Serbian history

Using available contemporary sources and previous research results, this paper deals with the way that the protracted Ottoman conquest of the Balkans affected the population of the Bosnian urban areas and countryside during the fifteenth century. The very first Ottoman incursions into Bosnia during the 1380’s were marked by people fleeing and running away from potential negative consequences of such military raids, and the process of depopulation continued, with varying intensity, even after the fall of the Bosnian Kingdom in 1463. Due to the very nature of preserved sources, this work is not an extensive statistical study or a detailed demographic overview of the period in question. That means that this analysis will not be able to provide an exact number or percentage of people who left Bosnia due to the Ottoman conquest, but it will focus on, present and highlight those sources which talk about the tendency of people to leave their homeland, run away and evade, either the Ottoman army, or the changes brought by Ottoman rule in general.

This document contains a list of travelers and the relevant accounts, painstakingly composed while researching Habsburg-Ottoman diplomatic relations. It is presented without any guarantee on completeness. On the other hand, it might contain some value, since it digs up some previously unknown or lesser known travel accounts.

The monograph offers the reader a critical edition of 95 Athonite Slavic charters dating from the period 1230-1734. 39 of these documents are composed in Bulgarian or Serbian, while the remaining 56 are of Moldavian or Wallachian origin and are written in a sort of Bulgarian vernacular strongly influenced by the syntax of the Romanian language and the administrative terminology used in the two Transdanubian Principalities. The Serbian and Bulgarian documents scrutinized in the monograph are preserved in the archives of the Athonite monasteries of Karakallou, Kastamonitou, St. Paul,
Vatopedi, and Xenophontos. while the Moldavian and Wallachian Slavic charters are kept in the archives of Kastamonitou, Docheiariou and Zographou.

*proofs / NOT the published version
*published in: Tamara Scheer, Similarities and Particularities of Habsburg Occupation Regimes during the First World War (with a special reference to Serbia), in: Wolfgang Höpken, Wim van Meurs, eds., , Südosteuropa-Jahrbuch "The First World War in the Balkans: Historic Event, Experience, Memory,  Peter Lang Verlag, Berlin et al. 2018, 41-58.

Abstract: After the restoration of Serbia in 1830, the areas of medieval Serbia left out of her borders were dubbed Old Serbia – Kosovo, Metohija, Rascia (the former sanjak of Novi Pazar and the neighbouring areas). Old Serbia (from 1877 onwards the vilayet of Kosovo) was dominated by local Albanian pashas, whereas the Christian Orthodox Serbs and their villages were attacked and pillaged by Muslim Albanian brigands. The religious antagonism between Muslims and Christians expanded into national conflict after the 1878 Albanian League had claimed the entire “Old Serbia for Greater Albania”. The position of Christian Orthodox Serbs, who accounted for a half of the population at the end of the nineteenth century, was dramatically aggravated due to Muslim Albanians' tribal anarchy, Austria-Hungary's pro-Albanian agitation and, after 1908, frequent Albanian rebellions. All efforts of Serbia to reach a peaceful agreement with Muslim Albanian leaders in Old Serbia before the First Balkan War had ended in failure. The First Balkan War was the most popular war in Serbia’s history as it was seen as avenging the 1389 Battle of Kosovo which had sealed the Ottoman penetration into the Serbian lands. In October 1912, Serbia liberated most of Old Serbia, while Montenegro took possesion of half of the Rascia area and the whole of Metohija. While the decimated and discriminated Serb population greeted the Serbian and Montenegrin troops as liberators, most Albanians, who had sided with the Ottomans, saw the establishment of Serbian rule as occupation.
Keywords: Serbia, Old Serbia,

"The Young Bosnia and the "Black Hand", The Serbs and the First World War 1914-1918 : Proceedings of the International Scholarly Conference held in the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Belgrade, June 13-15, 2014, Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2015, pp 139-152. ISBN 978-86-7025-659-0

Abstract. Reading through historical studies on Serbs and Serbia written during and after the wars of the Yugoslav succession (1991–1999) reveals many elements of a biased, one-sided narrative derived from various sources. This contribution looks at the ideological and nationalistic writings on “Greater Serbia”, “Greater Serbian nationalists”, “Serbian hegemony” produced by Croatian nationalists in interwar Yugoslavia and by Croatian Second World War émigrés, who were markedly anti-Yugoslav both in the monarchic and communist period and whose perspective has gained ground in Western Europe and the USA. These writings are often compatible with Albanian historiography produced under the Stalinist regime of Enver Hoxha. This simplistic and biased perception of the Serbs as endemic nationalists, communists and anti-Europeans, allegedly keen on establishing complete hegemony over other nations and minorities in Yugoslavia, has reappeared since 1991 not only in mass media but also in much of Western scholarship, strongly influenced by a black-and-white perspective on the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Such approach, fostered by some scholars from the former Yugoslavia, chime perfectly with the old stereotypes inherited from Austrian and German historiography on Kriegsschuldfrage which have found their way into American historiography in the post-1945 period. Many controversial interpretations (Noel Malcolm, Holm Sundhaussen, Tim Judah, James Gow, Robert Donia, Branimir Anzulovic, Stjepan Meštrović, Philip Cohen, Marcus Tanner, Sabrina Ramet etc.), have been designed to support some immediate political goals or geopolitical claims and have little to do with scholarship and intellectual rigour. Yet, many such works have become standard and wide-spread, albeit stereotyped, perception of the Serbs and their history in the Balkans.

