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Controversial Balkan Paradigm: Democracy and/or/vs. Multiculturalism

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 PEACE AND TERRORISM: EUROPE AS A STRATEGIC PLAYER FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND PEACEKEEPING - YEAR XII - N. 1-2 SEPT. 2003

THE CONTROVERSIAL BALKAN PARADIGM: DEMOCRACY

AND/OR VS. MULTICULTURALISM

Dzemal Sokolovic
University of Bergen

Introduction

Not only Bosnia, or Kosovo, but the Balkans in its entirety continue to face the missionary, often oppressive demand of
Europe, the West and the World to learn the meanings of: democracy and multiculturalism. Regarding the former one can
quite reliably say that that is just the Balkans finding, while for the latter, at least, it can be said that mankind is indebted to
the Balkans for its experience and achievements in the successful co-existence of various of cultures, religions, peoples and
civilizations over the centuries. Nonetheless, the World has not had easy success in teaching the Balkans these lessons. Do
failures in the “democratization” of the Balkans, on the one hand, and “restoration” of multicultural societies, on the other,
stem from a state in which the teacher has become the pupil? Or do failures stem from the fact that the students must learn
more before they themselves become teachers of these concepts in the Balkans? Is necessarily the case - that the Balkans
must learn from the World lessons in multiculturalism and democracy, or could (should) the World itself had learn from the
Balkans?
To be entirely overt, let us raise two direct questions. First, can the “developed democracies” of Europe democratize
Bosnia, Kosovo, Croatia, Serbia, Romania or Albania, without fulfilling a basic prerequisite of the “nouveau regime”
established by the French revolution the separation between Church and State, thereby discarding state churches and these
services for its citizens? Second, can societies which committed genocide against others, which have brought about carnage
against heretic minorities within their own faith, or which have continually suppressed minority ethnic group identities,
teach those who lived with others side by side for centuries, how to live together?
Sarajevo’s “Oslobodjenje” has noted that: «All the wars in the former Yugoslavia started with a referendum» (Sense 1999:
11). Such a comment expresses the concerns of the introduction of democracy, - mechanically transplanted from a
homogeneous, nationally unitarian environment, into a multiethnic, religiously plural, culturally composite environment
such as the Balkans (Zimmermann 1996). On the other hand, faced with its own permanent failures to “restore”
multicultural society in Bosnia, the international community itself has had to admit that the only branch which has began to
function multiethnically is the one that is also out of its control the mafia. It is interesting to note that the “Arizona road”,
an area of trade co-operation among Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs, operates next to an American garrison and without
American blessing, on the same principle as, say, the free markets of Wall Street the interest.
Western perceptions of multiculturalism collided with the Bosnian (Balkan) reality of multiculturalism even in the course
of fierce battles among the three warring parties. Convinced that it was a religious, ethnic or even civilizational war,
foreigners remained puzzled when faced with the controversial reality. When Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks began
fighting in Mostar 1993, leaving Serb cannons silent for a while, a Bosniak officer, desperately short of heavy artillery
support, called his former friend a Serb artillery-man - to ask for help. The artillery-man approved but required 50 DEM for
30 minutes of artillery support against Croatian positions. When 30 minutes had passed, and the artillery fire over the
Bosniaks’, though Muslims, heads continued, the Bosniak called his Serb colleague again and warned that he was not able
to pay more, - however, the Serb officer answered: «This is at my account. It is on the house…». Those who define the
conflict in Bosnia, based their preconceptions and prejudices, as a civilizational clash of very distinctive people, apparently
do not understand this peculiar Bosnian civilizational multiculturalism. How can a person from a homogenous culture,
nation or civilization, unaccustomed to such distinctive multicultural ones, and who can hate a people even without
knowing them, killing them most gladly from a distance, grasp that the people in the Balkans, a multicultural cauldron, do
not hate one another even when they are killing one another, are not scared of the others even if hate them, and tolerate,
respect and even enjoy their distinctiveness even when are afraid of them?
It is true, therefore, that the Balkans had to endure dictatorships instead of democracies for centuries, just as it is true that
the region was the meeting place and collision point of diverse cultures, religions and civilizations. But, then is it also
possible as irresistibly suggested by Bosnia’s experience, as well by centuries of Balkan history that wars can also
inaugurate multiculturalism, while democracies can provoke wars?
When referring the Balkans, the common perception of the terms democracy and multiculturalism are not valid. The
questions concerning the relation of these terms, as implied in the title, will be examined in this paper: whether democracy
and multiculturalism are either compatible or incompatible, or whether they exist in opposition to each other. If there is any
truth in the “Oslobodjenje” comment, it will be important to consider both whether democracy can be perilous for
multicultural society, while if instigating wars it can be also fruitful.

