What French and German can learn from Serbs and Albanians

Indeed, there is something specifically non-European in the fact that the Balkans never reach the dimensions of European fighting. - Marija Todorova, “Balkan imaginary” )

I've been hearing Western politicians talking about our dark Serbian-Albanian history for years and years, about hate and big conflicts. If they really want to help us agree, we have to do this in front of them -- starting with the simple fact that they have no right.

For one thing, we need to know that the American theory of Bulgarian origin, Marija Todorova, has described this way of speaking about Serbs and Albanians, generalizing with this Balkans, namely Balkanism. This means that centuries since the Balkans, they see us as “sinating our conversion to tribes, backlog, primitive and barbarous” (Todorova 2006, 4), as wild, uncivilized in relation to them. And as humans who are forever oriented against each other and who hate each other. This time of political accuracy, I think it's the ideal time to rebel against this aunt. So we go around the table and say a lot, and we explain to them that talking about us as a constant source of conflict and primitiveness is just as offensive as being gay as being gay or boiling like Americans.

I think they're wrong, like where is that centuries-old hatred in the Middle Ages. If we look at Serbian and Albanian feudalists, we will find many mixed marriages between them. Especially have they married each other and mixed the blood of Brankovic's families, the Balshikes, the Crnojevices, with the Kastriots, Arnan and Topiaj, Albanians. And there is nothing strange and extraordinary -- in the Middle Ages, it was important to preserve the feudal possessions even to expand by creating military and defence alliances, and the best way to do that was to associate with Albanian greats. It was for this Serbian feudalist from today's Kosovo, Macedonia, Shkodra and Montenegro that they associated with Albanian feudalists in neighbouring territories. Albania's largest hero, Skenderbeu, is the best example of this: the father belonged to the Albanian tribe of Kastriots, while Mother Vojsawa was of Serbian descent; the older brother's name was Sinisa, the Serbian name, or the Slavic name. Or let's take a look at the famous “link of Albanian princes” in 1444, when Skenderbeu in Lezha gathered the most heard Albanian families and linked with them the alliance for the war against Turks. Albanian historians, for little or many reasons, view this event as their first attempt at uniting Albanians as a sign to the future Albanian state and the national movement. This, for my taste, is somewhat excessive, but, however, along with the Albanian families of the Kastriots, Ballaya, Aranis, Muzacaves, Caves, and Zechariahs, there were Serb greats from the Balsics, Crnojevices.

Well, you'll say, maybe this has been done for their own interests; even today Serbian and Kosovo politicians and businessmen co-operate among themselves, while the ordinary people endure and are killed. Had Haradinaj not been in the French prison because of Serbia's arrest warrant, he would not have been so popular in Kosovo today, and if he had not supported the Serbian List, he would not have been a prime minister. While Haradinaj publicly ordered Vucic “don't fuck with me”, in itself he probably thinks: “you drive, scratch as much of me as you do, I've never been so good at it”. Also, if Milosevic were not “forcibly chosen with the Albanians, Ramushi, to this day, as in 1990, would be a construction worker, or bodigard at some Swiss discotheque. But let us go back to the common people in the Middle Ages for a moment. Even here, we don't know there was any conflict, sedition, without leaving any more war between Serbs and Albanians. Car Dusan's “Canonnorn” is mentioned in several countries as farmers, who have rights and obligations, as well as other Cari subordinates. Finally, we have to say that in the Middle Ages, of course, the idea of nationality was not developed -- it was more important than in which social class you were part of which class you belong than you belong to, which language you speak, whether God, Orthodox or Catholic, you pray to. So in Canoncore it's about Serbs on the one hand and the Vlachs on the other, and that's primarily about the rules that are about farmers and farmers, and less about Serbs and Albanians in the ethnic sense today.

The same can be said of the centuries in which Serbs and Albanians passed on to the Ottoman Empire. This Emperor did not take good care of ethnic affiliation- was divided into villas and records, in which Muslims, Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Jews lived together. Of course, there was nothing like oil here: Muslims had far more rights and less taxes, but the important thing is that all ethnic communities had autonomy and their daily lives, even for criminal offences, led by their religious leaders. Of course, when the Ottoman Empire weakened to such a degree that the positions of Christians came deteriorating, but until late in the nineteenth century, it cannot be said that there was any conflict between Serbs and Albanians, and until later, not even one in which they, in all, stood face to face.

