Customer Reviews

Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I read "Balkan Ghosts" at least four or five years ago, so many of the details are vague in my mind. But the book greatly impressed me. It was not only prophetic of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, but it has more than a little applicability to the current War on Terror.

Quite a few negative reviews I see here were written by natives of the Balkans who think their homelands have been slandered. I note with amusement the American reviewer who pegs them correctly as "tribal" (especially Serbian) types utterly convinced that *they* are the "true" victims of history, profoundly bewildered how any outsider could sympathize at all with their enemies. (Of course, this attitude isn't limited to that part of the world, or even to the poorer parts of the world; Germany has recently been making noises about how it was the "real" victim of WWII.)

Then we have the usual suspects: the politically correct types who decry Kaplan's "racism" or "Eurocentrism" or whatnot, and blame the East's troubles on "colonialism," "imperialism," etc...never on Communism, or local tyrants, or the peasantries only too happy to slaughter Jews and Gypsies. Because, of course, all cultures are equal, and $DEITY forbid anybody pronounce one culture superior to any other!

Inevitably, one such reviewer trots out the old line about how "in 800 A.D., for instance, the Byzantines and Arabs and Chinese were producing great works in art, architecture, and astronomy, while the Europeans were wallowing in feudal primitivism." Well, that's nice, but it's currently 2003 C.E. What have they done lately? We've been hearing that argument about the Islamofascists ad nauseum since September 11th, 2001, and I'm tired of it. What they've done lately is cut out the clitorides of young girls, stone adulteresses, force women into identity-obliterating garments, declare fatwas on "heretics," reprint Nazi literature, blow themselves up in pizzerias full of teenagers, and fly airplanes into skyscrapers.

While one Balkan titled his review, "This book is no longer accurate," I think it's actually become a hell of a lot more relevant to world politics since 9/11. What's past is always prologue, as our 21st-century enemies with their seventh-century mindsets dismayingly prove.

Back in "sophisticated" Europe, the age-old hobby of antisemitic violence has been re-discovered with a passion. While this has been most in evidence in the West (for example, the thugs who seized a young Jewish woman in Paris and carved a Star of David into the flesh of her wrist), I didn't miss this comment from a Romanian reviewer: "[Kaplan's] book is biased because he is Jewish, so he portrays the Jews as great saints while the Romanians are tyrants and unworthy of anyone's attention." The implication, of course, is that Jews victimized Romanians as much as vice versa. Would someone please send me a link to a story in which Jews dragged Romanians to slaughterhouses and strong-armed them onto conveyor belts that ended in sharp blades?

Kaplan may indeed be biased, and I'm giving the book four stars on the presumption that the reviewers pointing out simple factual errors, such as those of spelling and etymology, are correct. But other writers validate much of what Kaplan writes -- such as Andrei Codrescu, of that oh-so-right-wing media outlet NPR, who is a Romanian Jew. There's also a highly engaging P.J. O'Rourke article on Albania in which the tribalism comes off even worse than it does in Kaplan's book.

This book, purporting to understand the Balkans as a "journey through history", is full of generalizations and misinformation. I think it's a lovely book if you're looking for that species of "current affairs" or "travelogue" that focuses more on the thrilling story at the expense of fact.

What one does with the following hyperbole, I leave to others who are more susceptible: "Nazism, for instance, can claim Balkan origins. Among the flophouses of Vienna, a breeding ground of ethnic resentments close to the southern Slavic world, Hitler learned how to hate so infectiously" (p.xxvii).

The book is an homage of some sort to (Dame) Rebecca West's, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. This alone should indicate the tone of this highly stylized portrait cast in broad, impressionistic strokes of a region that, ultimately, does more to occlude understanding than shine any meaningful light.

If you're looking for an easily digestible book on the Balkans, look to Mark Mazower's, The Balkans: A Short History. Or at least read it as a corrective to Kaplan's thriller.

The back of my copy of Kaplan's book (Vintage Departures) describes the book as "History/Travel". Delete "History" and maybe I'd give it another star.

