Journal articles on the topic 'Radio West (Kosovo, Serbia)'

AbstractThis article critically examines contemporary narratives which frame Serbian politics as a conflict between supporters of a pro-European Union (EU) policy and supporters of closer ties with Russia. Contrary to this narrative, contemporary Serbian political actors increasingly present policies and platforms oriented towards both the European Union and Russia. These developments reflect the contradictory legacies arising from the history of Serbian and Russian diplomatic relations along with the sometimes ambivalent implications of Russia's stance on the issue of Kosovo's independence, Serbian public attitudes towards Russia, and recent developments in Serbian-Russian economic relations. Given the long time frame for EU membership and the current impasse over issues like Kosovo and Serbia's potential NATO membership, Serbia's leaders currently enjoy the luxury of simultaneously deepening ties with both the EU and Russia. However, a future linkage between Kosovo's independence and EU membership and/or the possibility of Serbia's joining NATO will likely present Serbian political elites with mutually-exclusive choices bearing important implications for their relations with either Russia or the EU.

The article is devoted to one of the most dramatic events in the history of Serbia - the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, in terms of analyzing two key aspects. Firstly, numerous inconsistencies, discrepancies, contradictions and outright falsifications were revealed on the part of the official investigation and the official version of the attentate, in which it was not possible to reliably establish the motives, methods of committing the crime and the true perpetrators of the prime minister's death. Consequently, the reason for the murder of the prime minister, which, no doubt, lies precisely in the politics, remains hidden. In the Serbian political dimension, Kosovo and Metohija have long been the main stumbling blocks. Secondly, the authors of the article analyze the radical change in Zoran Djindjic's policy, which took place in general across a wide range of issues, and in particular, on the indicated "Kosovo problem". The Serbian prime minister had a sharp change in political orientations due to specific measures taken by the US, the EU and the "world community" towards Serbia, among which there were extremely destructive tendencies covered by double standards and humanistic rhetoric. The West did not need a "renewed Serbia", moreover, Serbia, renewed on the basis of a combination of democratic and national-state principles, which, in fact, became the policy of Zoran Djindjic a few months before the attentate, was a direct threat to the West. In particular, it hindered the implementation of the plans to build a certain order (characterized through the formula "constant chaos of low intensity"). Pax Americana, or the "new globalized order", can only be established in the Balkans on the rubble of Serbia, with dysfunctional state institutions, a devastated economy and destroyed national consciousness. The West needs Serbia only in the form of a failed state. The key point is the deprivation of its main attribute of statehood - sovereignty, inviolability of borders and territorial integrity. The withdrawal from Serbia of its southern region, Kosovo and Metohija, occurred contrary to the UN Charter, the entire complex of international legal acts on the territorial integrity and sovereignty of states, a number of UN Security Council resolutions, including Resolution No. 1244, the Constitution and legislation of Serbia. Without idealizing or romanticizing the image of this Serbian statesman, the authors consistently identify the steps taken by Zoran Djindjic in the Kosovo direction at the international and regional levels, testifying to his firm desire to implement the provisions of UN Security Council Resolution 1244, to reconsider relations with the West in general and build democratic Serbian state on national basis. All undertakings were interrupted by an unknown sniper's bullet fired on March 12, 2003. English version of the article on pp. 402-409 at URL: https://panor.ru/articles/role-of-zoran-dindic-in-resolving-the-kosovo-issue/66002.html

In the context of public international law and relations between principles of territorial integrity and right to self-determination, independence of Kosovo will never be legal if it is not recognized by Serbia. This can be concluded from the examples of violent secession of Bangladesh and Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. That is why Serbia still has a right to decide about the independence of Kosovo and Metohija despite signing Brussels Agreement and the fact that 100 UN member states recognized Kosovo as an independent state. Forty years after the secession of northern part of the island, Nicosia has not recognized Turkish republic of Northern Cyprus, which caused that this secessionist creation does not become a member of the UN. Its independence is not full from the perspective of international law, and this fact that cannot be disputed in spite of the factual occupation of the northern part of island by Turkey. On the other side, Pakistan recognized the independence of Bangladesh and forever lost half of its population and state territory. In return, half of its foreign debt was written off, 90,000 prisoners were released and 13,000 square kilometers of territory in western part of Pakistan, controlled by India, were returned. However, no one is offering anything similar to Serbia to recognize the independence of Kosovo. Debts of Kosovo towards IMF and World Bank are paid by Serbia. In addition, if Serbia recognized the independence of Kosovo, Serbia would lose about 100,000 Serbs living on that territory and about 1,200 square kilometers of territory in the northern part of Kosovo which is not controlled by Pristina. In that context, it is clear that principles of territorial integrity are still stronger in international law then right to self-determination. Postmodernist theories have a goal to hide that fact. Key of the independence of so-called ?Kosovo? is still in hands of Belgrade. That is why there are so many persistent attempts and strong pressures from the West to recognize the independence of ?Kosovo?. Example of Cyprus shows how to resist those attempts within the framework of public international law (by applying the principles of territorial integrity). However, if in the future Serbia chooses the same approach as Pakistan in the case of Bangladesh, Kosovo will be lost forever. At that moment, it would be clear that the relations of great powers in the world have changed.

This article suggests a rethinking of Serbian-Albanian relations. Contemporary research tends to reduce this problem exclusively to the Serbia-Kosovo issue, which is usually regarded with a value-based approach. As a result, the issue of Serbia’s foreign policy strategy in the south-west and south direction, which also includes the Republic of Albania and other states (Montenegro, North Macedonia), where the role of the Albanian factor is signifi cant, remains outside the scope of the analysis. The purpose of this article is to examine more closely the logic of Serbia’s foreign policy activities in the south-western (Albanian) direction, taking into account the historical context and current trends associated with the active implementation of infrastructure projects in the entire Balkan region. Given that these projects cover both Serbia and Albania, it is appropriate to assume that Belgrade and Pristina have a mutual interest in forming a predictable non-confl ict space and in certain coordination of their approaches to conducting politics in their border area. This, in turn, requires a rethinking of Serbia’s foreign policy strategy in the southwestern (Albanian) direction. To this end, the author analyzes both the historical evolution of Belgrade’s position on the Albanian-Kosovo issue and considers it in the context of modern regional infrastructure projects. Considering the structural regional changes, taking place since the second half of the 2010s, the author comes to the conclusion that Belgrade is facing a dilemma between the self-signifi cant signifi cance of the Kosovo issue and the interest in forming a predictable and stable space to the southwest of its own borders. This dilemma determines the logic of modern Serbia’s foreign policy actions.

The year 2019 marked the 20th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) intervention in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the end of the Kosovo War. I take this as an opportunity to reflect on the role, importance and impact of the NATO bombing victims’ redress. This article unwraps the process of policymaking aimed at the redress for victims of the NATO bombing, exploring how policymakers formulated policies and, among other issues, what role the families of the Radio Television of Serbia employees who died in the NATO bombing have in the formulation of these policies.

Two events in 2008 shaped the political map of the Caucasus: the West's decision on the independence of Kosovo and the Russo-Georgian War. First, on 17 February, Kosovo authorities unilaterally declared the independence of what was at the time a UN protectorate. This declaration enjoyed much support in the West, including near-immediate recognition by key states such as the US, Germany, France, the UK, and a dozen others. But it also faced strong opposition from Serbia and Russia and strong skepticism from prowestern countries such as Georgia. Russia opposed not only the Kosovo declaration itself but more importantly the western adoption of it. From the Russian perspective, by supporting Kosovo's accession to sovereignty western states were violating the rules set at the moment of collapse of the federal states of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union: to invite the former union republics to join the international clubs of sovereign states, but not extend such invitation to any other sub-units. In other words, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Kazakhstan, and Russia became members of the United Nations, but sub-entities like Chechnya, Kosovo, or Tatarstan did not receive the same recognition.

