the quest for solidarity and tamed nationalism: envisioning sustainable peace in the balkans

THE QUEST FOR SOLIDARITY AND TAMED

NATIONALISM: ENVISIONING SUSTAINABLE PEACE IN

THE BALKANS

by Marko Lehti

In the Balkans case it is far too often argued that peace and stability canonly be achieved by escaping from the Balkans to Europe, that is, byadopting European norms of “tamed nationalism.” This article searchesfor the indigenous roots of the Balkan peace. The idea of a Balkan federa-tion or union represents an often-ignored model presented from time totime since the early 19th century. The interwar period represents the mostinteresting effort to create something genuine among the Balkan states.Between 1930 and 1933 four large Balkan conferences and several smallerBalkan meetings were organized with discussions on how to achieve a sus-tainable peace in the Balkans. Taming extreme nationalism by empha-sizing a common Balkan heritage, rewriting history, and increasingcommunication was the idea of the Balkan League movement in the1930s. This experience offers a valuable model for seeking a sustainablepeace in southeastern Europe today.

ALTERNATIVE BALKANS

“It has often been said that the Near Eastern Question is a chronic

world problem. Viewed in this way, it is the oldest, the most continu-

ous, and the most complicated problem known to history. Its origin

goes back to the days of ancient Troy or even beyond. It is with us

today. Will it be with us tomorrow?”1 This is how Robert Kerner and

Harry Howard opened their 1936 study on the Balkan conferences

and the Balkan Entente. They hoped that finally a solution to this

never-ending problem might have been found. Both the Middle East

and the Balkans were still often labeled as the Near Eastern countries

as their past belonged to the Ottoman Empire, but also because of

their location near, but outside of, Europe. Even if looking back all the

PEACE & CHANGE, Vol. 39, No. 1, January 2014

© 2014 Peace History Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

101

way to ancient Troy is an exaggeration, the so-called Eastern Ques-

tion—the decline and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire—had

been the focus of great-power diplomacy since the early nineteenth

century, and conflicts were seen as an unavoidable part of disintegra-

tion. The scholarly interest in the Eastern Question has traditionally

been focused on various efforts by the great powers to manage the

fragmentation of the declining Ottomans and on their (mutual) power

struggle.2 However, alongside maneuvers of great-power diplomacy,

there were also ambitious and imaginative visions of the possible

future orders, as well as brave men who believed in a lasting peace.

The focus of this study is on these visions of bringing lasting peace to

the Balkans and whether it could be considered achievable.

Horror stories of extreme cruelty in the Balkans have for two cen-

turies generated discussion in the Western media. From time to time,

these stories have aroused the strong moral obligation in the West to

do something to achieve peace in the Balkans and even generated a

demand for Western intervention in humanitarian causes. In the 1990s,

the images of the massacre of Srebrenica and the Kosovars’ exodus

generated a widely approved moral obligation that conflicts needed to

be solved and peace guaranteed by the West. Srebrenica has its prede-

cessors: In 1876, the Western audience was shocked by the massacre of

the entire population of the village of Batak during the Bulgarian April

uprising. Half a century earlier, in 1822, the massacre of some 20,000

Greeks on the island of Chios during the Greek War of Independence

was the very first massacre to be widely reported in the Western media.

Even if the frames and tools of international politics and peacebuilding

have drastically changed in the past two centuries, there are also strik-

ing similarities in how the images of horrors have generated a wide

moral obligation to resolve the conflict.3 However, in all these cases,

the attention of the foreign audience was only on the particular conflict

—the Greek War of Independence, the Bulgarian April Uprising, or the

Bosnian War—with no attention paid to the whole Balkan-wide peace

solutions or long-term conditions for lasting peace.

In addition to solving just one particular humanitarian crisis, the

need to build a sustainable peace for the whole of the Balkans was

introduced into the international agenda during the nineteenth cen-

tury. Further, the idea of a Balkan federation appeared as one plausi-

ble solution to solve the violent ethnic and national conflicts in the

Balkans and to introduce conditions for a lasting peace. For example,

in 1841, an unsuccessful Bulgarian revolt troubled Western Europe, in

102 PEACE & CHANGE / January 2014

particular France. As a result of public pressure, the French foreign

minister, Franc�ois Guizot, whose main concern was to maintain peace

in Western Europe, set up a one-man committee, appointing econo-

mist Jerome Adolphe Blanqui to find a solution to the Eastern Ques-

tion. Blanqui traveled to the Balkans, and on his return he

recommended the creation of a Balkan federation consisting of

Walachia, Moldavia, Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria.4

The idea of a Balkan federation, or, later, a Balkan union or

league, was seen by many as a prerequisite and a primary tool for the

Balkan peace. Even if it were possible to promote peace by other

means, a federation represents the most promising but also too-often-

ignored model not just to solve one particular conflict and end

violence but also to construct long-term conditions for lasting peace.

The federation plans had been presented from time to time since the

1820s, and they continued to surface at intervals until the first few

years after World War II. However, since then, the idea has more or

less faded away. The idea of a Balkan federation represents an often

forgotten and marginalized alternative history that, instead of conflicts

and massacres, emphasizes unity and solidarity in southeastern

Europe, and in particular a dream of lasting peace.

During the interwar period, the most interesting efforts to create

something genuine among the Balkan states occurred. The two decades

between the world wars are usually presented as an era of hostility and

exclusivity among the xenophobic Balkan states.5 There is, however,

an alternative story to be told. If we compare post–Second World War

interpretations with a few contemporary analyses from the 1930s,

there is a striking contrast. In the 1930s, it was still possible in optimis-

tic terms to describe the Balkans as Europe’s Peace Peninsula.6 Indeed,

the Balkan states were often xenophobic and exclusive, but one can see

true efforts to achieve Balkan cooperation and unification. This move-

ment for the Balkan union was carefully examined in studies published

in the late 1930s and early 1940s. These efforts reflected the very same

liberal idealism of the interwar era that generated the Balkan coopera-

tion. However, since then, this idealism has been forgotten.7

Postwar studies interpreted the Balkan development from the cold

war perspective and emphasized hard security and sovereignty, as well

as regarding Balkan cooperation as a failure. During the past two dec-

ades, the Balkan federation and the quest for Balkan solidarity have

been underrated by politicians and thinkers, but also by scholars,

because of the traumatic legacy of Yugoslavian disintegration—the

The Quest for Solidarity and Tamed Nationalism 103

only existing federation in southeastern Europe. The recent experi-

ences of brutal ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and elsewhere have under-

mined the possibility of Balkan unity and even presented unity as an

absurdity. Yet Noel Buxton’s and Leonard Leese’s comment one year

after World War I is as relevant today as it was ninety years ago: “It

seems perhaps absurdly optimistic to plead the cause of a Balkan

Federation while the echo of guns is still sounding in our ears, but

even the despised Balkan peoples cannot live by war alone.”8 Indeed,

besides conflicts and crises, it is also possible in the Balkans to recog-

nize peacemaking activities. These efforts have often been later

ignored, as a lasting peace has not been achieved, but in this study

they are approached as an alternative future.

During the past seven decades, there have been no new studies on

1930s Balkan cooperation or a Balkan federation. This article aims to

restore the value of studies that were ignored during the cold war. In

addition, I hope to expand the analysis of the movement for a Balkan

union and of questions of how peace is defined and what the tools to

achieve a lasting peace are. I argue that the way that peace was pro-

posed in the 1930s included Balkan cooperation, arbitration, and

mutual guarantees, as well as offering an early example of a compre-

hensive peacebuilding toolbox.

QUEST FOR TAMED NATIONALISM

To Western audiences, the Balkans have for long symbolized the

backward barbarism of mountain men, the prevailing national or

ethnic tensions, and cruelty. It appears to Western observers as “a site

for irrational and obscene, European and yet yielding up nightmares

‘unthinkable’ in Europe.”9 While Europe is seen as civilized and

peaceful, the Balkans have been seen to be apt to violence and hatred.

Therefore, for many Western observers, the roots of Balkan conflicts

are endemic.

Such discourse on the Balkans is related to that of the Orient, as

Todorova has noted; both are Western labels, not to define any clear

geographical area but to portray the image of Other, and thus they

are a continuation of colonization, real or virtual, in other terms.10

Despite the obvious similarities of the categories orientalism and balk-anism, they nevertheless differ fundamentally, as the first constitutes

the other of Europe/the West, and the latter merely occupies a position

“in-between” the Orient and the Occident.11 According to Sfikas, this


“Orientalist approach” to the Balkans has dominated the Western

public gaze and the minds of politicians.12 But Western Balkan studies

have also emphasized “deep rooted seeds of ethnic and national con-

flict instead of seeing also alternative options.” Thus in practice,

accepting the uniqueness of the Balkan mentality by underlining how

the Byzantine-Orthodox heritage combined with the Oriental features

of the Ottoman past has made the Balkans different from liberal and

democratic Europe. Following Goldsworthy, the problem is to locate

the Balkans permanently on the margins and emphasizing its transi-

tional features studies become tautological.13 The Saidian-inspired

approach to the study of balkanism—how the notion of Balkan is

imagined and produced—has been a counterattack to breakaway

scholars like Todorova and Goldsworthy.14 Their study carefully doc-

umented the Western imaginings of the Balkans, but less attention has

been paid to how balkanism is working within the Balkans.15 This

study explores the linkage between balkanism and the dream of lasting

peace and how it was aimed to transform the burden of balkanism

from a seed of conflict to an anchorage of Balkan peace.

