ROUND TABLE

I first had an opportunity to come to what is now the former Yugoslavia in 1985, then again in 1991, when I travelled past Vukovar just at the beginning of the fighting there in the summer of 1991. At the time I wrote a short article for the Canadian newspapers in which I summarised some of my sentiments about what I had noticed in Vukovar and my general feelings about the situation in disintegrating Yugoslavia.

I would like to read from that article if I may, with your indulgence, because I think some of the themes and comments that I made at the time still have some relevance. I would then like to conclude by drawing on some of my observations in recent days.

I wrote at the time, travelling upstream on the Danube River from Turkey to Austria, one quickly encounters Serbians who recall in horrific detail the murderous deeds of Croatian Ustase during the Second World War. The Serbs forget of course that a little up river there are Croatians equally prepared with grizzly accounts of atrocities perpetrated by Serbian Chetniks or Tito ‘s Communist partisans. Everyone has a point to make. It is in trying to make sense of these competing claims that these problems begin. Massacres did take place in war torn Yugoslavia - all agree. But was one side totally innocent and the other absolutely evil? And which was which? And how is it that these young people know so much about slaughters that occurred years before they were born. Who taught the younger generation so much hatred and why? The current fighting in the former frontier areas of Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia confirms that these are not academic questions. So as our ship slips by the embattled city of Vukovar, I wondered whether there are any peaceful solutions to ancient feuds of this sort. The only acceptable answer I could come up with - the extermination or mass expulsion of the minority populations being unacceptable - would seem to be a third party negotiated settlement of the sort now being brokered by the European community. International peace keeping force will be necessary to ensure the security and demilitarisation of the borders. And getting the warring nations’ compliance requires a sweetener. I would suggest all co-operative parties receive promises of economic and political integration in the European community provided that they agree to resolve peacefully their various disputes. A similar approach can be applied to the disintegrating Soviet Union. Let those peoples or nations who democratically express a desire to remain members of some larger federation, be it called the USSR or Yugoslavia, do so. Those who do not should be allowed to go off on their own and develop whatever independent, economic, political or military ties they deem appropriate to their national interests. For our part, we must insist that all the borders of Europe - West and East - remain as they are today unless every party to a border dispute is willing to place its grievance to an independent tribunal whose decision must be final and binding.

Itinational control is always necessary to supervise the implementation of such an agreement. The short term consequences of these recommendations might superficially appear chaotic. New nations will spring up all over the map. These emerging states will be heady with their new found freedom. Some will prove economically viable, many will not, at which point voluntary reintegration into an international economic community or regional association will be their choice. But unless they are allowed to exercise national self determination, there will be no long term peace not in what was once Yugoslavia or what remains of the Soviet Empire. Those were my words in 1991 I would like to reflect now perhaps on some of the things I have heard this morning and seen in the last day or two travelling this part of Croatia. I think the most useful comment made earlier this morning was the notion on how the West predicates much of its behaviour toward the new states or re-emerged states of Central Europe. The notion that ancient hatreds have indelibly stained the Balkan region for example and have made it impossible to ever establish a peace here. Like my predecessors at this podium, I disagree with that view. Yesterday I had the opportunity to interview several Croatian refugees from a Bosnian region and I asked them first on how they came to be refugees and was told of the atrocities they had experienced. I concluded my interviews by asking them do you hate Serbs. The answer was no, which was perhaps surprising, given what they have experienced. They added, however, that it was better that the Serbs had now gone from their village. I think that perhaps suggests what the future of Croatia and perhaps of Serbia may be. There are some realities we must all accept. One is your neighbours in Croatia will always be Serbs. Second that the horrors of the recent past have already laid the bases if you let them develop for a new next cycle of violence. The third point of course is the old saying that good fences make good neighbours. However, in the case of Russia and Ukraine, for example, good neighbours are in fact the people who build the best fences. You have talked about your new borders. Your hopes for new territories are still being incorporated into free Croatia. You have talked eloquently several of you as the commentaries this morning have commented on about the betrayal of the West. Despite your dissatisfaction, or understandable dissatisfaction with the Anglo- American powers and with the European community in general it is in your own best interest to maintain the engagement because an engaged West, if we can call it that, prevents your abandonment. You also several of you commented on the question, worried perhaps is the word, about whether or not you are Europeans. You say you are; much of the Anglo-American world and Europe has said you are not. There is nothing new in this. The Anglo-American powers did not want or feel that they needed, that is perhaps the most important point, a free Croatia or for that matter a free Lithuania or a free Ukraine. They preferred as Norman Stone mentioned this morning to keep the USSR together, to keep Yugoslavia together. Some of this was based on ignorance, some on political expediency. If I may just read you a quotation from some foreign office documents that described British attitudes towards Ukrainians, you perhaps can get a sense of the racism involved in Anglo-American descriptions of East Central Europeans in general. Talking about the Ukrainians, the British Foreign office wrote some authorities assert that Ukrainians are of artificial origins without any real claim to racist distinction and are in fact a collection of magnificent crossbreed scallywags. I stand before you as a magnificent crossbreed scallywag. Most of the Ukrainian leaders, wrote another foreign office official, are only just emerging from the status of semi-intellectuals and have a decidedly oriental kink in their brains. I leave that for you to decide if I have an oriental kink in my brain. I have no doubt in myself that you are Europeans and you will behave like Europeans because this is what you are. But so are the Serbs. How you behave toward each other will ultimately be the standard by which you are judged fit or not fit for membership in Europe. Remind you, or perhaps I need not remind you, that not all European states in the West or East have always behaved well. But I leave you with one final thought - does it really matter if you are considered to be Europeans or not. You now of course have a free Croatia and perhaps the most important thing you have won in the last several years and I see this reflected in the comments this morning is a proper understanding of the West ‘s attitude toward you. That was I think your most profound victory.

Ante Beljo: Thank you Mr. Lubomyr Luciuk. We now have Mr. Ron Vastokas, who teaches anthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada. He was born in Lithuania, and is now working in Lithuania; he is the director of the Canadian Institute founded by the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is involved in Lithuanian politics and is especially concerned with issues dealing with the West’s relations to the newly-created nations in the post-Soviet era. He was in Croatia during the elections.

Ron Vastokas