Kosovo is part of South-Eastern Europe, inside the Balkan Pe-ninsula. It has a surface area of 10.877 square kilometres, surroun-ded by Albania, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro.[1] Kosovo for-ms a geographical unit surrounded by impressive mountains and hills.[2] Kosovo’s location in the centre of the Balkan Peninsula defi-nes itself as the crossroad of important terrestrial routes, crossing from Northern and Central Europe towards South and West Euro-pe.[3] The Kosovo’s relief, taken in general, is a mountainous one. Kosovo does have agricultural land, which is generally arable, considerable forest land, large water bodies, flora and fauna rich areas, and considerable ground resources.[4]These and other resources Kosovo is endowed with represent the key supporting factors of Kosovo’s development, current and future. In fact, as any other country, Kosovo is also characterized by limiting elements in terms of extent of natural resources that may be available for utilization.As it is widely known, in conditions of free market economy and privatization, possibilities of ensuring a proper planning for the utilization of all natural resources available are considerably relative. Setting from the fact that there are no inexhaustible resources, it is necessary that relevant mechanisms are in place and authority to undertake all possible measures to provide for a diligent and rational utilization thereof. To achieve such a goal, modern countries, including Kosovo, have passed relevant laws. Setting from such terms, this article aims to present the current situation of Kosovo in terms of legal norms on utilization of natural resources it is endowed with.[1] Kosovo, an encyclopaedic view, Tirana, 1999, pg. 7.[2] Kosovo, a short history, Noel Malcolm, Tirana, 2001, pg. 1.[3] Kosovo, an encyclopaedic view, Tirana, 1999, pg. 8.[4] Ibid, pgs. 26-44.

This article examines the emotion-based status-seeking logic in Russia’s foreign policy vis-à-vis the West, presenting the example of Russia’s reactions to NATO’s military campaign against Serbia in 1999. It is argued that Russian assertiveness in combination with expressive rhetoric must be understood as a result of the ruling elite’s need to have Russia’s identity and self-defined social status as an equal great power in world politics respected by its Western interaction partners. Russia’s reactions to NATO’s intervention, which was not authorized by the UN Security Council, must be read as a strategy coping with the emotion anger about the perceived humiliation and provocation of status denial and ignorance by the West. We find various elements of such a coping strategy, among them the verbalization of the feeling of anger among Russian political circles and the media; uttering retaliation threats, but no ‘real’ aggressive, retaliatory action; minor and temporary activities aimed at restoring Russia’s image and status as an influential an equal power. On the surface, the Kosovo episode did not result in any visible break or rift in the RussianeWestern relationship. However, emotionally it has lead to a significant loss of trust in the respective partner on both sides.

<p>West Rumelian Turkish (WRT) refers to the dialects of Turkish spoken in the western Balkans. It is now spoken primarily in Macedonia and Kosovo, but was previously spoken more broadly in Bosnia, Greece, Albania, and Serbia. They differ from other dialects of Turkish in that they have been heavily affected by neighboring Indo-European languages like Serbian, Albanian, Aromanian, Romani, and Greek, and have undergone many of the changes characteristic of the Balkan Sprachbund (Friedman 2003). In this paper, I present a pattern of multiply-marked relative clauses in Pulevski’s Turkish that has not been attested elsewhere in Turkic, in which relative clauses can be marked with one of six different combinations of overt participial morphology. I argue that this variation is caused by two factors: first, the fusion of the constructions {<em>ći</em> + finite verb} and {participle} into a new construction {<em>ći</em> + participle} and second, the introduction of relative marking using the interrogative ‘which’ based on models in surrounding Indo-European languages.</p>

Introduction. Primary health care in the Republic of Serbia is predominantly funded by the Republic Health Insurance Fund (RHIF). From the total income of health centers and institutes at the primary level, with no pharmacy and pharmacies (Kosovo excluded), 84% in 2008 was paid by RHIF. Frequency of participation ranged from 63-95% and it was stable in all observed years. The aim of this study was to determine the expenditures for primary health care for each insured person in statistically defined districts in the Republic of Serbia, with an emphasis on prevention participation. Material and Methods. Retrospective and comparative analysis of health statistics from the database of the Institute of Public Health of Serbia (IPHS) and financial data from the RHIF for the period 2006-2008 was done. Results. Observed by the districts in 2008, in Vojvodina, the lowest expenditure for primary health care had North Backa District (5,207 RSD) and greatest was in West Backa District (6,632 RSD) per capita. In the central Serbia territorial difference was much greater, ranging from 3,574 RSD in the District Morava to 6,701 RSD per capita in the District Toplica and Nisava. Expenditures for direct health care of RHIF per capita in the reporting period continuously have grown. Conclusion. The results showed that the largest cost for primary care for the insured person in the districts of Serbia was registered in the Nisava and Toplica (6,701 RSD) and lowest in the district of Morava (3,574 RSD) per capita.

Side by side with tumultuous social processes in the end of XXth century great demographical changes have been taking place in Serbia, such as: the decline of nuptiality and fertility, postponement of family formation into older ages of life course of individuals, the rise of: extramarital births as well as adolescent pregnancies and live births, the spread of one-parent households, particularly of lone mothers, and divorces. Besides that, the main feature of the demographic development of Serbia has been increased mobility of population, namely migrations of highly educated professionals to the West ("brain drain") and forced migration of refugees and internally displaced persons to Serbia, as a consequence of armed conflicts in its surroundings and at Kosovo and Metohija. All the above-mentioned demographical changes caused the precomposition of households, as profound associations of population, where its biological and socio-economical reproductions take place. The information of last census of population of Serbia in 2002 indicate that according to the features of family and households, Serbia has approached the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, that are forerunning in the process of post-socialistic transformation and European integrations. Common characteristics of all those countries are: decrease of universality and popularity of marriage delay of childbearing, continuation of earlier demographic tendencies: of low natality, depopulation and aging of population. All those processes have contributed to the transformation of prevailing forms of households, i.e. decline of nuclear family units and the rise of single person households households of aged persons, as well as single-parent ones. As to the Serbia the demographic differences between its separate parts: Vojvodina and central Serbia, have been fading for the first time in its history, owing to previous socio-demographic developments starting from the beginning of XXth century, as well as to the above actual ones, in the period between last two censuses.

The geographical center of one territorial unit is the location point which in theoretical sense is nearest to other points of that territorial unit. There are several methods for determining the geographical center. Those are 1) method of geographical coordinates of extreme border pont, 2) the method of brunt determinate 3) the method of isofrontiers, 4) the isofrontier-translations method (composite), 5) the method of grid, 6) the integral method of brunt determinate. The integral method of brunt determinate by computer program ArcView a method which provides very precise results was applied. The geographical center is an interesting and important place, which should be marked in an adequate manner. It would be, for example, useful to put the basic geographic orientation sign at a location. It is an object where the name of destination, its latitude (numerical value in degrees, minutes and seconds), longitude and altitude (in meters) and the data about straight liner distance to the destination in the Republic of Serbia (cities, mountains, monasteries, etc) and the other parts of the world (cities, mountains, and points of the main elements of the Earth - the Equator, the North Pole, the zero meridian and data zone border line) (in kilometers/miles) would be indicated. Geographical centers in Serbia are as follows: The geographical center of the Republic of Serbia is situated in Draca settlement, Kragujevac municipality. The center is located to the west of Kragujevac, about 8 km from the center of the city (rectilinear). The geographical center of Central Serbia is situated in Kaludra settlement Rekovac municipality. The center is located about 10 km to the south of Rekovac. The geographical center of the Autonomus Province of Voivodina is situated in Zabalj settlement, Zabalj municipality. The center is located about 12 km to the northeast of Novi Sad. The geographical center of the Autonomus Province of Kosovo and Metohia is situated in Komorane settlement Glogovac municipality. The center is located about 24 km to the southwest of Pristina.

