Even today, the country in Europe with the largest population of internally displaced persons (IDP) is Serbia. More than a decade after the end of the wars in former Yugoslavia, more than 200,000 people remain in limbo in Serbia. Many ethnic Serbs fled – or were expelled from — Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo during those conflicts… Continue reading Finding a Normal Path in Serbia
Slovenia and Bulgaria are, respectively, the best-case scenario and the cautionary example of “transition” states. Both have struggled to transform communist-era economic and political structures. Both are now members of the European Union and NATO. But their economic and political realities place them practically on different planets. Slovenia has a per capita GDP of $29,000… Continue reading A Tale of Two Reforms
It’s been 20 years since Czechoslovakia split apart. The divorce took place without violence and without a referendum. The two leaders – Vaclav Klaus from the Czech side and Vladimir Meciar from the Slovak side – decided along with their respective political advisors that it was best for their countries to part ways. This was… Continue reading The Velvet Divorce
It took two decades, but the Erased finally got their day in court. And the court ruled in their favor. On June 26, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights upheld a lower court ruling that Slovenia had violated the European Convention on Human Rights in its treatment of the roughly 25,000 people stripped of… Continue reading Restoring the Erased
One of the most remarkable and disturbing aspects of the Erasure in Slovenia was that it took nearly a decade before it became a public issue. After the country became independent, roughly 1 percent of the population lost their residency in the country practically overnight. Thousands were deported. Many were sent to detention centers. And… Continue reading Erased and Forgotten
You are born in a country. You are a citizen of that country, and you don’t give it much thought. It’s like the air that you breathe. And then the country disappears. Everything that you took for granted has vanished. The ground beneath your feet has shifted irreversibly. Your national identity is up for grabs.… Continue reading Becoming Erased
In 1968, protests erupted around the world: Chicago, Mexico City, Paris, Warsaw, Tokyo. The protestors, most of them part of a new generation untouched by World War II, demanded an end to war, dictatorships, economic follies, and the culture of death promoted by sclerotic leaders in the East, the West, the North and the South.… Continue reading High Times in Yugoslavia
In Bratislava, as the Velvet Revolution unfolded in November 1989, musicians played a key role in the Czechoslovak opposition movement. Yes, they participated in the demonstrations and spoke out against the communist authorities. But their main contribution was more prosaic: amps. The dissident community, which had been silenced for decades, needed to get their voices… Continue reading Rock the Regime
It was breathtaking. We emerged from the forest on the outskirts of Moscow and saw, looming above the tall grass, an enormous ruined palace. It was 1985, and I was studying Russian at the Pushkin Institute. We heard a rumor about a grand edifice, the unfinished palace of Catherine the Great, that was moldering not… Continue reading You Don’t Know Squat
The worlds of rock music and academia are not entirely separate. Noam Chomsky has appeared on stage with Rage Against the Machine. Poet Paul Muldoon and fellow Princeton professors play gigs as the Wayside Shrines. And, of course, plenty of students opt for courses that deconstruct Madonna, probe the historical impact of the Beatles, and… Continue reading Punks and Professors