Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies

Identity construction in the Balkan region - Austrian interests and involvement in a historical perspective
New imperial setting after the Austro-Hungarian “Compromise”: 1878/1881
The years 1878 and 1881 demonstrate a cultural shift in the Austro-Hungarian
advance in the Balkans. The Berlin Congress of 1878 was convened by the European great
powers to correct the Treaty of San Stefano, where the Russian sphere of influence after
the Russian-Turkish war had become unacceptably strong for Vienna and London. The
Berlin Congress functioned as a European readjustment after the defeat and withdrawal
of the Ottoman Empire from big parts of Southeastern Europe. It acknowledged the
independence of those states which had seceded from the Ottoman Empire (Serbia,
Montenegro, Romania and Bulgaria). Conversely, other regions and nations were
exempted from state-building, and Ottoman domination was replaced by a Western
European form in order to prevent the new nation states from becoming too strong and
to prevent Russia, which was confirmed as a protective power for Orthodox believers,
from becoming too influential. In this situation the Habsburg Empire was guaranteed
occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whereas Great Britain took Cyprus and Tsarist
Bessarabia also made territorial gains. Incidentally, 130 years after the congress, there is
again no stability in all these three regions.
The year 1881 marks the end of a period which lasted 350 years starting with the “Acta
confinis” as the beginning of the Habsburg military border with the Ottoman Empire.
This “Vojna Krajina” was institutionalized in 1535 by King Ferdinand I, extended under
the “Statuta Valachorum” by Emperor Ferdinand II in 1630, and reached its biggest
extension in 1700, when 1.2 million inhabitants lived in its almost 50,000 square
kilometres. From the Adriatic Sea along the Danube to Transylvania and the Carpathian
mountains a strip 1,800 kilometres in length followed the rules of the “Konfin”/Vojna
Krajina. This territory was directly administered by the Imperial Military Council (first
in Graz, then in Vienna) without interference from local landowners, who lacked feudal
authority over the population. The Vojna Krajina was mostly populated by Orthodox,
“Pravoslav” emigrants, who had fled the Ottoman Empire during the centuries of
Ottoman advance. They were entitled to live as “free peasants” and, in exchange, had
to serve as soldiers not only against the Ottomans in the south but also in the Silesian
and other wars. Their religious beliefs were tolerated by the authorities and the Vienna
administration waived its endeavours for unification with Rome as it had done in other
cases. In 1691, when a big group of Serbian emigrants settled in southern Hungary, a first
Pravo-Slavic metropolis was established in Sremski Karlovci, representing the beginning
of religious tolerance in the Catholic empire. Inner social and political contradictions
quickly arose, when Catholic Croatian landowners and the Catholic Church tried
to oppose the settlement of an Orthodox, Serbian population in the middle of their
traditional sphere of influence. But the Viennese court rejected all these petitions
and continued to privilege and also to use the Serbian “peasant soldiers”, at the same
time working to minimize the influence of the local nobility. The Austro-Hungarian
Compromise of 1867 caused the abolition of the Vojna Krajina in 1881 when it was
submitted to the Hungarian authorities ruling Croatia. The disappearance of the
15