The Serbs : history, myth and the destruction of Yugoslavia / Tim Judah.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Judah, Tim, 1962-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Yugoslav War, 1991-1995--Serbia.

Yugoslav War, 1991-1995.

Serbia--History.

Serbia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xviii, 414 pages)

Edition:

3rd ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Who are the Serbs? Branded by some as Europe's new Nazis, they are seen by others-and by themselves-as the innocent victims of nationalist aggression and of an implacably hostile world media. In this challenging new book, Timothy Judah, who covered the war years in former Yugoslavia for the London Times and the Economist, argues that neither is true. Exploring the Serbian nation from the great epics of its past to the battlefields of Bosnia and the backstreets of Kosovo, he sets the fate of the Serbs within the story of their past.This wide-ranging, scholarly, and highly readable account opens with the windswept fortresses of medieval kings and a battle lost more than six centuries ago that still profoundly influences the Serbs. Judah describes the idea of "Serbdom" that sustained them during centuries of Ottoman rule, the days of glory during the First World War, and the genocide against them during the Second. He examines the tenuous ethnic balance fashioned by Tito and its unraveling after his death. And he reveals how Slobodan Milosevic, later to become president, used a version of history to drive his people to nationalist euphoria. Judah details the way Milosevic prepared for war and provides gripping eyewitness accounts of wartime horrors: the burning villages and "ethnic cleansing," the ignominy of the siege of Sarajevo, and the columns of bedraggled Serb refugees, cynically manipulated and then abandoned once the dream of a Greater Serbia was lost.This first in-depth account of life behind Serbian lines is not an apologia but a scrupulous explanation of how the people of a modernizing European state could become among the most reviled of the century. Rejecting the stereotypical image of a bloodthirsty nation, Judah makes the Serbs comprehensible by placing them within the context of their history and their hopes.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface to the New Edition

Preface

Acknowledgements

Author's Note

List of Abbreviations

1. Death Does Not Exist

2. An Empire on Earth

3. It Is Better to Die in Battle Than to Live in Shame

4. Resurrection and Beyond

5. Cutting the Turks Into Pieces

6. Union or Death

7. We Chose the Heavenly Kingdom

8. You Used To Warm Us Like the Sun

9. Frankie and Badger Go to War

10. We are the Strongest

11. It Was War . . .

12. The Madmen Take Over the Asylum

13. The War for More

14. 363 Quadrillion Per Cent

15. Skull Towers

16. . . . For Nothing

17. End of Empire

18. Revolution and Beyond

Appendixes

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780300147841

0300147848

OCLC:

808346481