1. Multiculturalism

There are no closed cultures - there are simply more or less open cultures. Therefore, even very minimally open cultures
exist in a relation with others. However, one can speak about closed cultures, though in entirely relative terms. It should be

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emphasized from the beginning that the openness of a culture, in whichever degree it might be manifest the diffusion of
cultural elements or the contact of cultures is not eo ipso multiculturalism; openness is just conditio sine qua non of
multiculturalism. The diffusion of single cultural elements from one culture to another is just a nascent form of openness;
true contact of cultures is the next, more comprehensive and higher degree of cultural openness towards others. Openness
represents the substance of multiculturalism, while its essence is something else.
Multiculturalism is the highest level of openness cultures can have towards each others. What distinguishes it from other
levels of culture openness and defines its essence is as follows. In the case of the diffusion of single cultural elements or the
contact of cultures, the specific identities of cultures in relation to one another does not vanish. This distinctiveness of
cultural identities does not disappear in the case of multiculturalism, rather it remains while new one, formed of the
common identity of two or more cultures, emerges; multiculturalism is, therefore, the process of the emergence of dual or
even multiple identity (Sokolovic 1998) ). It is necessary to warn and underscore that multiculturalism is neither
cancellation of an identity and adoption of another one, nor the rising of an entirely new identity at the cost of previous
ones. Assimilation as the subsumption of one culture by another, and the erasing of one identity by another, is a process that
is the opposite of multiculturalism. Neither is multiculturalism integration, i.e. such a relationship of cultures in which the
specific identity of cultures in contact is kept, but a relationship of conspicuous dominance of one culture over another is
established (Einarsen).
A further question of interest is the relation between openness of cultures, at all levels, including multiculturalism, on the
one hand, and the homogeneity, cohesion, xenophobia and repressiveness of cultures, on the other.
It sounds “logical” that homogenous (gr. homoios same, equal, similar; gr. genos kin, sort, kind) cultures are less open
towards others and vice versa. However, it appears that reality often goes beyond this logic. The openness of a culture is
not necessarily a characteristic that stands in opposite proportion in relation to its homogeneity. Homogenous and cohesive
cultures can be quite open. Homogenous and cohesive cultures can be very receptive of cultural elements from other
cultures, and - they are also prone to contacts with other cultures. Ultimately, as the peak of this illogical reality one can say
that homogenous and cohesive cultures are, in all appearances, capable of multiculturalism. Homogenous cultures,
consequently, have no fear of losing identity through contact with others and have the capacity to build a common,
multicultural identity without risking its own.
Xenophobic (gr. xènos foreigner; gr. fobeomai fear) cultures can, likewise, be open to other cultures. Openness towards an
alien, foreign unknown is at times a readily espoused necessity, though an unwelcome threat to one’s own identity. This
concerns the receptivity of single cultural elements from other cultures, as well as general global contact with them.
Xenophobic cultures, however, will never be capable of making an identity that can be shared with others and equal with
their own. Their fears of others inhibit them from advancing their openness (a characteristic more or less repressed), into a
true multiculturalism. In the case of xenophobic cultures there exists not only a fear of others, but fear of openness of one’s
own culture as well. For instance, the worries about youth, as the most open (and receptive) social layer, can transform into
a fear of a culture’s own youth; the worry for it’s a culture’s future transforms into a fear of its present. The summit of such
an anxiety is actually the fear of being stigmatised as a closed culture, so that minimal attempts at openness has a
hypocritical character. Xenophobic but open cultures consider their own openness through the framework of a missionary
relationship towards other cultures. Openness, in their perception, only goes in one direction. ”Missionary open cultures”
are either overtly missionary, as in the instances when they impose their patterns on other cultures, or hypocritically open,
as in cases when they adopt strangers into their own culture. Assimilation is denied, and preferably termed by the
euphemism - integration (McGarry, O’Leary 1993). The effect of their purported openness, however, can be the opposite of
the intention. Xenophobic cultures are, namely, less homogenous and less cohesive and therefore more exposed and
vulnerable in the relation to “superior” cultures. These xenophobic cultures are, in spite of all protective measures,
“victims” of the unwanted and unpredictable process of multiculturalization in their own environment.
Cultures can be not only homogenous and xenophobic, but at times can develop into repressive cultures in their relations
towards others, as well as self-repressive, in the relations towards themselves, resulting in a puritanical culture. Repressive
cultures are most often the output of their own xenophobia. Not sufficiently homogenous and self-assertive, such
xenophobic cultures either become overtly aggressive or choose to be closed even at the expense of giving up the
possibility to influence others. Nor can repressive cultures, however, be marked as closed ones. (Self)-repressive cultures
are capable of opening towards others selectively. Their cultural purism would never espouse a multiple identity, and
eschew even cultural contacts. Such repressive cultures, can still be open to the reception of single cultural elements, as
they know how to enjoy in the exoticness of the others, and can then make comparisons with others, but only as proof of
their own self-sufficiency, incompatibility with others, superiority or, moreover, the dependence of the others in question.
Repressive cultures pretend to look open, while striving to conceal their fears of the alien through their aggressiveness,
while the lack of homogeneity and cohesion is transformed into self-repression over anything not satisfying the criteria of
their cultural purism. These cultures most often do not want to hide their ”superior” position towards others by
assimilation, and rather choose sharp civilizational, cultural, religious or national boundaries which will keep them distant
from the others. Endogamy of repressive cultures leads to self-repressiveness and introverted aggressiveness. The biggest
peril to their identity does not arise from others, but from their own fear from others, and from their fear of multiculturalism
above all.
To grasp what true multiculturalism implies, it is imperative to have a definition and understanding of both culture in
general, on the one hand, and of one specific single culture, on the other. The ease with which people use the term
multiculturalism ensues the fact that the terms that make it up are simply taken for granted. What is one single culture?
What is the critical mass of cultural elements necessary so that one can speak about the culture distinct as being from

