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Reorienting the Western Gaze and the Question of Otherness:
A Review Essay on Jolanta Sujecka’s The Balkan Jews and the Minority Issue in South-Eastern Europe (Warszawa: Wydawca, 2020)

Despite being published in 2020, The Balkan Jews and the Minority Issue in South-Eastern Europe remains an extremely timely book during the current unsettling events in the Middle East. After the horror of the Oct. 7 events and the Israeli retaliation in Gaza, many citizens in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo have almost unprecedentedly taken to the streets in solidarity with Palestinians. In other capitals and towns of Southeast Europe, local Muslims along with marginal Arab diaspora and leftist organisations have called forth the recognition of the Palestinian state. Meanwhile, state authorities and most political representatives have firmly stood in support of Israel.

Just as security experts and pundits warned about the potential effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine on Southeast Europe, so scholars have paid attention to the reverberations of the war between Israel and Iran’s proxies in the same region. In this regard, the collected volumeedited by Jolanta Sujeckacan provide sobering perspectives as different chapters explore the most salient historical events of Balkan Jews in relation to the aspirations and repercussions of the establishment of Israel in 1948. By addressing the tragedy of the Holocaust and its aftermaths in Southeast Europe, some contributors debunk the myths of the heroic and benevolent narratives over the “Jewish question”. Likewise, others re-examine the history of Balkan Jewish merchants and trade makers, political activists and royal soldiers, or simply “others”, whose agency has been at times undermined and often forgotten, albeit not fully erased from the linguistic, political, and sociocultural fabric of Southeast Europe.

This collected volume has anticipated a wide range of scholarly studies dedicated to Balkan Jews – among others, Nadège Ragaru’s monograph (2023) on Bulgarian Jews during the interwar period, or Katerina Králová’s study (2025) regarding the adverse circumstances of the homecoming of Greek Jews after the Holocaust. The bulk of the volume is dedicated to the constant attempt to shine bright the history of Balkan Jews so that day-present minority issues in the region can be more easily grasped. As a whole, the volume shows how Balkan Jews came to experience, compromise, and at times grapple with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of the nation-states and nationalist policies toward minority groups, as well as the interwar period and socialist takeover until the arrival of democracy in 1989. Most chapters problematize and challenge the idea of Balkan Jews being a monolithic and homogenous community. In fact, the different case studies not only recollect a history of persecution and extermination but also that of successful trade makers, polyglots, religious and secular figures, partisans fighting the Nazi occupiers in Yugoslavia, Zionists, and internationalists. They all serve to counter the ambiguous and mendacious official national narratives still imbued with the legacies of the socialist knowledge production and its memory culture.

This review does not follow the book’s chronological order, nor does it discuss each chapter in depth. Rather, it seeks to advance a comparative approach to an array of similarities and dissonances that, at different levels, have either popularised and exploited the memory and history of Balkan Jews or consigned the latter to oblivion.

Throughout the volume, the Ottoman period takes a central place. Different authors describe how the religious salience and cultural heritage of Sephardi, Ashkenazi, and Romaniote Jews differed from one another across the Ottoman Empire. The Jewish Millet was recognised, becoming the centre of a network of urban hubs from which successful trade relations were established and carried out by Jewish brokers and merchants. From the Southeast European coastline to Western Anatolia, the cities of Thessaloniki, Dürres, Valona, Split, and Dubrovnik, as well as Sarajevo, Skopje, and Belgrade, and others beyond the Balkan Peninsula, such as Izmir, Aleppo, and Baghdad, constituted the geography of the Jewish entrepreneurial success. This entrepreneurial network shows the decentralised organisation of the Ottoman Empire and the high level of autonomy given to the same Jewish millet. Despite this, Dragi Ǵorgiev notes how all Balkan Jews were nonetheless subjected to the deshvirne – the blood tax – and a wealth of restrictions imposed among non-Muslim and non-Turkish millets for neutralising any potential threat against the central authority of the Sultan. Balkan Jews had to grapple with the Ottoman Turkish and Muslim hegemony, often compromising on their religious identity to minimise tax liability and avoid military obligations. The phenomena of Islamisation were not uncommon among Balkan Jews.

Thessaloniki was undoubtedly recognised as the “Jerusalem of the Balkans” prior to becoming the apple of discord among nations in the wake of the demise of the Ottoman administration. When Western scouts and travellers began to visit the Balkans, local Jews were orientalised along with other populaces in the region. It should be pointed out that the “Western gaze” was already replicated within the Ottoman Empire in other forms of otherisation. For instance, Sephardi Jews were seen as “people of the West” because of the different linguistic and cultural baggage that they themselves had brought into the Balkans after being expelled from the Iberian Peninsula. Agnieszka August-Zarębska focuses on the Ladino heritage, otherwise known as the Sephardi Jewish language. The use of Ladino facilitated a diglossia among the Balkan Sephardi Jews, who were able to integrate into the different non-Jewish administrations without refraining from nurturing their Jewish uniqueness through the translation of Biblical texts and the canonisation of other religious sources written in Hebrew (p. 186). Tellingly, August-Zarębska notes how the Ladino was gradually brought to the brink of extinction since the same language and its orthography had been constantly exposed to the consequences of geopolitical disorders, such as the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Kemal Atatürk’s Turkish language reform, the rise of Balkan states and the parallel rebirth of Latin and Cyrillic notations and texts in the “first Yugoslavia” and Bulgaria, respectively. In this regard, other contributors to the volume do not convey a passive image of Balkan Jews, but they aptly discuss how Zionism and Hebrew came to play a paramount role in the formulation and dissemination of political aspirations and philosophy for establishing a Jewish state. If the revival of Hebrew as a lingua franca came to downgrade other minor Jewish languages (p. 211), the revival of Ladino studies during the 1960s and the 1970s among the US and Israeli Jewish diaspora reinforced ironically the image of a “Western” or “diaspora language” having no roots in Europe and Southeast Europe in particular.  

