FACES AND PLACES: "Holy Russia," "Heavenly Serbia" (07/25/99)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

"Holy Russia," "Heavenly Serbia"

Now that NATO has cleared Kosovo of Serbians and the Albanians are returning, NATO has declared a victory. Nice.

Mr. Milosevic, however, is still in power. In fact, he got a better deal than he was offered at Rambouillet. The new arrangements require no local referendum on Kosovo and allows Kosovo to formally remain within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The United Nations is now in charge of civil administration in Kosovo. With China and Russia, both on the U.N. Security Council, allied with Milosevic, the man can still be a factor in the region. Not so nice.

Meanwhile, evidence of barbaric atrocities continues to be uncovered. How is it possible that so ruthless a demagogue could involve his people in such savagery, all in the name of national pride? Part of the answer lies in messianic nationalism, the idea that one's people are chosen to redeem the world.

Marxism/Leninism was a vehicle of Russian national messianism. The vehicle may be dead, but the myth of Holy Russia as the third and final Rome lives on. It is the one national ideal that unites all Russians, including some members of the "mafia."

Russians, it appears, are not alone among the Slavs in subscribing to a messianic myth. In his book, "Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide," Branimir Anzulovic traces Serbia's expansionist impulses to Serbian national mythology. The dominant myth - that of "Heavenly Serbia" - appeared soon after the Serbian defeat at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. The medieval Serbian state was lost, Serbian nationalists believe, because the Serbian people preferred moral salvation to military victory.

Mr. Anzulovic traces the birth of the Serbian messianic myth to the 14th century "Narration about Prince Lazar" written by Serbian Patriarch Danilo III, which portrayed the defeat of Prince Lazar's armies at Kosovo as "a martyr's victory and a triumph of the commitment to the 'heavenly kingdom' over the earthly 'kingdom.'"

As in Russia, the relationship between the Serbian nation and the Serbian Orthodox Church has been intimate, almost inseparable, at least in the past. The Church was founded in 1219 by St. Sava, the youngest son of the founder of the Nemanja dynasty, and brother of the first Serbian king. Almost from its inception, the Orthodox Church of Serbia was granted autocephalous status by the ecumenical patriarch.

Conquering Serbia, the Ottoman Turks permitted the Serbian Church to exist. "When the autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church was re-established as a patriarchate with the seat in the Kosovo town of Pec in 1557, it no longer served the Serbian state because the Serbian state ceased to exist," writes Mr. Anzulovic, "but it served the Ottoman state and, as the only surviving national institution, it became the main carrier of Serbian national identity."

The synergistic relationship that existed between Church and nation reached its most radical form in the poetry of Bishop Pear Petrovic Njegos, whose dramatic poem "The Mountain Wreath," published in 1847, became the national epic of the Serbians, according to Branimir Anzulovic. "The theme of 'The Mountain Wreath,'" he writes, "is not the cosmic struggle between good and evil, but the struggle for a homogeneous Orthodox theocracy."

The poem was inspired by a massacre of Muslims who were actually Slavs who converted to Islam (what we Ukrainians call "yanychary") on Christmas Eve. The climax takes place on Christmas Day during a slaughter of Turks. "We put under our sabres all those who did not want to be baptized. But those who bowed to the Holy Child, and crossed themselves with the Christian cross, we accepted as our brothers. We burned all Turkish houses, that there might be no abode nor trace of our infidel domestic enemy." Mr. Anzulovic cites other brutal poems, novels and stories that became popular among Serbian intellectuals. It is the intellectuals who resurrected the Greater Serbia concept.

The genocide in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia is the result of many factors, according to Mr. Anzulovic, including ill-informed Western leaders who chose initially to ignore the slaughter in Bosnia and then sought a quick fix. "Their indifference to facts is matched by their indifference toward the fate of the peoples affected by their uninformed decisions," he writes.

There is a bright spot in all of this, however. The Serbian Orthodox Church does not support Milosevic. A statement issued by Serbian bishops on March 23 argued that "The way of non-violence and cooperation is the only way blessed by God." The Orthodox Patriarch Pavle, has personally participated in protest demonstrations.

But there is also a downside. Although the Church is the only institution that still incarnates the Serbian identity, it appears to have little moral authority among ordinary Serbs. Thanks to years of Communist rule, most Serbians are atheists; they view the Orthodox Church as a museum, and the cross as a symbol of their nation, not their spirituality. Any similarities here with some Ukrainians?

Will the present NATO-brokered arrangements bring peace to the region? Will Yugoslavia become a multi-ethnic state as it was under Tito? The answer is no and no - at least not as long as Milosevic is around and maybe even after he's gone. Nationalism is a powerful force in determining human events. Two world wars have been fought to preserve nationalistic ideals, and national pride remains the single most significant determinant of civic cohesion within a nation-state.

For many American policy-makers, nationalism is an evil, generally to be equated with fascism and Nazism. There is a rank hypocrisy here. America's ruling elite prides itself on being culturally sensitive to America's minorities and yet appears totally ignorant of world cultures, world histories and the nationalisms of the world's people. The mind-set seems to be that if it's not important to the anointed, it must not be important to anyone else.

This type of cultural myopia has led us to grievous errors in understanding what motivates the Russians, the Serbians and the Chinese. Errors in interpretation have resulted in geopolitical blunders. Americans should stop being "shocked" when their good intentions are "misunderstood" and begin to develop a foreign policy based on what is rather than on what we would like it to be.

Now that the Russian bear has its paw in the Serbian door, will we hear from Holy Russia and Heavenly Serbia soon? Bet on it.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: [email protected]

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