Methodological comparison

The differences between the two are notable, if one goes back to the original checklist:

1. Durability 2. Factual accuracy

3. Group-centeredness and “ownership”

4. Flexibility 5. Level of usage 6. Media of transmission

171

1. Durability: Although both cases are examples of how the past is evoked and seen as relevant to the present, they seem to operate in two distinct, though related, modalities.

The Kosovo legacy, at least after it could become institutionalised with the emergence of a Serbian polity in the 19^th Century, is more like a case of linear continuity.

If one looks at Munich and the way it has been evoked, there is a difference. Munich, as seen by the British in 1956, or by Madeline Albright in 1999, is not so much a continuity as a recurrence of the past, the process of which Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon remains the classic diagnosis. Marx noted the asymmetry of past and present comparisons (at least of those that he mentions) the latter is farce compared to the original, which is tragedy. This asymmetry had been identified as an essential aspect of authority, which is one of the keywords of this thesis. Authority deriving from a past event is that which grants that event its ability to legitimise later actions. This legitimacy seeking task is very accurately described by Marx as a process of “translating back into the language of the original”.

The two modalities are distinct – and this distinction is an important aspect of the comparative agenda of the thesis – but they do have a common functionality, using the past to legitimise present actions.

The Kosovo Myth has existed for over 600 years. It had for a longer period a covert existence and later an overt one. The first existence we know little of, but it was sustained by a vibrant folk culture. On the second overt lifetime we can say much more, as we are able to chart its influence from the early 19^th Century; in its overt, institutionalized lifetime, it has been utilised for almost 200 years now. Munich by contrast is a much younger narrative; but it has had a busy lifetime and one fears it will live long.

2. Factual accuracy: There is no way of escaping the fact that this is deeply problematic.

For historians, factual accuracy is fundamental to the discipline: gaining as accurate an account of the past is the primary task. But political myths are often a disconcerting mixture of the empirically-provable and the empirically-dubious, but this latter seems to matter little to its target audience. It is this audience, through its tellings and re-tellings of a narrative, that often project their concerns and onto the past event. It was argued above that Gallipoli in Australian experience has gone through several rounds of re-versioning; a

172

Vietnam-era anti-war tale, an anti-British tale of betrayal and slaughter of the innocents, even most recently an attempt to make the original commitment sound like an contemporary UN-style peace keeping mission. None of these later readings can be squared with the facts that Australians volunteered to fight in British colours.

Considerably more dubious claims have been made about other events; and this is certainly the case with Kosovo. The Kosovo Maiden did not exist, Brankovic was not a traitor, and the elaborate metaphysical narrative – Tzar Lazar’s choice – that was grafted onto the historical event could only be believed – at the most literal of levels – by the most religious literalist. But many of the most salient aspects of the battle, the death of Lazar, the killing of Murat, the huge slaughter are more than enough to make the story deeply compelling. All these aspects – even the factual dubious – add the authority to the narrative, and to ignore the aspects that are dubious (because they too are sources of political legitimacy) is to be, in Burke’s worrying phrase; “wise historically, a fool in practice.”

How does this compare with Munich? It has been argued above the Munich’s factual accuracy is probably more contestable that might be habitually assumed; the simplistic image of Chamberlain, and he alone, carried out the policy with neither political nor popular support, is a triumph of hindsight bias. But to date that has remained the enduring image, despite the openness of the appeasement debate.

3. Ownership: The ownership of the Kosovo Myth has mostly been Serbian – although it has been noted that at times of Serbian success and leadership, such as the gaining of independence and especially at the time of the First Balkan War, other South Slavs were willing to share in the praising of Vidovdan, for example, the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović made plans for an elaborate Vidovdan monument, and also depicted some figures from the Kosovo myth, the Kosovo Maiden and Miloš Obilić.⁴¹⁶ It had been noted too that rival, external groups and outright enemies were willing to use Vidovdan; the Ustaša regime as a pretext to begin massacres of Serbs in the NHD – supposedly there was

416 He was also a committed Yugoslav and member of the Yugoslav Committee (although he later refused invitations to live in post-war socialist Yugoslavia). However, his plans for a Vidovdan monument date from 1907, and his sculpture of the Kosovo Maiden dates from 1908.

173

going to be a Serbian rebellion starting June 28^th, this was fictitious. In the post-war period, Stalin chose the same date to expel Yugoslavia from Cominform.

Among Serbs, of numerous political creeds and both religious and anti-religious beliefs, the ownership rights of the Kosovo legacy has been furiously contested.