The thousand-year long history of Serbia's troublesome province of Kosovo (Kosovo and Metohija) is a case study of conflicting narratives and opposing versions of history.The case of Kosovo became famous worldwide after the Kosovo Albanian minority in Serbia, within the wider federal, communist Yugoslavia, organized separatist movements, fully backed by communist Albania, openly demanding, since 1981, secession from Serbia, and claiming the status of a constituent nation. It was an announcement of the coming collapse of Titoist Yugoslavia in 1991 .The violent dismemberment of communist Yugoslavia, followed by the series of wars for Yugoslav succession (1992-1995), had its last chapter with the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia and FR of Yugoslavia in 1999,followed by the UN protectorate over Kosovo, administered by UNMIK under UN SC Resolution 1244 of June 1999, and militarily protected by the NATO-led KFOR.
The following study, covering the period from the medieval times to unilateral proclamation of independence of Kosovo by the Kosovo Albanians in 2008, illustrated by a series of lesser known Kosovo-related documents, provides relevant historic insight into important elements of the Kosovo drama, in particular from Serbian, rarely quoted or deliberately neglected sources.

CIP - Каталогизација у публикацији
Народна библиотека Србије, Београд
94(497.11)"1912/1918"
355.48(497.11)"1912/1918"
355.312(497.11)"1912/1918"
ОКРУГЛИ сто Други пешадијски пук „Књаз Михаило”-
Гвоздени пук у ослободилачким ратовима 1912-1918 (2012; Прокупље)
Други пешадијски пук „Књаз Михаило” - Гвоздени пук у ослободилачким
ратовима 1912-1918 : зборник радова са округлог стола, Прокупље, 5. октобар
2012. године / [главни и одговорни уредник Драган Р. Лекић]. -
Прокупље: Историјски архив Топлице, 2014 (Прокупље: Прадо). - 268 стр.:
илустр.; 24 cm
Тираж 1.500. - Стр. 3: Предговор /
Редакциони одбор. - Прилози, осврти, прикази:
стр. 217-265. - Напомене и библиографске
референце уз текст.
ISBN 978-86-918165-0-6
a) Србија. Војска. Други пешадијски пук „Књаз Михаило” - 1912-1918
b) Први балкански рат 1912-1913 - Стара Србија
c) Други балкански рат 1913 - Стара Србија, јужна
d) Први светски рат 1914-1918 - Србија
e) Кумановска битка 1912
f) Брегалничка битка 1913
COBISS.SR-ID 210502924

Europe has been challenged with the waves of migrations recently, but such a phenomenon is not a newborn aspect of “our” European identity. However, it was the Balkans - the region which due to Ottoman expansion and its revision suffered numerous migrations (voluntary and involuntary) and relocations (frequently forced) of its inhabitants. The results of such a policy was a constant need to revenge, we mean Balkan nations wanted to revenge on Turks and vice versa. Such phenomenon is clearly visible in the course of 19thcentury (Russo-Turkish wars, Berlin congress, shaping of modern Balkan states), but it has roots in older periods. In June 1690, as a result of Great Turkish War, from 30 to 40,000 Serbs gathered in Belgrade led by the patriarch Arsenije III. Čarnojević to seek refuge in Hungary. This is called the Great Migration or in Serbian Velike seobе Srba (Велике сеобе Срба), the main area to settle for Serbs was current territory of Vojvodina, but they were moving also to present day Hungary and Romania. The main aim of this paper is to provide the scholars and public with a new unbiased view of Serb migration 1690 and its place in national identity and myths. One of quests to solve is the “war of numbers” such typical for Balkan region (concerning Great Serb migration from 40.000 to 500.000) and how is the Serb migration perceived in modern European historiography – primarily Czechoslovak, Albanian and Anglo-American compared to traditional and modern Serbian.
Keywords: Serbian history, Serbs, The Great Migration, memory, identity, historiography, Serbian orthodox church

