Book Review: Yugoslavism. Histories of a Failed Idea, 1918-1992

Abstract

ences. We find the confessions of women and men, soldiers and civilians, war captives, citizens of blockaded Sarajevo, farmers and intellectuals -but with one thing in common. All of them at a key moment helped a representative of another ethnic group and by doing so saved or strongly influenced their life. Broz has begun to collate a Yad Vashem for Bosnia and it is useful as both a documentary source and a human testimony.The stories are terrifying, horrible and touching in terms of personal suffering. Propaganda will not be found anywhere on the pages of this book. We are presented with bare, and at times, documentary prose, without any notes on facial expression or body language of the author's counterpart or about his/her emotional state while retelling the story. The confessions are cleaned of everything that is not the story itself in order to avoid falling into kitsch. The general impression of victimization and horror through which these people passed is thus even more real than that achieved by other authors of books on the Bosnia war.Acceptance of individual experiences has to be a part of a collective therapeutic process through which all newly established states in the area of former Yugoslavia can begin to confront what happened. This book is only one attempt to answer the question as to what makes people turn against their neighbours. Thanks to Broz, we perhaps know more about the individual victim and their response to this war, than arguably any other similar historical phenomenon. All the situations make a unique collection of stories by people who made their own choice and helped their neighbour or stranger of another nation just because they wanted to or felt it was the right thing to do. Most of the storytellers were in danger of being punished or killed for helping the 'enemy'. Broz's book is thus about modern society and the role that individual responsibility should play. The personal choices people made, such as the courage to take a stand, highlight how the individual is an important factor in the transition to a more just form of society. As one informant confessed: 'There, you see, it was worth living. Evil and evil people all around us, at every step of the war and on all sides. And only a handful of good people and goodness held this city together' (91). gordana bekc  ić Pjes   ic, Belgrade