Introduction to a Thematic Issue
The present issue of Slovanský přehled / Slavonic Review has been primarily conceived as a thematic issue with a territorial focus on Southeastern Europe. The Studies /Articles section of our journal is thematically focused on the topic of Neighbors and Neighborhood in the Balkans. The special issue was edited by František Šístek and Markéta Slavková. The remaining sections of our journal offer additional texts geographically devoted to Southeastern Europe. However, the present issue also includes documents, book reviews, and news from academic life with a territorial focus on Central and Eastern Europe. The next issue of Slovanský přehled / Slavonic Review (nr. 2/2023) will in turn, primarily include articles devoted to Eastern and Central Europe.
The articles published as part of the special issue on “Neighbors and Neighborhood in the Balkans“ represent a selection of papers from the 6th International and Interdisciplinary Conference in Balkan Studies “Balkan Express 2021: Neighbors and neighborhood in the Balkans”, held in Prague on November 12-13, 2021. The organization of the gathering was financially supported by Strategy AV 21 – Top Research in Public Interest, a research program of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The conference was jointly organized by several top Czech research and educational institutions and associations: the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences; Faculty of Humanities of Charles University, Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences; Institute of International Studies of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University and the Czech Association for Slavic, Balkan and Byzantine Studies. The Balkan Express Conferences, organized since 2013, are the largest conferences in Balkan Studies held on a regular basis in the Czech Republic. The 6th Balkan Express conference organized in November 2021 approached the Balkan past and present through concepts and ideas of neighbors, neighborhood and neighborly relations.
The neighborly relations in the region have been understood with a certain ambiguity. On the one hand, the neighborhood (komšiluk) plays a central role in the daily lives of people in the Balkans, on the other hand, the region is characterized by deep and long-lasting mutual animosity and repetitive violence among neighbors. The neighborhood is therefore perceived as a “breeding ground of distrust, jealousy, hatred and conflict”. In this view, the Balkans is the infamous “powder keg of Europe”, where neighbors driven by “ancient hatreds” simply “kill, loot, rape and expel one another” with greater frequency than in other parts of Europe. The latter negative (and stereotypical) perception of the Balkans often prevails. For example, the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s were, besides other things, depicted as the “war of neighbors against neighbors”. Such understandings are not only a simplification, but more importantly, they overshadow the complexity of actual existing everyday relationships in the Balkans, which span across the religious and ethnic boundaries.
Neighborhood and neighborly relations in the Balkans, inextricably linked with broader issues of ethnic conflict, confessional and social divisions as well as coexistence and mutual interdependence, have been approached from many different angles by scholars of the region in the post-Communist period. Historians of the early modern age contributed to the discussion by highlighting the conceptual difference between tolerance as an intellectually elaborated concept characteristic of the modern era and more rudimentary toleration, which according to them, fittingly captures the practical experience of coexistence in “traditional“, pre-modern Balkan societies.
The classical emic understanding of the Balkan notion of neighborhood, which formed under Ottoman and Mediterranean social and cultural influences, emphasizes social inclusion and the unique relations, respect, and mutual coexistence among neighbors in the region regardless of their faith and ethnicity. In his presentation at the Balkan Express conference, Slovenian anthropologist Bojan Baskar showed that the notions of a neighborhood (komšiluk) and the neighborly relations have also a theological background and introduce obligations and rights among neighbors as a part of the mutually shared ethical norms. Baskar further argued that these ideas are equally formed by all three 'Religions of the Book' (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Surprisingly, Baskar pointed out that only Islam elaborated a corpus of definitions, sayings, and rules regulating the relations among neighbors and that Islamic ethics applies to all neighbors, regardless of their faith.
Historian Elijas (Eli) Tauber from Sarajevo, founder and director of the recently opened Archive of the Jewish Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina and leading expert on Jewish history, society and culture of that Balkan country, prepared and presented an exhibition entitled “When the Neighbors Were Real Human Beings” at the 6th Balkan Express Conference in November 2021. The exhibition focused on the destinies of persecuted Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Second World War whose lives were saved thanks to the solidarity and friendship of their non-Jewish neighbors. Eli Tauber provides the following concise definition of komšiluk in his monograph on the same topic: “The word komšiluk (pronounced kom-shee-look) originates from the Turkish word komşuluk and most closely translates to the neighborhood. However, this translation is inadequate because in Bosnia and Herzegovina, komšiluk is not limited to a shared space but encompasses sharing one’s life - as in one’s worries, hopes, fears, meals, rituals of birth and death, and of course, coffee drinking. Komšiluk functions as a local community and is governed by voluntary decisions of individuals to participate in it or not”.
