Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: The Scholars' Initiative

Abstract

WINSTON CHURCHILL ONCE LAMENTED that the Balkans had produced far more history than they could possibly consume. The history to which he referred was the lengthy litany of wrongs and retribution that had been committed by the various groups that inhabited the peninsula. What he did not say-or, perhaps, realize-was that the great bulk of what passes for history among the region's peoples was of relatively recent vintage, having been written over the previous century by apologists for the region's newly created nation-states. Nor could he know that the Balkans would share in the bounty of a second great age of state-and history-making at the other end of the twentieth century.