6 ms·

I don't know where are you from, but imagine your country being under devastating economic sanctions, then bombarded by enormously more powerful armies, then an

by otto2 3y ago

I don't know where are you from, but imagine your country being under devastating economic sanctions, then bombarded by enormously more powerful armies, then annexing a part of the country, all of that against international law. Make that process displace hundreds of thousands of people. Now when you imagine that, be honest with yourself and see if you would keep conversations at weather and sport.

blago 3y ago
Have you been to Vietnam? There is no comparison between what was done to them and Serbia, yet Vietnam has moved on. Victimhood is strong in the Balkans, it's a way of life. I know because I was born there.
- racketcon2089 3y ago
  Vietnam won decisively and Serbia lost decisively; measured in destruction it was incomparably worse for Vietnam, but they have no outstanding border conflicts while experiencing peaceful economic development and national sovereignty since the last war in 1979. When your story has a happy ending (and your government needs the US to counterbalance China) it's a lot easier to move on. This is essentially the reverse of former Yugoslavia where things were fairly placid from 1945-1980 then fell apart. There's a tendency to equate the grievances of a generation with immutable national character because it makes analysis easy and change impossible. But this gets used for purposes of denigration of peoples or excuses for policy failures, if not by race and culture, then by economic class and individual good fortune. I'm guessing you were born to educated professionals who immigrated or helped you do so, rather than say, grew up in a refugee camp with a non-citizen passport.
  - blago 3y ago
    It sounds like you are from the West. Thank you for explaining the psychology of my people so clearly to me. I think I understand it better now but it looks like I can use some book reading. Any recommendations?
    - racketcon2089 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - blago 3y ago
        > Sorry your genetic ancestral memory of the Balkans doesn’t stack up to... Ah, we have a serial West-splainer. I emigrated when I was 24 and I speak for pretty much everybody I've known in those years. I've studied and wrote essays on the literature and the history of the region daily through high school and college. I speak the language and the customs. You on the other hand seem completely oblivious to the cultural significance of Kafana, or its different incarnations throughout the region, to recognize that arguing about politics, whining about history, the Great Powers, life, and the Universe, has and still is pretty much the purpose of their existence. > PS. Was I right about the educated professionals part, or were you a displaced person whose village was razed? I'm having a hard time comprehending the relevance. Did the displaced people in Yugoslavia 30 years ago define the pathos of the region, which BTW is more than just former Yugoslavia, in the last 600+ years?
        racketcon2089 3y ago
        You sound like you’re from Belgrade and have never been to Kosova or Bosnia or even to the countryside. Would you prefer to say “western Balkans” or do you presume to also speak for Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians, etc. I would engage with your sources rather than once again retreat into claims of irreducible essence of identity that can never be understood by outsiders. If the Balkans has a curse, it’s that dishonest rhetoric being peddled by corrupt westernizers and corrupt nationalists.
        OfSanguineFire 3y ago
        If the GP had gone to Kosovo or (as the common English shorthand for “Bosnia and Herzegovina”) Bosnia, do you think that would change anything? In my experience, northern Kosovo and Republika Srpska are the very hotbeds of banging on about Serb identity and national character in the region, more than Beograd. Vojvodina is a good escape from all that. Obviously the ethnic Hungarian population there doesn’t care about “Kosovo is Serbia” stuff, but even a lot of the Serb population feel those disputes are far away.
  - golergka 3y ago
    > Vietnam won decisively Northern, communist Vietnam won. It wasn't a war between a Vietnam and USA, but rather between a communist and pro-western regimes.
    - racketcon2089 3y ago
      At no point did it exist as an independent entity with popular support, it was first created by the French and propped up by the US. It’s about as credible as saying the Soviet war in Afghanistan was between two competing regimes or that the liberation of France in WW2 was a conflict between pro-German and pro-American regimes. Formally true, but not a meaningful distinction given the massive disparity in capabilities and supporters.