The remittances of diaspora workers, resulting from international migration, have attracted the attention of academics and policymakers for their role and importance in macroeconomic variables in their countries of origin. The purpose of the paper is to explore the effects of remittances and other variables, such as exports, capital formation, foreign direct investment, and labor force on economic growth in the six former Western Balkan communist countries (Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia). This study utilizes a strongly balanced panel data over the 2005-2015 period for the six Western Balkan countries using the ordinary least squares method (OLS), i.e., the Pooled Regression Model, to evaluate the parameters. According to the regression results, we can conclude that remittances have a positive impact on economic growth in the West Balkan countries, so remittances can foster economic growth in those countries. Also, we find a statistically significant positive relationship between economic growth and other variables included in the model, such as exports, capital formation, and labor. The relationship between economic growth and foreign direct investment has turned out to be statistically insignificant and negatively related.

Abstract This paper focuses on perceptions of the European Union (EU) and external actors (such as the United States, Russia, and Turkey) in six countries of the Western Balkans (WB) and Croatia in a comparative perspective. We present data generated by public opinion polls and surveys in all countries of that region in order to illustrate growing trends of EU indifferentism in all predominately Slavic countries of the region. In addition, there is an open rejection of pro-EU policies by significant segments of public opinion in Serbia and in the Republic of Srpska, Bosnia-Herzegovina. On the contrary, there is much enthusiasm and support for the West in general and the EU in particular in predominately non-Slavic countries, Kosovo and Albania. We argue that the WB as a region defined by alleged desire of all countries to join the the EU is more of an elite concept than that shared by the general population, which remains divided over the issue of EU membership. In explaining reasons for such a gap we emphasise a role of interpretation of the recent past, especially when it comes to a role the West played in the region during the 1990s.

Meštrović’s political activity, reflected in his sculpture and architecture, was closely tied to the idea of a political union of the South Slavs which culminated on the eve of and during the First World War. As a political idealist and a person who always emphasized that he was first and foremost an artist, Meštrović had no inclination for classic political activism which meant that he was not interested in belonging to any contemporary political faction. Since his political activism was not tied to a specific political party and since, unlike the politicians with whom he socialized, he did not have a prior political life, Meštrović cannot be defined either as a supporter Ante Starčević and an HSS man, or as a unionist Yugoslav and royalist. He was passionate about politics, especially during the time when the idea about a single South Slavic state took centre stage in politics, and he actively promoted this idea through his contacts with politicians, kings, cultural workers, and artists. He never acted as a classic politician or a political negotiator on behalf of a political party but as an artist who used his numerous local, regional and international acquaintances for the promotion of a political interest, that is, of a universal political platform of the entire Croatian nation as part of a Slavic ethno-political framework. Even within the political organization he himself founded, the Yugoslav Committee, Meštrović did not present a developed political manifesto but, being an artist and an intellectual, ‘encouraged the ideology behind the idea of unification through his activism and especially through his works’ (N. Machiedo Mladinić). The very fact that he was not a professional politician enabled him to ‘learn directly about some of the intentions of the political decision makers at informal occasions he attended as a distinguished artist, particularly in those situations when a direct involvement of political figures would have been impossible due to diplomatic concerns’ (D. Hammer Tomić). For example, he was the first to learn from the report of the French ambassador to Italy Camillo Barrera that Italy would be rewarded for joining the Entente forces by territorial expansion in Dalmatia. Equally known is Meštrović’s attitude towards the name of the committee because, unlike Trumbić and Supilo, he did not hesitate to use the word ‘Yugoslav’ in the name. He believed that a joint Yugoslav platform would render Croatian interests stronger in the international arena and that this would not happen had the committee featured ‘Croatian’ in its name and even less so if it started acting under the name of wider Serbia as Pašić suggested. Meštrović’s political disappointment in the idea of Yugoslavia went hand in hand with the distancing of Croatian and Serbian politics which followed the political unification. The increasing rift between him and the Yugoslav idea was becoming more and more obvious after the assassinations of Stjepan Radić and Aleksandar Karađorđević between the two Wars. His reserve towards the Republic of Yugoslavia, augmented by his political hatred of communism, was such that Meštrović never seriously considered going back to his native country and after his death, he did not leave his art works to the state but to the Croatian people. This article focuses on the most politicized phase in Meštrović’s work when he even changed the titles of the art works between displays at two different exhibitions: the works that bore the neutral names, such as ‘a shrine’, ‘a girl’, or ‘a hero’, at the 1910 exhibition of the Secession Group in Vienna were given the names of the heroes of the Battle of Kosovo the very next year and displayed as such in the pavilion of the Kingdom of Serbia at the exhibition in Rome. Special attention was given to the idea of the Vidovdan shrine, a secular temple to the Yugoslav idea, and the so-called Kosovo fragments intended to decorate it. The heightened controversy surrounds the sculpture and architectural projects Meštrović created during the period in which his political activism in the Yugoslav political and cultural arena was at its peak and he himself did not hide the intention to contribute to the political programme with his art works. This is why critical remarks which were expressed against or in favour of Meštrović’s sculpture during the early twentieth century are inseparable from the contrasting opinions about the political ideas from the turbulent time surrounding the First World War, and all of this, being a consequence of Meštrović’s political engagement, pulled him as a person into the political arena of the Croatian, Serbian and Yugoslav cause. The closest connection between Meštrović’s sculpture, architecture and politics occurred during his work on the Vidovdan shrine and the so-called Kosovo fragments. At the same time, there was a marked difference between Meštrović’s architecture which is eclectic and referential in its style and bears no political message, and sculpture which strongly personified the political programme based on the Battle of Kosovo and expressed in monumental athletic figures. Meštrović opposed the desire of the political establishment to depict his figures in national costumes so that they may witness ‘historical truth’ and, instead, continued with his idea of universal values and not historical and political particularism. Believing that only the passage of time could assess the historical protagonists best, he deemed that some of them would vanish while the others would remain, ‘so to speak, naked’ and acquire ‘supernatural dimensions’ (I.Meštrović). By depicting his figures as having torsos stripped of any sign of national identity, Meštrović wanted to provide them with a ‘general human meaning and not a specific one of this or that tribe’ (I.Meštrović). Aside from the Vidovdan Shrine and the Kosovo Fragments, the article discusses a number of other works onto which Meštrović grafted a political programme such as the Mausoleum of Njegoš on Mount Lovćen, the funerary chapel of Our Lady of the Angels at Cavtat, the equestrian reliefs of King Petar Karađorđević and ban Petar Berislavić, and the sculptures of the Indians at Chicago as ‘ahistorical’ pinnacles of his monumental Art Deco sculpture. The article argues that, based on the consideration of Meštrović’s ‘political’ sculpture, it can be said that the best achievements are found in the works in which political agendas and historical evocations (for example the caryatids, kings and bans, and even the portraits of Nikola Tesla and Ruđer Bošković) gave way to the naked ahistorical physis of a number of Kosovo heroes, female allegorical figures and, most of all, the pinnacle of the Art Deco equestrian sculptures of the Chicago Indians. What matters in the Chicago statues is the contraction of the muscles which accompany the movements of the Bowman and the Spearman and not the type of their weapons which are absent anyway, because this feature indicates that Meštrović focused on what he was best at: the naked human body relieved of the burden of costume, signs of civilization, and the pomp of political, ideological and historical attributes. This is why the politics of Meštrović’s sculpture is at its strongest when it is at its most general or, in other words, when it embodies an ideal and not a political pragmatism or a specific historical reality.