August-Zarębska’s chapter can be understood here as the introduction to a larger section of the volume dedicated to the exploration of age-old tropes of orientalism ascribed to Balkan Jews. Wojciech Sajkowski employs the gaze of French travelogues to investigate the reasons why Balkan Jews were often unnoticed despite being recognised as an important community since the time of the Ottoman Empire. The image of the “Jewish other” contributes to placing Balkan Jews outside the region but having its history inside it. A similar position has been historically given to Balkan Muslims (Karić et al. 2024) and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Southeast Europe. To reorient this geospatial dissonance, Bojan Aleksov begins by investigating the scholarship of Holocaust studies in tandem with that of Balkan Jewish refugees and survivors after WWII. When contextualized within European studies scholarship, the thorny question of belonging indicates that the historical presence of minority groups in Southeast Europe has often been depicted as a great danger (see Bobako 2017, Said 2019:60-71). Aleksov here aptly argues that the Western gaze has historically compromised the knowledge production over the history of Balkan Jews, positioning the latter into a “neither Western nor Eastern” predicament (p.331). When recent studies tend to resituate Jewish history more firmly in its European context and move beyond the dichotomy of “Jewish” vs. “European” history (or “German”, “French”, “Serbian”, “Greek”, etc. — and thus implicitly “non-Jewish”), they reinforce the idea that the Jewish population belongs neither to the Balkans nor to the Middle East. The Western gaze at Balkan Jews reduces the latter to a community of survivors and refugees fleeing Europe in the direction of Israel, while at the same time anti-Zionist (and at times anti-Semitic) organisations, some Arab nations, and Palestinians often perceive Jews from “the East” as former European refugees who have colonised, robbed and settled in Palestine. In other words, it seems that Balkan Jews belong to nowhere, constantly scattered between the West and the East and burdened by the question of belonging. It also follows that the Balkans are considered a transit area in the history of Balkan Jews in the same way the region today takes the shape of a “corridor” for the thousands of refugees and migrants escaping from the Middle East and Asia.

Although the historical role of Jews was tokenised during socialism and exploited by Eastern bloc’s regimes to commemorate the victory over Nazism, Jews themselves had managed to avoid further cultural exploitation and stigmatisation. By self-identifying as Yugoslavs, for instance, Jewishness remained somewhat protected beneath the ideological parapet of the socialist “unity and brotherhood”. If anything, the geopolitical turmoil in the Middle East after the establishment of Israel radically changed the public position of socialist citizens of Jewish origin. The policies of scapegoating and harsh expulsion were orchestrated in order to instrumentally associate Jews with Israel and pursue vested interests in the Mediterranean region. In the wake of the 6-Day War, the hostile reactions of the socialist states toward Israel forced Jewish communities to leave the Balkan heartland or comply passively with the new geopolitical order.

This troubling predicament has been taken into consideration by Jonna Rock and Maja Savić-Bajanić, who investigate the long-lasting legacies of the anti-Israeli feelings in today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina on a legal and political ground. Both chapters begin with the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the reorganisation of the state through the Dayton Agreement in 1995. Within the new institutional landscape, Bosnian Jews fell under the category of “others” as the community could not fit the three constituent national groups – e.g., Serbs, Croats, and Muslims (p.392). The return of Islam as a national identifier caused Bosnian Jews to face anti-Semitic discourse as the geopolitical upheavals of the Israeli-Palestinian/Arab dispute reverberated into a country also in search of justice and peace. Furthermore, the collected volume also shines a light on a wealth of under-researched postulates of solidarities and interfaith cooperation that Jews and Muslims had nurtured and enacted in other dire times in Southeast Europe. These chapters speak volumes of the need to decolonise the study of the Balkans as Europe’s historical powder keg. Among others, Katarzyna Taczyńska explores a gendered historiography of Balkan Jews through the lens of personal diaries and memoirs written by Jewish female partisans during WWII. Her analysis rebuts the stereotypical image of enmity by looking at the terrible events of WWII also as a period of emancipatory social discourse and transformation (p. 265). Taczyńska focuses on the lived experiences of Ervin Salcberger, an Ashkenazi Jew born in Pale, Bosnia, and Lea Salcberger, another Jewish woman with Sephardic roots from Sarajevo. The first occupied a high position in a unit designated for Bosnian Muslims as chief of staff of the 16th Muslim Brigade, while the second was a rebellious woman engaged in guerrilla resistance movements. Rather than fuelling Yugo-nostalgia through the memory of female comradeship and two politically engaged women, Taczyńska contributes to expanding the scholarship of untapped interfaith and interethnic solidarity that other scholars have highlighted, such as that of the 1941 Resolution of Sarajevo Muslims condemning the persecution of Serbs by Ustaše and Muslim coreligionists of the SS Handschar (Sindbaek 2012, among others). In an interestingly gendered twist, the typically ascribed picture of a female caregiver goes to a Jewish man, Zoran Mandelbaum, the chairman of the Jewish community during the siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s. In Konstanty Gebert’s chapter, the Bosnian capital emerges out of the ruins of war as a city of tolerance, whereby the story of Mr. Mandelbaum embodies Sarajevo’s age-old tradition of tolerance and coexistence – a tradition that brought Mr. Mandelbaum to provide “kosher aid” to his Muslim komšije, the neighbour, who gratefully replied out loud: “Oh, he’s Jewish, you know. Jews do such things” (p.277).

It goes without saying that interfaith coexistence cannot be taken for granted or romanticised. Throughout the volume, the rise of anti-Semitism and the persistence of anti-Jewish sentiment within the Balkans are explained as phenomena driven by religious prejudices, conspiracy theories, or ignorance in general. As Aleksov argues (p. 330), harking back to the genealogy of anti-Jewish feelings in the Balkans serves as a stepping stone to address broader questions of contemporary anti-Semitism. The “myth of the rich Jews” resembles present-day discursive tropes of anti-Semitism, albeit such a stereotype began to circulate since the time of the Ottoman suzerainty of the Republic of Dubrovnik. In fact, successful Jewish merchants and trade makers had established a modern vector of economic transitions whose potential reached the cities of Venice and Ancona, as well as the whole Adriatic eastern coast and Thessaloniki. Benedetto Littorio describes such a success story of the local Jews in Dubrovnik, seemingly proving the “myth of the rich Jews” true. However, other chapters – such as those authored by Sajkowski and Ognyanova – describe the bulk of the Balkan Jewish communities as poor, backward, and ignorant (p.52), or usually belonging to an urban middle class (p. 92). Other two chapters – written by Dragi Ǵorgiev and Bojan Mitrović – respectively, identify in the Christian theory of the Jewish deicide and ignorance among Serbian rural society (p. 73) the main features of a hostile sentiment against Jews that in the twentieth century became of urban relevance, especially in Bulgaria.