      - charlysl 3y ago
        You are very articulate but you don't have a clue of what you are talking about, no matter how many books you have read. The southern vietnamese have a very distinct identity, and they haven't moved on at all, if they had a chance they would declare independence from the north in a split second. Source: I have lived in Saigon for a decade, which beats hands down the many books I had read about the subject before that
        racketcon2089 3y ago
        I could say the same as an American southerner! The existence of distinct regional identity preexists the state and continues after reunification. The North dominates in their politics just as in ours and there’s resentment about it in both countries, but it does not follow that there is no national identity or that a regional dictatorship created and funded foreign powers which could not survive without their indefinite aid is true expression of regional identity.
        charlysl 3y ago
        First of all, apologies, the way I started my reply was too brusque. Yes, at the end of the day it's all about who has the power. I just wanted to point out that present Vietnam is far from united and that you can't imagine how much resentment there is in Saigon towards the communist government in the north. Saigon had a "good" war, barely saw any fighting, but the post-war was horrible, scarring southerners to this day, many people repeatedly tried to flee on dingies out of desperation from human (northern) caused starvation and scarcity, this in a land that had never experienced hunger (the Mekong Delta is extremely fertile and milked by the north). They haven't forgotten. The world is full of hopeful irredentists, and whether they will ever succeed or not is not a matter of right, but might (maybe in the shape of a foreign power). It is just that in southern Vietnam most people are irredentists, which I suspect is not the case in the US south, isn't that right?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- thsksbd 3y ago
  Vietnam didn't move on! That's the one thing they most certainly did not do. For decades the Viet refused to move on until they won. After they won, they then fought a war with China and another proxy war with America. The Viet do not move on. They stick to their guns. Or feces covered bamboo sticks, or any weaponizable itsm they have on hand. Nor did the Afghanis. They just kept at it until they won. In fact, giving up and moving on is what just about only the peace loving Serbs did.
golergka 3y ago
> your country being under devastating economic sanctions, then bombarded by enormously more powerful armies, then annexing a part of the country All of that just out of a sudden, without anything else occurring to trigger these events, right? No genocides, no invasions, no massive civilian casualties? No war criminals walking around free doing DJ gigs 30 years later?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mydriasis 3y ago
  No, none of that is forgotten either. It's hell as far back as anyone alive can remember, from the 90s to the 40s to WWI and the Balkan wars, and all of the fighting with the Ottoman empire throughout the 19th century. But you knew all of that.
  - yakshaving_jgt 3y ago
    Are you suggesting that because other genocides have happened, the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats is just business as usual? Perhaps NATO should have just left them to it. Sure, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, but I suppose that pales in comparison to the millions killed in WW2.
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      > the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats We've just seen a massive, 150k people ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and nobody in the whole world went so far as lifting a finger to stop it. Except Russia, which did lift one of its fingers but that was it. It happened this autumn. But yeah, let's pretend that NATO is in business of preventing ethnic cleansings around the world, as opposed to ruining countries it doesn't like for profit. And BTW, what happened to Krajina Srpska?
      - yakshaving_jgt 3y ago
brnt 3y ago
Welcome to understanding small countries. We're not all stuck in our pasts.
nezirus 3y ago
You coveniently ignore the events leading to and the reasons for sanctions and bombardment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia This was actually the second time NATO has bombarded serbian forces, the first time was in Bosnia, which eventually led to Dayton peace agreement later that year: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Deliberate_Force https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Deliberate_Force
- zigman1 3y ago
  Sounds like talk in the kafanas

