Anti-War Initiatives and the Un-Making of Civic Identities in the Former Yugoslav Republics

This paper describes the emergence of anti-war initiatives in the former Yugoslavia against the background of the official nationalism of Communist elites and their post-1990 successors. The author argues that anti-war activism in the disintegrating state was a mobilization of the most articulate segment of a widespread, all-Yugoslav, urban, cosmopolitan and genuinely non-ethnonationalistic cultural identity. One of the reasons behind its easy suppression by the official rhetoric of ethnic homogeneity is its purely cultural stance and lack of experience in alternative forms of political organization. Dominant approaches to ethno-nationalism in former Yugoslavia are criticised for essentializing ethnic identities, and contrasted with some interpretive approaches that analyze the structural preconditions of ethno-nationalism as top-to-bottom projects of the ex-Communist middle-to-high ranking functionaries in search of legitimacy and forced to create a 'democratic electorate.'