southeastern europe

On 31 January the BBC News website focused on a fresco in the Church of the Resurrection in Podgorica that depicted hell. Within a vivid red inferno and in the company of biblical figures that have been condemned to burn in hell, one can see figures bearing a resemblance to an ageless Josip Broz Tito (or Michael Caine cast to impersonate him), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and, behind them barely discernible, Lenin and Stalin. The anonymous artist assumed that propagating and 'implementing' communism was a deadly sin but carefully steered away from any similar judgments as far as the opportunistic nationalism that traumatized the societies of former Yugoslavia are concerned. So no Milosevic, Bulatovic, Karadzic or Mladic are discernible in the political hell featured in the walls of the Church of the Resurrection, perhaps while the verdicts on their genocide indictments are pending ...     A church in Montenegro has sparked controversy by displaying a fresco depic...

After a close referendum result on independence back in 2006, Montenegro held its first post-statehood Census this spring and its statistical service started releasing the data generated earlier this week. The 2011 Montenegro Census data were anticipated with both eagerness and trepidation as they had the potential of destabilising or consolidating the process of state building. Just prior to the Census the government and political parties had engaged in campaigns charged with nationalist rhetoric using posters, leaflets and promotional videos to promote their particular preferred outcomes. The outcome seems to have protracted a sense of societal insecurity among the Montenegrin population which seems quite split on issues of identity.  As on Monday Monstat released the first results of the April 2011 census  various political parties and ethnic leaderships have been trying to deploy their own narratives as to their meaning. The Croat National Council urged their p...

The political forces of the countries that have emerged from the breakup of Yugoslavia have been making plans, drawing up communication and campaign strategies for quite a while for 2011. No, it was not because of any special celebration or commemoration (although there are plenty of opportunities for this). And, no, it was not because of any big electoral battles coming up (although, again, there were a few elections scheduled for 2011). Simply 2011 is a population census year. And although national borders are supposed to have solidified after two decades of often violent conflict (again with a few exceptions such as the continually, though low key, contested territorial settlement in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the issue of the independence of Kosovo) the census year controversies indicate that Southeastern Europe continues to experience a latent phase of the protracted conflict that led to the dissolution of Yugoslavia.  Endless contestation of who will conduct it, what questi...

I must admit I am envious of the linguistic capabilities of many of the citizens of the republics that used to make up Yugoslavia who, on top of already mastering "Serbian", "Croatian" and "Bosnian" - languages that I was taught back in the early 1990s as variants of "Serbo-Croat" -  and being able to understand and function in Slovenian, in a single day, on the 27th of July, became proficient in yet another, little known language, Crnogorski - Montenegrin. Jelena Susanj from Matica Crnogorska holding a book on the Montenegrin language Thanks to the dilligent efforts of Montenegro's Skupština, the country's students who were taught a language that comprised Serbian, Montenegrin, Croatian and Bosnian as its regional variants, will from now on be instructed in Montenegrin (Crnogorski). This is the newest chapter in a long history of language politics in the small post-YUgoslav republic. In 2004, in a clumsy yet potentially positive a...