Besides emphasizing the primordial roots of Balkan violence, the

other cause for conflicts is seen to be in modern nationalism and its

particular Eastern form. The particular notion of balkanization was

introduced in the West to describe how a disintegration of large multi-

national empires would increase instability and chaos because small

nation-states are by nature fragile but also mutually hostile.16 Small

states were few in pre-World War I Europe and southeastern Europe

introduced the first large-scale example of what happened when impe-

rial order was replaced by small nation-states. It was not primarily

a question of size, but the wars in the Balkans were seen above all as

a consequence of nationalism. Since the mid-nineteenth century, seces-

sionist nationalism and irredentist minorities have been seen as a

destabilizing element of the international order and thus as a source of

conflicts.17 These conflicts need to be resolved for the sake of coun-

tries in conflict but also in order to promote the security and stability

of international society more broadly. Therefore, to ensure lasting

peace in the Balkans more generally would require the taming of the

demonic effects of nationalism. This argumentation was based on the

idea of different nationalisms in West and East. In the 1940s, Hans

Kohn gave a theoretical form to existing prejudices by introducing a

definition of two ideal types of nationalism: In contrast to libertarian-

individualistic Western nationalism based on civic community, the


Eastern form of nationalism has been seen as collective-authoritarian

cherishing of the ethnic community. The first is by nature democratic

and thus peaceful, while conflicts are endemic in the case of ethnic

nationalism. Several scholars have claimed that this division does not

hold and that all forms of nationalism include a certain totalitarian

ethos and presenting these as exclusive ideal models ignores existence

and variation of civic and ethnic elements in the case of each national-

ism and nation. Regardless of this, the division is still inscribed deep

into West European prejudices.18 Western nationalism is still seen to

be liberal and tame, as it accepts a multicultural model of political

community and thus the ethnic nationalism of East Europeans needs

to be tamed as a condition for their European-ness.19

In the Balkan case, it is far too often argued that peace and stabil-

ity can only be achieved by escaping from the Balkans to Europe, that

is, by adopting European norms of “tamed nationalism.” Further, this

Europeanization is seen to require the involvement of the superior

Westerners, who can stand above the bickering local nations and who

represent the civilized world in comparison with barbarism of the

Balkan mountain men.20

In addition to looking at the long history of Western peacebuild-

ing efforts in the Balkans, it is important to look at how the Balkan

peoples themselves have aimed to achieve Balkan peace. This article

argues that the ideal of Balkan peace and solidarity is not cherished

only by the Westerners but that, instead of accepting a passive role of

the Balkan people, it is important to study their efforts and visions to

build a sustainable Balkan peace. The Balkan past is not only a story

of quarrelling and conflicting states, nations, and religions; there are

alternative Balkan experiences to be learned emphasizing mutual

respect and successful management of the diversity of religious and

ethnic groups. Contrary to popular belief, even the Ottoman Empire

was managing its polyethnic and multireligious society fairly success-

fully by the millet system based on nonterritorial self-governance.21

Likewise contrary to popular belief, the sources of Balkan ethnic con-

flicts were not predominantly indigenous but, following Carmichael,

“the Balkans suffered ethnic quakes, largely because the impact of

European ideas (initially nationalism, then fascism and communism)

was so profound and clashed so indelibly with older ‘autochthonous’

ideas found in religious practice and traditional culture.”22

This study challenges the myth of the Balkans as a passive

object of Western peacebuilding efforts and pinpoints how there


have been Balkan peoples envisioning lasting peace. Further, I argue

that even if the aim of taming nationalism has also been characteris-

tic of Balkan peacebuilding visions, escaping from the Balkans to

Europe has not been unanimously accepted as the only path to a

lasting peace, but instead sources for solidarity were sought from

the Balkan heritage.

THE LEAGUE OF PEACE

Envisioning a Balkan federation (or union) as a tool for building

a sustainable peace was not only characteristic of Western peacebuild-

ers but has been popular among Balkan politicians and academics,

too. Internal and external initiatives and ideas are often blurred and

mixed. What were seen as prerequisites for a federation and how it

was seen to support a vision of lasting peace reveal certain differences

and pinpoint how Balkan activism challenged the passive role reserved

for the Balkans but also comprehended the very notions of the Balkans

and peace differently.

The intellectual sources of Balkan federation stem from two direc-

tions—the philosophical roots of the lasting peace that originated from

Immanuel Kant and the transformation of a Europe of empires to a

Europe of unitary states according to which there was also a need for

alternative models of governance. Kant launched the idea of a league

of peace (foedus pacificum) as a precondition for perpetual peace

among states because that would create a covenant of peace instead of

a treaty of peace that would resolve only one particular war. For

Kant, a state of war prevailed among states even if they were not

fighting against each other, as there was no external law controlling

them. To put an end to all wars, “the law of nations shall be founded

on a federation of free states.” This federation or league would not

aim to gain any power of a state but instead would preserve and

secure the freedom of each state.23

This Kantian idea of a league of peace was the intellectual inspira-

tion for various plans for building European-wide federations, and at

the beginning of the twentieth century for the idea of the League of

Nations.24 The original idea of a league of nations that was outlined

within the liberal-minded forums was something other than the orga-

nization that was founded after the war. It was closer to the idea of a

European league that would have joined all the European states in a

single commonwealth and thus limited sovereignty to guarantee lasting


peace. After the war, many prominent politicians saw this kind of

development as a realistic and also the most favorable option in the

future, but soon integrationist plans were marginalized. They did,

however, retain a certain topicality and from time to time certain poli-

ticians returned to the idea of a league of Europe, among them Aris-

tide Briand in 1929.25

Federation obviously refers to a certain kind of model governance:

“a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing

states or regions united by a central (federal) government.”26 The

successful creation of this kind of federation would have required

“subunits with high levels of infrastructural capacity,” and except

in the case of Germany, this precondition was not fulfilled in

nineteenth-century Europe.27 Nonetheless, the notion of federation was

used rather loosely in the nineteenth-century political discussion and

offered for many an alternative model of the future for existing empires

and emerging unitary states without giving too much actual thought to

what kind of governing model that would include. Thus, federation

and confederation were sometimes mixed. For several minority nation-

alities in European multiethnic empires, a federation offered an ideal

model to transform an old empire into a league of nations, and several

demands were voiced to reorganize the Habsburg, Romanov, or Otto-

man empires according to national principles. A few believed in the

collapse of big empires, but national self-determination was deemed

feasible within a federal structure. Later, after gaining independence, a

federation during the transition period in particular was a tool to

escape smallness and to gain subjectivity in the world of big powers. A

federation of free nations would also have re-created a stable order in

place of the crumbling empire by taming nationalistic strivings and

thus solving the dilemma of balkanization.28

For a long time, a Balkan federation was comprehended as the only

means of successful peacebuilding, because it was seen to solve national

conflicts but simultaneously guarantee national self-determination. One

of the earliest plans for a Balkan federation was initiated by Count John

Capo d’Istria (later Kapodistrias), who was born in Corfu, studied in

Italy, later served as Russian secretary of state under Alexander I, and

finally returned to Greece in 1827 to serve as the first president of a

provisional Greek government. He soon became unpopular and was

ousted with the support of the great powers, after which Greece trans-

formed from a republic to a kingdom. Because of his political back-

ground, his vision of the Balkan future combined the imperial and


national, premodern and modern elements. A Greek-dominated

neo-Byzantine empire was at that time a popular utopia cherished by

many Greeks, but Kapodistrias’s vision of the Balkan future was based

on a federation of national units combining certain imperial features.

During his service in Russia, he proposed the creation of a confedera-

tion of Walachia, Moldavia, and Serbia, but his 1828 plan extended the

federative principle to the whole of European Turkey, which was

divided into five states: the Danubian principalities, Serbia (including

Bosnia and Bulgaria), Macedonia (including Thrace), Epirus-Albania,

and Greece with the remaining islands. All these five states of Kapodis-

trias’s plan were meant to have formed a united federation with Con-

stantinople as a free city and the seat of congress.29

Another good example from half a century later is the Greek nov-

elist Demetrius Bikelas, who in 1885 wrote that to solve the Eastern

Question Turkey should in the future have Constantinople and

Thrace, but “then there could be in the Balkan peninsula a real con-

federation of independent and satisfied states, united by their interests,

and turning their efforts only toward progress and civilization.”30

In Serbia, history professor Vladimir Karich wrote in 1893, the

Balkan states should band together because of their weakness in com-

parison with Austria and Russia. Such a federation should also include

Turkey, and interestingly, he pointed out the cultural similarities and

common historical background and economic interests of all Balkan

nations. In 1899, the prominent Serbian politician Milan Pirochanats

published in Paris a pamphlet entitled Le P�eninsule des Balkans, in

which he argued that a Balkan federation would be the best way to

put an end to great-power interference in Balkan affairs. He did not,

however, dare to use his own name, but instead a pseudonym, Stefan

Bratimich.31 The political power aspect of a federation was empha-

sized in these Serbian contributions, which stated the necessity of a

federation, claiming that the Balkan states could not survive in the

international order dominated by the great powers without becoming

stronger through unification. To secure sovereignty and gain accep-

tance from the European powers, according to many political thinkers,

required a bigger political arrangement than a single nation-state.