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others? What is (are) criterion (criteria) - ethnic, national, political, religious, social etc. - that define one culture, and where
are the borders that separate it from other single cultures? Where does a single culture come in contact with different
cultures and, finally, at what point does such a relationship assume the character of the phenomenon called
multiculturalism? On the other hand, there are dozens, some claim even hundreds of definitions of culture, and yet the
question of what culture really means still remains. These questions will remain unanswered in this paper as well. Readers
themselves are simply left to keep their perceptions of both culture in general, and of any one specific single culture in
mind, whatever they might be.

2. Types of multiculturalism

There are various of types or forms in which multiculturalism, a state of more than one and more than the sum of two or
more cultures, in a word, the state of multiplied cultural identity, exhibits. One can speak about the following:
1. Marginal multiculturalism: Multiculturalism that arose on the borders of two cultures or at the meeting points of single
social groups from different cultures.
2. Intra-multiculturalism: Multiculturalism that arose through deep divisions within a homogenous and often xenophobic
culture, possibly ensuing a period of terrible intolerance and aggressiveness.
3. Stratified or sub-multiculturalism: Multiculturalism that arose through deep social stratification within one culture, but
while retaining hierarchic relations among component sub-cultures.
4. Minority multiculturalism: Multiculturalism in which two or more cultures exist in a plainly majority-minority and,
consequently, unequal relationship, in which only minority groups assume the state of double identity, while majority or
dominant group retains its identity and endeavours to integrate and assimilate minority ones.
5. Amalgam multiculturalism (or Balkans or Bosnian multiculturalism): Multiculturalism in which two or more cultures
amalgamate their identities into a common one, while retaining and developing their own distinctive identities.
This typology of multiculturalism can also be viewed within the framework of levels of development or historical phases of
multiculturalism. However, these levels or phases can by no means be taken as mutually superior or inferior to one another.
This means that multiculturalism, i.e. the capacity to adopt multiple cultural identity, should not be regarded as superior or
higher in comparison to cultural purism. Likewise, it would be wrong to say that only single types of multiculturalism are
inherent to particular cultures. A society or a culture can simultaneously exist through the various types of their relations
towards other cultures, or through various types of multiculturalism.
Marginal multiculturalism - Marginal multiculturalism can be defined as a kind of openness among cultures to one another
that come about on their cultural, i.e. social borders. This means that marginal multiculturalism can occur on both the
periphery and in the core of a culture. Globalization makes such marginal multiculturalism almost universal. Borders, geo-
political as well as social borders, still exist trying to preserve homogeneity of cultures but are also crossed. Merger with
other cultures comes about, but foremost along the geo-political and social margins. Along these geo-political margins,
commonly state borders, cultural contact happens irresistibly, and such contact with other cross-margin cultures can entail
the development of a double cultural identity on both sides of the border. The cultural centres on either side of the border -
can be very homogenous, even xenophobic towards the neighbouring culture, and even repressive towards its own,
particularly if border regions display too much of a propensity to adopt the culture of their neighbours.
In terms of social margins, in which single social layers or age groups tend to be more inclined towards others and their
cultures, the fruit of it is more than co-existence of two cultures. Certain social layers, within otherwise open but
homogenous cultures are more “vulnerable” or amenable to outside cultures, and less “immune” to impacts from outside.
Even if they are not subjected to open repression or excommunication from their own cultures, they, on the one hand,
contribute to the homogenization of their culture, and on the other, instigate self-isolation. Certain age groups, and not only
a youth culture, can also be carriers of marginal multiculturalism. These groups can hence become marginal within their
own culture, or even stigmatized.
Intra-multiculturalism - Intra-multiculturalism can be considered a state of dual cultural identity which has not arisen from
the contact of two distinctive cultures, but from the splitting of a single culture. The paradigmatic instance of this type of
multiculturalism can be seen in a few European Christian societies which survived after the clash within the Catholic
church and the deep division by the Reformation into Catholic and Protestant groups, as they carried on to be tolerantly
distinctive, while also sharing a common cultural identity. In other words, these societies retained their common
Christian/ethnic identity, while admitting a deep division along protestant and Catholic lines. Therefore, no matter how
much nation-makers try to set up national homogeneity, the difference between these cultures remains appreciable.
This intra-multicultural tendency is also present in Bosnia but on another, ethnic basis. Originally from a single ethnic
group, with a corresponding culture, although deeply divided by religious identities even before Islam arrived, the people
of Bosnia were divided on the national basis as well only in the second half of XIX century, building on an already existing
religious distinctiveness. No matter how much nationalists among them endeavour to prove and nurture mutual
distinctiveness, and however their national cultures really diverge, Bosnians, i.e. Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, still share a
common identity. Some of them, often including very extreme ones, uncover that commonality only when in Croatia,
Serbia or, even, in Turkey, as they grasp that their new hosts are more distinctive than their old Serb, Croat and Bosniak
neighbours.
Intra-multiculturalism is, due to its common origin, often unwanted by hard-line nationalists, and as such can be the source
of mutual prejudices, stigmas, tensions and conflicts. What makes it the source of tensions and strives is not an appreciable