This book is absolute trash. Its sources are ridiculous and it was written by one with dubious credentials for providing an analysis of the Balkan region, one of the most complex, if not the most complex region in the world. He cites Stoker as a source on Romanian history, completely ridiculous; Stoker composed a ficticious story in the anti-Eastern Victorian sentiment of his time. He has not done enough research based on primary sources and has little knowledge of any Balkan country except perhaps Greece. Even so, his "analysis" is patently biased, particularly against Orthodoxy. He is one who's thesis is that all the Balkan problems can be traced to "ancient ethnic hatreds", a pure lie. In some cases, the hatreds are ancient, but have not led to much bloodshed. For instance, the hatred between Bulgarian and Serb is about a thousand years old and can be traced to the incessant warfare between the two medieval empires and later independent states over the region of Macedonia. The hatred between Serb and Croat, however is much more recent. To understand why the Serbs rebelled in the recent war against the Croats and Moslems, we needn't go back to "ancient history", just 50 years back. The Croat Ustashi, Moslem SS Hadzar, and Albanian SS Skenderbey were responsible for the death of 1 million Serbs in concentration camps and massacres in Europe's third largest genocide. As Croatia tore away and reinstituted the trappings of the NDH, such as the crest, the monetary unit, reburying of the Ustashi in the Jasenovac area, Tudjman's statement "I am proud that my wife is neither a Serb nor a Jew", regular threatening radio messages, and several massacres committed by Croats in Slavonia provoked the Croatian war of the 1990's. The Serbian fears could be traced to WWII, certainly not ancient history. His analyses of Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria are weak. He does not delve into the genocide the Balkan state Turkey perpetrated against the Armenians, etc. In short, this book's thesis is a complete failure. Certainly some of today's Balkan conflicts can be attributed to ancient history, but by far the most is a result of the history of this century.

There's a reason they say Kaplan's books rest on the bedside tables of Presidents...Kaplan, besides being a shrewd and intelligent analyst of human behavior, and having an immaculate eye for detail, is a skilled writer...It is in his books that you can read about history and politics and conflict as though it were an epic story, his words painting beautiful pictures in your head. But more importantly, Kaplan is able to convey a depth to the history and events that make up nations and cultures...reading Kaplan means you get to see beyond the facts and figures, dates and names, to the people, the emotions, and the actual factors that brought about the past and present, and will eventually bring about the future.

Ok, here's how I came across this book. I'm a student of Christian history and during some free time I became interested in learning more about the cultural and political histories of the nations which largely embraced Eastern Orthodox Christianity. So, I went to Amazon and browsed through some books and eventually I decided on this one. Well, I wasn't disappointed.
Keep in mind that Kaplan is technically a travel writer, and it shows. This book is about one man's travel experiences. Yes, it also weaves in a good bit of historical information and cultural observations, but it does not pretend to be unbiased history. I guess I personally was looking for a more scholarly work with more hard facts, systematically laid out. This isn't it, BUT it does give you a lot of good information and a broad overview of the region while keeping things light. This is a quick, enjoyable read, and a good INTRODUCTION to the topic. Don't do what I did, though, and expect to get it all here. Read this, but keep reading.

In this book Robert Kaplan describes his travels in the 1980s and early 90s throughout the Balkan region, and with his insights into the area's politics and ethnic struggles, he correctly predicted the coming catastrophe that would engulf the area. Kaplan was one of the few western journalists who knew anything about the Balkans at the time, and nobody seemed to be very interested in this European backwater. Thus, the world was surprised by the orgy of war crimes and ethnic cleansing that erupted here in the 90s, but Kaplan wasn't. In the more recent introduction to the current edition, Kaplan gets rather big-headed talking about how his timely predictions came true, but not without justification, as his gifts for insight and observation gave him the prescience that nobody else had or wanted about this region.

While most travel writers stick to colorful (and western-oriented) descriptions of people and places, Kaplan instead focuses on history and politics, and their deep influences on the dynamics of the regions he visits. While traveling through Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece, he describes the deep historical and ethnic roots of these closely related countries. Here, events of 600 years ago still cause deep resentment. A history of small ethnic groups repeatedly conquering each other through the centuries, then being destroyed by outside invaders, has led to severe racial hatred and periodic outbursts of incredible violence. Kaplan provides great insight into the perpetual desire of these peoples to return to their periods of greatest historical strength and largest territories. A disturbing example of this is Macedonia, which both Greece and Serbia would like to annex because it contains populations of their kinsmen. Meanwhile the ethnic Macedonians think they are entitled to all the lands and peoples conquered by their native son Alexander the Great back in ancient times. There is a similar problem in Kosovo, coveted by Serbia and Albania for the same reasons. Also of note is Kaplan's section on Greece, which proves without a doubt that this nation is not the classical stereotype that the West thinks it is. Greece is far more similar to Turkey and the Middle East than to the mythical realm of Socrates and Aristotle. And they have the same insane and hateful politics and ethnic resentment as their neighbors Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia.