In the case of the latter, Irina Ognyanova’s and Yorgos Christidis’s chapters deserve special attention. Both authors argue that anti-Semitic fashion was imported by Western nations, and reinforced by Bulgaria’s geopolitical orientation during the interwar period. After WWII, Bulgaria’s national myth constructed around the idea of having been the only nation that “saved its own Jews” was barely challenged. If anything, this heroic narrative was exploited after the Communist takeover, surviving until the radical changes of 1989. As mentioned above, Nadège Ragaru’s recent investigation (2023) and other previous research (Crampton 2005:167, and Ntetorakis, 2022:73-79, among others) debunk such a myth by shedding light on the terrible savagery in the Bulgarian-occupied regions of Macedonia and Thrace. There, the local Jewish population was interned in transit camps before being deported to Nazi-occupied Poland. What Ognyanova interprets as a pragmatic decision undertaken by the Tsardom of Bulgaria to compromise with the Axis allies was, in truth, motivated by the nationalist aspirations of repairing the historical wrong that the Treaty of San Stefano and the Treaty of Berlin in 1878 had officialised by ceasing Bulgaria from the regions of Macedonia and Thrace. Within these, a large degree of complicity with the Nazi extermination policy continues to be tabooed and denied by nationalist views circulating within today’s Bulgarian academia. Moreover, questions of political and moral responsibility remain undressed. As I argue elsewhere (2024:125), Bulgaria’s national rhetoric of innocence over the “Jewish question” is imbued with a positivist understanding of history that neutralises critical approaches to the study of the Holocaust and fascism in the country. Bulgaria’s national myth systematically taboos research on the predicament of Jews in the Bulgarian-occupied lands during the interwar period. Ognyanova here aligns her historical analysis with the latest statements of the Bulgarian Academy of Science (Vatchkov et al. 2022a and 2022b), which deny the penetration of Fascism into the highest power hierarchies during the interwar period. Perhaps, Christidis’s chapter provides an alternative perspective on the subject matter, focusing on the reaction of Shalom – Bulgaria’s main Jewish organization – to the so-called 2019 Terzin Declaration on the “Holocaust Era Assets and Related Issues”. Despite being non-legally binding, the declaration aimed at compensating the Jewish community for the Holocaust-related confiscations (p. 406-407). Although a similar declaration should have also been extended to the Turkish and Muslim victims of the ethnic cleansing of 1989 (Kamussela 2019), Christidis argues that even Shalom reiterates the heroic discourse over the “Bulgarian rescue of Jews” to avoid any further political exploitation of historical events which could have otherwise jeopardised the position of the same organisation with the institutional landscape (p. 407).

A certain “musoxenia” – meaning, “the fear of strangers” – resonated over time within Southeast Europe. Agata Grzybowska-Wiatrak employs this paradigm to explore the historical reluctance of Greeks to mix with other “ethnoi” – namely, other people. Similar to the Bulgarian context, Pédro Bádenes de la Peña also looks at Greece’s silence over the extermination of local Jews during WWII. The thorny question of collaboration with Nazis, the indifference of most Greek (Christian, white) society toward the Holocaust, and the absence of a proper, public debate on a national scale, were historically conditioned by nationalist voices and ideological positions. To a certain extent, Leszek Kołakowski’s assumption (2012:85) about the different use of the memory of the Holocaust in the West and socialist countries, is proven untrue. Although post-1945 Greece experienced a bloody civil war due to the power vacuum left by the Axis collapse, the “Jewish question” remained subaltern to national interests and ideological manipulations in the post-1945 Greek-Israeli relations. The latter were firstly interrupted by Greece to have an upper hand over Greek minorities in Arab countries, and only later mutually restored to seek vested interests within the Western orbit and the European Union in particular.

A comparative look at Bulgaria’s and Greece’s “shared guilt” suggests that a “patriotic focus” was a common feature of most European nations to sanitise and idealise their nationhood and defend it at all costs. Two chapters authored by Amikam Nachmani and Andrea Bourotis address exactly the issue of Hellenisation – that is, the age-old predicament of adaptation and compromises that Greek Jews enacted to respond to processes of minoritisation that nonetheless forced them at times to leave Greece or eventually endure ethnic cleansing. Hellenisation takes back to the local history of Jews in Thessaloniki, a city that best explains the reasons for which the “Jewish question” remains a subject of multilayer controversies in historiography. In Bouroutis’s contribution, Thessaloniki is rightly considered the geopolitical centre of competition between competitive nationalisms and post-Ottoman aspirations of emerging Balkan states in the nineteenth century. Throughout, Jews were hit the most by the Great Fire of 1917 – a tragic event that devastated two-thirds of the city, including the Jewish quarter. Jews had to pay the highest price after phenomena of gentrification and inconvenient local policies that de facto displaced them firstly on the edge of the city and later outside Thessaloniki proper. In retrospect, Bouroutis’s chapter intercepts a certain anti-Jewish attitude that did not cease to grow rampantly since then. For instance, Thessaloniki Municipality’s decision to allow the local open market on Saturdays – the Sabbath for Jews – reveals how the important and historical Jewish community was not considered in the plans of the reconstruction of the urban fabric and its local economy.

In these dire times, however, Zionism began making inroads and opening a new horizon of opportunities for all Jews worldwide. Răzvan Theodorescu’s short chapter, which opens the collected volume, focuses on the figure of Theodor Herzl, the Sephardic Jew whose idea of establishing a Jewish state reached the Balkan Jews quite easily. Among others, Serbia and Albania were the countries that most resonated with Herzl’s final objective of establishing the state of Israel. This project did not follow a coherent line of action at first, nor did it have a final destination on the map. Alike Palestine, Uganda, and Argentina, Albania was also designated to let Herzl’s dream come true. Through the experience of Leo Elton, a British journalist, Shaban Sinani contends in his contribution that the idea of establishing a Jewish state in Albania was a truly diplomatic project rather than a simple speculation verbalised due to the lack of anti-Jewish feelings and religious intolerance in the country. As the Beinstein-Konitza Agreement confirms, Albania could have easily secured a “place under the sun” to Jewish escapees from the widespread Nazi course of action in Europe. On the other hand, the “first Yugoslavia” of the Prince of Serbia, Aleksandar Karađorđević, was always sensitive to the Zionist demands due to the loyal attitudes of the local Jews to his kingdom (p.60-65). As explained by Pawel Michalak, the “first Yugoslavia” was one of the first countries to support and sign the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Moreover, the so-called “Vesnić Letter” – a document which was named after the author, the Serbian diplomat Milenco Radomar Vesnić – was written in support of the resurrection of a Jewish state in Palestine (p. 80). The most symbolic sign of Karađorđević’s support of Zionism was the act of planting a forest in Palestine in 1935 and naming it “the Mountain of King Aleksandar”.