Thus, a federation or confederation was imagined by nationalists as a

necessary tool to guarantee regional ownership instead of being ruled

by European powers.

While the international peace movement gained popularity in the

1870s and 1880s, the Balkan question was on the agenda because


the peninsula was seen as a violent corner in an otherwise rather

peaceful Europe. Pamphlets and booklets in favor of a Balkan federa-

tion were then published. At the 6th Universal Peace Congress, held in

Antwerp in 1894, it was decided to found the League for Balkan Con-

federation—a kind of assembly—which indeed held its regular meet-

ings in 1895 and 1896 in Paris. The league was chaired by the

Portuguese socialist Sebasti~ao de Magalh~aes Lima, but other delegates

represented the Balkans, or as they were then called, the Near Eastern

nations: Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Armenians, and others.

Interestingly, the group consisted solely of Christian peoples. Still, the

meeting can be regarded as the first pan-Balkan forum. The results it

achieved included a detailed plan for a federation. The Macedonian

question was seen as the greatest obstacle to achieving a federation,

which seemingly was seen as the ultimate goal of cooperation. The

envisaged federation was to include ten regions: Greece and Crete,

Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Mace-

donia and Albania, Thrace with Constantinople as a free city and a

center of confederation, Armenia, and the Asia Minor coastal

regions.32 Interestingly, the Turks were excluded and also isolated, but

the Armenians were included in these Balkan-centric plans.

All in all, a federation was seen as an efficient and necessary

method to guarantee sustainable peace, but what would constitute the

common and shared basis of this unity and how to achieve this kind

of unity was apparently not seriously discussed. The problematic

nature of national borders was not recognized, and the minority ques-

tion was totally ignored in plans prior to World War I.

THE INITIATIVE FOR A BALKAN UNION

During the postwar years, federation plans no longer played a

major role in Balkan policies, and Balkan unity beyond national lines

was mainly cherished only by the Socialists, the Macedonian activists,

and a few Agrarians, who all mainly belonged to the political opposi-

tion in the Balkan states. Federation plans were part of their programs

to challenge the existing governments.33 In the 1920s, it seemed that

the notion of a Balkan federation was retreating to the margins of

Balkan politics, and conflicts over borders and minorities prevailed

among the Balkan states.

After World War I, Greece and Turkey had their own war, which

ended in a peace treaty in 1923. To prevent future conflict, the


Norwegian philanthropist Fridtjof Nansen suggested a population

exchange between Greece and Turkey. At the time this kind of

exchange of population enjoyed wide-ranging international support—Nansen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize—and the “ethnic cleans-

ing” was seen to stabilize the situation and no one worried about the

destruction of the old multiethnic society. Some 400,000 Turks were

forced to leave Greece and some 900,000 Greeks to leave Turkey so

that the ideal of homogeneous nation-states could be achieved.34

Nevertheless, the question of nationality was ultimately a more com-

plicated question than a simple division between Greeks and Turks,

but the new governments of Greece and Turkey were seemingly satis-

fied and regarded the national question as solved, which opened the

door for Greek-Turkish rapprochement during the interwar years. The

remaining differences were agreed in the convention signed in 1930

together with a Treaty of Neutrality, Conciliation, and Arbitration

between Greece and Turkey.35

Conflicts between the Balkan states over the minority question,

however, were not yet completely resolved. The Macedonian question

was still a festering problem between Bulgaria and its neighbors. Peace

treaties more or less reinstated the borders of 1913, in which Macedo-

nia was divided between Serbia and Greece, and left the Bulgarians

dissatisfied and revisionist. According to the Bulgarians’ own calcula-

tion in consequence of the peace treaties, two million Bulgarians were

left outside the Bulgarian state, and of these, half a million lived as

refugees in Bulgaria.36 In 1925, a frontier clash on the Greece-Bulgar-

ian border was escalating toward full-scale war, which was prevented

by the successful intervention of the League of Nations. A League

commission of enquiry under the British diplomat Sir Horace Rum-

bold did not suggest greater minority protection but the exchange of

population, thereby eliminating the whole minority.37 Indeed, accord-

ing to certain Western observers, peace in the Balkans would be guar-

anteed by following the principle of national self-determination, but

this would be possible only by executing “a transmigration scheme,”

and then “a Balkan federation becomes possible” and “‘the Balkans

for the Balkan peoples’ would be achieved at last.”38

A new initiative bringing a Balkan federation back onto the politi-

cal scene was launched at the 27th Universal Peace Congress held at

Athens in October 1929. A special Balkan subcommittee was set up as

in the 1890s. The initiator of the idea and a key figure in the work of

the committee was former Greek premier Alexandros Papanastassiou.39


Plans for a Balkan federation and cooperation had been favored by

him earlier, and the same spring in Greece he had already proposed a

Balkan interparliamentary meeting and an organization, official or

private, which would bring the Balkan nations closer to each other.40

His brave opening seemingly also enjoyed the official support of the

Greek government. Eleftherios Venizelos’ return to power a year earlier

was a crucial turn leading to the adoption of the active role of region-

builder in the Balkans.41

French foreign minister Aristide Briand had launched his proposal

to all states in Europe just a couple months earlier in August 1929.

Briand’s public initiative was not the first of its kind, but it was cer-

tainly the most prominent single effort to achieve a European union,

as he was a foreign minister of one of Europe’s great powers.42

According to Papanastassiou, Briand’s proposal for a United States of

Europe was not realistic, but its realization might be more feasible

within a limited region like the Balkans including Turkey.43

Bringing all the Balkan nationalities around the same table obvi-

ously required an international godfather, and Papanastassiou used the

International Peace Bureau as a convener for the first Balkan confer-

ence and in such a way as to avoid potential diplomatic controversies

that would spoil the conference. On May 12, 1930, the bureau sent as

promised an invitation to attend a Balkan conference at Athens in

October that same year to the six Balkan foreign ministers—those of

Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey—to

assist in the nomination of local committees to the conference.

According to the invitation, all Balkan nationalities were invited “to

contribute to the rapprochement of the Balkan peoples … and … to

create a union of the Balkan states.”44 By the end of June, all had sur-

prisingly accepted the invitation.

Papanastassiou’s grand idea was not only to reintroduce the for-

mation of a federation—actually the new core term was now a union

—but really to open a way for organizing something concrete among

the Balkan countries. Laying the foundation for an Institute for

Balkan Union was how the Greeks defined the overall goal. Instead

of being solely intergovernmental, the institute was planned to bring

together intellectuals and scholars but also reinforce cooperation

among journalists, athletes, and politicians, among others. Thus, the

institute supported the rapprochement of the Balkan peoples and

above all favored mutual understanding and solidarity and the spirit

of peace.45 In a Greek memo written by Papanastassiou, the goals of


cooperation were divided into four paragraphs. First, the Balkan

Union would make it possible simultaneously to protect minorities

and to respect the sovereignty of each member state. Second, the

union would be based on absolute equality between the component

states. Third, the union would constitute a peculiar form of federa-

tion, not imitating American or Helvetic models, but functioning

more like the League of Nations. Fourth, even if the Union was con-

stituted in the spirit of the League of Nations, all member states

would be preserved as their own legal entities in international law.

This kind of Balkan union of independent nations would mark a his-

torical turning point and would be essential to ensure peace in the

Balkans.46

The Balkan initiative was not exceptional as such. Regional initia-

tives had already been launched during the war, and one of these was

the idea of a Baltic League introduced by the Estonians, Latvians, and

Finns. After the war, the idea was cherished by the Estonian and

Latvian political elites, and indeed, an intensive regional system

among all Baltic states, including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,

and Poland, was created in the early 1920s. Altogether some forty

joint conferences were organized between 1919 and 1926. The agen-

das of these conferences varied from high political questions to the

low politics of everyday practices, and the questions dealt with foreign

ministers, civil servants, or various experts.47 Papanastassiou’s idea

arose from the same liberal ground. For him, the Balkan conferences

were not only for high politics but every imaginable question: Devel-

oping Balkan interaction, mutual understanding, and solidarity should

be included in their agendas.