Once one of the most numerous and prosperous minorities in Yugoslavia, the number of Jews declined to only 15,000 in the years after WW2. This number further decreased due to migration to Israel in the first post-war years, and further impoverishment took place because of confiscation and restitution of the majority of private and communal Jewish property, and enforced renouncing of Yugoslav citizenship. The first multi-party elections in Yugoslavia brought to power nationalist elements in all republics, which was followed by civil war, and the breaking of socialist Yugoslavia. Jews of Yugoslavia found themselves on different warring sides. Fragmentation on all confronted sides made the Jewish community even more vulnerable. A huge majority of former Warsaw Pact members after the Berlin wall fell passed laws for restitution of  property taken by the state in post WW2 period. Jews of Yugoslavia, in several new states, had promises from state officials that their property would be restituted and errors made half a century ago would be rectified. The only case where such a promise came true was Serbia. In 2011 Serbia passed General Restitution Law concerning individuals, therefore also Jews. In 2006 Serbia passed Law on property of the religious communities that also included Jewish community and that helped restitution of the Jewish communal property. The state of Serbia is the only state in the region that passed the Jewish Lex Specialis that concerns on Jewish property with no successor but also unclaimed Jewish property in February 2016. Croatia passed a General Restitution Law in 1996, and amended it in 2002, but it only affects property nationalized after May 1945. That Law is limited to direct successors who are Croatian citizens or citizens of countries which have bilateral agreements with Croatia. Due to very high taxes, in some cases reaching 25% of property value, a lot of Jewish requests remained unsolved. Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the rare European countries that did not pass such a law. Moreover, the BIH constitution declares three constituent nations: Serbs, Croats and Bosnians, while others as minorities cannot be nominated for state positions, according to chapters IV and V of the BIH constitution (Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina). This paper aims to give insight into the economic power of Jews just before the breakdown of Yugoslavia, and the current economic situation of Jewish communities in Serbia, Croatia and BIH, with a special emphasis on their economic, legal and social position in the last two decades. This restitution issue is very important for it shows how much goodwill states have for helping their local Jewish communities. The research material is obtained from local Jewish communities, periodicals, reports, interviews, conferences, scientific journals and statistical data of all three states and various Jewish organization. Facing the past, admitting and rectifying remain open issues in those countries, and they are excellent indicators of the progress achieved in the last 25 years.

There is no doubt that there was a cultural life in Belgrade in the first period of Ottoman rule (1521–1688), and that its course was set by the intellectual elites of each religious/ethnic community. The main characteristic of the cultural life in Belgrade is the lack of intellectual communication between different religious communities. The cultural life of members of a community was limited exclusively to that community. But divisions within a single religious community were not uncommon. In the Catholic one, for example, there was a harsh and unbridgeable divide between two groups based on their different territories of origin and their sympathies for different, and competing, religious orders. Except to some extent for the shared participation of all communities in a city’s general economic liveliness, nothing, not even such a civilization-shaping invention as the printing press effected a change towards their joint cultural advance. Their cultural lives followed their own separate courses.

«Le patriarcat œcuménique et les patriarcats balkaniques (Tarnovo, Peć). Enjeux ecclésiaux et impériaux au XIVe siècle» in: Le Patriarcat œcuménique de Constantinople et Byzance hors-frontières (1204-1586), Actes de la table ronde organisée dans le cadre du 22e Congrès International des Études Byzantines, Sofia, 22-27 août 2011, éd. M.-H. Blanchet, M.-H. Congourdeau et D. I. Mureşan, Paris, 2014 [Dossiers byzantins, 15], p. 203-242.

La querelle ecclésiologique qui avait animé les XIIIe--XIVe siècles dans les Balkans est ici revisitée. Longtemps, la vision des sources grecques produites au Patriarcat œcuménique a occupé l’intérêt des chercheurs. Cette fois-ci, les sources slavonnes sont également mises à profit pour reconstituer la perspective des Patriarcats concurrents bulgare et serbe. De cette confrontation, il résulte que l’enjeu du conflit était à la fois politique et ecclésiologique. L’élévation au rang patriarcal correspondait au titre impérial que les souverains bulgares revendiquaient depuis le XIIIe siècle et les serbes depuis le XIVe. Cependant, la justification ecclésiologique visait le cadre de la Pentarchie, dont l’Église de Rome serait à exclure du fait de sa chute prétendue dans l’hérésie. Ainsi, une place libérée au sommet de la direction collégiale à cinq membres de l’Église universelle serait devenue disponible pour une autre Église. Cependant, le Patriarcat de Constantinople n’a jamais accepté cette interprétation, considérant toujours que Rome pouvait retourner dans la communion orthodoxe. L’opposition aux pressions bulgare et serbe est ainsi à mettre en relation avec les appels inlassables de Constantinople, tout au long du XIVe siècle, à l’organisation d’un concile œcuménique duquel on espérait la réconciliation avec l’Église de Rome, son renoncement à la monarchie ecclésiastique et son retour dans le cadre collégial de la Pentarchie.   
Voir la suite de l'analyse dans :
"Rome hérétique ? Sur les décisions des conciles de Moscou et de Constantinople (1589, 1590 et 1593)", in: A. Girard et B. Schmitz (éd.), De l’Église aux Églises : réflexions sur le schisme aux Temps modernes, [= Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, 126-2 (2014)], p. 275-288.