"Dusan T.Batakovic. The Kosovo Chronicles " - читать интересную книгу автора

the most part, found the best way to suppress the Serbs by putting
themselves in the service of the Turkish authorities. The author's archival
findings clearly proved what was really happening in Kosovo and Metohia
during the 19th century and what were the true origins of ethnic clashes in
that particular area.
This part of Mr. Batakovic's volume represents, in fact, a
comprehensive history of Kosovo and Metohia during the 19th century,
starting from the First Serbian Insurrection against the Turks (1804) to the
First Balkan War (1912) when, after the victory of the Serbian army, the
region of Kosovo and Metohia had been incorporated in the bulk of the
Serbian state. It is essentially a historical analysis of complex ethnic,
religious and political relations in the triangle Serbs-Turks-Albanians
based on a rather deep archival and documentary research. The author managed
to trace down the roots of these conflicts, their nature and development.
Parallel to this, he gave the historical background for the events which
occurred in the 20th century, when the problem of Kosovo and Metohia reached
its peak in both, crisis and international attention. This segment of book
should serve as a textbook of Kosovo and Metohia's history to everyone who
is interested in this particular field.
Mr. Batakovic's collection of articles contains several synthetical
pieces written on the subject of the history of Kosovo and Metohia. This
region of constant clashes needed to be defined in terms of general
categories. In an attempt to discover the real nature of those conflicts the
author searched for the answer to the following questions: what really lays
in the bottom of centuries long clashes in the history of Kosovo and
Metohia, is that the conflict of religions, nations or civilizations? One
will find the author's answers both original and inspiring. Contradictory
problems need to be thought about. And that is exactly what Mr. Batakovic
has done.
A special attention should be paid to the article entitled "The Kosovo
And Metohia Question - ethnic strife and communist rule". It stands as the
pivotal piece among all other articles in this book. It is at the same time
the most important and the most complex attempt to analyze the situation in
Kosovo in Metohia in the last fifty years, since the communists took over in
Yugoslavia.
This is the first time in Serbian and Yugoslav historiography that
someone tried to look on the Kosovo and Metohia question outside the
framework of political and ideological clich s. The article of Mr. Batakovic
represents a pioneer work in a noncommunist approach to contemporary history
of Kosovo and Metohia. Trying to see the problem in the realm of communist
regime and its policies in Yugoslavia, and in Serbia specifically, the
author found a whole new field of research and reasoning. With strong
foundations in his knowledge of Kosovo and Metohia's history, both distant
and recent, Mr. Batakovic made a successful synthesis of Serbo-Albanian
misunderstandings in Kosovo and Metohia, finding a balance between
contemporary politics and traditional differences between ethnicities living
in this region. His final conclusion that the Titoist politics had been
detrimental to the positive solution of this serious problem seems
persuasive and largely acceptable.
One should appreciate the courage of the author to tackle such a