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distinctiveness between the common and single identities, but their similarity, as single identities strive to be as mutually
distinctive as possible, and are in turn steadily reminded by common identity.
Stratified or sub-multiculturalism - As in the previous case, stratified or sub-multiculturalism results from one single
culture as the common source of emergence of two or more sub-cultural identities. In a sub-culturally divided culture,
people share both specific sub-cultural identities, as well as a common cultural identity. What differentiates sub-
multiculturalism from intra-multiculturalism is the fact that the latter has mutually subordinated identities. Although one
can raise the question of adequacy of the term multiculturalism, in respect to the existence of such sub-cultures, one can
nevertheless identify reasons to justify the use of this term. Sub-cultures can be more distinctive mutually than in the
relation to an entirely single culture. Caste divided societies are, of course, the most conspicuous instance of such a
multiculturalism. All class societies also pertain to this type of multiculturalism. In some cases even single social classes
are sub-multicultural.
Yet, the most typical is the case of the relation between rural and urban sub-cultures in certain societies. The city-village
division is one of the oldest and most durable of socio-cultural divisions. The passing of millenniums cement distinctions
that have been erased by the introduction of socio-economic systems, and neither capitalism or socialism have succeed in
overcoming this divide. In some cultures, owing to a specific egalitarian social legacy, this sub-cultural division is not so
strikingly present and therefore these cultures do not have this characteristic of multiculturalism. However, in societies with
turbulent histories and deep social cleavages, the city-village division has a truly sub-cultural flavour. Gaps diverging from
this cleavage are at times so deep that people from other cultures, in particular from cultures where the urban-rural gap is
not so sharp and the difference between the sub-cultures is not so visible, consider them to be inexplicable and
unacceptable.
The deep gap between rural and urban sub-cultures has even confounded nationalism in Bosnia itself. At the moment when
ethnic groups, due to the fear of the other, began to homogenize nationally, they also began to grasp that the others were
not so distinctive as the distinction between their own “villagers” or “city residents”. So, for instance, it so happened in the
course of the recent war in B&H that Serbs in several towns under Serb control required “their Muslims” to be brought
back, as they were unable to homogenize with the very distinctive “their own villagers”. Similarly, urban Bosniaks in some
cities began to identify with urban “brothers of any faith and ideology” in order to distance themselves from more dominant
“nation-fellows” from the villages. In Capljina, a town which became “pure” Croatian in the wake of genocide against the
Bosniaks, one Croat was forced to spend one year in a Croatian camp (two times longer than Bosniaks were typically held),
because he had protested the expulsion of Muslims from the town, claiming that his “nation-fellows” were driving out
“those who brought them civilization and culture”.
Sub-multiculturalism implies a subordinate relationship among single sub-cultures, but the existence of a common identity,
regardless of the sub-cultural basis (ethnic, religious or social), is unquestionable. Double cultural identity, without regard
to subordination among sub-cultures, includes all and is accordingly universal. In the event of a multiculturalism which
arises on the basis of an urban-rural sub-cultural division, the result is that villagers are not only ones who retain their rural
culture, while also building a common one, for city-residents undergo this transformation process as well. In the case of
Bosnia, the urban culture of which has endured at least three shocks during the latest century, urban culture almost
vanished, and was nearly assimilated by a rural one. It is therefore understandable that Bosnia today is full of jokes about
rural people’s behaviour in cities, as displaced persons negotiate the rural-urban gap with much difficulty.
Minority multiculturalism - I consider minority multiculturalism to be a type of relation between two or (more often) more
cultures which stand in a minority-majority and therefore uneven relation, in which only the minority groups assume a
multicultural state of double identity, while the majority or dominant group retain only its own identity and strives to
integrate and assimilate minorities into the dominant culture. This type of multiculturalism is not a recent phenomenon, but
it has recently become a common feature of the developed industrial societies of the West. One can speak about two sub-
types of minority multiculturalism. In the first, minorities are an indigenous group, whether they settled at the same time as
the majority group or earlier. In the second, minorities with distinctive cultures have recently come into new culture, either
as economic or political immigrants. In both cases, a new common cultural identity is made only by the minorities, and a
dual identity is inherent only to them.
The dominant culture of the host can be receptive of many cultural elements from minority culture(s); the culture of the
majority is often even open for cultural contact with the minority culture as a whole. But, the dominant culture of the
majority never claims to share a common cultural identity with minorities. Tolerance is obvious, respect is expressed, and
one may even enjoy certain single cultural elements. However, this cannot be called multiculturalism, as it exists only on
the side of the minority. For example, Bosniak refugees in Scandinavia, as well as other countries, as well as other
immigrant groups, were delighted by the Norwegian enthusiasm for Bosnian cuisine. Everyone wanted to eat Bosnian pita,
burek in particular, but it is difficult to find any Norwegian woman who learned to make pastry for pita in the Bosnian way
in order to make burek. On the other hand, many Bosniak women abandoned long since Bosnian coffee and became
accustomed to the tasteless, thin, impersonal coffee from machine, which is not even Norwegian as much as it is global.
Celebrating a ”Muslim Christmas” became a usual custom among Turks or Bosniaks in Germany, for instance (Lasic
2000).
Minority multiculturalism is actually either a process of assimilation/integration of minority cultures into the dominant one,
or the process of the emergence of new sub-cultures, and as such a trend towards a hierarchy among cultures. What
differentiates minority multiculturalism from sub-multiculturalism is the fact that minority multiculturalism lacks a
common basis. Hence minority multiculturalism has little chance to develop into another type. Minority multiculturalism,

