Balkans

Croatia 1992, Bosnia 1992, Kosova 1999, Ukraine 2022

British soldier in Bosnia in the 1990s, there to provide security for UN aid convoys In Croatia's war of independence (1991-5), about 14,000 civilians died; in the Bosnian war (1992-5), about 40,000; in the Kosovan war (1998-9), about 12,000. We distrust and dislike NATO; but it was far from the main problem in these cases. It intervened only very late (a short bombing campaign against Serb nationalists in Bosnia in September 1995, another against Serbia over Kosova in March-June 1999), and it accounted for some hundreds among the tens of thousands of civilian casualties. The great majority...

A childhood in Stalinist Albania

On a bookshelf in our front room there’s a picture of my partner and me, half-empty glasses raised in the air. It is New Year’s Eve, 1989, and we are drinking to celebrate the death of Stalinism across much of Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall had just come down and the dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, had just been put against a wall and shot, during a brief civil war as Romanian Stalinism crashed. The bourgeois revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were liberations, for sure. The new freedom meant elections, new political parties, the ability to form free trade unions and an end to...

Lithium for batteries: how?

Thousands of environmentalists in Serbia have forced a small government u-turn in a battle over mining giant Rio Tinto’s claim to the Jadar valley. 130,000 people, 2% of the Serbian population, have signed a petition against Rio Tinto’s plan to open the biggest lithium mine in Europe. The government has ditched proposed law changes that would make it easier to expropriate land. As an essential ingredient in car batteries, lithium is a key resource of the green tech revolution. The EU wants to produce 30 million electric vehicles in the next few decades to meet its climate pledges. Demand for...

Bosnia-Herzegovina: 25 years after Dayton

There is a film nowadays rarely seen which was once, perhaps surprisingly, the most popular foreign film ever shown in China: Walter Defends Sarajevo (directed by Hajruin Krvavac in 1972) is a Yugoslav film, set in the Second World War, telling the story of the Nazis’ attempts to eliminate the mysterious Walter – based on a real person – who is the leader of the Sarajevo Partisans and a master at disguise and intrigue.

Municipal polls show some change in Bosnia

Above: Irma Baralija and her party Naša Stranka ("Our Party") have won a commitment to hold municipal elections in the divided Croat-Bosniak city of Mostar. They oppose communalism. But they are also avowed neoliberals. As mentioned in Solidarity 572 , the BiH municipal elections of 15 November showed some changes from previous voting patterns. Now, with the exception of Mostar (elections on 20 December), all results are in and more details can be added. There were elections for mayors and assemblies in 143 municipalities (the municipality is the smallest local government unit in BiH). A total...

Losses for communalists in Bosnia

Municipal elections in Bosnia-Hercegovina, delayed because of Covid-19, took place on 14-15 November, and the earliest indications are that the parties based on ethnic groupings have fared badly amongst voter concerns over widespread corruption and what is seen by many as a disastrous response to the epidemic. In Sarajevo, the SDA (Party of Democratic Action, the party claiming to represent Bosnian Muslims) lost out in three of four voting districts and in Banja Luka, opposition parties made important gains. The HDZBiH (Croat Democratic Union of Bosnia-Hercegovina, the party claiming to...

Kino Eye

Kino Eye is a new column which will offer suggestions for film or TV viewing which are related to articles in Solidarity . The term "Kino Eye" is borrowed from the early Soviet documentary filmmaker Dziga Vertov, whose best-known film is Man with a Movie Camera (1929). Suggestions for viewing from readers are welcome. In Solidarity 562 I recommended two interesting, and very different, films from Bosnia, Walter Defends Sarajevo and Grbavica . Although not about Sarajevo, another film from that region also worth seeing is Tito and Me (Goran Marković, 1992), the comic story of a chubby young...

Video: Remembering the Bosnian War, with Sarah Correia and Martin Thomas

Audio and video Introductory speeches from a meeting of the same name, which outline the complex events that led up to the war, left responses and legacies of the war. Sarah Correia is a researcher at LSE, researching memories of the Bosnian war. Martin Thomas talks about the response of much of the left at the time. December 2020 marks 15 years since the end of the Bosnian war. In 1992 after Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence, a Serb-backed military assault took place, bringing ethnic cleansing, rape and destruction of mosques. Under the banner of “peace” and opposing Western intervention many on the left sided with, or failed to oppose, the Serb nationalists. Workers' Liberty argued an international arms embargo should be lifted so that the Bosnians could defend themselves. This meeting will outline the complex events that led up to the war, the left responses and the legacies of that war.

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.