Konstant Gebert tries to explain such a decades-long friendship between Serbs and Jews by claiming that both people had endured the same sort of violence, fought against the same enemies, and experienced genocide (p. 278). Gebert’s parallelism echoes, in short, what Milorad Dodik firmly stated in a pernicious interview with The Jerusalem Post (Beck 2024). What Gebert overlooks here is also a certain continuum of nationalist and colonial policies that Serbs and radical Zionists have unleashed in Southeast Europe and Palestinian territories, respectively. If it is true that the history of both Zionism and nationalism in Southeast Europe cannot be reduced to one of colonialism and violence, it is also true that ethno-nationalist and racist ideas within certain Zionist circles (e.g., Ze’ev Jabotinsky faction) were also inspired by the Balkan nation liberations during the Balkan Wars and the revival of the same nations against “national foreigners”. Needless to say, the Holocaust prompted Balkan Jewish survivors to align more and more with Zionism and the idea of migrating to Israel. However, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews were divided by the dilemma of pursuing a (post-)integration path in the would-be Israel or protecting their status of “Serbs of the Moses faith” (in Serb., Srbi Mojsijeve vere, p. 174) recognised since the time of “first Yugoslavia”. As Krinka Vidaković-Petrov further explains, a homogeneous community of Balkan Jews did not exist even during the interwar period when many Jews embraced socialism and fought the Nazi occupiers in Yugoslavia, while others embraced Zionism in the attempt to overcome exactly the different positions within the Jewish communities.

Romania and Moldovia remain marginal to the historiography of Balkan Jews due to the small communities that have inhabited the two countries. In a similar context to Serbia, Emanuela Constantini notices that Romanian Jews and the first Zionists were close to the Kingdom of Prince Ion Cuza and his successor, Hohenzallen Prince Karl. This relation did not impede anti-Jewish feelings from shifting gears within the country but also conversely spread in Moldova and contributed to the outflow of the Jews in spite of a certain revival of the Jewish culture.

Francesco Trupia, PhD, Adjunct at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland

References

Beck, E. (2024) Republika Srpska President Dodik to ‘Post’: Coexistence with Muslims is impossible – exclusive, The Jerusalem Post. Available from: https://www.jpost.com/international/article-806165

Bobako, M. (2018). The Palestinian Knot: The ‘New Anti-Semitism’, Islamophobia and the Question of Postcolonial Europe. Theory, Culture & Society, 35(3), 99-120. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276417708859

Crampton, R. (2005) A Concise History of Bulgaria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kamusella, T. (2019) Ethnic Cleansing during the Cold War. The Forgotten 1989 Expulsion of Turks from Communist Bulgaria. London/New York: Routledge.

Karić, D., Rexhepi P., Buljina, H. (2023) Feel-good Orientalism and the Question of Dignity, Maydan. Islamic Thought. Available from: https://themaydan.com/2023/02/feel-good-orientalism-and-the-question-of-dignity/

Králová, K. (2025) Homecoming. Holocaust Survivors and Greece, 1941–46. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Kolakowski, L. (2012) Is God Happy? Selected Essays. London: Penguin.

Ntetorakis, A. (2022) “Victims, Bystanders, Collaborators. Refugees from the Bulgarian Occupation Zone in Thessaloniki during the Holocaust” in: Voß, C., Ferhadbegović, S., Králová, K. (eds.) Memory Cultures in Southeast Europe since 1945. Berlin: Peter Lang.

Ragaru, N. (2023) Bulgaria, the Jews, and the Holocaust. On the Origins of a Heroic Narrative. New York: University of Rochester Press.

Said, E. (2019) Orientalism. London: Penguin Classics.

Sindbaek, T. (2012) Usable History? Representations of Difficult Pasts in Yugoslavia – 1945 and 2002. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press

Trupia, F. (2024) “Whose Heroes? The Paradox of Non-Commemoration of the Interwar Period in Bulgaria and Ukraine”, in: Gajda, K. (Ed.) Non-Commemoration of the Heritage in Eastern Europe, Berlin: Peter Lang, 109-130.

Vatchkov, D., Poppetrov, N., Zhivkov, S. et al. (2022a) “Was There a Fascist Regime in Bulgaria? Statement of Bulgarian Historians.” Papers of BAS. Humanities and Social Sciences. 9 (2), 111–117.

Vatchkov, D., Stoyanovich, P., Chukova, R. et al. (2022b) “Bulgaria’s Policy on the ‘Jewish question’ during World War II.” Papers of BAS. Humanities and Social Sciences, 9 (2), 118–126.

Karin Roginer Hofmeister is a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer in Holocaust Studies at the Institute of International Studies at Charles University in Prague and coordinator of the Malach Centre for Visual History. She obtained her PhD from the Institute of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in Prague. Her dissertation, “The Serbian Orthodox Church’s Engagement in Memory Politics of Post-2000 Serbia: Memory of Suffering and Resistance,” was completed on September 15, 2022, from which the book “Remembering Suffering and Resistance: Memory Politics and the Serbian Orthodox Church” is derived.

Hofmeister argues that Eastern Christianity and its ecclesiastic institutions have been under-researched in general social sciences and memory studies. Despite their significant role in public memory production in predominantly Orthodox societies, churches are often treated as symbols and imagery rather than a source of mnemonic action. The complexity of Orthodox Churches, established through the millennial past of Christianity and the posterity of eschatology, makes it difficult to study multiple actors or objects. Studying Orthodox Churches as active participants in memory politics could encourage comparative research across the Orthodox world and other religious traditions and their ecclesiastic institutions. Hofmeister suggests that this approach may also be applied more universally, situating similarly complex public actors in various processes of societal reproduction.

The book is structured into four parts (Dynamics Between Religion and Memory in Late Modernity; The SPC Within the Mnemonic Fields in Post-2000 Serbia; Memory of Suffering; Memory of Resistance), each with many subheadings, as well as an introduction and conclusion. Hofmeister’s study explores the Serbian Orthodox Church’s (further: SPC) role in public mnemonic communication in post-2000 Serbia, focusing on the historical disjuncture of World War II memory. The Church’s activities, particularly concerning civilian suffering and resistance, are situated within the multitier terrains of memory-making in post-2000 Serbia. The Church’s public engagement has taken liturgical and non-liturgical forms, often merging into a hybridized fusion. The convergence between the SPC and Serbian political elites allows the Church to play a more prominent role in commemorative practices and memory work.