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in the circumstances of repressive nationalization, which is euphemistically called naturalization, has minimal chances to
survive.
Amalgam (Balkans or Bosnian) multiculturalism - In general, a process of amalgamation is a method of extracting gold and
silver from their ores by treatment with mercury, in order to form an amalgam. The amalgam variant of multiculturalism is
similar but, just as is the case with gold and silver (Remember the myth of king Midas!), one should not overlook the
ambivalent character of this type of multiculturalism.
Under amalgam multiculturalism, thus, I consider the process of the emergence of a dual or multiple cultural identity by
which the best features from single identities are extracted into newly emerged, common identity. In other words, the best
from others’ cultures is espoused and amalgamated with the best in one’s own culture, in a process that is also preferable
for others. I also term it the Balkan or Bosnian type (the attribute Yugoslav could have been appropriate when Yugoslavia
existed in its authentic and autochthonous shape.) for a simple reason. In the narrow environment of the Balkans, as well
as in Bosnia, there is not a single social group which has an absolute majority or dominance, and unlike most of the other
multicultural milieus the outcome of this process is a higher cultural identity. Of course, it is unclear and certainly
questionable as to what is this higher cultural identity. It is not easy to answer this question, and it is perhaps impossible.
But even so, it does not mean that a gradation does not exist. It has to be approved even though it cannot be defined
precisely. One can reliably say that preferable, accordingly higher and lower elements exist in every cultural identity;
evenly, there are both preferable and less preferable, and also unwanted cultural identities. I consider that in the Balkans,
due to the specific combination of circumstances, there is a propensity towards openness to others and even preference
towards a common identity. Nowhere as there (here) was multiculturalism so marked. Nowhere as there did others tolerated
differences in such a way, respected the distinctive, knew to enjoy the culture of the other as in the Balkans. In respect to
the qualitative difference between the newly emerged common identity, it is not uncommon in relation to a single identity.
In periods of cultural openness, amalgam multiculturalism is paradigmatic, highest and, one might argue, the most
desirable type of multiculturalism.
Yet, in light of this, one can raise a question immediately: if multiculturalism here has reached such a high level, then why
are the tensions among different identities in the Balkans, in Yugoslavia, and in Bosnia in particular, so intensive including
hatred, strives and even cruelty? Is it a result of tensions and conflicts among very distinctive cultures, and the related
notion of the clash of civilizations (Huntington 1997)? Or is it a result of the tensions and conflicts among similar, keen
identities? At last, if it is about the tensions and conflicts between single (cultural, ethnic, religious, etc.) identities and a
common one (Bosnian, Yugoslav or the Balkans one), or a result of the common identity in this particular case, then the
question of accountability of multiculturalism itself and its own raison d’être has to be asked.
Researchers often characterize these tensions and conflicts, including the latest one in Bosnia, as ethnic, religious or
civilizational in nature (Isakovic 2000). A more profound analyses succeeds in proving that none of these conflicts can be
characterized by any of these attributes (Sokolovic 1995). Moreover, none of the conflicts as such can be defined by any of
these attributes. Even if it had been the case that all 8.527.800 Serbs and 4.633.300 Croats (as many as it was recorded in
Yugoslavia in the 1991 census), confronted one another in the war, it would still not be enough of an indicator to term their
conflict as ethnic. Tensions in the Balkans are not religious, though religious boundaries between Islam and Christianity, or
Catholicism and Orthodoxy run amidst the peninsula. Social cleavages exist in the Balkans like in any other part of the
world, and are not deeply divisive among the ethnic groups, despite the fact that few places have such a concentration of
such diverse peoples on such a small territory. The least accurate and the most superficial response is to characterize the
conflicts in the Balkans civilizational, despite the fact that the Balkans has inherited an historical origin from some of the
most important world civilizations. And yet, the tensions and conflicts shaking the Balkans are basically culturally founded.
In the Balkans, in spite of such a highly achieved level of multiculturalism, and the development of an amalgamated (with
dual and even triple identities common in Bosnia), the periods of co-operation, harmony and tolerance shift consecutively
with highly irrational periods of time in which the most natural ties are torn, and in which chaos becomes systematic, as
deep gaps separate even those the closest kinship relations. The twentieth century was the time in which the Balkans began
to be viewed as a paradigm that ran counter to multiculturalism. It is therefore not uncommon to use the term “Balkan” as a
synonym for concepts that stand in opposition to tolerance, unity and co-operation. Such a preconception and prejudice
about the Balkans is understandable, but not exact (Todorova 1997). It is equally inaccurate, however, to present
preconception or prejudice of the Balkans as an idyllic, tolerant, multicultural point of convergence of various peoples,
religions and cultures. It appears that it is correct only to say that both statements are exact only upon the condition that the
other, entirely opposite one is included as well. Only then one can say it is about neither preconceptions nor prejudices. The
Balkans is, therefore, the area of both xenophilia and xenophobia, multiculturalism and nationalism, ecumenism and
crusades, ethnic promiscuity and ”ethnic cleansings” or, to be quite honest genocides. For that very reason one can hardly
grasp it even when one espouses it.
In centuries prior to the twentieth century the Balkans achieved the highest degree in the multicultural development and
demonstrated to humankind the feasibility of co-existence among distinctive cultures, and also the viability of dual identity,
and the possibility of co-existence among single cultural identities, on the one, and common identity, on the other hand. In
Bosnia, for instance, in addition to single ethnic or religious identities (Bosniak, Croat and Serb), there also existed people
with a Bosnian or Yugoslav identity. None can deny that Bosnian Franciscans shared both Croatian and Bosnian identity
simultaneously, and at times held even broader identities (Hadzijahic 1990: 45). One must also admit that Bosnia adopted
the Yugoslav identity more readily and enthusiastically that other parts of Yugoslavia, in defiance of the fact that
”Yugoslavia” later retaliated so cruelly. Until today, Tito remains as a symbol of such a Yugoslav-hood, and as a symbol of
that identity, more than anywhere else (Bringa). One can make similar claims for previous periods as well, including the