Recognition of regional features, outlining of the contours of regions, tendency to regionalize ethnic, economic, cultural and state-administrative space, and strengthening the ideology of regionalism in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, that is Serbia and Montenegro, appear as a practical and political but also as a theoretical problem which includes and combines several scientific disciplines. The phenomenon of regionalism is not contradictory although it is primarily expressed through the numerous conflicts of interests rivalry and antagonisms of political subjects. The problematic side of the phenomenon of regionalism includes the result of an extremely negative and existentially tragic experience of the several years-long disintegration of the complex Yugoslav state. During the partition and disintegration of the second Yugoslavia, there also happened the disintegration of the Serbian ethnic area Growth, support and instigation of regional tendencies occurred in the historical circumstances of secession and did not stop in the post-secession period. Particularization and segmentation of political area, as well as the disintegration of the former state, did not occur in accordance with the norms of internal and international law. Legality was late and was achieved within the transformation of power reflected in the changed territorial policy of the dominant alliance of great powers. The entire past decade was characterized by an extraordinary metamorphosis of political space. Secession trend had the territorial features which included the change of borders and had been long in the focus of the global geopolitical attention. Territories were divided and made smaller. Intensive territorial dynamics within the external silhouette of the de-stated SFR of Yugoslavia resulted in the creation of several state and quasi-state political formations. Former republics became semi-sovereign states. Dispersed and displaced Serbian ethnos was configured in the three territories: in the Republic of Serbia - from which Kosovo and Metohia were amputated and placed under the UN protectorate - in the entire Republic of Montenegro and in the Republic Srpska, located in one part of the former Bosnia and Herzegovina. Demopolitical result of the geopolitical destruction of the Serbian ethnos was a great movement of the Serbian population from the west to the east, and its concentration in the territory of the Republic of Serbia this implied that the Serbs were expelled from their millennia-long abodes in Croatia, parts of Bosnia and from Kosmet. The geo-economic result of the same process was the devastation of the national economic strength west of the Drina and in the southern province. Economic regression occurred also in the national parent-land state. Balkan re-arrangement of the spheres of interest in the post-bipolar period was in 1995. fixed by the interest arrangement of the great powers known under the name Dayton Peace Agreement. Redistribution of the territories from the destroyed state occurred in the post-communist period with the expansion of west-civilization structures to the European east Westernization of the eastern part of Europe, or entire Europe as the other pole of the global West, could be characterized as a dual mega-regionality. Namely, the west is composed of Europe and America; on the other side, there is the global East or its hybrid variation Eurasia. With the disappearance of their common state and its framework, south Slavs found themselves in the seemingly independent, and actually client states. Western delimitation of the south Slavic area moved from the Yugoslav borders towards a wider Balkan demarcation. One could say that the revitalized notion of the Balkans became a new, in many aspects obligatory framework for regional thinking. The Balkan macroregion is further determined by the intentions to expand the European Union. One of the Euro-centric concepts, which is being experimentally employed precisely in the Balkans, is the establishment of the so-called Europe of regions in the peripheral areas. On the other hand, even though the process of the disintegration of the Yugoslav Federation appears to be irreversible, the superordinate Euro-American factor does not give up the possibility of the mezzo-regional initiatives, cooperations, associations and integrations. This "middle" level of dealing with the specificities of the Yugoslav region is related to the states and nations from the former Yugoslavia, or the so-called West Balkans. Naturally, it is not the tendency to revive the silhouette of the previous state, but certainly there is a noticeable intention to achieve a regional linking of the related, now semi-sovereign territories which sometimes belonged to the same state framework. The fourth level deals with microregionalism, that is the relation between the different areas in the newly-created states. It is interesting that the regionalist discourse is mostly cherished exactly in the ethno-heterogeneous Serbian area, although other Yugoslav states also have or had regional tradition and mixed population, like, for example, Slovenia and Croatia Nevertheless, these former Yugo-republics are structured as mono-national states, so the regional policy and ideology of regionalism are still not in the first plane. Regionalism within the newly-formed states could be supplemented with the micron level implying specific sub-regionalism of the highest degree, within the larger regions in the same state. This could be illustrated with Backa, Banat and Srem inside Vojvodina, understood as the northern Serbian region, or Kosovo and Metohia in the south of Serbia, in the province with the same name. In the part of Serbia outside the provinces, similar things could be said for Belgrade with its surroundings, Macva, Podrinje, Sumadija, Raska District etc. Thus, when it comes to the present FR of Yugoslavia, all five levels of regional dynamics have a principled, but insufficiently studied significance. Mega-regional level is related to the mark denoting the global belonging to the West. Macroregional level deals with the European loyalty, that is inclusion of the FR of Yugoslavia into the continental European trends. This trans-continental and continental direction of inclusion implies a historical teleology of the relative eastern belonging to the absolute West, that is Euro-America, and the entrance into the full structure of the European Union. All the mentioned problems of recognition and characterization of the regional phenomenology in the political topography of the world are motivated by the tendency to achieve as clear as possible spatial-temporal national and state orientation The direction is related to the so-called safety dilemma of the nation and the country faced with the change of size and essence of one's own state, with the different geopolitical position and redefined foreign-policy priorities. It is also the case of the changed alliance policy, and the innovated strategy of integration into the old and new global and regional political structures. On the basis of the indicated components of geopolitical context, one could say that the phenomenon of regions and their cognate correlates {regionally regionalization and regionalism) should not be understood exclusively through the legal categories of international law and the so-called constitutional solutions, that is administrative division of the state territory. Actually in the analysis of regions and regionalism in Serbia and the FR of Yugoslavia it is necessary first to discuss the pre-normative or meta-le-gal factors in the creation of the regional issue within the national and state issue, which have the form of the unsolved political problem. Meta-legality is located within the domain of the international relations and geopolitic. Meta-legal or pre-normative factors of the formation or recognition of regions and regionalisms deal with the possibility of the political constitution of the Serbian, that is Serbian / Montenegrin (still Yugoslav) society. Since the unique state area was destroyed in the four-year secession wars and there occurred significant demopolitical changes, war migrations, forceful displacements and expulsion of the population - the ethnic character of many areas was also drastically changed. At the same time, the post-secession existence of the FR of Yugoslavia could be also viewed through the optics of the state residuum. The remaining Serbia or Serbia (temporarily) without Kosovo is certainly not an equivalent for the Serbian ethnic space, nor for the entire Serbian lands. It is not even the FR of Yugoslavia, as a dual con federation of the Serbian / Montenegrin nation. Geopolitical reduction of the SFR of Yugoslavia to a residual creation of the FR of Yugoslavia was not deduced from the legality sui generis, but resulted from a conflict, the defeat of integralism and the victory of separatism, as well as from a new triumphal configuration of power. The impulse implying the statism of the collective rights from the former complex federal necessarily-multinational level was transferred to a lower mononational level. Therefore, the regionalist ideology in the post-secession reality of the residual state almost inevitably, as a tendency, nears the separatory particularism. Even the lost national state and the state entirety are openly denied within the requests for the territorization of the collective rights of various minorities. Naturally these requests do not carry the primary features of the development of democracy. On the contrary, in the majority of cases this implies the rise of parish and tribal consciousness prone to narrow-minded separation. Thus the post-secession requests for the regionalization are often just a slight rhetorical mask for real separatism. For example, they are expressed through the pseudo-national separation of Vojvodina from Serbia, as well as Montenegro from Serbia, or through the establishment of state-like entities in the territorial tissue of Serbia Alleged arguments are found in the unfinished disintegration of the SFR of Yugoslavia on the one hand, and in the prevention of the creation of the so-called Greater Serbia, even within the diminished Serbia That way, even in the post-secession, reduced Serbia one could easily recognize the tendencies of federalization and confederalization, even the amputation of its remaining state space. Additional arguments for the crawling secession and prolonged territorial destruction are found in the ideology of globalization and world trends of relativizing territorial integrity and state sovereignty. On the other hand, the idea about the principled insignificance of borders in Europe without borders, as well as Europe of regions, is emphasized. Thus, it is obvious that the new state and regional delimitations and demarcations are in contradiction with the vision of the trans-statal and trans-national integrity of the European continent. In Serbia itself, me problem of the restructuring of regions is determined by the inherited and unchanged triple division of its territory into the central part and two autonomous provinces in the north and south. Thus every idea for regionalization (expert, party, leader's, NGO and the like) faces the inherited, too narrow constitutional framework and easily slides to the federalization or confederalization of the Republic, and in extreme cases to the independence and sovereignty of ethnic, religious, linguistic and other minorities. Roughly put, the tendencies for territorial separation from the Republic of Serbia still exist in several neuralgic and unstable areas or regions. In Vojvodina, the presented tendencies have the character of a meaningless internal - Serbian autonomy, autonomism, latent separatism. Authentic Serbian autonomy lost its original character long ago and deteriorated into an internal national re-statism. On the other hand, in the furthest south of Serbia, in Kosmet, the UN protectorate is established, but the region is actually occupied and thus the status of the Province is "frozen". In the three municipalities in the south of Serbia, with the relative Albanian majority, Albanian separatism smolders within the platform of the so-called east Kosovo. In the Raska region (Sandzak) there are also strong tendencies for separateness on the religious-ecclesiastical, so-called Bosniac platform, with religious solidarity, and ethnic and territorial unity of all Bosniacs. In the meta-legal or pre-normative situation - which most often denotes political and geopolitical context implying interests, power and force - the inclinations for territorial design are faced with the conflicting ideology of regionalism. Therefore, the constitutional-legal solutions of the former, present and future regions, generated within the self-created legality which does not respect meta-legal, political and geopolitical impulses regardless of how aestheticized and "humanized" they may be - at the end face the practical impossibility of realization.

