Specifically, it was the fact that my family members had this exact attitude in ex-Yugoslavia circa 1991 that caused a lot of avoidable trouble for us (which some other people I know indeed avoided thanks to their better insight into the situation).
Elsewhere you said:
I lived through a time and place—late 1980s and early 1990s in ex-Yugoslavia—where most people were blissfully unaware of the storm that was just beyond the horizon, even though any cool-headed objective observer should have been able to foresee it.
I’d be interested in hearing more about this sometime; all I know is the western media depictions of the Yugoslav wars, it would be interesting to know how things looked from the inside preceding them.
Well, I could write a lot about it, but I think I’ve underscored the aspects relevant for this topic well enough already. If you have some more specific questions, feel free to PM me.
Is there any account of things you’d recommend for curious western readers? Either written by you in the comments here (I haven’t been obsessively reading all comments here), or somewhere else.
For someone interested in this topic, I would first recommend making sure to gain an accurate understanding of the general historical framework in which this and other modern-era European ethnic and ideological conflicts have occurred. Without that, one is likely to get lost in the flood of complicated details and confused by the various parties’ contradicting attempts to present their case as favorably as possible (or worse, successfully propagandized by some of them).
The ex-Yugoslav wars were, in my view, not a unique grand event that by itself decisively shaped history, like e.g. the world wars were, but rather just another instance of wider phenomena that have manifested themselves in many other places and times. Therefore, in my opinion, an interested reader should approach this topic by first gaining general insights about the origins and development of democratic and nationalistic ideologies in Europe in recent centuries, then studying the pre-1990 historical background of the ex-Yugoslav peoples, and only then getting into the concrete details of what happened in the 1990s. In my opinion, at each step a correct grasp of generalities, even if vague, is much more valuable than knowledge of details.
I’m not familiar with the academic sources on ex-Yugoslav wars, but for a detailed factual account, the (English) Wikipedia pages are generally not bad.
Elsewhere you said:
I’d be interested in hearing more about this sometime; all I know is the western media depictions of the Yugoslav wars, it would be interesting to know how things looked from the inside preceding them.
Well, I could write a lot about it, but I think I’ve underscored the aspects relevant for this topic well enough already. If you have some more specific questions, feel free to PM me.
Is there any account of things you’d recommend for curious western readers? Either written by you in the comments here (I haven’t been obsessively reading all comments here), or somewhere else.
For someone interested in this topic, I would first recommend making sure to gain an accurate understanding of the general historical framework in which this and other modern-era European ethnic and ideological conflicts have occurred. Without that, one is likely to get lost in the flood of complicated details and confused by the various parties’ contradicting attempts to present their case as favorably as possible (or worse, successfully propagandized by some of them).
The ex-Yugoslav wars were, in my view, not a unique grand event that by itself decisively shaped history, like e.g. the world wars were, but rather just another instance of wider phenomena that have manifested themselves in many other places and times. Therefore, in my opinion, an interested reader should approach this topic by first gaining general insights about the origins and development of democratic and nationalistic ideologies in Europe in recent centuries, then studying the pre-1990 historical background of the ex-Yugoslav peoples, and only then getting into the concrete details of what happened in the 1990s. In my opinion, at each step a correct grasp of generalities, even if vague, is much more valuable than knowledge of details.
I’m not familiar with the academic sources on ex-Yugoslav wars, but for a detailed factual account, the (English) Wikipedia pages are generally not bad.