The Serbs: history, myth and the destruction of Yugoslavia (1997; 3rd revised enlarged ed. 2009)

"Who are the Serbs? Branded by some as Europe's new Nazis, they are seen by others -- and by themselves -- as the innocent victims of nationalist aggression and of an implacably hostile world media. In this challenging new book, Timothy Judah, who covered the war years in former Yugoslavia for the London Times and the Economist, argues that neither is true. Exploring the Serbian nation from the great epics of its past to the battlefields of Bosnia and the backstreets of Kosovo, he sets the fate of the Serbs within the story of their past. This wide-ranging, scholarly, and highly readable account opens with the windswept fortresses of medieval kings and a battle lost more than six centuries ago that still profoundly influences the Serbs. Judah describes the idea of "Serbdom" that sustained them during centuries of Ottoman rule, the days of glory during the First World War, and the genocide against them during the Second. He examines the tenuous ethnic balance fashioned by Tito and its unraveling after his death. And he reveals how Slobodan Milosevic, later to become president, used a version of history to drive his people to nationalist euphoria. Judah details the way Milosevic prepared for war and provides gripping eyewitness accounts of wartime horrors: the burning villages and "ethnic cleansing," the ignominy of the siege of Sarajevo, and the columns of bedraggled Serb refugees, cynically manipulated and then abandoned once the dream of a Greater Serbia was lost. This first in-depth account of life behind Serbian lines is not an apologia but a scrupulous explanation of how the people of a modernizing European state could become among the most reviled of the century. Rejecting the stereotypical image of a bloodthirsty nation, Judah makes the Serbs comprehensible by placing them within the context of their history and their hopes."--Publisher description.;Death does not exist -- An empire on Earth -- It is better to die in battle than to live in shame -- Resurrection and beyond -- Cutting the Turks into pieces -- Union or death -- We chose the heavenly kingdom -- You used to warm us like the sun -- Frankie and Badger go to war -- We are the strongest -- It was war -- The madmen take over the asylum -- The war for more -- 363 quadrillion per cent -- Skull towers -- For nothing -- End of empire -- Revolution and beyond.

Journalist Tim Judah’s classic account, now brought fully up to date to include the overthrow of Miloševic, the assassination of Zoran Djindic, the breakaway of Kosovo, and the arrest of Radovan Karadžic.

 

Praise for the first edition:

 

"A lively and balanced history of the Serbs."—Aleksa Djilas, New York Times Book Review

 

"Judah writes splendidly. . . .The story he tells does much to explain both the Serb obsession with the treachery of outsiders and their quasi-religious faith in the eventual founding, or rather reestablishment, of the Serbian state."—Mark Danner, New York Review of Books 

 

"Judah's book is probably the best attempt to date to explain the calamitous situation of the Serbs today through a meticulous consideration of the Serb past."—David Rieff, Toronto Globe and Mail

 

Tim Judah was Balkans correspondent for the London Times and the Economist, and has been a frequent contributor The New York Review of Books.

Deep in the bowels of the patriarchate building of the Serbian Orthodox church in Belgrade is a great canvas depicting one of the most traumatic events in Serbian history.