For the sake of example, though, consider what things were like in the West. Was not all of Europe locked in political and civic wars from the Middle Ages, while religious - based wars between Catholics and Protestants until the 20th century V II? To bring just a few well-known examples from all over the so-called centenarian war between England and France really lasted, with several interruptions, from 1337 to 1453, almost a hundred years! In the so-called Night of St. Bartholomew, in 1572 French Catholics brutally murdered their fellow countrymen who were also Christians, only that they were prone to reform. In the so - called Thirty Years ' War that broke out in Western Europe in 1616 and 1648, 8 million people died, and so on. etc.

Then, there is no discussion about how much and how our Balkan ancestors loved the Jews, but I don't know about any programs to Jews before World War II, similar to the crimes committed against them throughout history in Western Europe. From the English Kingdom to the last were expelled in 1290, and from Spain in 1492. Many of these Jews in Spain, the Sepharids, came here to the Balkans, where their descendants lived as communities until the arrival of the Germans in 1941. Even during World War II, the only country in Europe in which there was no mass Jewish storage was Albania, although it too was, originally under Italian occupation and later under the German. Albanians stubbornly adhered to their old traditions of hospitality and trust, hiding Jews in their homes. As the number of Jews in other European countries during the war fell 90 or 95 %, Albania came out of the fight with a larger Jewish population of 11%!

Where are they, I ask you, such brother-in-law wars and similar massacres in the Balkans at this time? Where are the examples of such ethnic hatred among us compared to those of Catholic-protestan or German-French conflicts or Anglo-French hostility? Where are the Jewish programs from the Middle Ages to modern times in Kragujevac, Krusevac, Crewe, or Gjirokastra? Well, there's no such thing. As the fact that I've chosen as a motto of this text shows, if for any reason we're not European, then we're about the fact that we've never hated and fought so long and so bloody between us as Westerners have.

To conclude. I do not intend to overlook or reduce the importance of the conflicts we have, in fact in these modern times, between Serbs and Albanians, and much less to give up our responsibility for them - on the contrary, it would be extraordinary and of great value if the cause of our recent conflicts and their perpetrators finally go to prison, where they have the place. But since in the media, both our own and our foreign, we find almost only topics related to our conflicts and crimes, so I find it important to insist that this is not our only appearance or our most important one, and that our reports from ancient times to today contain many positive examples and events. Such examples include, to mention just a few, the medieval family and dynasties, the joint uprisings against Turks, the folk songs that speak of the same heroes as the work of Marko Kraljevic and Mue Kesegiu, and which shows deep respect to each other, Albanians participating in the First and Second Serbian Chiefship, and later the efforts that they somehow approach or engage in the Principate of Serbia, Serbian leftists who at the beginning of the 20th century agreed on independent Albania and the establishment of a Balkan confederation based among the second-party nations, following the construction of the World Wars in Albania, where Serb-era films and other regional performances, multi-comopa-combating actors, and theatre actors, and all-communica with the rest of the time. For this, it would be worth it, first of all, that we cease to distribute these persistent and inaccurate themes over our centuries-old hatred and to remember that Europe itself has drowned in all wars at a time since here in the Balkans lived together, and then together we silence these Western voices about us and explain to them that they are the ones who can learn from us. The European Union is in crisis -- perhaps a lecture on traditional Balkan honour, commitment and hospitality, respect for the elderly, on commitment to family and tribe, would do well in this time of crisis.

Danas 25,11,2017

*Autor is a scientific associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Science in Belgrade. This text is written within the “Contact Password: Change of Serbian-Albanian perception”, which has the support of Swiss Embassy in Kosovo and the project P ERFORM, which supports the development of social sciences in the Western Balkans, implements the Multimedia Centre in Pristina in co-operation with the Institute for Philosophy and Social Science in Belgrade.