by otto2 3y ago

blago 3y ago

Have you been to Vietnam? There is no comparison between what was done to them and Serbia, yet Vietnam has moved on. Victimhood is strong in the Balkans, it's a way of life. I know because I was born there.

racketcon2089 3y ago
Vietnam won decisively and Serbia lost decisively; measured in destruction it was incomparably worse for Vietnam, but they have no outstanding border conflicts while experiencing peaceful economic development and national sovereignty since the last war in 1979. When your story has a happy ending (and your government needs the US to counterbalance China) it's a lot easier to move on. This is essentially the reverse of former Yugoslavia where things were fairly placid from 1945-1980 then fell apart. There's a tendency to equate the grievances of a generation with immutable national character because it makes analysis easy and change impossible. But this gets used for purposes of denigration of peoples or excuses for policy failures, if not by race and culture, then by economic class and individual good fortune. I'm guessing you were born to educated professionals who immigrated or helped you do so, rather than say, grew up in a refugee camp with a non-citizen passport.
- blago 3y ago
  It sounds like you are from the West. Thank you for explaining the psychology of my people so clearly to me. I think I understand it better now but it looks like I can use some book reading. Any recommendations?
  - racketcon2089 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - blago 3y ago
      > Sorry your genetic ancestral memory of the Balkans doesn’t stack up to... Ah, we have a serial West-splainer. I emigrated when I was 24 and I speak for pretty much everybody I've known in those years. I've studied and wrote essays on the literature and the history of the region daily through high school and college. I speak the language and the customs. You on the other hand seem completely oblivious to the cultural significance of Kafana, or its different incarnations throughout the region, to recognize that arguing about politics, whining about history, the Great Powers, life, and the Universe, has and still is pretty much the purpose of their existence. > PS. Was I right about the educated professionals part, or were you a displaced person whose village was razed? I'm having a hard time comprehending the relevance. Did the displaced people in Yugoslavia 30 years ago define the pathos of the region, which BTW is more than just former Yugoslavia, in the last 600+ years?
      - racketcon2089 3y ago
        You sound like you’re from Belgrade and have never been to Kosova or Bosnia or even to the countryside. Would you prefer to say “western Balkans” or do you presume to also speak for Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians, etc. I would engage with your sources rather than once again retreat into claims of irreducible essence of identity that can never be understood by outsiders. If the Balkans has a curse, it’s that dishonest rhetoric being peddled by corrupt westernizers and corrupt nationalists.
        OfSanguineFire 3y ago
        If the GP had gone to Kosovo or (as the common English shorthand for “Bosnia and Herzegovina”) Bosnia, do you think that would change anything? In my experience, northern Kosovo and Republika Srpska are the very hotbeds of banging on about Serb identity and national character in the region, more than Beograd. Vojvodina is a good escape from all that. Obviously the ethnic Hungarian population there doesn’t care about “Kosovo is Serbia” stuff, but even a lot of the Serb population feel those disputes are far away.
- golergka 3y ago
  > Vietnam won decisively Northern, communist Vietnam won. It wasn't a war between a Vietnam and USA, but rather between a communist and pro-western regimes.
  - racketcon2089 3y ago
    At no point did it exist as an independent entity with popular support, it was first created by the French and propped up by the US. It’s about as credible as saying the Soviet war in Afghanistan was between two competing regimes or that the liberation of France in WW2 was a conflict between pro-German and pro-American regimes. Formally true, but not a meaningful distinction given the massive disparity in capabilities and supporters.
    - charlysl 3y ago
      You are very articulate but you don't have a clue of what you are talking about, no matter how many books you have read. The southern vietnamese have a very distinct identity, and they haven't moved on at all, if they had a chance they would declare independence from the north in a split second. Source: I have lived in Saigon for a decade, which beats hands down the many books I had read about the subject before that
      - racketcon2089 3y ago
        I could say the same as an American southerner! The existence of distinct regional identity preexists the state and continues after reunification. The North dominates in their politics just as in ours and there’s resentment about it in both countries, but it does not follow that there is no national identity or that a regional dictatorship created and funded foreign powers which could not survive without their indefinite aid is true expression of regional identity.
        charlysl 3y ago
        First of all, apologies, the way I started my reply was too brusque. Yes, at the end of the day it's all about who has the power. I just wanted to point out that present Vietnam is far from united and that you can't imagine how much resentment there is in Saigon towards the communist government in the north. Saigon had a "good" war, barely saw any fighting, but the post-war was horrible, scarring southerners to this day, many people repeatedly tried to flee on dingies out of desperation from human (northern) caused starvation and scarcity, this in a land that had never experienced hunger (the Mekong Delta is extremely fertile and milked by the north). They haven't forgotten. The world is full of hopeful irredentists, and whether they will ever succeed or not is not a matter of right, but might (maybe in the shape of a foreign power). It is just that in southern Vietnam most people are irredentists, which I suspect is not the case in the US south, isn't that right?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
thsksbd 3y ago
Vietnam didn't move on! That's the one thing they most certainly did not do. For decades the Viet refused to move on until they won. After they won, they then fought a war with China and another proxy war with America. The Viet do not move on. They stick to their guns. Or feces covered bamboo sticks, or any weaponizable itsm they have on hand. Nor did the Afghanis. They just kept at it until they won. In fact, giving up and moving on is what just about only the peace loving Serbs did.

golergka 3y ago

> your country being under devastating economic sanctions, then bombarded by enormously more powerful armies, then annexing a part of the country All of that just out of a sudden, without anything else occurring to trigger these events, right? No genocides, no invasions, no massive civilian casualties? No war criminals walking around free doing DJ gigs 30 years later?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mydriasis 3y ago
No, none of that is forgotten either. It's hell as far back as anyone alive can remember, from the 90s to the 40s to WWI and the Balkan wars, and all of the fighting with the Ottoman empire throughout the 19th century. But you knew all of that.
- yakshaving_jgt 3y ago
  Are you suggesting that because other genocides have happened, the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats is just business as usual? Perhaps NATO should have just left them to it. Sure, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, but I suppose that pales in comparison to the millions killed in WW2.
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    > the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats We've just seen a massive, 150k people ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and nobody in the whole world went so far as lifting a finger to stop it. Except Russia, which did lift one of its fingers but that was it. It happened this autumn. But yeah, let's pretend that NATO is in business of preventing ethnic cleansings around the world, as opposed to ruining countries it doesn't like for profit. And BTW, what happened to Krajina Srpska?
    - yakshaving_jgt 3y ago

brnt 3y ago

Welcome to understanding small countries. We're not all stuck in our pasts.

nezirus 3y ago

You coveniently ignore the events leading to and the reasons for sanctions and bombardment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia This was actually the second time NATO has bombarded serbian forces, the first time was in Bosnia, which eventually led to Dayton peace agreement later that year: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Deliberate_Force https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Deliberate_Force

zigman1 3y ago
Sounds like talk in the kafanas