Sarajevo is still a divided city,
and I can imagine that many Sarajevans still feel that their security is tenuous.
A quick Google search reveals that Sarajevo as well as the entire Bosniak
“heart” of Bosnia-Herzegovina is landlocked, surrounded on three sides by the
Republska Serbska and on the fourth by Croat-dominated territory. The region
around Sarajevo itself is also divided. During the siege of 92-95, a large section
of the southern bank of the rust-colored Miljacka River was occupied by Serb
forces, and even today the boarder of Republika Srpska lies just over the wooded
line of hills south of the city. Just this week, the gulf between Serbs and Bosniaks
was once again apparent as the two communities held separate commemorative
events. Bosniaks invited the Vienna Philharmonic to play in the Vijecnica National
Library. I day earlier, in a Serb neighborhood to the east, residents unveiled
a monument to the assassin/freedom fighter Gavrilo Princip. Reuters covered the
story (and interviewed our group) HERE.
Even small things appear to
reflect the continuing ethnic mistrust in this country. As he drove us from the
airport along narrow, winding roads to a centuries-old Jewish cemetery
overlooking Sarajevo from the south bank of the Miljacka, D______, our tour
guide pulled a pack of Marlboro cigarettes out of his pants pocket. “You see,”
he said, “the warning labels must be printed three times. Once in Cyrillic for
the Serbs, of course. Then the same warning is printed for the Croats and
Bosnians, even though it’s spelled the same. Word for word.” The street signs
were now posted in Cyrillic as well.
This is a story we heard from
other short-term residents as well. Barhana is a popular rakjia bar in the Baščaršija
old town. American graduate students and other young tourists dominate the
space. There is still a joint European military mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
and EUFOR soldiers stationed near the airport were eating lunch at Barhana at
the table next to ours. “Where is the new statue of Princip?” we asked. They
didn’t know, and they advised us that we would never find out unless we asked
in Serbian neighborhoods. Bosnians will simply ignore you or gently apologize
and shrug, offering you a Sarajevsko Pivo. You can’t even get Novi Sad Serbian
beer unless you leave Sarajevo. Serbs won’t sell Bosniak beer, and Bosniaks return
the favor.
The Sarajevsko brewery itself,
just across the river from the Latin Bridge, is evidence of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire’s lasting impact. Krakow and
Prague play up their Habsburg roots, trading on a romantic narrative of a
degenerating, doomed central European aristocracy—Think of the tragic stories
of the beautiful and neurasthenic Empress Sisi or the murder-suicide of her
son, the crown prince Rudolf. In contrast, it’s difficult to determine whether
there’s any serious Habsburg nostalgia here. Clearly, the Austrians (or
“Schwabes”, as Ivo Andrich’s Visegrad Turks refer to them in Bridge on the Drina)
shaped this city as much as the Ottomans. One sees it in the architecture—solid
facades reminiscent of similarly formidable Secession-style Belle Epoch
buildings in Paris, Berlin, Budapest and Vienna. But Turkish Islam, Titoism,
and the siege have had a far greater impact on look and feel of the city.
Even though the mythic tragedy of
the murdered Archduke—a man who hoped to provide national minorities within the
empire more autonomy, whose greatest
joy was playing with his children, whose last words were “Sopherl! Don’t die!
Live for our children!”—would seem to provide an obvious source of tourist
revenue, the city is too divided about the character and status of the
assassin. For many years, Sarajevans marked the spot where Princip stood with
the imprint of his shoes in concrete. During the civil war in the 90s, however,
the monument was removed (now it stands just inside the door to the museum).
Many Serbs view him as one of their greatest heroes and they are quick to
accuse those who refer to Princip as a “nationalist” or “terrorist” of
anti-Serb prejudice.
Personally, I find this kind of
knee-jerk response to the realities of the historical record baffling. It is a
fact that Princip acted in concert with certain officials from Serbia who hoped
to use terror and assassination to eject the Austrians from Bosnia. It is a
fact that Princip’s actions that day triggered a cascade of events culminating
in the outbreak of war a month later. However, those facts don’t damn the
Serbians as a people or Serbia as a nation. It does not make them uniquely
responsible for the catastrophe of the Great War. Most historians point at the
other great powers: Germany and Austria for the most part (Fischer,
Hastings), occasionally Great Britain (Ferguson) or even Russia. This is
clearly a case where the violent breakup of Yugoslavia has made the sober assessment
of history impossible. Serbs feel that the West continues to unfairly victimize
them for their role in the war; that they suffered as much if not more than the
Croats and Bosniaks, and that they must defend their own myths or risk losing
face.