In recent years, the key concept and practice of komšiluk, associated with neighborly relations in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman part of the Balkans and, more particularly, with Bosnia and Herzegovina, were discussed and critically reassessed, among others, by anthropologist Bojan Baskar, anthropologist David Henig and historian Xavier Bougarel. Among the recent contributions to the scholarly literature focusing on the “dark side“ of neighborly relations, the monograph by historian Max Bergholz, Violence as a Generative Force: Identity, Nationalism and Memory in a Balkan Community, which presents a detailed study of a violent break-up of communal coexistence in the region of Kulen Vakuf in Western Bosnia after the occupation of Yugoslavia and establishment of the fascist Independent State of Croatia in 1941, has received critical attention. At the same time, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and other Balkan scholars continue to provide new case studies on different aspects of neighborhood and neighborly relations and their everyday life dimensions.
The present thematic issue of Slovanský přehled / Slavonic Review – “Neighbors and Neighborhood in the Balkans” offers articles on different aspects of neighborhood and neighborly relations from the late 19th century and the interwar period until the present, based primarily on historical (archival research) and anthropological (field research) methodology. It includes the following contributions in the Studie / Articles section:
Krzysztof Popek (Institute of History, Jagiellonian University, Cracow), Muslims in Rural and Municipal Councils in Bulgaria at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Century; Božica Slavković Mirić (Institute for Recent History of Serbia, Belgrade), Neighborly Relations in Kosovo and Metohija between the Two World Wars – Examples of Family Cooperatives (“porodične zadruge”); Konstantinos Tsivos (Institute of Greek and Latin Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague), Greek and Slavic Macedonian Refugees in the Post-war Period / The Example of Political Refugees in Czechoslovakia; Petros Marazopoulos (Department of Classical Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno), “Reversed Nested Orientalisms”: The Concept of Orientalism in a European Context; Marzena Maciulewicz (Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw), Research on Neighborhood(s) in Post-Conflict Urban Settings. Microcosm of Neighborly Relations in Mitrovica, Kosovo.
There is no need to present the topics and key arguments of individual articles in greater detail in this introduction. For quick orientation, check the abstracts and summaries available alongside each article further in this issue.
František Šístek – Markéta Slavková
STUDIE / STUDIES
ŠÍSTEK František – SLAVKOVÁ Markéta Introduction pp. 7–11
POPEK Krzysztof Muslims in Rural and Municipal Councils in Bulgaria at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Century pp. 13–27 The modern Bulgarian state, created in 1878, was not ethnically and religiously homogeneous. In 1881, 26 percent of the country’s population were Muslims (527,000) and in 1910 they comprised 14 percent (602,000). Despite that, Muslims did not hold any posts in Bulgaria’s central administration, nor did they generally occupy them at the level of districts (okrag) and counties (okoliya). However, the situation was different in commune (obshtina) governments. Muslims were formally represented in the councils of cities and villages in the northeastern parts of the country and the Rhodope Mountains (the areas where they were concentrated) and had the opportunity to play an important role in making decisions on key issues related to local finance, infrastructure and education together with Bulgarians. In some cases, they managed to efficiently participate in the functioning of local governments, while in others they played only a symbolic role. The case of Muslim rural and municipal councilors at the turn of the 19th and 20th century can be analyzed as an interesting example of the durability of the centuries-old tradition of komshuluk. The paper is based on the original studies of the materials found in the State Archive in Varna, as well as on the press from this period.
SLAVKOVIĆ-MIRIĆ Božica Neighborly Relations in Kosovo and Metohija between the Two World Wars – Examples of Family Cooperatives (porodične zadruge) pp. 29–49 In Kosovo and Metohija, the patriarchal way of life prevailed between the two world wars, so the population was organized into the traditional tribes, fis, and family cooperatives. These communities represented economic and social units in which each member had a specific role, among other things, in preserving and nurturing traditions and customs. In Metohija, Albanian family cooperatives had up to 80 or even more members. There were also dual-faith cooperatives (Catholic and Islamic) in which special attention was paid to customs and religious obligations. The members of the family cooperative formed one blood community, kindred (fis), and members did not marry each other as long as there was an awareness of their common origin. Under the influence of agrarian reform, industrialization, and modernization, but also the aspirations of the members of the cooperative for personal income, these family cooperatives were subdivided into smaller families. This affected the size of their property holdings, which became smaller. The awareness of kinship among Albanians was much stronger than among Serbs, so the cooperative remained among them longer. In the years preceding the Second World War, due to the process of modernization, many family cooperatives broke up into smaller families.
TSIVOS Konstantinos Greek and Slavic Macedonian Emigrants in the Post-war Period: The Example of Political Refugees in Czechoslovakia pp. 51–68 The Macedonian question was a key concern during the Greek Civil War, especially during its final phase (1946–1949). This article is based on research using primary archival material from the National Archive in Prague (Czech Republic) and on the bilingual émigré newspaper Agonistis – Borec. The first part of the article summarizes the contradictory approach to the Macedonian question by the Communist Party of Greece (hereinafter KKE) during different phases of the Civil War. Next, it examines the demographic structure of the Greek and Slavic Macedonian refugees, who had, after the defeat of the Greek communists, found asylum in the Soviet Union and its satellites, focusing on the example of political refugees in Czechoslovakia. After this, it focuses on the impact that important political events of this period, particularly the de-Stalinization and the removal of Nikos Zachariadis from the leadership of the KKE, had on the relations between Greek refugees and Slavic Macedonian refugees, mainly in the light of the establishment of the “Ilinden” organization, the education of refugee children, and the prospect of their repatriation.