The analysis period after 2000 is divided into two phases when it comes to the development of the public sphere and the role of the SPC. These phases are characterised by a series of events that shaped and were influenced by Serbia’s changing socio-political landscape in the modern era. The research period began with the fall of Slobodan Milošević in October 2000. The second phase, post-2000, marked a shift in power in both the secular and religious domains. This decade witnessed the election of a new patriarch in 2010 and the establishment of the Serbian Progressive Party in 2012. This period concluded in 2019, signifying a new era of symphonic relations between the church and the state.

The author combines multi-sited ethnography, reconstructive and context-generating contemporary history, and close disciplines like sociology, memory, and religious studies to study the SPC’s mnemonic engagement and interplay in memory-making. Hofmeister relies mainly on a mixture of primary sources, such as documents, media representations, interviews, and participant observation, to gain intimate knowledge of complex processes in time and space. She points out that the SPC significantly increased its media presence after 2000. The official positions of the SPC are expressed in documents, statements, and decisions of the Holy Synod of Bishops, the Holy Synod of Bishops, and the Serbian Patriarch. Orthodox media, print and digital, also provide useful insight into the complex picture of SPC strategies in interpreting the past and presenting historical narratives in the public arena. The author regularly followed the Facebook accounts and YouTube channels of the SPC, its administrative units, and relevant specific church bodies, such as the Jasenovac committee, as a complementary but useful primary source. Karin Hofmeister notes that she had difficulty reaching the major church actors who drive the mnemonic activity within the church due to the church’s historic reservedness, the inaccessibility of high-ranking hierarchs, and the lesser clergy’s restricted autonomy. She was, however, able to interview two church officials participating in the relevant mnemonic processes, as well as additional actors with whom they had research interests. She also spoke with several scholars and members of non-church mnemonic groups who were actively involved in the generation of memories from WWII after 2000.

The book uses postmodern social theories and religious sociology to investigate the connection between religion and ecclesiastical institutions in late modernity. Hofmeister relies on Slavica Jakelić who introduced the term “collectivistic religion,” to analyse Serbian Orthodox religious traditions and their impact on the SPC’s public realm. Karin Hofmeister claims that Serbian Orthodoxy meets the most significant features of the collectivistic form of religious affiliation and its late-modern public display. It has been understood more as an assigned attribute of collective identity than as a frame of individual spirituality manifested through observance and personal participation in the liturgical practices and doctrinal knowledge of Orthodoxy. It also remains highly institutionalized, making the SPC a vital and active public actor, mediating the emotional commitment to an imagined ethno-religious community and thereby moderating the adverse psychological effects triggered by a high level of instability in fluid societal realities. The author also employs Habermasian theory to define the realm of public interaction and spiritual discussion, exploring the concepts of identity, communal memory, and story as subjects of public mnemonic interaction and reproduction. The author integrates memory studies to synthesise the significant correlation between religion, ecclesiastic institutions, and memory, focusing on Danièle Hervieu-Léger’s concept of religion as a chain of memory. The book tries to uncover various layers of the study topic and provide ethnographically detailed examples to illuminate the research problem.

Chapter I presents a historical background of Serbia and the SPC, as well as a thorough examination of religion. Hofmeister contends that the SPC is a public organization with substantial physical and symbolic capital that represents the interests of a national community. However, it excludes the public from discussions about shared societal issues inside the church, state authorities, and other groups. This does not lessen the SPC’s public presence, which grows as it interacts with the media. Instead, the SPC employs this infrastructure to shape its public image and pursue certain narratives, especially in pseudo-public forums where actual discourse is an illusion. As a result, the church seldom participates in critical discussion capsules unless armed by transnational actors.

The author analyses mnemonic fields using post-socialist, post-conflict, and post-secular frames to understand how the SPC uses them to reshape World War II public memory. Hofmeister uses the typology of Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik to examine the characteristics of a prominent mnemonic actor, a “mnemonic warrior,” and analyses the SPC’s mnemonic work, focusing on liturgical remembrance and ethnographic examples. The book explores the SPC as a collective force in forming group identity, rather than just a spiritual guide. It examines the SPC’s role in commemorating civilian casualties and resistance during World War II, focusing on key memorial sites like Jasenovac, Staro Sajmište, Jajinci, and Ravna Gora. The author emphasizes the church’s role as a keeper of memories and the idea of frames. Analytically, Hofmeister differentiates between the SPC’s liturgical remembrance and its broader mnemonic activities. Each chapter is divided into three sections: liturgical remembrance, non-liturgical remembrance, and ethnographically detailed examples of the SPC’s practices in memorializing Staro Sajmište and the memorial complex at Ravna Gora. She uses interdisciplinary scholarly works and fieldwork to address aspects of World War II memory in post-2000 Serbia. The book also examines the SPC’s interactions with other mnemonic players in the Serbian mnemonic scene at different stages of memory creation. The author discusses the SPC’s mnemonic focus on the suffering of Serbian civilians during World War II, particularly in the Independent State of Croatia (ISC). Post-2000, the SPC expanded its focus to include Jewish and Roma victims and became involved in the memorialization of Staro Sajmište, the ultimate site of the Holocaust in occupied Serbia. Post-2000 remembrance of World War II resistance highlights heroic victimhood, with the Serbian royalist armed forces, known as the Chetniks or Ravna Gora movement, portrayed as heroes defending Orthodox Christian virtues against fascists and communists. Since 2000, the Church has actively participated in revising World War II resistance, portraying the Chetniks as victims of post-war retributive violence by Yugoslav Communists. The SPC’s activities regarding the Ravna Gora memorial complex are scrutinized as a symbol of revisionist memory production in Serbia.

The SPC has been actively promoting a post-2000 mnemonic agenda, focusing on the suffering of civilians during World War II. It has explored various methods of engaging with memory, including research, education, museum exhibits, and media representation. The SPC has initiated national projects to include Serbian victims in transnational memory culture. The SPC’s interest in commemorating the Holocaust is understandable and justifiable to both national and transnational audiences, creating unity and continuity over time.