If compared with the other regional projects in the Baltics and

in Central Europe, the Balkan initiative was the most recent. Baltic

cooperation emerged immediately after the war and was used to

solve problems of successor statehood. The Balkan project started a

decade later and was more determinedly building conditions for

lasting peace. By then, the European ideological atmosphere had

already become more unfavorable to regional and integrationists

aims, and the year 1929 was certainly the last moment for this

kind of ambitious regional initiatives before the fatal change

toward a more exclusive and authoritarian policy. On the other

hand, it should be kept in mind that the war had ended in the Bal-

kans in 1923, just six years earlier. The political realities did not

allow this kind of public opening for a Balkan union much earlier


because a prerequisite for even considering the possibility of a

union was that Balkan neighbors were not regarded as an immedi-

ate threat to one’s own national sovereignty. Therefore, Greek-

Turkish rapprochement was crucial for a new opening in Balkan

cooperation in 1929, because in both countries it was believed that

their minority and border problems were more or less solved and

what remained were only disputes of secondary importance.48

However, not all Balkan nationalities shared the same feeling of

security, and in particular the Bulgarians continued to live in

national insecurity because the limits of what was Bulgarian

remained open and thus contested.

THE BALKAN CONFERENCE SYSTEM

Between 1930 and 1933, four large Balkan conferences were orga-

nized: in October 1930 in Athens, in October 1931 in Istanbul, in

October 1932 in Bucharest, and in November 1933 in Salonika. Dur-

ing the first conference, the organs of Balkan conferences were already

established: The general assembly formed the core unit, but beside it

was named the Council, the Presidency, and the Secretariat for creat-

ing continuity and permanence between meetings of a general assem-

bly. It was suggested that the Balkan conference would be an

unofficial assembly and governments could only be observers.49 None-

theless, the government of the host country was usually closely

involved in the preparations, in particular in Greece and Turkey, and

the prime minister of Greece as well as the Turkish president pro-

nounced their greetings to the conferences.50 Governments often

appointed, or at least approved, delegates and thus also controlled

their work. Thus, the “unofficial” Balkan conference was, in practice,

very much an official body. In a few cases, delegates also asked advice

straight from their national foreign ministries during the conference.

As Papanastassiou noted, the Balkan conferences were “not in a

position to assume responsibility for the attitude of the govern-

ments.”51 But on the contrary, the dilemma of the conferences was

that the given unofficial status of the treaties and suggestions was

not binding on governments. Nevertheless, serious political questions,

in particular those supporting mutual confidence-building measures,

were continuously discussed at the conferences. The role accorded to

high political issues in conferences started to make the Balkan gov-

ernments nervous, and in March 1932 the Yugoslavian and Greek


foreign ministers issued a joint statement advocating that the Balkan

conferences would in the future abstain from addressing political

questions.52

The overall agenda of the movement for a Balkan union was to

guarantee a lasting peace, and a Balkan pact was seen to be necessary

to achieve this goal. This pact was planned to include various confi-

dence-building measures, such as an agreement on nonaggression,

obligatory arbitration, and mutual assistance, which were in general

use during the interwar era, but these measures were seen just as a

first step toward the union, and they were seen to nurture a pacifist

and conciliatory atmosphere.53 From the very beginning, consensus

was hard to achieve. Already, in Athens, the Bulgarians raised the

question of minorities with strong support from the Albanians but

strong opposition by the Yugoslavs in particular.54 This episode pre-

dicts what was to follow in the future and proves that the wounds of

the peace treaties were not yet healed. The Macedonian and Kosovo

questions were still raising fierce passions, and the juxtapositions in

the conferences can be traced back to the Balkan Wars; the bitter Bul-

garians and Albanians with unfulfilled national aspirations contrasted

with the Yugoslavs (or the Serbs), the Greeks, and the Turks, whose

national aspirations were more or less satisfied.

While no solution was achieved in the two first conferences, the

finding of a satisfactory solution to the minority question was seen as

a prerequisite for the continuation of Balkan cooperation. Therefore,

at the Bucharest conference, the minority issue was also included in

the draft of the Balkan pact. Chapter IV of the draft dealt with minor-

ities, and it was suggested that special national offices be founded in

each country and a special Balkan commission on minorities. The

model was obviously taken from the League of Nations minority

system, which emphasized voluntary mediation among the states

involved, but even if the Balkan system also accepted only states as

actors, it also included an idea of permanent observation. Nonetheless,

there was not even unanimity among the representatives, because the

Yugoslavs opposed the formulation and they were afraid that such

offices would “encourage turbulent minorities.” Another obstacle to

achieving a satisfactory draft for a Balkan pact was the exclusion of

territorial problems, the main source of conflicts, from the statement

concerning preservation of the status quo.55

The result, however, was that at the preparatory meeting a day

before the conference, the Bulgarian delegation withdrew from the


conference because the question of minorities had not been resolved.

They had received their instructions straight from the Ministry of For-

eign Affairs in Sofia. The Bulgarian government had tried to launch

the idea of bipartite conferences to settle the minority question, but

only the Albanians had approved the method.56 At this time the

Albanians, who had previously stood on the same front with the

Bulgarians, did not follow them. Therefore, the retreat of the Bulgari-

ans did not prevent the conference, but there was no doubt that the

incident cast a shadow over it.

After the Bucharest conference, the signs of change in Europe

toward more exclusive and authoritarian nation-states were obvious.

In particular, in Germany the rise of Hitler meant the end of the

Weimar Republic. In the international forum, the failure of the

Geneva Arms Conferences also signaled the end of disarmament

policy and a shift from disarmament back to the arms race. In this

tenser international situation, the Balkan Council met in Bucharest

in May 1933 to prepare the next Balkan conference. The conference

was anticipated to be only the next meeting in a series, but it hap-

pened to be the last one. The problems of finding a host for the

conference already showed that Balkan conferences no longer

enjoyed as wide support in Balkan governmental circles as they had

in the beginning. It would have been the turn of Yugoslavia, but

the Yugoslavs announced that it would be impossible to organize

the conference in Belgrade. Thus, in the end, the Greeks offered

Salonika as a location for the next conference, which remained the

last Balkan conference.57 Beside the future-oriented spirit, this

turned out to be the last conference, as the general political atmo-

sphere in Europe and in the Balkans was becoming unfavorable to

their continuation.58 The working method and statute of the confer-

ences were also criticized, and suggestions for reforms were intro-

duced, replacing the demand for unanimity by majority decisions

and emphasizing nations as core units of cooperation and seeing

conferences more linked to states than before, but not all favored

these proposals.59

Since the mid-1930s, the political atmosphere had also been shift-

ing in the Balkan states toward authoritarian regimes. Ironically, the

political rapprochement among the Balkan states and eventually the

formation of the Balkan Entente in February 1934 by the four Balkan

states—Greece, Romania, Turkey, and Yugoslavia—blocked the wider

Balkan cooperation cherished by the Balkan conferences. The political


rapprochement of the four Balkan states was not a result of the Bal-

kan conferences but represents an opposite process. The signatories of

the Balkan Entente guaranteed the security of each and all of their

Balkan frontiers, while the Balkan conferences emphasized pragmatic

cooperation and tried to lower the symbolic and real borders. The

treaty was open to the remaining Balkan states, but in practice it was

directed against the revisionist aims of those left outside. Albania was

not even invited because of its relationship with Fascist Italy. So with

the Balkan Entente, the Balkan divisions that had already existed in

the minority question were regularized.60 Thus, the signing of the Bal-

kan Entente literally made the continuation of the Balkan conferences

impossible.

Obviously, besides the shift in political trends, there were other

obstacles that prevented the ultimate success of the conferences from

the very beginning. First, the role of conferences as unofficial or semi-

official but still dealing with high politics was a frustrating constella-

tion, even if it was the original aim and afforded a certain freedom.

Second, the minority question cast a dark shadow over cooperation

from the very beginning. The front lines remained more or less

unchanged, and on one side stood Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, and

Romania and on the other side Bulgaria and Albania. Even if the

conferences worked hard to achieve a novel solution to manage the

minority issue, the differences were so profound that there was no

place for compromises even in this unofficial forum. Finally, it was

obvious that not everyone shared the same view of the final aim of the

conferences and the same vision of the Balkan union as Papanastas-

siou, who, after 1929, took the main responsibility for writing the

objectives and contents of cooperation. The end of the movement for

Balkan union was the death of its most prominent spokesman in

1936.

CREATING BALKAN CIVIL SOCIETY

Efforts to create confidence-building mechanisms and to manage

existing disputes were core issues on the agendas of Balkan confer-

ences, but the Balkan conferences dealt with a surprisingly wide vari-

ety of issues concerning economic and social relations and

communication, and they were also comprehended as tools for

strengthening peace. The development of communications (railways,

highways, water, air, postal, telephone, and telegraph)61 and the


organization of credit facilities were on the original agenda, as was

monetary union,62 cultural relations, and even the role of women.

Education and, in particular, history teaching in schools were also

seen as a target of cooperation. Mutual rapprochement and increased

interaction were seen essential part on the way toward a Balkan union

and a peaceful future.