Over the last five decades the share of extramarital births in the total number of live births has been increasing in all European countries. This is also true for Serbia (excluding Kosovo), where the share of extramarital births in the period of 1950-2009 increased by 3 times (from 8.0% to 23.2%), and their number increased by a fifth (from 13,141 to 16,294). Women under 25 years of age and over 40-49 years have a substantially higher share in extramarital births than in the total number of births. Almost every second extramarital child's mother is younger than 25, and changes in the period of 1961-2008 developed in the direction of a decreasing share of women under the age of 30, and especially under 25, as well as an increased share of women above 30. According to the latest data, more than a half of extramarital children are first, although their share is decreasing. At the same time, the percentage of births of second and especially of third and higher orders is increasing. The share of extramarital births is increasing with all women, regardless of their education level. The highest and constantly growing share of extramarital births is recorded with women without education and the lowest share with women with university education. According to activity, the most represented are unemployed and dependant women, who also have significantly higher shares of extramarital births than employed women. From an ethnic aspect, it is noticeable that the highest and constantly increasing share of extramarital births is present with ethnic Roma women, which reached over four fifths of the total number of children born by Roma women in 2008. Among the ethnic Serbian women the share of extramarital births is significantly below the average for Serbia. According to the type of settlements the share of extramarital births is lower in urban than in other (non-urban) settlements, and in the largest urban agglomerations, including Belgrade, it is even below the average for Serbia. Some significant regional differences can also be noted - the zone of the high share of extramarital fertility is in the east of Serbia, while the zone of lower and medium fertility is in the west of central part of Serbia. It is assumed that future dynamics in the area of extramarital births in Serbia will develop in a manner similar to that of the last several decades. It can be concluded that this is not a phenomenon related to adopting new values and norms, but primarily a continuation of already present tendencies in an environment with traditional moral norms.

AbstractThe author claims that strategies of ethnic mobilization have deep roots in the politics of ex-Yugoslav nations, and that these roots are closely related to the response of the Western Balkans, especially Serbian political elites, to the challenges of democratization and modernization. The author develops this notion in two basic sections, outlining the ontology and history, and psychological background of the ethnic mobilization. Beyond the larger historical perspective, which will be reviewed, the very source of current ethno-mobilization processes lies in the deep opposition of Serbian political elites to the loose federal Yugoslav Constitution of 1974 that initiated various political strategies of ethno-mobilization's undermining and neglect. The author understands the term 'ethnic mobilization' to have three layers of meaning, the first being most rudimentary: an orderly and phased procedure aimed at ethnic crystallization or homogenization of Serb people. The second layer encompasses the underlying framing narrative of the reinterpretation of certain social events or conflicts within a particular interpretative frame or 'code.' The third meaning is, in a very important sense, demobilization, namely, the competing elites had to be demobilized, neutralized, or marginalized, and were usually described as ethnic 'traitors,' or 'those who sold to the interests of the enemy, or of the West.' Based on ideas of Latinka Perović and Dubravka Stojanović, the author traces the roots of the ethnopolitics back to the Russian anti-modernist movement of 'narodnichestvo.' This anti-Western and deeply anti-democratic strategy of political power lies at the heart of violent conflicts in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia/Kosovo, and even Macedonia. And, in the author's view, it remains the key obstacle to a post-war democratic transition for these countries. Strategies of ethnic mobilization remain, up to the present day, the driving force of power structures in these countries.

Migrations from Yugoslavia to Germany have a long tradition. There have been various economic and social causes, and in some periods even political ones for that phenomenon. Taking into consideration the historical aspect and also the contemporary migration flows, the dynamics of migrations of the Yugoslav population to Germany has the following stages in its development. The first stage had begun in late XIX century and ended with the World War I. Although the overseas migration flows prevailed, yet the German agriculture and its mine industry attracted a part of the Yugoslav population. Between the two world wars mostly "Westfahl Slovenes" and Croats and Serbs from Bosnia-Herzegovina got "temporary employed" in the Rhine-Westfahl industrial area, along with several thousand Serb-Croat-Slovene agricultural seasonal workers per year. The second stage began immediately after the Second World War when most of about 200,000 citizens from the former Yugoslavia, being mostly refugees, moved from the West European to overseas countries, but some of them stayed in Germany. Involuntary migrants and refugees, however, returned in great number from Germany to Yugoslavia. At that stage non-extradition of war criminals on the part of the West occupying powers on German territory, then disregard of West German Governments of the anti-Yugoslav activities of the part of extreme Yugoslav emigration, and different interpretation of the bilateral agreement on extradition, became the essential problem in relations between SFR Yugoslavia and FR Germany. The third stage in development of migrations commenced in early 1960s. At that time, Germany and other Western countries became prominently immigrational, while since mid-1960s till 1973 economic emigrants from Yugoslavia became more and more important in the German economic space. From 1954 to 1967 migration of Yugoslav citizens had not yet been intensive and their intention was mostly to work abroad. Illegal employment was, however, prominent at that time. Due to the normalisation of political relations, re-establishment of diplomatic relations and conclusion of bilateral agreements that legally defined employment of foreign workers, since 1968 till 1973 a great number of Yugoslavs got employed in FR Germany. The contemporary migrations from FR Yugoslavia to Germany resulted from the economic and political crisis in the former SFRY as well as from the civil wars that were waged in the Yugoslav territory. FR Germany became the most important destination country of Yugoslav migrants - workers, refugees, false asylum-seekers and political emigrants. Different categories of migrants from Yugoslavia to Germany enjoy the treatment that is in accordance with the immigration policies of the German governments as well as with the degree of development of the German-Yugoslav political and economic relations, and the degree of the established co-operation in the field of legal assistance and social welfare. Migrant workers, who have legally regulated their employment and residence status, could in the future expect to gain assistance from their mother country in getting efficient protection of their rights and interests in all stages of the migration process. Numerous migrants asylum-seekers, in spite of the proclaimed international protection, share, however, the fate resulting from the politically motivated measures and actions taken by the German authorities within the arbitrary decision-making of the right and/or abuse of the right to asylum. This is the reason why as early as in late 1994 the Government of FRG announced that it would expel foreigners from the country. The remaining refugees, or actually the so-called false asylum-seekers in FR Germany, share the fate of forced repatriation. Within this category special emphasis should be placed on the attitude of the German government to the Albanians and Roma from Kosovo. At first, the Germans treated the Albanians from Kosovo as politically persecuted persons, offering them refuge. Then they declared them (and Roma also) to be false asylum-seekers and insisted on readmission - their gradual repatriation to Kosovo. Considering both positive and negative implications of the migration process, the key issue for the citizens from Serbia and Montenegro who live in Germany remains the following: maintenance of their national identity, cherishing of their mother tongue and culture, keeping up relations with their mother country, social gathering - in various associations, clubs and organisations, education in their mother tongue, what particularly includes comprehensive additional teaching for children in Serbian, as well as better information dissemination.