Since 2000, Serbia has aimed to rewrite World War II resistance as a major mnemonic goal, but the divisive nature of the topic in the former Yugoslav space has made it difficult to penetrate transnational mnemonic platforms. The mnemonic field is highly fragmented, with inconsistencies, incompleteness, semi-officiality of action, and spatio-temporal discontinuities. The SPC has capitalized on the clericalization of death and promoted liturgical remembrance as reconciliation among the dead. However, the SPC has not developed a centralized and institutionalized platform of mnemonic action beyond the liturgical plane of remembrance. Most activities have remained individualized and take place in a semi-official zone.

Hofmeister sees the Church’s remembrance work as a perpetual regeneration of Serbia’s ethno-religious legacy. The SPC has protected the Serbian community’s existence, and its ecclesiastics have acted as bridges between the past and the present. The re-emergence of religion and religious institutions in the public arena following the collapse of state socialism has been strongly related to the desire to re-establish and validate the lineage destabilized by ontological uncertainty, as well as to fill the utopic space left vacant by the failure of communist ideology. The SPC has carried and reshaped the lineage’s memory beyond the community of religion, encompassing the group defined primarily in ethnoreligious terms. Since 2000, the SPC’s mnemonic participation has taken numerous forms. The liturgical form of remembering is the essence of religious memory, with the space for liturgical practices expanding with the construction of memorial churches and sacral buildings.

The author focused on the efforts of Slavonian Bishop Jovan (Ćulibrk), whose diocese is located in the Republic of Croatia. In her opinion, he was a crucial figure in the development of recollections of suffering during the Second World War in Serbia after 2000. He handled several positions, including research, memorial design, and representing Serbia in the International Holocaust Memorial Association. He adeptly transitioned between liturgical and extra-liturgical practice and participated in public performances at the Genocide Victims Museum. Regrettably, numerous inquiries remain unresolved about Bishop Jovan despite the considerable role he plays in the mnemonic endeavour. His eparchy is situated in Croatia, a country with distinctive remembrance approaches compared to the SPC; the specifics of these disparities are regrettably undocumented. Recognizing the SPC’s authority over its dioceses in the former Yugoslav region—now comprising multiple independent states—highlights the imperative for the SPC to engage with the historical memory of World War II and its relevance within these nations. Consequently, ascertaining the position of Bishop Jovan in the Republic of Croatia and understanding the dynamics of his connections within the SPC is fundamental. It is noteworthy that Bishop Jovan, being just one among the SOC’s bishops, does not independently dictate decisions, which are instead determined at a higher echelon. A more comprehensive analysis of the diverse memories across former Yugoslavia may afford valuable insights into the regional political framework within which the SPC operates.

Hofmeister’s analysis reveals that the SPC has a significant mnemonic influence beyond religious memory, thanks to historical connections between Orthodox churches and state institutions. However, due to increased reliance on state authorities, the SPC has lost much of its autonomy, resulting in a higher authority in public discourse compared to non-state mnemonic actors. The Church has gained support from conservatives and ethno-nationalists, increasing its public visibility. The SPC has also taken a firm stance against liberal and left-leaning mnemonic actors, particularly in the period following Milošević’s rule. However, the SPC has adopted a more nuanced approach, seeking to improve its public image as an ethno-nationalist warrior and becoming a credible advocate for locally relevant mnemonic issues. By leveraging its authority as a custodian of tradition and continuity, the SPC has unified fragmented memory politics related to civilian suffering and resistance during World War II.

The book is well organized with a strong conceptual and theoretical foundation, supported by an extensive and impressive collection of references (239–265). In addition to her clear and direct style, Hofmeister’s writing is characterized by academic precision. The book by Hofmeister enhances South-eastern European collective memory research and the SPC’s role in Serbian society. It explores religious history, public sphere reflections, late modernism, mnemonic actors in Serbian historical narratives, and identity politics. While more balanced than some recent books on SPC,[1] this book still has certain limitations.

In a wider context, we could consider examining the mnemonic practices of various churches in the region, such as the Catholic Church in Croatia and Slovenia, the Islamic community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and other Orthodox churches in Eastern Europe. How have religious communities in other post-socialist (especially post-Yugoslav) societies either aligned with or contested dominant historical narratives? Is the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) particularly influential in shaping memories compared to the Catholic Church or the Islamic community in neighbouring countries? Is the SPC an exception in this respect, or does it adhere to a pattern? What is the situation in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Russia?

The Yugoslav state had a carefully planned system for commemorating the Second World War, in which political and ideological opponents of the government were completely excluded. One such opponent was Nikolaj Velimirović, who died in exile without any intention of returning to communist Yugoslavia. The writer does not mention Bishop Nikolaj’s imprisonment by the Germans during the war or the longstanding doubts about his authorship of the book Words to the Serbian People through the Dungeon Window. [2] When foreign authors write about the SPC, they primarily rely on John Byford’s and Predrag Ilić’s works [3] without extensively referring to more recent research. [4] According to Hofmeister, Velimirović’s ideas were sidelined in socialist Yugoslavia but became popular again in the 1980s. However, she does not mention that during that period, the regime started to portray him as an anti-Semite, a state enemy, and a close ally of Dimitrije Ljotić and the right-wing movement Zbor due to his increasing popularity in conservative circles. Of course, there was a strong basis for that portrayal. But Nikolaj Velimirović is a more complex figure and cannot be reduced to just those elements. It remains a fact that the patriarch of the SPC, Gavrilo Dožić, and Bishop Nikolaj were among the leading figures of the March 27, 1941 coup against the Tripartite Pact and that both of them spent most of the war in captivity, including a short time in the Dachau camp. The former Yugoslav regime and the SPC today exaggerate and distort memories of the Second World War. It is important to present a more balanced perspective and make comparisons based on as many different pieces of information as possible.

Radmila Radić, PhD, Retired Principal Research Fellow, Institute for Recent History of Serbia

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[1] Radmila Radić. “The Serbian Orthodox Church in Western Historiography: Maria Falina, Religion and Politics in Interwar Yugoslavia: Serbian Nationalism and East Orthodox Christianity, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). Tokovi istorije, 3/2023 DOI https://doi.org/10.31212/tokovi.2023.3.rad.279-296

[2] Srećko Petrović. “Is Nicholai Velimirovich the author of the book Words to the Serbian People Trough the Dungeon Window?” Philotheos 20, no. 2 (2020): 260–303; Rastko Lompar. Dimitrije Ljotić– učitelj ili farisej. Zbor, hrišćanstvo i verske zajednice 1935–1945. (Beograd: Catena Mundi, 2021); Vladimir Cvetković. “Nationalism”, “Fascism” and “Anti-Semitism” of Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović.” In: Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović: Old Controversies in Historical and Theological Context, Vladimir Cvetković and Dragan Bakić, eds. 211-254 (Belgrade: Institute for Balkan Studies, Los Angeles: St. Sebastian Press, 2022).