MARAZOPOULOS Petros “Reversed Nesting Orientalisms”: The Concept of Orientalism in a European Context pp. 69–83 My paper aims to examine ways in which the term “Balkans” was negotiated in modern Greek culture during the 19th and 20th centuries, based primarily on modern Greek literary texts of various kinds; however, in order to approach the issue more globally, other types of textual evidence from the relevant period are discussed, such as diplomatic, historical, and political texts. The goal of my research is to develop a theoretical pattern which explains the variety of Greek attitudes towards the Balkan nations. To describe this evolutionary scheme, based on the theoretical framework composed of seminal works including Edward Said’s Orientalism, Maria Todorova’s Balkanism, and Milica Bakic-Hayden’s Nesting Orientalisms, I discuss an ideological and discursive mechanism which I call “reversed nesting orientalisms”. Thus, I highlight the imaginary relationship as it was created, evolved, and consolidated in terms of narrative representations within modern Greek culture, with the broader goal of reaching a deeper understanding of the historical, political, cultural, and ideological factors which shaped modern Greek discourse about the Balkan nations.
MACIULEWICZ Marzena Research on Neighbourhood(s) in Post-Conflict Urban Settings: The Microcosm of Neighbourly Relations in Mitrovica, Kosovo pp. 85–115 This paper addresses the issue of investigating neighbourly relations in a contemporary post-conflict urban space, based on research conducted in Mitrovica, Kosovo, and it includes references to the outcomes of research in other post-conflict urban settings. The study focuses on the ways neighbourly relations are expressed in language, it inquires into whether there are any significant traditions which influenced the contemporary forms of these relations, what their place is within other social relations, and how they manifest in everyday life. Finally, it discusses how changing socio-political circumstances, especially within the framework of the most recent conflict, affect their existence and shape their contemporary dynamics.
RECENZE / BOOK REVIEWS
Michal TÉRA, Kyjevská Rus. Dějiny, kultura, společnost (Josef Bartoň) pp. 117–122
Marek JAKOUBEK, V Bulharsku nám s hrdostí říkali „Češi“, tady s pohrdáním „Bulhaři“. Obyvatelé Vojvodova v Bulharsku a na jižní Moravě (Tereza Lančová) pp. 122–124
Florin CURTA, The Long Sixth Century in Eastern Europe (Martin Šenk) pp. 125–127
Jindřich DEJMEK (ed.), Cirkulární telegramy Československého ministerstva zahraničních věcí z let komunistického režimu (1956–1989). Díl druhý, Cirkulární telegramy MZV 1969–1980, svazek II/1 (1969–1972), svazek II/2 (1973–1977) (Miroslav Šepták) pp. 127–130
ZPRÁVY / BOOK REPORTSpp. 131–135
ZPRÁVY Z VĚDECKÉHO ŽIVOTA / NEWS FROM ACADEMIC LIFE
Obituary: PhDr. Mirjam Moravcová, DrSc. (March 22, 1931 – March 10, 2023) (František Šístek) pp. 137–139
Zemřel přední odborník na dějiny východní Evropy prof. PhDr. Michal Reiman, DrSc. A Leading Expert on the History of Eastern Europe, Prof. PhDr. Michal Reiman, DrSc., Passed Away (Lenka Vlčková Kryčerová – Radomír Vlček) pp. 139–141
Conference: “Bosnia and Herzegovina: Post-Colonial and Post-Conflict Heritage of a European State” (Prague, November 10, 2022) (František Šístek – Markéta Slavková) pp. 141–145
Politicky motivované násilí v jihovýchodní Evropě ve 20. století Politically-Motivated Violence in Southeastern Europe in the 20th Century (Milan Sovilj) pp. 145–146
Šestnáctý ročník pražské Konference mladých slavistu The Sixteenth Annual Prague Conference of Young Slavists (Marek Příhoda) pp. 146–151
Čtvrtý ročník konference Studentské dialogy o východní Evropě (Brno – Olomouc – Praha) The Fourth Annual Conference Student Dialogues on Eastern Europe (Brno – Olomouc – Prague) (Marek Příhoda) pp. 151–155
Konferencia „Promýšlet Evropu dvacátého století: Ve stínu obra“ Conference: “Rethinking 20th Century Europe: In the Shadow of a Giant” (Tatiana Peťková) pp. 156–158
Centralist Ambitions and Peripheral Realities in the 20th Century: Contested Identities in Yugoslavia (May 16, 2023, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague) (Maroš Melichárek) pp. 158–160