Balkan Ghosts

Robert D. Kaplan is the author of some sixteen books on travel and foreign affairs.  He began his career as a free-lance journalist, with a specialty of examining parts of the world that were not well covered in the world's press.  In 1993, he published Balkan Ghosts, discussing his experiences traveling throughout the Balkans in 1990, the most recent of several visits to the area throughout the 1980s.

Kaplan, like Rebecca West over a half century earlier, traveled through untouristed areas of the Balkans, often hitchhiking, often traveling on trains that were impressively primitive for 1990.  He talked to everyone.  He was befriended by knowledgeable people in each country -- rarely those holding office -- who were flattered and delighted that an American journalist was taking time to hear their stories.

He modestly admits that his travel writing is based on earlier models.

[A]t its very best, travel writing should be a technique to explore history, art, and politics in the liveliest fashion possible.  Mary McCarthy's The Stones of Florence and Dame Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon are the best examples of this that I can think of.  I have tried, however clumsily, to aim my star in their direction.

I chose to read Kaplan's book as a follow-up to West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, discussed several posts ago.  Unlike West's book, Kaplan's analysis extends beyond Yugoslavia, covering also Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece.  The section dealing with Yugoslavia, however, is one of the two longest sections in the book.  It is broken into four subsections covering Croatia, "Old Serbia" (Kosovo) and Albania, Macedonia, and Belgrade and its surrounding area in Serbia.  He refers liberally to Rebecca West's massive work as he travels throughout Yugoslavia, noting how little had changed in some ways among the common people, despite the years of Tito's Communist government.  Referring to West's book, he notes that "Like the Talmud, one can read the book over and over again for different levels of meaning." 

Perhaps the overall theme of Kaplan's book is that history is never forgotten in the Balkans, and hatreds always remain under the surface, waiting to emerge at inopportune times.  Each of the countries he discusses -- Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania (and, mentioned in passing, beyond the Balkans, Hungary) -- has at one time or another been a much larger entity than it is at present.  The people of each country believe that is their country's destiny to regain its former glory.

Moreover, hovering over each country's local concerns, and drastically affecting their development, have been the imperial ambitions of empires on the peripheries of the Balkans -- Russia, Austria-Hungary, and, especially, Ottoman Turkey.   All of the Balkan nations have been under the thumb of the Ottomans -- an empire that for centuries was devoted to the ultra-conservative goal of keeping life from changing.  Because of the Ottomans, Kaplan points out, most of the Balkans were insulated from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, movements arising out of the West and leading to their later dynamism.  Only Transylvania, now part of Romania, escaped (surprisingly, for Dracula fans) the deadening hand of Ottoman rule because of its proximity to Hungary; only in Transylvania could Kaplan get decent service in a restaurant. 

Ottoman rule, with all its cruelties and unfairness, humiliated and degraded all the Balkans, but especially the Serbians

They filled their hearts with vengeful sadness and defeat, feelings whose atmospheric effect bore an uncanny resemblance to those that for centuries propelled Iranian Shiites.

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire and then of Communism, those feelings of inferiority, defeat, and hatred have left the Balkan nations only each other to turn upon.

Kaplan was in Romania just after the fall and execution of the Communist dictator Nicolai Ceauşescu, and describes in some detail the fall-out from that violent era. 

He lived in Greece for a number of years during the 1980s, and describes the career of the Greek prime minister (1981-89 and 1993-96)  Andreas Papandreou.  Papandreou is described in Wikipedia as being "frequently regarded as one of the greatest Prime Ministers of the country."  Kaplan would disagree, describing him in terms that seem to foresee a certain politician of out own time:

The fact that close to 40 percent of the electorate still supported Papandreou ... even after Papandreou was indicted for embezzlement and wire-tapping, "shows the Third World-Latin American-style populism of Greek politics.  It is tribal, xenophobic..." [quoting a Greek pollster]

  And for his supporters:  "Their loyalty to him was tribal and not affected by issues."

Americans view Greece as part of the West, as the home of the Athenian Parthenon and a founder of our civilization, Kaplan notes.  That's superficial, he contends.  Greece today is an integral part of the Balkans and shares their discontents.  Greece, like the rest of the Balkans, is still coming to terms with centuries of Ottoman rule.  Greece is not a child of the Enlightenment, or of its own classical history. 

Balkan Ghosts is a perceptive and fascinating study of the Balkans as they existed just thirty years ago.  The war in Bosnia had not yet occurred, nor had the war in Kosovo.  Since these wars, most of the Balkan states have joined the European Union or have applications pending.  I would be interested to read whether Kaplan (still an active author) feels more optimistic about the Balkans' prospects today than he did in 1990.

The book is a shorter and more accessible book, perhaps, than is Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.  Kaplan includes, as did Rebecca West, a considerable discussion of landscapes, art, and architecture, but he focuses much more on current politics, and the historical basis for present conflicts.  Well worth reading.