The other Balkan wars (ajánló)
Timeless and timely, these pages bring to life again—after eight decades—the ravages of war in the Balkans at the other end of the twentieth century.
Timeless, for readers who discern that the tragedy of Yugoslavia is evoked all too readily by these first-hand accounts of Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek enmity and brutality long ago. These allies against the Turks in the first Balkan war of 1912 turned enemies in the second Balkan war of 1913. Since then much has changed; much has not. The Balkan lexicon now includes "ethnic cleansing." By other names, however, it is everywhere in these pages, as compelling in an era of telegraph and steamship as in an era of computers and television.
Timely, for readers who will more fully understand from this volume, published by the Carnegie Endowment in 1914, how deep and strong are the roots of the present conflict in the Balkans. Members of the orginal Commission of Inquiry, who came from the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia and Germany filled their report with details of regional politics, nationalist and ethnic tension, religious differences, moral codes abandoned, meddling by outsiders, local leaders gripped by ambition and local hatreds run rampant.
These pages also bespeak a confidence misplaced and an optimism lost. Confident that they knew the causes of war, and optimistic that the Balkans could know a peace like the one the rest of Europe had experienced for a generation, these distinguished commissioners were innocent of what August 1914 would mean for their world. Sadly, the people of the Balkans will one day face another grim postwar future, knowing that they cannot easily escape a history that the world asks them to forget for the sake of peace.
Professor Kennan's introduction bridges the Balkan wars of 1913 and 1993. He does justice to both eras with a historian's eye and a special blend of realism and moral sensibility. He judges—as will many readers—that the 1914 report "may stand, in its entirety, as one of the most eloquent and compelling pleas for recognition of the folly of modern war and the essentiality of international peace, not just in the Balkans but everywhere in the civilized world."
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| KATALÓGUS | TARTALOM |