Throughout the 550 year Ottoman rule over the Balkan lands, where even today internal dynamics threaten peace and justice, how and through what means the Ottoman Empire achieved consistency, security and peace is a question to which a number of political scientists, sociologists, communication scientists and history researchers have sought an answer. The most interesting point of the question is that the peoples of the Balkans, a living museum comprising a number of different ethnic groups and religious beliefs, have reached the point where the culture of coexistence has been internalised and dynamics have moved from the conflict of identities to cultural integration. The Balkans are a bridge to the East from Europe and indeed to the West from Turkey, incorporating a patchwork political and cultural geography, the geopolitical location and a richness of culture and civilization, being one of the areas attracting the attention of researchers from different disciplines and capturing the imagination of the peoples of the world throughout history. Balkan studies are almost as difficult as climbing the peaks in the areas and meaningful answers cannot be reached by defining the area on a single parameter such as language, culture or traditions, while the phenomenon of the other can also be observed within the culture of coexistence in this intricate and significant location. Different ethnic groups with different cultures, such as the Southern Slavs (Bosniaks, Montenegrans, Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) as well as Turks, Albanians, Bulgarians, Balkan Jews, Balkan Romany and Wallachians (Romanians and Greeks). Although these peoples may have different religious beliefs, in the ethnically rich Balkan region, religion, language, political and cultural differences are vital in the formation of a mosaic, making the discourse of coexistence possible and creating common values and loyalties, breaking down differences. The Serbian and Montenegrin peoples, belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church, the Croat and Slovene peoples belonging to the Catholic Church and the Muslin Bosniaks have shared the same lands and livee in coexistence throughout the historical process, despite having different beliefs. However, in some periods the other and the perception of the other have replaced common values, leading to conflicts of interest, unrest and religion based wars. After the breakup of the Yugoslavian Federal Socialist Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo, defined by the European Union as the Western Balkans, have established themselves as nation states of the stage of history. The scope of our study is these Western Balkan Countries, and we will use the terminology Western Balkans throughout.

Abstract A description is provided for Lycogala epidendrum, a wood-inhabiting myxomycete which occurs on dead branches, twigs and wood, rotten logs, stumps and trunks, cut logs and other woody debris. Some information on its associated organisms and substrata, interactions and habitats, economic impacts, intraspecific variation, dispersal and transmission and conservation status is given, along with details of its geographical distribution (Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Liberia, Malawi, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia; Canada (Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan), Mexico, USA (Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia); Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama; Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil (Acre, Amazonas, Maranhão, Pará, Paraiba, Pernambuco, Piauí, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Norte, Rio Grande do Sul, Roraima, Santa Catarina, São Paulo, Sergipe), Ecuador (including Galapagos), French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela; China (Fujian, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Yunnan, Zhejiang), Georgia, India (Assam, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal), Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan (Almaty, East Kazakhstan, Kostanay, North Kazakhstan, former Kokchetau, former Taldy-Kurgan, former Tselinograd), Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Papua-New Guinea, Philippines, Russia (Altai, Altai Krai, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Kamchatka Krai, Khabarovsk Krai, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Magadan Oblast, Novosibirsk Oblast, Primorsky Krai, Tomsk Oblast, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug), Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Vietnam; Bahamas, Spain (Canary Islands); Australia (New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia), New Zealand; American Virgin Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Martinique, Puerto Rico, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago; Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark (including Faroe Islands), Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia (Kaliningrad Oblast, Krasnodar Krai, Leningrad Oblast, Moscow Oblast, Rostov Oblast, Vladimir Oblast, Volgograd Oblast), Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, UK; Christmas Island, Mauritius, Réunion, Seychelles; Cook Islands, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, USA (Hawaii)).