Here there is a large contrast with Munich.

Munich is not explicitly owned by anyone. In this, it differs from national myths, which are usually centered on one particular group; most typically and self-defined as a culture or nation. Because of this, in no way is Munich a calendar event; and it is not geographically grounded. No ceremonies of rituals evoke it, and beyond newspaper headlines, no institutions transfer it (Gallipoli is commemorated in numerous ways noted above, there is even a sporting event between the Turkish, New Zealand and Australian handball teams called the Gallipoli Tri-Nations). Munich is deeply political and its

“message”, its loud urgent “Never Again!” has seemingly universal relevance, and has been utilised in many different political cultures and contexts. This message is, of course, a subjective interpretation.

The many users of Munich quoted in this thesis have been mostly from the political right, or at least, centerists like Tony Blair and Madeline Albright who are committed to liberal interventionism. It is a point of inconvenience that appeasement – in the context of 1930s Britain – was a policy carried out by a Conservative Prime Minister (albeit of a National Government, though an overwhelmingly Conservative one). It would be an even stronger right wing trope if appeasement had been a policy of the left. It was not however. In this sense Munich has evaded the right/left dichotomy to a considerable extent. Indeed, among the first voices of the “Guilty Men School” were left-wingers such as Michael Foot (who was one of the three anonymous authors of the 1940 pamphlet “Guilty Men”). Some right-wing spokesmen, such as Ronald Reagan did try to link appeasement with liberal weakness (as he perceived it) but this requires some historical amnesia. But as is the case of political myths, facts often fall into second place.

4. Flexibility: The range of political creeds argue the formidable flexibility of the Kosovo Myth; one can hardly imagine two more diametrical worldviews than those of the Bosnian rebels and Patriarch Gavrilo, yet both were able to draw upon Kosovo, in the case of the

174

former, as a modernising, revolutionary creed, in the later a deeply spiritual commitment.

This, of course, ignores the degrees of exploitation of the myth, some trivialising by merely commercialising images, although even some of this commercialisation could become sinister, as in the case of the Obilić football club, which became owned by the warlord Arkan.

By contrast Munich had shown little flexibility. So far (although this could change, and could have been otherwise) it had been used a very direct cautionary tale, “history” as an urgent lesson, that must be applied now to avoid past disasters from recurring. This alarmism has been very instrumental politically; this instrumentality cannot really be challenged, even if one does not agree with any of the cases of its usage tabulated above.

5. Level of Usage: The levels at which Kosovo has functioned are layered and complex. In calendar terms Vidovdan was ritualised into becoming a framework through which later experiences were refracted as Halpern noted; the dead of all wars were remembered on Vidovdan each year. The number of hugely important events that were timed to take place on Vidovdan must make it date almost with parallel. Even following the fateful day in 1914; 1919, 1921, 1948, 1989, 2000 all continued to make it a day of huge resonance and gravitas.

In spatial/geographic terms it was deeply problematic. “Kosovo” was both an event and the site of that event; the actual site was mostly alienated from the subscribers to the myth;

at least in the popular imagination, it was lost, longed for, eventually regained, only to be recently lost again.

Little of this applies to Munich. It is not commemorated in any physical or spatial sense, it has not generated any rituals, and it is not a calendar event. Its main level of usage had been political speech and political discourse, which leads us to the final point of comparison.

6. Media of Transmission: The story of the Battle of Kosovo Polje was firstly preserved by Church text, but – as was the case everywhere in the Middle Ages – very few Serbs could read. However there was the vibrant tradition of oral poetry and song, and for centuries Serbian peasants shared and transmitted the hagiography of the battle via their singers and guslars. As was argued above, when a Serbian state emerged, first autonomous

175

later independent in the 19^th Century, Kosovo could be institutionalised in an overt way through the agencies and institutions of the emerging state. At the cultural level – not that it should be divided too sharply from the political level – it became the subject of plays, visual arts and literary debate. The medieval Serbian Empire, which popularly if not strictly was brought to an end by the battle of 1389, became a model for the emerging nation – as was witnessed by the Garašanin’s Nacertanje (discussed above). That the Kosovo legacy and its heroes, martyrs (and sometimes traitors) became a rallying cry in times of conflict is well attested; indeed, the Kosovo legacy (however inadvertently) inspired an huge conflict in 1914 that went some way to destroying the young nation, certainly killing many of the men whose mothers had greeted them as “avengers of Kosovo”.

Munich, as stated, is largely confined to the realms of political speech; the political speech of power holders, often facing a crisis or, – and this is significant – often causing a crisis.