over 75 photographs have been added to the book--something sorely missed in the original edition--including paintings and aerial photos of the campus from 1880 to the present. These photographs complement the text by conveying the physical development of the University over the past 175 years. For students, alumni or anyone with a connection to the U-M, this history of "a university characterized by change" will be an enlightening and enjoyable book.--M. Q. Thorburn
. . . December 1994