Introduction: Socialism – from Eternal Reality to Passing DreamThe Year of Revolutions in 1989 presaged the end of the Cold War. For many people, it must have felt like the end of the Twentieth Century, and the 1990s a period of waiting for the Millennium. However, the 1990s was, in fact, a period of profound transformation in the post-Socialist world.In early representations of Socialism’s end, a dominant narrative was that of collapse. Dramatic events, such as the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in Germany enabled representation of the end as an unexpected moment. Senses of unexpectedness rested on erstwhile perceptions of Socialism as eternal.In contrast, the 1990s came to be a decade of revision in which thinking switched from considering Socialism’s persistence to asking, “why it went wrong?” I explore this question in relation to former-Yugoslavia. In brief, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was replaced through the early 1990s by six independent nation states: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Kosovo came much later. In the states that were significantly ethnically mixed, the break-up was accompanied by violence. Bosnia in the 1990s will be remembered for an important contribution to the lexicon of ideas – ethnic cleansing.Revisionist historicising of the former-Yugoslavia in the 1990s was led by the scholarly community. By and large, it discredited the Ancient Ethnic Hatreds (AEH) thesis commonly held by nationalists, simplistic media commentators and many Western politicians. The AEH thesis held that Socialism’s end was a consequence of the up-swelling of primordial (natural) ethnic tensions. Conversely, the scholarly community tended to view Socialism’s failure as an outcome of systemic economic and political deficiencies in the SFRY, and that these deficiencies were also, in fact the root cause of those ethnic tensions. And, it was argued that had such deficiencies been addressed earlier Socialism may have survived and fulfilled its promise of eternity (Verdery).A third significant perspective which emerged through the 1990s was that the collapse of Socialism was an outcome of the up-swelling of, if not primordial ethnic tensions then, at least repressed historical memories of ethnic tensions, especially of the internecine violence engendered locally by Nazi and Italian Fascist forces in WWII. This perspective was particularly en vogue within the unusually rich arts scene in former-Yugoslavia. Its leading exponent was Slovenian avant-garde rock band Laibach.In this article, I consider Laibach’s career and methods. For background the article draws substantially on Alexei Monroe’s excellent biography of Laibach, Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK (2005). However, as I indicate below, my interpretation diverges very significantly from Monroe’s. Laibach’s most significant body of work is the cover versions of Western pop songs it recorded in the middle part of its career. Using a technique that has been labelled retroquotation (Monroe), it subtly transforms the lyrical content, and radically transforms the musical arrangement of pop songs, thereby rendering them what might be described as martial anthems. The clearest illustration of the process is Laibach’s version of Opus’s one hit wonder “Live is Life”, which is retitled as “Life is Life” (Laibach 1987).Conventional scholarly interpretations of Laibach’s method (including Monroe’s) present it as entailing the uncovering of repressed forms of individual and collective totalitarian consciousness. I outline these ideas, but supplement them with an alternative interpretation. I argue that in the cover version stage of its career, Laibach switched its attention from seeking to uncover repressed totalitarianism towards uncovering repressed memories of ethnic tension, especially from WWII. Furthermore, I argue that its creative medium of Western pop music is especially important in this regard. On the bases of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Bosnia (University of Melbourne Human Ethics project 1544213.1), and of a reading of SFRY’s geopolitical history, I demonstrate that for many people, Western popular cultural forms came to represent the quintessence of what it was to be Yugoslav. In this context, Laibach’s retroquotation of Western pop music is akin to a broader cultural practice in the post-SFRY era in which symbols of the West were iconoclastically transformed. Such transformation served to reveal a public secret (Taussig) of repressed historic ethnic enmity within the very heart of things that were regarded as quintessentially and pan-ethnically Yugoslav. And, in so doing, this delegitimised memory of SFRY ever having been a properly functioning entity. In this way, Laibach contributed significantly to a broader process in which perceptions of Socialist Yugoslavia came to be rendered less as a reality with the potential for eternity than a passing dream.What Is Laibach and What Does It Do?Originally of the industrial rock genre, Laibach has evolved through numerous other genres including orchestral rock, choral rock and techno. It is not, however, a rock group in any conventional sense. Laibach is the musical section of a tripartite unit named Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) which also encompasses the fine arts collective Irwin and a variety of theatre groups.Laibach was the name by which the Slovenian capital Ljubljana was known under the Austrian Habsburg Empire and then Nazi occupation in WWII. The choice of name hints at a central purpose of Laibach and NSK in general, to explore the relationship between art and ideology, especially under conditions of totalitarianism. In what follows, I describe how Laibach go about doing this.Laibach’s central method is eclecticism, by which symbols of the various ideological regimes that are its and the NSK’s subject matter are intentionally juxtaposed. Eclecticism of this kind was characteristic of the postmodern aesthetics typical of the 1990s. Furthermore, and counterintuitively perhaps, postmodernism was as much a condition of the Socialist East as it was the Capitalist West. As Mikhail N. Epstein argues, “Totalitarianism itself may be viewed as a specific postmodern model that came to replace the modernist ideological stance elaborated in earlier Marxism” (102). However, Western and Eastern postmodernisms were fundamentally different. In particular, while the former was largely playful, ironicising and depoliticised, the latter, which Laibach and NSK may be regarded as being illustrative of, involved placing in opposition to one another competing and antithetical aesthetic, political and social regimes, “without the contradictions being fully resolved” (Monroe 54).The performance of unresolved contradictions in Laibach’s work fulfils three principal functions. It works to (1) reveal hidden underlying connections between competing ideological systems, and between art and power more generally. This is evident in Life is Life. The video combines symbols of Slovenian romantic nationalism (stags and majestic rural landscapes) with Nazism and militarism (uniforms, bodily postures and a martial musical arrangement). Furthermore, it presents images of the graves of victims of internecine violence in WWII. The video is a reminder to Slovenian viewers of a discomforting public secret within their nation’s history. While Germany is commonly viewed as a principal oppressor of Slovenian nationalism, the rural peasantry, who are represented as embodying Slovenian nationalism most, were also the most willing collaborators in imperialist processes of Germanicisation. The second purpose of the performance of unresolved contradictions in Laibach’s work is to (2) engender senses of the alienation, especially as experienced by the subjects of totalitarian regimes. Laibach’s approach in this regard is quite different to that of punk, whose concern with alienation - symbolised by safety pins and chains - was largely celebratory of the alienated condition. Rather, Laibach took a lead from seminal industrial rock bands such as Einstürzende Neubauten and Throbbing Gristle (see, for example, Walls of Sound (Throbbing Gristle 2004)), whose sound one fan accurately describes as akin to, “the creation of the universe by an angry titan/God and a machine apocalypse all rolled into one” (rateyourmusic.com). Certainly, Laibach’s shows can be uncomfortable experiences too, involving not only clashing symbols and images, but also the dissonant sounds of, for example, martial music, feedback, recordings of the political speeches of totalitarian leaders and barking dogs, all played at eardrum-breaking high volumes. The purpose of this is to provide, as Laibach state: “a ritualized demonstration of political force” (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst 44). In short, more than simply celebrating the experience of totalitarian alienation, Laibach’s intention is to reproduce that very alienation.More than performatively representing tyranny, and thereby senses of totalitarian alienation, Laibach and NSK set out to embody it themselves. In particular, and contra the forms of liberal humanism that were hegemonic at the peak of their career in the 1990s, their organisation was developed as a model of totalitarian collectivism in which the individual is always subjugated. This is illustrated in the Onanigram (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst), which, mimicking the complexities of the SFRY in its most totalitarian dispensation, maps out in labyrinthine detail the institutional structure of NSK. Behaviour is governed by a Constitution that states explicitly that NSK is a group in which, “each individual is subordinated to the whole” (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst 273). Lest this collectivism be misconceived as little more than a show, the case of Tomaž Hostnik is instructive. The original lead singer of Laibach, Hostnik committed ritual suicide by hanging himself from a hayrack, a key symbol of Slovenian nationalism. Initially, rather than mourning his loss, the other members of Laibach posthumously disenfranchised him (“threw him out of the band”), presumably for his act of individual will that was collectively unsanctioned.Laibach and the NSK’s collectivism also have spiritual overtones. The Onanigram presents an Immanent Consistent Spirit, a kind of geist that holds the collective together. NSK claim: “Only God can subdue LAIBACH. People and things never can” (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst 289). Furthermore, such rhetorical bombast was matched in aspiration. Most famously, in one of the first instances of a micro-nation, NSK went on to establish itself as a global and virtual non-territorial state, replete with a recruitment drive, passports and anthem, written and performed by Laibach of course. Laibach’s CareerLaibach’s career can be divided into three overlapping parts. The first is its career as a political provocateur, beginning from the inception of the band in 1980 and continuing through to the present. The band’s performances have touched the raw nerves of several political actors. As suggested above, Laibach offended Slovenian nationalists. The band offended the SFRY, especially when in its stage backdrop it juxtaposed images of a penis with Marshal Josip Broz “Tito”, founding President of the SFRY. Above all, it offended libertarians who viewed