In all Balkan conferences, the removal of obstacles to mutual com-

munication and trade was on the agenda, and several resolutions and

pragmatic recommendations were adopted. At the Athens meeting, in

1930, the Communication Committee observed high barriers to mutual

communication: Direct connections were lacking between most capitals;

railways and highways ended at state borders, and even long-distance

telephone lines were lacking between many cities. Many recommenda-

tions for constructing intra-Balkan roads, including the reconstruction

of the Via Egnatia, the old Roman road connecting the Adriatic and the

Black Sea, and railway lines were made.63 In Bucharest, a draft conven-

tion on the personal status of Balkan nationals based largely on the

models introduced by the League of Nations was introduced. According

to this draft, “nationals of any Balkan state might enter freely, without

passport formalities, into the territory of any other Balkan state for the

purpose of carrying any lawful business or exercising any lawful occu-

pation,” but this vision of common labor markets was ill-fated. At the

last conference, the need for a relaxation of frontier examination and

visas and the creation of combined customs posts at frontiers was artic-

ulated.64 All these decisions pinpointed how exclusivity of national bor-

ders was comprehended as a serious obstacle to communication, and

there were serious efforts to facilitate border control and regulations, to

develop postal and transport connections, and overall to make it easier

to travel in another Balkan country.

At all conferences, the improvement of mutual social relations,

but also certain social problems, such as equality of women, rights of

children, and conditions of laborers, were on the agenda, and they

were also part of the League of Nations activity. In particular, the

engagement and rapprochement of Balkan women’s organizations to

the movement toward Balkan union were seen as significant backing

for a peaceful future. Conversely, a Balkan women’s meeting held in

1931 in Belgrade emphasized the importance of female participation

in the Balkan conferences, and already at Istanbul a particular

women’s delegation had participated in the general conference.65 This

emphasis on equality demonstrates the progressiveness of these


conferences in their own time and challenges the myth of oriental

male-dominated Balkans, where modern ideas of equality were alien.

Surprisingly, many Balkan organizations were also founded in

these various expert meetings in the early 1930s. Representatives of

municipalities met in Tirana and two years later in Bucharest, so-

called intellectual leaders met in Belgrade, representatives of Balkan

universities met in Sofia, and journalists met in Bucharest, managing

to found the Balkan Press Association.66 The Balkan Tourist Federa-

tion was founded in April 1931 in Istanbul, aiming to promote tour-

ism and worked continuously until World War II.67 A Balkan medical

union was also set up by a medical conference.68

Several meetings related to commercial relations and communica-

tion by land, sea, and air were organized, such as a maritime

conference in Athens, a Balkan merchants meeting in Istanbul, a

Balkan bankers’ meeting in Salonika, and the industrial entrepreneurs

meeting in Athens.69 A Balkan Chamber of Commerce and Industry

was inaugurated in May 1932 in Istanbul in the midst of economic

depression.70 At all Balkan conferences, the unification of the legal

systems of Balkan countries was discussed generally but without any

concrete results, but a permanent commission of Balkan jurists was

named in June 1932.71

Balkan Week was celebrated throughout the region in spring

1931. During the week, lectures, exhibitions, and in particular meet-

ings of special groups were organized promoting the Balkan ideal. This

was an important opening for marketing the Balkan idea to a wider

public. Balkan Week was also celebrated during the following years

but in less prominent ways.72 The Balkan Games represented another

effort to spread Balkan solidarity among larger masses. The first games

were organized during the Athens conference. In October 1931, the

conference took place in Istanbul, but for unknown reasons the Balkan

games were organized at the same time in Sofia, where the national

sports organizations of all the Balkan countries also formed a Balkan

sports federation called the Balkaniad, or the Little Olympiad.73

All in all, cooperation in social, economic, and intellectual sectors

was understood to be a significant element of a league, and the emer-

gence of a Balkan-wide civil society was seen to be essential for peace-

ful development. As a product of several intra-Balkan gatherings, it

can be argued that the original aim of Papanastassiou to create

rapprochement among “educators, clergymen, journalists, writers,

parliamentarians, politicians, and businessmen of the various Balkan


countries”74 was at least in certain terms coming true during the early

years of the 1930s. All spillover effects of new organizations founded

during the early 1930s are difficult to discover, but generally it could

be argued that when low political issues are also examined, the failure

of the conferences does not appear as fatal, but in contrast the overall

balance looks fairly positive.

IN SEARCH OF A BALKAN IDENTITY

All Balkan conferences seriously discussed whether a Balkan

union would require Balkan solidarity, and it was argued that political

disarmament would need to proceed by intellectual disarmament.75

According to the active participants at Balkan conferences, achieving

“une conscience balkanique” was seen to serve the ultimate goal of an

enduring peace, and therefore the prerequisites for what can described

as a loose common Balkan identity were consciously discussed, and a

surprisingly detailed plan was also introduced to create solidarity

instead of hatred and distrust.

Because modern national traditions in the Balkans have been based

on a denial of the unifying Ottoman (and partly Byzantine) legacy,

transcending national boundaries was not an easy task. Even Todorova

writes that there may have “never been a common Balkan identity. At

best, there has been the occasionally romantic, occasionally reluctant

recognition of cultural similarities accumulated over centuries which,

at times, assume the form of a defensive common response to an

inscriptive identity from the outside. One may very carefully speak of

the existence of tentative Balkan identities (in the plural) as part of the

multiple identifications of the separate Balkan national identities.”76

Still, what I argue is that each of these “occasional dreams,” like plans

and visions to build a Balkan union, may represent the voice on the

margins, but they are also a proof of a genuine effort to imagine the

Balkans with common future and thus also with shared identity.

Papanastassiou justified his regional initiative by arguing that “the

destinies of these peoples and their vicissitudes have been similar or

common; they have lived for centuries within the framework of the

same political organization; they have similar habits and ideas and

sufficiently common interests; in a word, they present numerous com-

mon elements which facilitate their union.” Papanastassiou defined the

Balkans by the shared experiences of the past, which have created

common “Balkan culture” but also similar political and economic


interests to be resolved. He relied heavily on the significance of the

Ottoman past, and therefore all the Ottoman successor states were

invited, including Romania and Turkey. In particular, Turkey’s role is

noteworthy: for Papanastassiou, the Balkans was far from being a

community of Christian nations.77

Balkan solidarity and the symbolism of unity were consciously

constructed at the first Balkan conference in particular. The Balkan

flag with six golden stars and six stripes was flown for the duration of

the conference as a symbol of the united Balkans. In the beginning,

the Balkan Hymn of Peace, composed especially for this occasion, was

played for the triumphant peaceful future for the whole Balkans. Pap-

anastassiou opened the conference with brave words about a common

destiny: “The Balkan peoples are and will in the future be masters of

their own destinies and that we shall work so as to develop in this

corner of Europe a new and bright civilization which will illuminate

the world.” Papanastassiou was strengthening Balkan solidarity but

also sending a message to the great powers that a united Balkans

would not be so easily guided and managed by great powers as the

“balkanized” Balkans had been. The closing plenary was held at the

Greek theater in Delphi, which was a seat of the Amphictyonic

League, the “Balkan Federation” of the fourth century B.C.78 The her-

itage of ancient Greece instead of the Byzantine or Ottoman heritage

was thus deliberately used to construct a positive image for a Balkan

League, but curiously this was a heritage not shared by the Slavs and

the Turks, whose ancestors arrived in the Balkans much later.

The second conference in Istanbul used the most sacred places of

the old and lost empire, the royal palaces of Dolma Bachche and Yil-

diz, as venues, but the message was not to re-create the Ottoman

Empire and its legitimacy but merely to possess imperial places and in

a way nationalize them. Nonetheless, the closing session on the fol-

lowing day was moved to the new capital of the Turkish nation-state,

Ankara, and took place in the National Assembly, indicating that the

new nation-states had definitively displaced the old empire. At the

closing session Mustafa Kemal, the Turkish president, delivered an

address in which he spoke of how the shared past unites the Balkans:

The present Balkan states, including Turkey, owe their birth to

the historic event of the gradual displacement of the Ottoman

Empire, finally interred in the tomb of history. That is why the


Balkan nations, possessing a common history, were related for

centuries. If this history presents painful and sorrowful aspects,

all the Balkans share their responsibility for it, while that of Tur-

key has not been less heavy. That is why you are going to erect

on the sentiments … of the past … the solid foundations of fra-

ternity and open vast horizons of union.79

The Ottoman legacy was seen to form a basis for cooperation and

unifying all the successors, but the Balkan cooperation was compre-

hended more or less as therapy for those who shared the same painful

past, but at the same time beyond the political oppression of the past

were more fundamental shared features and characteristics forming a

true basis for Balkan unity and a common Balkan culture also in the

post-Ottoman period.

