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Stop this war
Clinton and his leftist buddies in NATO are squandering our money and our military credibility in the Balkans.
By David Horowitz
[05/10/99]

The bitter end
The mistrial in the Steele case marks Kenneth Starr's induction into the American hall of shame.
By Jack Hitt
[05/08/99]

Israel's Russian muscle
No longer second-class citizens, the recent immigrants are emerging as vital swing voters.
By David Tuller
[05/08/99]

Jesse Ventura's gaffe riot
From dumb racial jokes to self-serving politics, the Minnesota governor's past predicted his future.
By Jake Tapper
[05/07/99]

Bungling in Buffalo
Fugitive James Kopp is finally charged in the killing of an abortion doctor after the FBI harasses the wrong men.
By Jeff Stein
[05/06/99]

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There is perhaps no one better suited to address this question than Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for literature. Milosz has long been regarded as a voice of hope in an age darkened by war, death and destruction. Milosz knows from firsthand experience that countries can simply cease to exist: His own beloved "native realm" (to use the title of his superb memoir), Lithuania, was devoured by the Soviet Union. His magnificent poetry bears eloquent witness to human dignity and resistance in the face of our century's evil. Milosz's work has inspired anti-Nazi demonstrators, Polish Solidarity workers and opponents of totalitarianism in both Eastern and Western Europe.

The recent proposal by the G-8 countries -- which include the largest NATO powers and Russia -- to reach a U.N.-monitored compromise in the Kosovo conflict could bring an end to the current impasse. But nationalism will remain the primary barrier to peace in the Balkans.

Salon News asked Milosz to talk about nationalism in the former Yugoslavia and the wars that it has inspired.

You once said: "People have an enormous need for mythology." Would you apply this statement to the Serbs today?

I grew up in Lithuania, where the past was very much alive, even a pagan past, the traces of which can be found in some folk songs and beliefs. Nations mythologize their past, and sometimes the grip of local mythologies is so strong that they are unable to liberate themselves. In Serbia and Montenegro those mythological images of the past were maintained for centuries by literature. Scholars who wanted to find out how Homer's Iliad was written, for example, traveled to Serbia and Montenegro before the Second World War, and in remote villages they tape-recorded the old tellers of poems, who acted precisely like the Greek tellers in the time of Homer.

In Serbia all those epic songs were centered around the battle of Kosovo of 1389. That battle, which was won by the Turks, resulted in Serbia's loss of independence and a centuries-long domination of Serbs by the Turks. So if we think of the durability of the myth of the battle of Kosovo, we can understand why Kosovo has such symbolic meaning for the Serbs. This myth has been a permanent ingredient of Serbian nationalism.

What were the results of the Turkish domination of Serbia?

For 500 years, Serbs resisted the Turks and the conversion to the Muslim religion, which the Turks tried to foster. Those Serbs who converted to Islam enjoyed numerous privileges, but they were hated by those who didn't and labeled traitors; they were called "Turks." The ethnic cleansing that began in Bosnia in 1991 was perceived by the Serbs as revenge against the Muslims, i.e., against the traitors, even though the ancestors of these "traitors" had embraced Islam centuries ago. This feeling of revenge as historical justice explains how the Serbs can commit crimes and feel innocent.

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