the band’s exploitation of totalitarian aesthetics as a route to evoking repressed totalitarian energies in its audiences.In a sense the libertarians were correct, for Laibach were quite explicit in representing a third function of their performance of unresolved contradictions as being to (3) evoke repressed totalitarian energies. However, as Žižek demonstrates in his essay “Why Are Laibach and NSK Not Fascists”, Laibach’s intent in this regard is counter-totalitarian. Laibach engage in what amounts to a “psychoanalytic cure” for totalitarianism, which consists of four envisaged stages. The consumers of Laibach’s works and performances go through a process of over-identification with totalitarianism, leading through the experience of alienation to, in turn, disidentification and an eventual overcoming of that totalitarian alienation. The Žižekian interpretation of the four stages has, however been subjected to critique, particularly by Deleuzian scholars, and especially for its psychoanalytic emphasis on the transformation of individual (un)consciousness (i.e. the cerebral rather than bodily). Instead, such scholars prefer a schizoanalytic interpretation which presents the cure as, respectively collective (Monroe 45-50) and somatic (Goddard). Laibach’s works and pronouncements display, often awareness of such abstract theoretical ideas. However, they also display attentiveness to the concrete realities of socio-political context. This was reflected especially in the 1990s, when its focus seemed to shift from the matter of totalitarianism to the overriding issue of the day in Laibach’s homeland – ethnic conflict. For example, echoing the discourse of Truth and Reconciliation emanating from post-Apartheid South Africa in the early 1990s, Laibach argued that its work is “based on the premise that traumas affecting the present and the future can be healed only by returning to the initial conflicts” (NSK Padiglione).In the early 1990s era of post-socialist violent ethnic nationalism, statements such as this rendered Laibach a darling of anti-nationalism, both within civil society and in what came to be known pejoratively as the Yugonostagic, i.e. pro-SFRY left. Its darling status was cemented further by actions such as performing a concert to celebrate the end of the Bosnian war in 1996, and because its ideological mask began to slip. Most famously, when asked by a music journalist the standard question of what the band’s main influences were, rather than citing other musicians Laibach stated: “Tito, Tito and Tito.” Herein lies the third phase of Laibach’s career, dating from the mid-1990s to the present, which has been marked by critical recognition and mainstream acceptance, and in contrasting domains. Notably, in 2012 Laibach was invited to perform at the Tate Modern in London. Then, entering the belly of what is arguably the most totalitarian of totalitarian beasts in 2015, it became the first rock band to perform live in North Korea.The middle part in Laibach’s career was between 1987 and 1996. This was when its work consisted mostly of covers of mainstream Western pop songs by, amongst others Opus, Queen, The Rolling Stones, and, in The Final Countdown (1986), Swedish ‘big hair’ rockers. It also covered entire albums, including a version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. No doubt mindful of John Lennon’s claim that his band was more popular than the Messiah himself, Laibach covered the Beatles’ final album Let It Be (1970). Highlighting the perilous hidden connections between apparently benign and fascistic forms of sedentarism, lead singer Milan Fras’ snarling delivery of the refrain “Get Back to where you once belong” renders the hit single from that album less a story of homecoming than a sinister warning to immigrants and ethnic others who are out of place.This career middle stage invoked critique. However, commonplace suggestions that Laibach could be characterised as embodying Retromania, a derivative musical trend typical of the 1990s that has been lambasted for its de-politicisation and a musical conservatism enabled by new sampling technologies that afforded a forensic documentary precision that prohibits creative distortion (Reynolds), are misplaced. Several scholars highlight Laibach’s ceaseless attention to musical creativity in the pursuit of political subversiveness. For example, for Monroe, the cover version was a means for Laibach to continue its exploration of the connections between art and ideology, of illuminating the connections between competing ideological systems and of evoking repressed totalitarian energies, only now within Western forms of entertainment in which ideological power structures are less visible than in overt totalitarian propaganda. However, what often seems to escape intellectualist interpretations presented by scholars such as Žižek, Goddard and (albeit to a lesser extent) Monroe is the importance of the concrete specificities of the context that Laibach worked in in the 1990s – i.e. homeland ethno-nationalist politics – and, especially, their medium – i.e. Western pop music.The Meaning and Meaningfulness of Western Popular Culture in Former YugoslaviaThe Laibach covers were merely one of many celebrations of Western popular culture that emerged in pre- and post-socialist Yugoslavia. The most curious of these was the building of statues of icons of screen and stage. These include statues of Tarzan, Bob Marley, Rocky Balboa and, most famously, martial arts cinema legend Bruce Lee in the Bosnian city of Mostar.The pop monuments were often erected as symbols of peace in contexts of ethnic-national violence. Each was an ethnic hybrid. With the exception of original Tarzan Johnny Weismuller — an ethnic-German American immigrant from Serbia — none was remotely connected to the competing ethnic-national groups. Thus, it was surprising when these pop monuments became targets for iconoclasm. This was especially surprising because, in contrast, both the new ethnic-national monuments that were built and the old Socialist pan-Yugoslav monuments that remained in all their concrete and steel obduracy in and through the 1990s were left largely untouched.The work of Simon Harrison may give us some insight into this curious situation. Harrison questions the commonplace assumption that the strength of enmity between ethnic groups is related to their cultural dissimilarity — in short, the bigger the difference the bigger the biffo. By that logic, the new ethnic-national monuments erected in the post-SFRY era ought to have been vandalised. Conversely, however, Harrison argues that enmity may be more an outcome of similarity, at least when that similarity is torn asunder by other kinds of division. This is so because ownership of previously shared and precious symbols of identity appears to be seen as subjected to appropriation by ones’ erstwhile comrades who are newly othered in such moments.This is, indeed, exactly what happened in post-socialist former-Yugoslavia. Yugoslavs were rendered now as ethnic-nationals: Bosniaks (Muslims), Croats and Serbs in the case of Bosnia. In the process, the erection of obviously non-ethnic-national monuments by, now inevitably ethnic-national subjects was perceived widely as appropriation – “the Croats [the monument in Mostar was sculpted by Croatian artist Ivan Fijolić] are stealing our Bruce Lee,” as one of my Bosnian-Serb informants exclaimed angrily.However, this begs the question: Why would symbols of Western popular culture evoke the kinds of emotions that result in iconoclasm more so than other ethnically non-reducible ones such as those of the Partisans that are celebrated in the old Socialist pan-Yugoslav monuments? The answer lies in the geopolitical history of the SFRY. The Yugoslav-Soviet Union split in 1956 forced the SFRY to develop ever-stronger ties with the West. The effects of this became quotidian, especially as people travelled more or less freely across international borders and consumed the products of Western Capitalism. Many of the things they consumed became deeply meaningful. Notably, barely anybody above a certain age does not reminisce fondly about the moment when participation in martial arts became a nationwide craze following the success of Bruce Lee’s films in the golden (1970s-80s) years of Western-bankrolled Yugoslav prosperity.Likewise, almost everyone above a certain age recalls the balmy summer of 1985, whose happy zeitgeist seemed to be summed up perfectly by Austrian band Opus’s song “Live is Life” (1985). This tune became popular in Yugoslavia due to its apparently feelgood message about the joys of attending live rock performances. In a sense, these moments and the consumption of things “Western” in general came to symbolise everything that was good about Yugoslavia and, indeed to define what it was to be Yugoslavs, especially in comparison to their isolated and materially deprived socialist comrades in the Warsaw Pact countries.However, iconoclastic acts are more than mere emotional responses to offensive instances of cultural appropriation. As Michael Taussig describes, iconoclasm reveals the public secrets that the monuments it targets conceal. SFRY’s great public secret, known especially to those people old enough to have experienced the inter-ethnic violence of WWII, was ethnic division and the state’s deceit of the historic normalcy of pan-Yugoslav identification. The secret was maintained by a formal state policy of forgetting. For example, the wording on monuments in sites of inter-ethnic violence in WWII is commonly of the variety: “here lie the victims in Yugoslavia’s struggle against imperialist forces and their internal quislings.” Said quislings were, of course, actually Serbs, Croats, and Muslims (i.e. fellow Yugoslavs), but those ethnic nomenclatures were almost never used.In contrast, in a context where Western popular cultural forms came to define the very essence of what it was to be Yugoslav, the iconoclasm of Western pop monuments, and the retroquotation of Western pop songs revealed the repressed deceit and the public secret of the reality of inter-ethnic tension at the heart of that which was regarded as quintessentially Yugoslav. In this way, the memory of Yugoslavia ever having been a properly functioning entity was delegitimised. Consequently, Laibach and their kind served to render the apparent reality of the Yugoslav ideal as little more than a dream. ReferencesEpstein, Mikhail N. After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture. Amherst: U of Massachusettes P, 1995.Goddard, Michael. “We Are Time: Laibach/NSK, Retro-Avant-Gardism and Machinic Repetition,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 11 (2006): 45-53.Harrison, Simon. “Identity as a Scarce Resource.” Social Anthropology 7 (1999): 239–251.Monroe, Alexei. Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005.NSK. Neue Slowenische Kunst. Ljubljana: NSK, 1986.NSK. Padiglione NSK. Ljubljana: Moderna Galerija, 1993.rateyourmusic.com. 2018. 3 Sep. 2018 <https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/throbbing-gristle>.Reynolds, Simon. Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. London: Faber and Faber, 2011.Taussig, Michael. Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.Verdery, Katherine. What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Žižek, Slavoj. “Why Are Laibach and NSK Not Fascists?” 3 Sep. 2018 <www.nskstate.com/appendix/articles/why_are_laibach.php.>