[3] Jovan Byford. Potiskivanje i poricanje antisemitizma: Sećanje na vladiku Nikolaja Velimirovića u savremenoj srpskoj pravoslavnoj kulturi. (Beograd: Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji, 2005); Jovan Byford. Denial and Repression of Antisemitism. (New York: Budapest: CEU Press, 2008); Predrag Ilić. Srpska Pravoslavna Crkva i tajna Dahaua: mit i istina o zatočeništvu patrijarha Gavrila i episkopa Nikolaja u koncentracionom logoru Dahau. (Belgrade: Predrag Ilić, 2006).

[4] Radmila Radić. “Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović as an ʻEnemy of the Peopleʼ.” In: Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović: Old Controversies in Historical and Theological Context, Vladimir Cvetković and Dragan Bakić, eds. 255-292 (Belgrade: Institute for Balkan Studies, Los Angeles: St. Sebastian Press, 2022).

From Attila Bárány’s foreword we learn that this volume is the proceedings of an international conference Mercenaries and Crusaders (1202–1480) held between June 22-24, 2022 at the University of Debrecen. Spanning 451 pages, and comprising 25 individual papers, Mercenaries and Crusaders brings together a diverse array of essays from leading historians, each contributing to their expertise to shed light on the multifaceted roles of mercenaries and crusaders. The essays delve into the motivations, experiences, and consequences of being a mercenary or a crusader, moving beyond stereotypical portrayals to uncover the human dimensions of these roles. From detailed analyses of contractual arrangements and the logistics of medieval warfare to personal narratives, these essays offer a nuanced picture that is both enlightening and engaging.

The collection spans from the First Crusade’s battles to the intricate political and military landscapes of 15th-century Europe, presenting a richly detailed examination of the multifaceted roles of mercenaries and crusaders in medieval warfare and society. This volume reveals a deep dive into the historical narratives, analyses, and scholarly debates surrounding these two groups across various geographical and temporal contexts.

Each chapter, while distinct in focus, contributes to a cohesive narrative about the complexities of mercenary life and the ideological, economic, and social currents that shaped the Crusades. The range of topics covered is impressive, starting with Sándor Ónadi’s exploration of the clergy’s role in the First Crusade, moving to essays like Benjámin Borbás’s investigation into the spoils of war, and Attila Bárány’s detailed accounts of specific figures and events such as Richard I’s return from the Holy Land and the insights of Gábor Barabás on the Hungarian crusade against heresy, thus illuminating the logistics, challenges, and human experiences behind the epic tales.

The inclusion of studies on specific groups and individuals, such as the Turcopoles in Zsolt Hunyadi’s chapter and the life of Pedro Sanches in Rui Pedro Neves’s work, enriches the volume with perspectives on the diverse participants in these military endeavors. This diversity is further highlighted in discussions on the roles of Lithuanian troops, Serbian mercenaries, and multicultural forces under King James II of Cyprus, showcasing the international scope of medieval warfare and the complex networks of allegiance and opposition it engendered.

Several chapters stand out for their focus on specific historical moments or regional studies, such as Gergely Kiss’s examination of the Conrad of Urach and Ölbei Tamás’s look at Hungarian mercenaries in Florence. These studies not only provide detailed accounts of individual contributions to crusading efforts but also reflect on the broader implications of mercenary involvement in political and military strategies.

One of the strengths of this volume is its geographical and thematic breadth. The thematic breadth of the book is impressive, covering topics from the ideological underpinnings of warfare, as seen in Mihály Boda’s analysis of just war doctrine, to the practical concerns of military organization and strategy, as discussed in László Szokola’s chapter on urban military roles. From the examination of Turcopoles by Zsolt Hunyadi to a detailed study of Lithuanian troops in Yanina Ryier’s contribution, the book traverses a vast expanse of medieval European history. It delves into the heart of mercenary uprisings in Apulia, Hungarian mercenaries’ roles in various European conflicts, and the involvement of diverse groups such as the multicultural mercenaries of King James II of Cyprus.

Chapters on the ideological aspects of crusading, such as Imre Solt Varga’s case study on the anti-Hussite crusade and Attila Györkös’s analysis of the crusading idea in Franco-Hungarian relations, reveal the deep entanglement of religious, political, and personal motivations behind these expeditions. Moreover, the inclusion of studies on the aftermath of battles, the emergence of just war doctrine, and socio-political theories related to warfare, as seen in the contributions by Ferenc Petruska and Zoltán Jobbágy, offer readers insightful perspectives on the consequences and ethical considerations of medieval conflicts.

The book does not shy away from the less explored corners of crusading history, with chapters such as Alexandru Simon’s work on the humanist frontiers of the Ottoman Empire highlighting the evolution of crusading thought well into the Renaissance. Saul António Gomes’ paper on the idea of crusade in Portugal through the 15^th century broadens the reader’s understanding of the crusading era.

This book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the intersection of military, political, and social history in the medieval world, with a focus on both the figures of mercenaries and the broader historical currents of the Crusades. Through its 451 pages, this meticulously curated volume showcases a rich tapestry of scholarship that sheds light on the complexities, nuances, and multifaceted dimensions of its subjects. These essays collectively offer a nuanced understanding of the motivations, challenges, and impacts of mercenaries and crusaders, highlighting the human dimensions of warfare and its lasting influence on European history.

In conclusion, this volume is a must-read for scholars, students, and anyone interested in medieval warfare, the Crusades, or the history of mercenary forces. Its contributions to the field are significant, offering fresh insights into the intricate interplay of warfare, ideology, and society in medieval Europe.