The main problem throughout the region is that all these peoples live interspersed among each other, and would just love to force everyone else out and build their own pure kingdoms. The logistical impossibilities of this never stopped anyone though, resulting in many occurrences of mass genocide, which most of the ethnic groups in the region have both committed and suffered from at various points in history. For many miserable decades, the Ottoman and Soviet empires forced everybody in the region to shut up, which merely redirected the people's resentment toward these outside rulers. Nobody in the West should have been surprised when the people turned back to destroying each other when these empires collapsed. The most disturbing realization in this book is that (except for the Turks) these small, self-destructive, and murderous ethnic groups are not that different from each other, but that has not stopped them from a thousand years of back-and-forth enslavement and genocide. For those who think the world is destined to become a happy melting pot in which everyone drops their differences and lives in harmony - we could learn a lot from this region.

All the reviews either love this book or hate it. Why? It tells the story of a Western in this nuthouse we call Bosnia-Hercegovina during the "troubles".

It is an excellent book. Period. Does it tell the full story? Is it 100 percent fair to Serbs, Croats, Muslims, Vojvodians, Kosovars, Macedonians and Slovenes? How can it be. A war is a complex event. Remember that all, that is ALL the UN peacekeepers such as myself all thought each side was as bad as the next. Yes Serbs could be brutal, Croats mean, Moslems retaliatory.........the list goes on. But in terms of a perspective of what went on before this mans eyes? I believe it 100percent because I saw the same thing.

A friend sent me a copy of this book, and I eagerly tore into it that night -- I was in the mood for some oldtimey frights, and this collection of historical ghost stories from other planets (or wherever) seemed like just the ticket. The chapter titles indicated some really cool freakouts also: "Just So They Could Go To Heaven" or "Land Beyond Dracula's Castle" or "Pied Piper's Children Go Back to Harlem and Kill." Alas, page after page, story after story, hour after hour, I slowly began to realize that something was wrong. THERE ARE NO GHOST STORIES IN HERE! Not even an "urban legend." If you're looking for something good like that, then skip over this one.

On an opening text for the greek version , Kaplan notices that Greece has changed a lot since the 80's and for that reason , this book should be read as a study on the country's past not present . The greek reader instantly starts to feel a little bit ichy ... " What horrible things could this man have written about us ? " he wonders . No need to worry really . Kaplan's look on greek recent history is sharp and interesting . He does not hesitate to point out the huge influence the extreme political persona of Andreas Papadreou had on a big part of the greek people . Even today , his party never dares to judge honestly his choices and possible mistakes and keeps referring to him as some kind of Messiah of the greek political history .

Besides Greece though , Balkan Ghosts focuses on almost all Balkan nations except Slovenia and Turkey . Kaplan examines the region's recent past and presents a potrait of the psychology and the way of thinking of the people living here . You'll probably find his conclusions and notices annoying if you are greek , bulgarian , croatian , romanian and oh my God , especially if you are turkish . Indeed , he does tell you his opinion right to your face ... His writing style is rich and gripping . Despite his virtues as a writter though , his offering is uneven . Some parts of the book , especially the chapters on Romania , although sporadically witty , are simply too confusing to follow . Maybe it's the area's history which is so complicated ... or maybe Kaplan just didn't manage to control his huge amount of information .

Furthermore , what will a reader who has nothing to do with the Balkans receive ? Will he understand the region's unhealed wounds or will he consider the people of the Balkans merciless maniacs who just don't know how to forget and move forward ?

If you are a citizen of a Balkan country , reading Balkan Ghosts is like looking yourself in the mirrow and trying to face your past actions and mistakes . In a way , it's like experiencing a teenager's eternal insecurity too ... " what is true ? What i think i'm like or what the others think i am like ? " . Kaplan has lived and travelled all over the Balkans for many years . He has no reason not to be objective and nowone claims that he isn't . The question is does he have what it takes to deeply understand the Balkans ? Does he have what it takes judge them ?

This book entirely changed my perception of a little region I knew nothing about. Kaplan is an insightful writer with just the right mix of journalistic style and narrative prose, he is also a fearless traveller. Anyone with an interest in a westerner's firsthand experience of the Balkans or the effects of the fall of Communism in the region should read this book. It really is a top class work of history.