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Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian eras. For instance, the fes is a cultural element from Morocco, without any connection to
either Islamic or Turkish culture, yet it reached Bosnia through diffusion throughout the then Ottoman empire. It was then
fierily rejected by Muslims in Bosnia, for conservative Bosniaks did not want to renounce their turbans. When the fes was
eventually adopted, it was embraced by Serbs and Croats as well, and even by Catholic priests (Mønnesland 2001). In fact,
the Bosniaks became, perhaps, the last Muslims who still considered the fes as a trait of their identity. Bosnia is not an
exception in the Balkans; it is solely paradigmatic for the Balkans. People from different cultures no matter what one
consider by one single culture, religions and ethnic groups, were always open to others, in addition to their own single one,
and open to the concept of other, wider and common identities. Similarly, the Macedonian identity is not specified by its
multicultural origin, but by its multicultural commitment. In addition to pro-Macedonian Macedonians, there were also pro-
Bulgarian, pro-Serbian and even pro-Turkish oriented Macedonians; and yet, the Macedonians were always multiculturally
oriented: while accepting a wider Yugoslav or the Balkan identity, Macedonians have never renounced their own
Macedonian identity (Poulton 2000: 56, 81, 99).
Where does this ambivalence in the Balkans multicultural experience originate? What determines that periods of openness
towards other cultures will be followed by xenophilia? What propels the periods of time in which single cultures become
introverted, to the point of xenophobia and repression? For what reason do those who achieved multiculturalism of the
highest degree, in which common identity was preferable in comparison to a single identity, almost over night begin to
build single identities, artificially and at times caricaturally, simply in order to be distinctive from others?
Nowhere as here (there), in the Balkans, can one see so strikingly the other side of ambiguity of multiculturalism. It is true
that there is no place where people are identified through a common amalgamated culture. However, in no place such as the
Balkans are people so aware of the superiority of common identity. In periods of co-operation, harmony and tolerance,
common identity is preferred. The idea of Yugoslav-hood was started by Croats, those who were the first ones having
opposed it; identification with Serbian-hood has torn Montenegrin people, as on those renouncing Montenegrin-hood as
single identity and those renouncing Yugoslav-hood in order not to be tied with Serbs have clashed; when they could
declared neither what they are nor Yugoslavs, Bosniaks have for much of history declared that they are both Serbs, and
Croats, and even Slovenians or Montenegrins (Hadzijabic 1990: 227). Ivo Andric, the writer, and Nobel price winner,
added to its Croatian, Bosnian and Yugoslav identity a Serbian one; the Bosniak writer Mehmed Selimovic declared
himself as a Serb; Serbian writer Mirko Kovac, an opponent of Serbian nationalism, went to Croatia. Before the latest war,
the Latin alphabet was dominant in Belgrade in public use; Bosnian nationalists had an aversion to Cyrillic alphabet and
ekavica, albeit the original Bosnian alphabet bosancica was also Cyrillic, while ekavica variant of Bosnian is spoken in
some area in Bosnia as well. Among adherents of the Belgrade regime, the famous Albanian movie star from Kosovo
Bekim Fehmiu remained to the end identified with Yugoslav-hood (Matvejevic). Serbs who joined the Bosnian political
