yugoslavias implosion

CHAPTER 4
Serbia: Between europe
and Backwardness
This chapter discusses how the Serbian elites’ pursuit of territorial
expansion over the past thirty years ended in military defeat and in
the demoralization and general criminalization of Serbian society. It
also explains why, despite the heavy loss of life, including on the Serbian
side, the devastation of the region as a whole and the political
departure (and subsequent death) of Milošević, these elites still hanker
after some form of Greater Serbia.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Serbian nationalism
took on an even more conservative form, pushing Serbia ever
further away from modern trends and values. The brutal removal
of the first democratic premier, Zoran Đinđić, shows how deep the
resistance to modernization runs.
The legacy of crime, genocide, and waging war on four fronts
will burden Serbia and its relations in the region for a long time
unless it comes to terms with the new reality and faces the catastrophic
consequences of Milošević’s policy honestly. Serbia continues
to pursue a policy of consolidating an ethnic state while relying
on the spc and the Army and, to a large extent, Russia. Regardless of
her aspirations in the Balkans, Russia has not been able to fulfill the
expectations of the Serbian elites.
Much of the blame for Serbia’s failure to abandon its dreams
of a Greater Serbia rests with the international community, which
expected to see democratic changes in Serbia almost overnight when
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ChApter 4