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Title: Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (Vintage Departures) by Robert D. Kaplan ISBN: 0679749810 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: March, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.82
Rating: 3
Summary: Cynical Assessment of a Troubled Region
Comment: While Balkan Ghosts certainly provides a lot of factual information for the reader, it ultimately fails to offer a creative assessment of the region, its troubles, and its future. One can learn much of the more macabre aspects of Balkan history by reading Kaplan's book, but not a real understanding of the "whys" behind the grisly detail. For example, while Kaplan often describes religious sites, personalities and historical events, he fails to analyze the critical role that religious faith, and denomination (in some cases), has played in the formation of national cultures and identity in the Balkans, and the impact that this has on the current crisis. Because if this, the book becomes a reportage that treats religion as ethnicity without examining how or why this is the case, and why this situation perseveres to this day. The book is definitely tainted by its perspective of a cynical Western outsider, without an insider's view of the Balkan societies, and what makes them tick. The result is a curious melange of Western triumphalism, cynicism and pessimism. Undoubtedly, despite its flaws, the book is an entertaining and enjoyable read, and it does provide a lot of information for those who are new to the region. A more penetrating, and less superficial, analysis would have been more satisfying, however, in light of the almost daily coverage of events in the Balkans on the evening news.
Rating: 4
Summary: Readable
Comment: "Oppressed" nations turning oppressors when opportunities arise. The absence of direct rule by a great power has created trouble spots such as the Middle East, Caucasus, and the Balkans. The book does a pretty good job in providing an insight on the national psychologies of most Balkan nations. After reading the book the impression I got is that the desire for ethnic and religious dominance over others to be the main cause for the regional instability in the Balkans. Serbs vs Croats, Bulgarians vs Serbs, Greeks vs Bulgarians, Romanians vs. Hungarians, Orthdox vs Catholic, Orthodox + Catholic vs Muslims, etc. (you name it)
The author is disproportionately focused on the subject of Jews of the Balkans where they have always constituted a very small percent of the population. The Gypsies on the other hand are rarely mentioned.
I recommend this book. (Currently there are not many alternatives on the subject anyway)
Rating: 2
Summary: terribly opinionated, to the point of being almost fictional
Comment: As a Romanian living in the USA, who has traveled extensively through Eastern Europe both before and after 1989, this book has left me perplexed. On one hand, it does a good job at depicting a complex situation with fractured societies trying to modernize and come to grips with their past deeds and misfortunes. On the other hand, Kaplan is much too frequently given to overdramatization. Local nuances escape him; for example, in Romanian 'drac' means as much trickster as it means devil. It is not necessarily a bad term. You can call someone a drac and this may mean you admire that person for being devious, while Kaplan would have this name conjure a mystical Dracula as a sign of the Other Europe which cannot ever be enlightened and saved from itself.
As such, for example, Ceausescu was as much admired as he was feared and hated; he tricked them (and us) all. In fact, I believe it's this multiplicity, which is a characteristic of the whole region, which puzzles Kaplan and which he never quite gets; after all this is South Eastern Europe, where Latins meet and mingle with Slavs, various breeds of Southerners and Levantines. You get treachery, you get backstabbing, you get shifting alliances, you get hot blood and high emotions, and also you get a (often times very black) dose of humor which somehow makes things very light. I believe this is the case with other leaders of the region, who managed to get to the top and stay there by a combination of cunning, deceit, ruthlessness, and other Byzantine skills, by taking advantage of a largely rural, unsophisticated, and especially careless population.
Besides, some of the things he says (this may be in a different book though) are downright silly; he notices how no one in a crowd is wearing a watch or how people in a certain place don't have coffee for breakfast. Gee, my American co-workers have Coke for breakfast and I never took this as a sign of a past or future tragedy.
The area indeed has quite a few identity problems to solve yet. Poverty is widespread, and maybe not so much poverty as gaping discrepancies between the few haves and many have nots; an independent legal system is not fully enforced yet (politics get in the way); various Mafias run rampant; there is a lingering nationalism and even disillusionment with the West, which often times has approached the region with glaring lack of understanding of the local cultural sensitivities. However, after the bloody hell that was Yugoslavia, no other major conflicts have emerged, and I believe that slowly (sometimes VERY slowly), more trustworthy relationships between the countries, communities, and ethnic groups, are developing. There is a significant young population which is Westernized, professional, urbane BUT has a strong attachment to the local values. All these paint a moderately optimistic picture, where in a foreseeable future the area will have left most of its 'troubles' behind and have become a conflict-free part of Europe. This is not the ever cursed land Kaplan would have you believe it is.
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Title: Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus by Robert D. Kaplan ISBN: 0375705767 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 23 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War (Vintage) by Robert D. Kaplan ISBN: 037570759X Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 13 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia, a Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy by Robert Kaplan ISBN: 0679751238 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: February, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Robert D. Kaplan ISBN: 1400030250 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 13 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos by Robert D. Kaplan ISBN: 0375505636 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 26 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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