parties in the course of the war were included Yugoslav ambassadors. Some Bosnian Croat intellectuals have returned to
Bosnia after realizing in Zagreb or Split that they do not fit there, and they are now most critical towards Croatian
nationalism in Bosnia. And so on, and so forth. In sum, even in the hardest moments for common identities, throughout the
most tragic periods of multiculturalism, there were those who did not renounce it. The common amalgamated identity
demonstrated not only its sustainability and immunity, but its superiority as well in such periods of divisions and cleavages.
However, there were also tensions among single cultures in the periods in which multiculturalism flourished. For an
analytic pessimist it was always possible to detect potential conflicts. The puzzle of the Balkans multiculturalism was and
remains confounding: for both foreigners and Bosnians, Yugoslavs and the Balkans people.
Amalgam multiculturalism is the fruit of the best of single cultures. But what in amalgam multiculturalism remains from
the elements of single cultures? Are all single cultures able to adopt the common and the better in the process of developing
such an amalgam? What happens to those who are not able to cross over the borders of their own culture? The answer is
nationalism (Siber 2001: 188). That is the other side of ambivalence of multiculturalism. Incapable of espousing a common
identity, nationalism, in fact, is not open to the benefits of identity of others. Nationalism is a double strike: an arising
common identity and the distinctiveness of other single cultures. The clash in Yugoslavia was not only a conflict among
different cultural identities, no matter whether very or slightly distinctive, but a conflict with a common identity at its basis.
It was not only a collision between Serbian and Croatian identity, for instance, but with the Yugoslav one as well from both
sides. Nationalism was endeavouring to exhibit the conflict as a conflict among very distinctive ones, between those who
are for common identity and those standing for single identities. Croatian nationalists confronted not only everything
Serbian but also the Yugoslav identity, accordingly implicite all other single identities, and as soon as Croatia became
independent cleavages arouse towards Slovenes and Bosniaks. Serbian nationalist has never been anxious about Yugoslav-
hood; he always hated Croatian, as well as other identities, because they do not recognize the Serbian as the Yugoslav
identity. Today, when Serbian nationalism has, in the wake of the withdrawal of hypocritical Yugoslav-hood from the
Serbian political scene, revealed its real face, it is anxious about Montenegro neither, preferring the more adequate name of
Serbia than the inadequate Yugoslavia. On the other hand, whereas Croatian-Serbian, or any other, nationalist is not
capable of fighting against common identity either in language or in basketball, for their superiority is apparent, he needs
Serbian, respectively Croatian nationalist in order to prove its superiority. When Yugoslavia existed and football and
basketball were important features of Yugoslav identity, the matches of the Yugoslav team with Croatia and Serbia were
not used for training neither. Today, matches between Croatia and Serbia prove only who is better of the two; inferiority
towards others, formerly much worse, is not of interest for a nationalist. That Croatian soccer and Serbian basketball team
once flashed might be the beginning of their fall in mediocrity.
The problem, accordingly, is not the make up of a common identity, but the question of what remains of single identities
after the common one has arisen. However, this still does not mean that the problem lies outside multiculturalism.

