Balkans

Balkan peninsula with northwest borderSoča-Krka-Sava

TheBalkansis the historic and geographic name used to describe a region of southeasternEurope.

The region has a combined area of 550000sqkm and an approximate population of 55 million people. The archaicGreekname for theBalkan Peninsulais the Peninsula ofHaemus(Χερσόνησος του Αίμου,Chersónisos tou Aímou). The region takes its name from theBalkan Mountainswhich run through the centre ofBulgariainto easternSerbia.

Quotes

• A gay peninsula filled with sprightly people who ate peppered food, drank strongliquors,wore flamboyant clothes, loved and murdered easily and had a splendid talent for startingwars".
  • A Long Row of Candlesby C. J. Sulzberger

• The next great European warwill come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.
  • Attributed toOtto von BismarkbyAlbert Ballin,as quoted by Joachim Remak inThe Origins of World War I(1967), p. 118

• In the Balkans, too, there were multiplecivil warsalong ethnic, religious and ideological lines [duringWorld War II].Yugoslaviahad fallen apart in the wake of theGerman invasion of April 1941.Seizing the moment, theCroatianleaderAnte Pavelichad pledged to side withHitler.In the ensuing chaos, hisUstasaswaged a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against theirSerbianneighbours in Croatia andBosnia-Hercegovina,torturing and killing hundreds of thousands of them. The populations of entire villages were packed intotheir churchesand burned to death, or were transported to be murdered atcampslikeJasenovac.Serbian CetniksandPartisansrepaid these crimes in kind. Of the million or so people who died in Yugoslavia during the war, most were killed by other Yugoslavs. This included nearly all of Bosnia's 14,000Jews.InGreecethe German occupation was the cue for bitter conflict. There, as in Yugoslavia, a three-cornered war raged - between theforeign invadersandnationalists,but also between nationalists and indigenousCommunists.WhenBulgariaannexed southern Dobruja fromRomania,tens of thousands of people were expelled from their homes on either side of the new border.
  • Niall Ferguson,The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West(2006), pp. 456-457

• It is very important to send a new signal ofconfidenceandhopethat this (Montenegro,Serbia,Albania,North Macedonia,Bosnia and HerzegovinaandKosovo) accession (into theEuropean Union) process is wanted by the EU (European Union) with great seriousness, and that it also has a realistic chance if everyone makes an effort.
  • Olaf Scholz,cited in: "Scholz backs giving chance to Western Balkans on EU membership"inAljazeera,10 June 2022.

• In general, I am an opponent ofPan-Slavism.I do not think that we should be doing anything either in the Balkans or with theSlavs.But the West has now tipped the balance very heavily againstSerbia,as if she is to blame for everything. But it's not theSerbsorCroatsorBosnianswho are guilty. InYugoslaviathe problems began for the same reason as in theU.S.S.R.Thecommunists--they hadTito,we hadLeninandStalin--charted out arbitrary, ethnically nonsensical and historically unjustifiable internal administrative boundaries, and for years moved inhabitants from one region to another. And when--also in the period of a few days--Yugoslavia began to fall apart, the leading powers of the West, with inexplicable haste and irresponsibility, rushed to recognize these states within their artificial borders. Therefore, forthe exhausting, bloody warwhich is today convulsing the unfortunate peoples of the former Yugoslavia, the leaders of theWestern powersmust share the blame with Tito. Now, attempting to somehow correct the very problem they helped to create, they essentially repeat the well-known maxim ofMetternich[the backward-lookingHapsburgdiplomat who dominated the post-NapoleonicCongress of Viennain the early 19th century] for theHoly Alliance:"Intervention for the sake of making others healthy." Today the slogan is "Intervention for the sake of humanism."It is an ironic similarity! But intervention is a very dangerous thing. It is not so easy for the great powers to control the world.
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,Interview With Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the New Russia and Ukraine (May 1994),by Paul Klebnikov, in the (9 May 1994), issue ofForbesmagazine
• Rumania,Serbia,andMontenegroshould be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines ofallegianceandnationality;and international guarantees of the political and economicindependenceand territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.
  • Woodrow Wilson,14 Points,1918