ROUND TABLE

I wanted to say how sorry we are as organisers of this symposium that due to the shortage of time, we were unable to get speakers from Bulgaria, Macedonia and Slovenia. It is from their expositions that we could find out what conflicts and even wars Serbia had with these nations. A centuries-old antagonism has existed between Bulgaria and Serbia so that periods and events in which the two nations were on the same side were very rare. As early as the Middle Ages, clashes broke out between the Bulgarians and Serbians (in the 10th century) for the czar Simeun who conquered Serbia and accepted the Serbian district into the protection of Croatian King Tomislav. During the fourteenth century, the Serbs and Bulgarians conflicted (battle of Velbuzda 1330), but before the danger of the Turks the two countries occasionally collaborated. In 1878, after the Russians won the war against the Turks and signed for peace in St. Stefan, they enabled the creation of a new Bulgarian nation which was supposed to include all of Macedonia and a part of Kosovo. Because of this however, conflicts broke out between Bulgaria and Serbia regarding control over the Balkans and especially concerning the division of Macedonia. Although the peace agreement in Berlin in 1878 diminished a Great Bulgaria, the rivalry between Serbia and Bulgaria continued. In the year 1885, Serbia attacked Bulgaria and with its army came to Sofia, but was defeated near a place called Slivnice. Ever since then, Serbia has searched for ways to take revenge on Bulgaria. It did so in the year 1913 in the second Balkan war during a battle on the river Bregalnica in Macedonia. Even in World War I, Serbia and Bulgaria were on different sides. Serbia fought on the side of the triumphant Entente while Bulgaria was on the side of the defeated Central forces. It was repeated once again in World War II when Bulgaria was on the side of the Germans and Italians, and Yugoslavia was dismembered and occupied. In those wars, Serbia had better luck and took some adjoining territory from colonised Bulgarians which it, or in essence the so-called Yugoslavia, still holds today.

Similarities can also be mentioned in reference to the relationship between Serbia and Macedonia. In the first Balkan War of 1912 in which the Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks and Montenegrins were allies, the first three nations divided Macedonia into three parts. Vardarian Macedonia belonged to Serbia, where it was proclaimed as Southern Serbia and was Serbianised by force. In Macedonia, Serbian terrorist forces named Chetniks were operating. Even today, some unresolved problems exist between the Serbs and Macedonians, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as Serbia and Montenegro have named themselves, do not wish to recognise Macedonia as an independent state.

Even though in the formation of the first Yugoslavia (1918-1945), relations between Serbia and Slovenia were mainly good (due to the language and border position of Slovenia, it wasn’t in danger of Serbianisation), in the second Yugoslavia (1945-1990) that relationship was damaged due to the great exploitation which the government of Belgrade implemented, as well as the mass liquidation of Slovenian units, and of the so-called white guard in 1945 when Slovenians in the masses were executed in Kocevski Rog and in other parts. The real conflict broke out in 1990 when the Slovenians along with the Croatians demanded a confederate arrangement of Yugoslavia and were then attacked by the Serbianised Yugoslavian Army in the summer of 1991. Since then, the Slovenians as well have chosen to live in the free and independent Republic of Slovenia which Serbia and Montenegro still do not recognise even though it has existed for five years already.

If we take into consideration everything that has been produced in this report for this symposium, and add some more figures to that, we can conclude that Serbia or its alternate Yugoslavia (all three different times) like an octopus, attacked all the remaining people and nations that it had lived with in a closer or farther vicinity.  The exceptions to an extent are the Orthodox Romanians because Serbia didn’t have direct conflicts with them. However the problem of  the Vlachs, Romanians really, exists in the Homolj Mountains in north-eastern Serbia which is already Serbianised to a degree. Perhaps the reason for good relations between Serbia and Romania is the natural border which is made by the great river Danube between Serbia and Bulgaria, the difference in language and culture, and the same Orthodox religion.

The claim that the Serbs conflicted with and went to war with many surrounding nations and executed ethnic cleansing in all of them mainly, as well as emigration and the officiousness of the Orthodox creed doesn’t just refer to the 19th and 20th centuries in the existence of the new Serbian state, but to the events in the far past, back to the 12th century when the Nemanjic dynasty ruled over Serbia. Montenegrin author, Jevrem Brkovic, who is present here among many others spoke of that very topic. Indeed, Stevan Nemanja, founder of the Serbian dynasty, was a Catholic, but converted to the Orthodox religion, and afterwards forcefully converted the entire region of modern Montenegro to that religion. Meanwhile, his son, Sava Nemanjic, was the originator of the so-called “svetosavlje” (ideology of St. Sava) which theoretically explained and encouraged that type of behaviour.

It must be said that today as well, and not only in the time of Vuk S. Karadzic and Jovan Cvijic, a number of Serbian scholars and their academies as a whole are working on the actualisation of a Greater Serbia. Some of them became advocators and ideologists of the aggression which they described, explained, and even initiated in their works. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, that was done by academic Milorad Ekmecic, and likewise in Serbia by academic Vasilije Krestic, both of them being prominent Serbian historians who were partly educated in Zagreb, and worked at universities in Sarajevo and in Belgrade. During the exposition at this symposium it was mentioned a few times how the events in South-eastern Europe and essentially in the Balkans took place under the dictation of peace agreements from 1919/20 and 1945/46, that is, under the impression of the decisions made at the Parisian peace agreements which determined the powerful victory of the Entente, essentially in Yalta where allies with the USSR divided control in Europe. It should be said that the strong victors in World Wars I and II were mainly the same: English, French, Russian, and American. Even today, they are in fear of one strong unified Germany which would surround itself by bringing together the remaining central-European nations (the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, the Baltic nations, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, and Slovenia), that is, all of central Europe from the north and the Baltics to the Adriatic Sea, while continuously pushing England, France, and Russia away from that territory. In that instance, the balance of power would be disrupted in the same way that Yugoslavia fell after World War II, supporting the forces with reference to a buffer-zone between the Atlantic and Warsaw Pacts. That was the primary reason that those countries - members of the Security Council didn’t support Croatia in 1991, but instead Yugoslavia, or specifically Serbia even though it was the aggressor. It was a question of foreign policy which wasn’t exactly in favour of Croatia, which instead of getting support from Western powers in 1991, received it mainly from Central-European nations with Germany leading the way.

It must also be said, as this symposium has confirmed, that public opinion in the United States, England, and France hasn’t always followed the official policies of their governments in reference to Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Several newspapers, opposition politicians, and even researchers of which some are present here, didn’t approve of the preventive action of the Yugoslavian Army in those countries, nor condemn them because of alleged nationalism and separatism, nor did they show Serbian aggression as a civil or genealogical war. Accordingly, it is not the nations that we can condemn, but their governments because England and France for example, aren’t responsible for the policies that Mr. Mayor, President Mitterand, or any other politician may represent.

Ante Beljo: Thank you Dr. Pavlicevic. Mr Jevrem Brkovic would like to add something.

Jevrem Brkovic