Balkan Babel

Book excerpt: The third edition of this critically acclaimed work includes three new chapters and a new epilogue, as well as revisions throughout the book. Sabrina Ramet, a veteran observer of the Yugoslav scene, traces the steady deterioration of Yugoslavia's political and social fabric in the years since 1980, arguing that, whatever the complications entailed in the national question, the final crisis was triggered by economic deterioration, shaped by the federal system itself, and pushed forward toward war by Serbian politicians bent on power -- either within a centralized Yugoslavia or within an ”ethnically cleansed” Greater Serbia. The book sheds light on the contributions made by Croatian naivete and Western diplomatic bungling to the tragedy in Bosnia, discusses the course of the Serbian Insurrectionary War in both Croatia and Bosnia, and devotes a chapter to examining the separate paths of Slovenia and Macedonia, before turning to an assessment of the record in post-Dayton Bosnia and Serb Albanian frictions in Kosovë during 1989-98. Chapters on the primary religious associations and on the rock scene help to set the political developments in perspective. With her detailed knowledge of the organic connections between politics, culture, and religion, Ramet paints a strikingly original picture of Yugoslavia's demise and the emergence of the Yugoslav successor states.