The emergence of sovereign nation-states and nationalism in gen-

eral were seen as constituting insurmountable political, social, and

intellectual barriers. The Balkan nations were spiritually far from each

other. The Romanian representative Madame Cantacuzino remarked

that Bucharest at that moment was mentally closer to Paris and

Vienna than to Sofia or Istanbul, but this situation was believed to be

changeable.80 In Athens, it was agreed that any form of union or

federation required “intellectual and moral amity, sincerity, and

understanding.” The prevailing intellectual isolation was claimed only

to feed misunderstanding, prejudice, and hatred. To break this isola-

tionism, the exchange of students and professors, the creation of

libraries and professorships to promote Balkanism, rewriting Balkan

history, and organizing sports events were proposed. It was thought

that cooperation would contribute to the emergence of a federation

and ultimately contribute to the pacification of the whole Balkans.81

Obstacles to Balkan solidarity were mapped, and interesting tools

were introduced in discussions, and even new broadcasting channels

in radio and cinema were considered. Instead of mutual hatred and

exclusiveness for close interaction, mutual understanding and tolerance

were called for. In the Balkan meeting of representatives of universi-

ties, a need for exchange of professors and students was a prime mes-

sage, but academic excursions were also supported.82 The great

masses were seen to be indifferent to the Balkan idea, and to awaken

them to appreciate tolerance, mutual respect, and altruism, the role of

schools, churches, armies, press, and nongovernmental organizations

was deemed essential.83


Humanistic disciplines were seen as tools to influence people’s

minds. In particular, education was seen as the nodal point in the con-

struction of Balkan consciousness, and it was pinpointed that instead

of talking of injustice and conflicts, it was necessary to learn to teach

about Balkan peace.84 The translation of Balkan literature was further

seen to be important, but still the most serious question was a need to

rewrite Balkan history. “Hate-breeding stories,” as the existing text-

books were called, demonized neighbors and their leaders, and thus it

was suggested that “the best way to promote intra-Balkan amity

would be to make a bonfire of the existing school-books on Balkan

history.” The dominating national history was comprehended as

narrowly political, and a real Balkan history should be broadly cul-

tural in approach, as the Balkans was understood, despite linguistic

and political differences, to constitute one cultural entity. Narrations

of dynasties and Balkan wars were to be replaced by the history of

Balkan peoples, thereby introducing the “physiology of people instead

of their pathology.”85 This new approach to Balkan history is reminis-

cent of the current emphasis on transnational history. The first step in

rewriting Balkan history was the search and rehabilitation of early

pioneers of Balkan integration, such as John Capo d’Istria, Demetrius

Bikelas, and other nineteenth-century advocates of a Balkan federa-

tion.86 By referring to earlier nineteenth-century visions of Balkan fed-

erations, the movement for a Balkan union was presented as a natural

consequence of the historical continuum. All in all, this revisited

history writing and teaching was seen to serve the cause of peace.

At the Istanbul conference, the idea of establishing an institute of

historical research was launched to undertake research concerning the

common elements and mutual influences of the Balkan peoples in

the past, and the status and role of the institute was discussed in the

following conferences. The major agenda of the institute included a

mission to publish Balkan historical sources, to publish a Balkan his-

torical review, to prepare a Balkan historical manual, to encourage

cooperation among Balkan historians, to rewrite the Balkan school

textbooks on history, and to support scientific research, but also to

popularize history to the masses.87 The agenda of the institute for

rewriting of past and finding seeds for a shared Balkan identity was

seen to be an essential condition for successful Balkan cooperation in

the future, but it was a challenging task.

In the beginning, it seems that every participant accepted the Bal-

kan label as an overall framework and effort to produce positive


meanings for the Balkans, but cracks in the harmony appeared as

cooperation continued. Besides linguistic and political differences,

many contributors wanted to emphasize that at a deeper level there

really was one uniform and particular Balkan culture, but the discus-

sion on the grand lines of a historical handbook reveals friction.

Sources of uniformity were mainly searched from cultural history and

folklore, but in that context the Byzantine and Orthodox legacies were

underlined. Lectures drafting the history handbook introduced a divi-

sion into Illyrian, Hellenic, Roman, Byzantine, Orthodox, and Latin

influences or legacies in Balkan history. What was ignored in these

drafts was obviously the Ottoman or Turkish and Islamic influences,

and a Greek representative, Lascaris, gave a critical note on the

unheeded position of Turks (and Albanians) in Balkan history. How-

ever, there were also contributors who consciously pointed out how

the difference between Christians and Muslims was negligible when

Balkan consciousness is constructed. Nevertheless, many contributors

emphasized the legacy of Orthodoxy and sought European or Latin

influences in their lectures.88

The Balkan wars and multiethnic areas like Macedonia and

Thrace were also sore points in the identity discussion. The Bulgarian

contributors pinpointed the importance of commemorating the victims

of injustice and oppression and how their sacrifice needed a memorial.

This obviously also referred to victims of the Balkan Wars and proofs

that instead of reminiscing on a common culture some still wanted to

commemorate the symbolism associated with hatred. The Bulgarians

also underlined the Slavic roots of federalism and thus diminished the

Hellenic and Turkic elements.89

The location and extension of the Balkans was also a dividing

issue. Others located the Balkans more in between Europe and Asia

and introduced as it as source of something unique, while others

emphasized its European characteristics. For the former, Asia Minor

was an extension of the Balkans, but for the latter, Asian features

were denied.90 Among all, it was the Romanians who felt less com-

fortable with the Balkan label. In autumn 1932, a prominent Roma-

nian historian and former premier, Professor Iorga, declared that

Romania was not a Balkan country but a European power. Iorga,

however, had earlier supported a broader view of history and had

launched the South-East European Studies Institute in Bucharest in

1914. King Carol I had stated before the war in 1910 that Romanians

“belong to the Balkans neither ethnographically, nor geographically,


nor any other way.” Nevertheless, the Romanians wanted to persevere

with Balkan cooperation, and in particular, Foreign Minister Titulescu

emphasized its significance.91 Others did not deny their Balkan loca-

tion in a similar manner, but not everyone agreed about the heritage

on which it was based.

Efforts to cope with the past and rewrite history are as such

remarkable examples of the early awareness of the significance of

collective memory for achieving peace. The idea was not original, as it

was at the same time on the agenda of the committee of the intellec-

tual cooperation of the League of Nations,92 but the Balkans may

have been the first regional effort consciously linking history writing

and peace. Sustainable peace was seen to require the reconciliation of

the national past, or, in other words, national trajectories also needed

to be tamed by softening extreme juxtapositions. By recognizing a

common historical legacy, a huge step was taken far beyond exclusive

nationalism, or at least the liberal-minded Balkan activists were ready

to approach that direction, but this idealism was destroyed by exces-

sive state-nationalism.

What Balkan activists were promoting through these tools was

comprehensive trust in peaceful change that could be achieved and

guaranteed through a Balkan union. This community of trust was

comprehended as a prerequisite for building lasting peace, and the

union would have institutionalized this community. Even if Karl

Deutsch introduced the notion “security community” just a couple of

decades later, the idea was exactly the same: Trust in peaceful change

was seen to be essential for guaranteeing peace. It is noteworthy how

Balkan activists planned to build up this community. Increasing

mutual communication and transaction was seen to be in line with the

original theory of Deutsch as essential conditions for security commu-

nity, but simultaneously Balkan activists seemingly believed that an

even more fundamental condition for security community is shared

identities, values, and meanings, as many constructivist scholars nowa-

days argue.93 Further, they firmly believed that a policy could be

launched to achieve these.

DE-BALKANIZING THE BALKANS

In this article, I have argued that according to the general myth,

the causes of Balkan conflicts are endemic and Balkan nationalism

is inherently aggressive. Therefore, achieving peace in the Balkans is


possible only by taming Balkan nationalism and adopting European

norms, which is seen to require Western supervision. The movement

for the Balkan federation/union introduced an alternative way of com-

prehending Balkan peace. The Kantian approach emphasized that

instead of achieving a peace treaty the ultimate goal should be a last-

ing peace, which is possible only by creating a federation or a union

among Balkan nations. Taming national antagonism was deemed

essential in moving toward the ultimate goal for lasting peace, but

when Westerners treated the Balkan legacy as inherently primordial

and violent, the Balkan activists did not accept this claim, but instead,

moving the Balkans to Europe, liberal-minded Balkan activists tried to

mold the Balkan heritage by emphasizing its transnational connection.

Mutual trust in peaceful change was deemed possible by curbing

extreme nationalism and creating a Balkan-wide civil society. Empha-

sizing a common Balkan heritage, rewriting history, and improving

communication were the core tools introduced by the movement for

Balkan union in the 1930s. More generally, the movement indicates

that de-balkanizing the Balkans may indeed be possible, if difficult. By

de-balkanizing, I refer to the process of redefining the international

subjectivity of the Balkans and the very meaning of the Balkans. The

Balkan activists represented an alternative Balkans to that depicted in

Balkanist narrations emphasizing endemic violence and legitimizing

Western interference in Balkans affairs. They also consciously aimed

to transform what was originally seen as a burden for the Balkans into

a source of a common future.

Seen from the perspective of the post-Yugoslavian wars of seces-

sion, it is obvious that the 1930s cooperation offers an early experi-

ence and in particular a valuable model of seeking a sustainable peace

through a Balkan-wide arrangement. Such a wider contextualization

of peace has long been lacking in the post–cold war Balkans, and

locals as well as the international community have emphasized that

crises can and should be resolved within a limited national context.

