southeastern europe

ANOTHER EUROPEAN DEFICIT: IS THERE RESPONSIBLE SCHOLARSHIP? by Biljana Vankovska A spectre has been haunting the intellectual circles in the region of former Yugoslavia for years. It’s probably more appropriate to talk about a haunting fear of being seen as a follower of any of the nationalistic policies that ended in a Balkan tragedy. Even the new generations of scholars and intellectuals bear the scars of the “original sin” of their older colleagues, i.e. their passive stand or even active support of nationalistic leaders from the end of 20 century. The (un)conscious feeling of responsibility and guilt for the bloody Yugoslav turmoil is being constantly mixed with the fear of possible stigmatization as a “nationalist”. Milosevic’s or Tudjman’s ghosts are hanging as a Damocles’ sword over anybody who dares speak about “national issues”, or, even worse, if s/he dares to pronounce a critical opinion on NATO/EU/USA (especially having in mind that these international actors have

Interview with Aleksandar Bozinovski, "Nova Makedonija ; Appeared (in edited form) on 26 October 2009. AB: Can you tell us something about yourself. From which part of Greece You origins are? SS: My father’s family comes from Athens although my grandfather, who travelled throughout the then European part of the Ottoman Empire following his father who was a marble artisan, grew up in the old city of Saloniki (as he called it) before his family relocated to Athens. His wife’s family came from the town of Ayval ı k in Asia Minor and found themselves refugees in Athens after the Greek defeat in 1922. My mother’s family comes from the Peloponnese, and her father fought in the Asia Minor campaign. AB: Are you a historian? SS: I have studied politics, international studies and sociology but a strong component of my work is historical. I had several excellent history teachers in my university years in Athens and they had always encouraged us to stop being introspective a

My interview was mentioned in the Facebook fan group of Antonis Samaras – the architect of Greece ’s Macedonian quagmire and aspiring leader of Nea Dimokratia. The author of the comment, Mr Evangelos Papathanassiou has not bothered to check which book has excited Macedonian opinion and therefore provides a surreal narrative about the "Greek" academic at King's College (sic) who wrote a book about the persecution of the Macedonians by Greece that culminates in accusing my opinions as left-nihilist and moves on to associate them with the views of the Greek prime minister George Papandreou just because our book was featured in the book pages of his website. Mr Papathanassiou seems to be of the impression that whenever a book is presented in a website, it is endorsed. The idea of a book being a starting point of an intellectual search and adventure seems to be alien to him. I found his use of adjective s personally offensive and his logic simplistic and dangerously populi