Jacob Mikanowski: evaluation

Transcript context

…The Serbian obsession with, I guess you’d have to call it the 14th century: Is it an actual historic obsession or is it a stand-in for some other clash of values? How do you frame that or think about it? So when you ask Serbians about Kosovo, they’ll tell you all these long stories about “the Serbian heartland is in Kosovo” and “Kosovo is Serbia.” Putting aside whether or not one agrees with any of that, what is it that they really mean when they’re saying it? The Battle of the Field of Blackbirds, 1389: it is pivotal in Serbian memory and Serbian mythmaking, that moment — although they really mythologized it — of the great defeat of Serbia at the hands of the Ottomans, and then wresting a kind of victory by assassinating the Ottoman sultan in the last second after the battle’s been lost. I think there’s a real pull of history. There’s a real pull of the defeat. But in terms of a larger value, it’s the dream of Serbia as a great country. Eastern European countries fall in two categories. There are countries that are small, and they’re happy being small — it’s a minority — and countries that are small to medium and dream of being big. Poland dreams of being big, but those dreams are less prominent than they used to be. Hungary dreams of returning to being big, and those dreams are still around. And Serbia dreams of being big. It had that oversize role in Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was, in a way, at least to some Serbs, not a Serbian empire but a big sphere of influence where they were the top dog. They were the big player. The Yugoslav Kingdom was very much like that, formed around Serbia. And Kosovo is the last piece of that. Once they lose that, and Montenegro, they’re really a small country. There really is no more dream. That’s how I read it. Once the United States steps back from that region, which sooner or later will happen — probably not sooner — won’t it just become part of Serbia, and they’ll get their larger nation back?…

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