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Nationalism is, nevertheless, the phenomenon pursuing the process of multiculturalism. In the times of nationalism, i.e. in
the periods of time in which single (ethnic, religious, sometimes regional) cultural identities become closed, the
consciousness about the superiority of common identity in the relation to narrow, national or religious or any other one,
which was up to recently ground of mutual convergence, becomes now the reason to resist anything common, everything
foreign and even the repression of its own if it is espoused by others. Nationalist set up borders either because the old ones
which had been erased, or simply to set up new ones which had never existed. He is scared of comparing with others. The
fear of the common is the fear of superior and the better. The fear of the better and superior one is simply the proof of own
inferiority and misery. Cultural boundaries serve only for political borders to be set up in order to protect national
mediocrity or even to proclaim it as geniusity (Sokolovic 1997). Nationalists are afraid of anything common in particular.
A complex of inferiority pushes them to get rid of the common, and hence become aggressive. It is not that Yugoslavia
vanished because Serbs and Croats were very distinctive; it is that both, including others, were better while they were also
Yugoslavs, both for themselves and for others. Yugoslav-hood did not disappear because Serbian-hood and Croatian-hood
were repressed, but both were against it because it included both Bosniak-hood, and Slovenian-hood, and Montenegrin-
hood, and Macedonian-hood, and Albanian-hood and so on and so forth, as only as such it was better. Only while the
Yugoslav identity involved many others was it superior. At the moment when Serbian-hood began to disguise itself as
Yugoslav-hood, it ceased to be Yugoslav-hood any more. The same applies to Bosnian or the Balkans multicultural
identity.
The case of Bosnia is characteristic once again. Prejudices, or deliberately fabricated preconceptions, whether on “ancient
hatreds” (Malkolm 1994), or about “natural alliances” between single ethnic groups, fall apart as soon as one looks at when
and on which conditions Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs were in conflict or alliance. During the Ottoman Era, when Muslim
Bosniaks were favoured, Serbs and Croats were allies; in the course of the Austro-Hungarian era, espoused by Catholic
Croats in Bosnia, anti-Austrian and even pro-Turkey alliance was made by Serbs(!) and Bosniaks, while during the first
Yugoslavia, which was undoubtedly biased (a bit!) towards Orthodox Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats merged. That is, in fact,
the truth voiced shortly about “ancient” hatred and “natural” alliance. It is avoided by “Western leaders in their public
comments on the Bosnian war” due to the fact that it indicates its sources of hatred and alliances among the Balkans
peoples (Ramet, Coffin 2001). Instead of hatred, “brotherhood-unity” was born in the course of the World War II and the
second Yugoslavia; “natural alliances” were torn apart like balloons in the strife between Croats and Bosniaks in the war
year 1993, as all former alliances were similarly torn apart. Hatred and alliances in Bosnia, Yugoslavia and the Balkans are
neither perpetual nor natural. For that reason, reconciliations are feasible again, and only they can be perpetual and natural.
Admittedly, this time reconciliation needs both the truth and the punishment. This time there is neither the Party nor Tito to
support the reconciliation. Most likely, Tito would say, after all happened during the latest war: «Give me power (i.e. the
Party) and TV and I will recreate “brotherhood-unity” in six months!». Or, perhaps, as in the Sarajevo’s war graffiti, in
which a Sarajevan desperately calls him to help (“Tito, come back!”) he would, nevertheless, tired of both Bosnia and
Yugoslavia and the Balkans, say: “I am no fool!” It is more important to hope that Americans are fool enough to remain
there (here).

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