"Welcome to Cazin" - Europe, Ukraine and Bosnia.
A few months ago, I attended a lecture by an intellectual friend, Hynek Pallas, whose parents were dissidents and activists in Czechoslovakia with the legendary fighter for democracy and human rights, Vaclav Havel.
When the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) started 30 years ago, a war that turned most Bosnians and Herzegovinians into losers and poor people, Havel asked for military intervention to protect basic human rights and security Havel also did this during the war in Kosovo, when the war-criminal regime and the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic tried to do with the Albanians what he failed to do in BiH.
During his lecture, Pallas discussed "the return of the nineties" regarding rhetoric, feelings, and symbolism related to the European situation. Similar behaviors currently exist regarding the war in Ukraine, based on ideas of identification, religion and nation. For example, there is still a debate in the Czech Republic about the NATO pact, politicians who advocate rhetoric and ideas like Putin and Milošević, and the spread of disinformation and propaganda, especially by the Russian government.
Since the end of February 2022, more people and mostly soldiers, have died in Ukraine compared to 1991-2001, when over 150,000 people died during the wars in the territories of the former Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. At the same time, there are remarkable similarities but also differences between BiH and Ukraine regarding the general situation in the world.
Despite the war, our world is more peaceful and richer today than 30 years ago. The situation in Ukraine is that most Ukrainians support the accession to the NATO pact, the European Union, and the further development of democracy. This is why Ukraine is quite different from, for example, Tuđman's Croatia 1991-1997, whose government was against the EU and democratic values, advocated the development of an authoritarian society and nationalist politics within the country, as well as against BiH.
While intellectual and political discussions in style about the return of the nineties, history, and geopolitics, I am trying to understand the complications and pluralism of identity on a personal level. Our behaviors are often irrational, impossible, and illogical in what we want and desire. We often do not understand our social world and act through pure emotions and feelings regarding everything that can lead to buying candy in a story to committing genocide.
Situations such as war also bring out the worst behaviors in humans, and humans often create and promote wars through mythological, romanticized, and primitive narratives and behaviors. According to much research about human nature and psychology, we are very tribalist, collectivist, and authoritarian in our basics.
For example, I have colleagues and acquaintances in Ukraine who find it challenging to live with family members who are still praising and glorifying Lenin, Stalin, and even Putin before the invasion. Their situation reminds me of bad relations, moments, and experiences with my grandfather from the Serbian community, who praised Milosevic and spent most of his life hating "the West"“
Today, I understand things better through human, moral, and social psychology studies regarding how our behaviors and values depend on the ideas, environment, and experiences we receive during childhood. I remember, for example, that one of my grandfather's first jobs as a teacher was to go to Cazin and how crazy it sounds nowadays that someone receives a gun for self-defense in addition to his work instructions.
At the time when in the early 1950s BiH, the majority of the population was more or less illiterate and without sufficient education, my grandfather arrived in Cazin as a teacher and a representative of the new government that did not tell the truth about the "rebellion" and when it was necessary to "keep quiet" about it.
During the first days, he found shy and nervous students who told him that they were told "not to talk to the Vlach" (a hateful term used against someone who is a Serb). Despite all the unpleasant moments, he stayed at Cazin to at least teach the students basic things like reading, writing, and math. And despite everything that happened during the 1940s and 1990s, my grandfather did not mind that he was from Bosnia, even though we did not have the same ideas about Bosnia and Herzegovina and what it should become.
When he left Cazin after about a year and went to the station, he found almost the entire village coming to him saying, "Teacher, we have come to say goodbye". That memory and grandfather's story would always delight me and mean more beautiful moments between us.
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