The peacebuilders of the twenty-first century have come from outside

of the region, from the West, and have emphasized how the Balkans

need to be civilized, or Europeanized, through intensive monitoring,

mentoring, and advisory procedures.94 Salvation is then seen to be

transported from Europe and assisted by Europeans, and not found in

the Balkan heritage.

In regard to the tamed nationalism that has long been compre-

hended as a prerequisite for peace in the Balkans, the tools to tame


differ in drastic ways if the 1930s and the recent peacebuilding are

compared. Liberal multiculturalism—a Western model—has been seen

as a success story in comparison to the experiences of ethnic conflicts

in postcommunist and postcolonial countries. The diffusion of liberal

multiculturalism has been promoted, but it lacks a clear-cut model for

its implementation.95 The historical understanding of nationalism has

also varied widely in space and over time, but the current understand-

ing of multiculturalism does not recognize this diversity or does not

utilize the importance of transnational history within a larger regional

framework in introducing regional solidarity or consciousness, seen as

essential phases in the pacification of the Balkan future. The European

Union is seen as the only regional union promoting and guaranteeing

peace, and thus more limited regional alternatives have been ignored.

However, this emphasis on a European connection has undermined

the significance of creating a transnational civil society within a regio-

nal framework as a precondition for security community and thus also

for a sustainable peace. A shared historical heritage is obviously con-

troversial in the Balkans, but it also offers a bedrock for this kind of

effort, even if far too often this possibility is denied.

NOTES

1. Robert Joseph Kerner and Harry Nicholas Howard, The Balkan Confer-ences and the Balkan Entente 1930–1835: A Study in the Recent History of theBalkan and Near Eastern Peoples (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1936), 1.

2. M.S. Anderson, The Eastern Question 1774–1923: A Study in Interna-tional Relations (London: Macmillan, 1966).

3. Gary J. Bass, Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008); Alexis Heraclides, “Humanitarian Intervention

in the 19th Century: The Heyday of a Controversial Concept, Global Society,” in

Journal of Interdisciplinary International Relations 26, no. 2 (2012): 227–230,238–240.

4. L.S. Stavrianos, Balkan Federation: A History of the Movement TowardBalkan Unity in Modern Times (Northampton, MA: Smith College History Studies,

vol. XXVII, 1944), 62–65.5. Anderson, The Eastern Question, 360–361.6. Norman J. Padelford, Peace in the Balkans: The Movement Towards Interna-

tional Organization in the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935), vii–viii.7. Kerner and Howard, Balkan Conferences; Stavrianos, Balkan Federation;

Padelford, Peace; T. I. Geshkoff, Balkan Union: A Road to Peace in SoutheasternEurope (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940).

8. Noel Buxton and Leonard Leese, Balkan Problems and European Peace(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1919), 122.


9. Vesna Goldsworthy, “The Last Stop on the Orient Express: The Balkans

and the Politics of British In(ter)vention,” in Balkanologie 3, no. 2 (1999). Avail-able also at http://balkanologie.revues.org/index749.html.

10. Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1997). See also Vesna Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism ofthe Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); David A. Norris, In theWake of the Balkan Myth: Questions of Identity and Modernity (Basingstoke:

Macmillan, 1999).

11. Alina Curticapean, Liminality Matters: Balkanism and Its Edges in Bul-garian Political Cartoons 2004-2009 (Tampere, Finland: Tampere Peace Research

Institute, 2011), 36–3712. Thanasis D. Sfikas, “National Movement and Nation Building in

the Balkans, 1804-1922: Historic Origins, Contemporary Misunderstandings,” inEthnicity and Nationalism in East Central and the Balkans, eds. Sfikas and Christo-

pher Williams (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999) 13–44.13. Goldsworthy, “The Orient Express.”

14. K.E. Fleming, “Orientalism, the Balkans and Balkan Historiography,” inThe American Historical Review 105, no.4 (2000): 1218–1233.

15. Curticapean, Liminality, 37.16. Todorova, Imagining, 123.17. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International

Politics of Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 28.

18. Taras Kuzio, “The Myth of the Civic State: A Critical Survey of Hans

Kohn’s Framework for Understanding Nationalism,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 25,no. 1 (2002): 20–39.

19. Doville Budryte, Taming Nationalism? Political Community Building inthe Post-Soviet Baltic States (Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 1–3; Will Kymlicka

and Magda Opalski, in Can Liberal Pluralism Be Exported? Western Political The-ory and Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2002), 14–22.20. Goldsworthy, “The Orient Express.”21. H. K. Kemal, “Millets and Nationality: The Roots of Incongruity of

Nation and State in the Post-Ottoman Era,” in Christians and Jews in the OttomanEmpire: The Functioning of a Plural Society Vol. 1, eds. B. Braude and B. Lewis

(New York: Holmer & Meier, 1982), 141–169.22. Cathie Carmichael, Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans: Nationalism and the

Destruction of Tradition (London: Routledge, 2002), 109.

23. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay (London: George

Allen, 1917), 128–136.24. Perry Anderson, The New Old World (London and New York: Verso,

2009), 3–46.25. Marko Lehti, A Baltic League as a Construct of the New Europe; Envi-

sioning a Baltic Region and Small State Sovereignty in the Aftermath of the FirstWorld War (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999), 150–157. See also Ruth Henig,

Makers of the Modern World: The League of Nations (New York: Haus Histories,

2010), 7–11.26. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation


27. Daniel Ziblatt, “Rethinking the Origins of Federalism. Puzzle, Theory,

and Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Europe,” in World Politics 57, no. 1(2004): 71.

28. Lehti, Baltic League, 73–85, 137–149, 159–170.29. P.A. Argyropoulo, “Capodistrias. Et la constitution de l’�etat Hellenique

(1827-1832),” in Les Balkans XII: 1 (1940): 1–20. See also Stavrianos, Balkan Fed-eration, 42–43; Bass, Freedom’s Battle, 62–64.

30. A. Andr�ead�es, “Un pr�ecurseur de l’Union Balkanique: Dem�etrius Bik�elas,”

Les Balkans IV, no. 8–9 (1933): 11–31; Stavrianos, Balkan Federation, 146, 150.31. Stavrianos, Balkan Federation, 146–147.32. Stavrianos, Balkan Federation, 150–151; Stavro Skendi, The Albanian

National Awakening 1878-1912 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 314.

33. Stavrianos, Balkan Federation, 186–191, 218–222.34. Anderson, The New Old World, 412; Awiel Roshwald, Ethnic National-

ism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia & the Middle East, 1914-1923(London and New York: Routledge 2001), 186.

35. Tom Gallagher, Outcast Europe: The Balkans, 1789-1989: From theOttomans to Milo�sevi�c (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 104.

36. Geshkoff, Balkan Union, 67.37. Gallagher, Outcast Europe, 85.38. Buxton and Leese, Balkan Problems, 121–124.39. Papanastassiou (1876-1936) was among the leading liberal politicians in

interwar Greece and a fierce opponent of monarchy. Following the Asia Minor

disaster in 1924, Papanastassiou formed a short-lived government that proclaimed arepublic.

40. A. Papanastassiou, “L’Union Balkanique,” Les Balkans I, no. 1 (1930):

2–3; A.P. Papanastassiou, Vers L’Union: Les Conf�erences Balkaniques (Paris: Publi-cations de la Conciliation Internationale, 1934), 3, 46–49. See also Kerner & How-ard, Balkan Conferences, 25–26.

41. Padelford, Peace, 8.42. Anderson, New Old World, 487, 496.43. Papanastassiou, Vers L’Union, 4–5.44. Papanastassiou, Vers L’Union, 46–49. See also Circular Invitation,

Appendix 1, Geshkoff, Balkan Union.45. Papanastassiou, Vers L’Union, 14–17.46. Ibid., 68–70.47. Lehti, Baltic League, passim.

48. Papanastassiou,”Les Accords Greco-Turcs et L’Union Balkanique,” in LesBalkans I, no. 3 (1930): 1–4.

49. “Le Premi�ere Conf�erence Balkanique,” in Les Balkans I, no. 2 (1930):

1–17.50. Kerner and Howard, The Balkan Conferences, 62.51. “Le Premi�ere Conf�erence Balkanique.”52. Padelford, Peace, 39.53. Papanastassiou, Vers L’Union, 74–79, 102–109, 124–133, 182–188. See

also “R�ealisation par �Etapes de L’Union Balkanique,” in Les Balkans I, no. 7(1931): 2; “Avant-project d’un Pacte Balkanique,” in Les Balkans I, no. 7 (1931):


37–45; Papanastassiou, “Vers L’Union Balkanique,” in Les Balkans I, no. 8 (1931):

8–9.54. Papanastassiou, Vers L’Union, 75–77; Papanastassiou, “Vers L’Union

Balkanique,” 4–8.55. “La Cinqui�eme session du conseil de la conferece,” in Les Balkans II,

no. 17–18 (1932): 322–323, 327–328; “Texte de l’avant project d’un pacte balka-nique,” Les Balkans II, no. 24 (1932): 699–701; Papanastassiou, “La troisi�eme

Conference Balkanique” and “R�esolutions de la 3me Conf�erence, Pace Balkanique,”

Le Balkans III, no. 1–2 (1932): 3–9, 172–179; “Comission de rapprochement polit-que,” Les Balkans III, no. 1–2 (1932): 102–104; Papanastassiou, Vers L’Union,124–133. About the League minority system see Matti Jutila, Nationalism Circum-scribed: Transnational Governance of Minority Rights in Post-Cold War Europe(Helsinki: University of Helsinki, 2011), 54–56.

56. Geshkoff, Balkan Union, 99–103; Padelford, Peace, 42, 45.57. Papanastassiou, Vers L’Union, 175–176, “La Session du Conseil de la

Conf�erence Balkanique a Bucarest,” in Les Balkans III, no. 6–7 (1933): 542–550.58. “La quatri�eme Conf�erence Balkanique,” Les Balkans IV, no. 14–15

(1933): 1078–1081.59. “La Modification des Status de la Conf�erence Balkanique,” in Les

Balkans V, no. 3–4 (1934): 352–356; Papanastassiou, “Modifications du Statust dela Conference,” in Les Balkans IV, no. 12–13 (1933): 686–690.

60. Geshkoff, Balkan Union, 201–218.61. “Communicatons A�erriennes interbalkaniques”, “La poste a�erienne balka-

nique”, L’�am�elioration des relations postales interbalkaniques” and “Le d�eveloppe-ment des communications t�el�egraphiques et t�el�ephoniques interbalkaniques,” in LesBalkans I, no. 12 (1931): 71–75.

62. “Sur l’Union Mon�etaire Balkanique,” in Les Balkans II, no. 13–14(1931): 39–40.

63. Papanastassiou, Vers L’Union, 79–85; “L’Union douani�ere en tant que

solution du probl�eme de l’union balkanique,” in Les Balkans I, no. 8 (1931): 15–18; “Raccordements des Chemins de Fer Balkaniques,” in Les Balkans I, no. 12(1931): 69–71. See also Geshkoff, Balkan Union, 149–150, 164–165; Padelford,

Peace, 16–20.64. La libert�e du travail et le circulation,” in Les Balkans II, no. 13–14

(1931): 58–61, “Comission des Communications,” in Les Balkans IV, no. 14–15(1933): 1037–1039; Geshkoff, Balkan Union, 154–155.

65. Avra S. Th�eodoropoulo, “La facteur feminin dans L’Union balkanique,”in

Les Balkans I, no. 3 (1930): 15–17 and Les Balkans I, no. 5 (1931): 9–11; Marie

Minetta Thanopoulo, “La reunion feminine de Belgrade,” in Les Balkans I, no. 9(1931): 43–45; “Les D�el�egu�ees F�eminines �a la Deuxi�eme Conf�erence Balkanique,”

in Les Balkans II, no. 13–14 (1931): 29; “Rapports de la Comission de Politique so-

ciale,” in Les Balkans III, no. 1–2 (1932): 132–135.66. “La Conf�erence Universitaire Balkanique de Sofia,” Les Balkans II,

no. 22 (1932): 549–552; “La Conf�erence de la Presse Balkanique,” Les Balkans I,

no. 4 (1931):27; “M�emoire sur les rapports de presse interbalkaniques,” Les Bal-kans IV, no. 10 (1933): 390–392; Geshkoff, Balkan Union, 93, 98–99,168; Padel-ford, Peace, 25.


67. “La r�eunion �a Sofia pour les communications le tourismer et l’aviation,”

in Les Balkans IV, no. 8–9 (1933): 116–121; Kerner and Howard, Balkan Confer-ences, 48, Geshkoff, Balkan Union, 93, 165.

68. “L’Entente Sanitaire Balkanique,” in Les Balkans 1, no. 12 (1931): 76–78; “La Conf�ed�eration m�edicale balkanique,” in Les Balkans II, no. 21 (1932):

405–406 and II, no. 23 (1932): 698–699; Geshkoff, Balkan Union, 98.69. “Le Semaines Balkaniques,”in Les Balkans IV, no. 8–9 (1933): 113–122;

Geshkoff, Balkan Union, 93, 98–99, 168.70. “Project de Status de la Chambre de Commerce Interbalkanique,” Les

Balkans I, no. 12 (1931): 65–69; “La Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie

Interbalkanique,” Les Balkans II, no. 13–14 (1931): 45 and III, no. 1–2 (1932):

273–277; Padelford, Peace, 40–41.71. “De l’unification du droit priv�e des Pays Bakaniques” and “Les possibili-

ties et les moyens d’unification du droit prive�e des pays balkaniques,” Les BalkansI, no. 12 (1931): 48–50, 51–57; “La Semaine juridique Balkanique de Belgrade,”

Les Balkans II, no. 22(1932): 546–549; Geshkoff, Balkan Union, 98.72. Papanastassiou, “Vers L’Union Balkanique,” 1–4; “Le semaine balka-

nique,” Les Balkans I, no. 8 (1931): 37–40.73. Padelford, Peace, 25, 39; Geshkoff, Balkan Union, 93, 167–168. About

how sport is supporting the Balkan Union, in E. Candas, “L’Athl�etisme et l’UnionBalkaninique,” in Les Balkans I, no. 9 (1931): 19–21.

74. Geshkoff, Balkan Union, 79–80.75. Georges Cantacuzene, “La Rapprochment intellectuel des peuples balka-

niques,” Les Balkans I, no. 1 (1930), 25–27.76. Maria Todorova, “Introduction: Learning Memory, Remembering Iden-

tity,” in Balkan Identities: Nation and Memory, ed. M. Todorova (New York: New

York University Press, 2004), 9–10.77. Papanastassiou, Vers L’Union, 23–27.78. Kerner and Howard, Balkan Conferences, 30, 39–40.79. “Texte du discours pronounce par S. E. Gazi Moustafa K�emal,” Les

Balkans II, no. 13–14 (1931): 1. (English translation by Kerner and Howard,Balkan Conferences, 60)

80. “La Troisi�eme conference Balkanique, Comission de rapprochement intel-

lectual,” Les Balkans III, no. 1–2 (1932): 124–132.81. Cantacuzene, “Le Rapprochement”; Janco Sakasoff, “Les problemes de la

paix balkanique,” Les Balkans I, no. 4 (1931): 11–14.82. “La Conference Universitaire Balkanique de Sofia,” Les Balkans II, no.

22 (1932): 549–550.83. Luben Danailov, “Mentalit�e balkanique,” Les Balkans III, no. 1–2

(1932): 14–16.84. Sakasoff, “Les problemes.”

85. Geshkoff, Balkan Union, 172–176. See also Cantacuzene, “Le Rapproche-

ment”; Fazil Ahmet Bey, “Sur le rapprochement intellectual,” Les Balkans II,no. 13–14 (1931): 34–39; “Rapport de la Commission de rapprochement intellec-

tual,” Les Balkans II no. 13–14 (1931): 117–120; “Rapport sur l’Institut de recher-

ches historiques,” Les Balkans II, no. 24 (1932): 689–692.86. Argyropoulo, “Capodistrias”; Andr�ead�es, “Bik�elas.”


87. “Rapport sur l’Institut de recherches historiques.”

88. Ibid.; “Elaboration d’un manuel d’histoire de la civilisation des peuplesbalkanique,” Les Balkans IV, no. 10 (1933): 371–379; M. Lascaris, “Le Manuels

d’Histoire,” Les Balkans IV, no. 14–15 (1933): 1130–1134.89. Sakasoff, “Les problemes”; M.D. Micheff, “Des difficult�es qui s’opposent

�a la d�etente morale et au rapprochement des Etats Balkaniques,” Les Balkans I,no. 12 (1931): 24–28.

90. A Souliotis-Nicolaidis, “La base et la raison d’une Conf�ed�eration Balka-

nique,” Les Balkans II, no. 13–14 (1931), 25–29; “Essai d’une psychologie despeuples balkaniques,” Les Balkans IV, no. 8–9 (1933): 1–10.

91. Padelford, Peace, 43, 62–63; Gallagher, Outcast Europe, 11, 56. See also

Adroan Cioroianu, “The Impossible Escape: Romanians and the Balkans,” in Balkanas Metaphor. Between Globalization and Fragmentation, eds. Dusan I. Beljic andObrad Savuc (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 209–234.

92. Geshkoff, Balkan Union, 175.93. Christopher Browning and Pertti Joenniemi, “From Fatricide to Security

Community: Re-theorising Difference in the Constitution of Nordic Peace,” in Jour-nal International Relations and Development, July 20, 2012 (doi:10.1057/jird.2012.

19).

94. David Chandler, Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-building (Londonand Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2006).

95. Kymlicka, Multicultural Odysseys, 61–66.


the quest for solidarity and tamed nationalism: envisioning sustainable peace in the balkans

Documents