Ardian Muhaj, PhD, Institute of History, Tirana

Joshua M. Cragle has published the first book-length study to mount the argument that the Christianization of the Saxons (and by extension, of all early medieval European peoples who were conquered and forced to take on the religion of their Christian conquerors) was not the unproblematic positive that Christian triumphalist historians, and other non-aligned scholars who were broadly accepting of the idea that conversion to Christianity represented progress for ‘barbarian’ peoples, have promoted. Cragle’s “Introduction” discusses modern colonialism and the destruction of Indigenous culture and religion by invading Europeans and argues that more attention should be paid to the processes of Christianization. The push and pull factors in Charlemagne’s conquest of Saxony included: violence, gifts, legal enforcement, slavery, economic exploitation, eradicating paganism, geographic restructuring, promoting saints’ cults, marriages and political alliances, and theological persuasion (p. 3). Some of the items on this list sound innocuous, and others more threatening. In combination they transformed Saxony.

The book is in three parts. Part I, “Origins,” opens with a sketch of Frankish history, then discusses Saxon history, which has scantier textual sources that are supplemented with archaeological evidence.  The histories are organised under the same sub-headings so similarities and differences between the Franks and the Saxons are clear. Chapter 3, “Early Franco-Saxon Conflict,” brings the two peoples together, and in contexts of war, piracy, and very occasional cooperation. Chapter 4, “Old Saxon Paganism,” marshals all the sources for this contentious subject and offers a detailed and plausible account of the pre-Christian religion of the Saxons (focusing on the gods Thunear and Saxnōt, the sacred groves and tree monument the Irminsul, divination, animal sacrifice, and funerary customs). Chapter 5 shifts to early Germanic conversion to Christianity in what is now modern Germany and surrounding territories. Short biographies of the missionaries Rupert, Corbinian, Killian, Pirmin, Amandus, Wilfrid, Wigbert, the two Hewalds, Willibrord, Wulffram, and Boniface, feller of the Oak of Jupiter at Geismar, are supplied. Later missionaries Willibald, Willehad, and Lebuinus are also covered.

Part II, “Charlemagne’s Saxon Wars,” opens with a discussion of the initial motivations for the conquest of Saxony, and the importance of disentangling this from what we later know. In January 772 Saxons attacked Deventer, intending to rout Lebuinus and his followers, who escaped to Utrecht. Apparently, the Saxon assembly at Marklo took place shortly after and Lebuinus allegedly attended. Cragle assumes that Charlemagne’s invasion of Saxony and destruction of the Irminsul that year was payback for Deventer. The chronology then becomes one of immediate revolt after attack (772 being the first instance). Chapter 7, “The Rise and Fall of Widukind, 777-785,” opens with Hedeby in Denmark being described as “a sanctuary for Saxons fleeing Frankish might” (p. 122). The missionaries Sturmi and Liudger, and the foundation of the influential monastery of Fulda, the Saxon revolt of 778, and the assembly at Paderborn called by Charlemagne in 782, and likely the place of promulgation of the First Saxon Capitulary are discussed, as is the savage beheading of 4,500 Saxon rebels at Verden in 782, likely a reprisal for the Frankish defeat by the Saxons in the Süntel Mountains. Widukind was baptised and his life after that event becomes difficult to piece together. The next chapter deals with Charlemagne’s relations (cordial and hostile) with the Avars and Obodrites, the Saxon revolt of 792, and the Capitulare Saxonicum of 797. Violent conflict raged in Saxony till 802/3, when the Lex Saxonum was promulgated. Chapter 9 “Turbulent Frontiers” takes the reader to the death of Charlemagne.

Part III, “Consequences,” opens with the reign of Louis the Pious, 814-840 CE. Chapter 11, “Christanization in Saxony Under the Late Carolingians,” covers the establishment of monasteries and churches, the introduction of saints’ relic cults, and the Heliand, or “Saxon Gospel,” a heroic poem of roughly 6,000 lines that indigenises the gospel for the Saxons. The next chapter discusses the Stellinga Revolt (842-843 CE) and its outcomes, and has a solid discussion of the relationship of traditional law and Pagan religion. The “Conclusion” ties together Cragle’s argument, using the list of factors accompanying or assisting Christianization noted above. In conclusion, Converting the Saxons: A Study of Violence and Religion in Early Medieval Germany is a ground-breaking study that should change the scholarly conversation around conversion to Christianity in Late Antiquity and the early medieval period, bringing to the fore discussions of violence and colonialism, cultural destruction and mass slaughter, genocide and profiteering from war. I recommend it highly; in fact, I wish I’d written it.

Carole M. Cusack, PhD, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Sydney

“Surprisingly little is known in the West about the role of Central Asia in the Second World War. The region as a whole has been largely overlooked by historians, who have tended, if anything, to concentrate on its centuries-old position at the hub of the ancient Silk Road”(p. 6). It is a paradox that there are so many gaps in our knowledge of the course of World War II, yet the outcome of this greatest conflict of the past century continued to influence the shape of the international system for decades to come into the modern era. At least one of these gaps has been filled by Vicky Davis’ Central Asia in World War Two: The Impact and Legacy of Fighting for the Soviet Union, a brilliant account of the war’s impact on the inhabitants of a region seemingly separated by thousands of miles from the frontlines of the Russian-German conflict.  

Putting into question the distance separating Central Asia from the main theater of the war is justified if we consider that the area of the five republics comprising this region stretches from the Chinese and Afghanistan border in the southeast to the foothills of the Urals and the Volga basin in the northwest. Thus at least during the Battle of Stalingrad, the residents of the western part of the Kazakh SSR directly experienced the proximity of the front and the fierceness of German attacks aimed at disorganizing the Soviet logistics support and hampering the city’s defense: “Only 500 kilometres separated Stalingrad from western Kazakhstan, which came increasingly under threat from German bombers during 1942, bringing the war much closer to home for some”(p. 45). On the other hand, their compatriots from distant villages at the foot of the Tian Shan Mountains, which separate the USSR from China, struggled to obtain any news from the front, as information was not only delayed but also put through the filter of Soviet propaganda.

If these communities had anything in common, it was certainly the shared fate of being the base for the frontline military operations: making Herculean efforts to mobilize manpower and infrastructure to support the fighting army, hosting the masses of people displaced from the European part of the USSR, and re-launching factories evacuated from war-stricken areas. They were also united by being the peripheries, where the colonial attitude of Russians to the indigenous population, derogatorily called “inorodtsy” (lit. “those of different descent”) by no means disappeared after the October Revolution despite lofty claims of the Bolsheviks, and where the forced modernization, implemented by the Soviet authorities already in the 1920s and 1930s, gained new forms of expression and fresh dynamics: “The population was far more exposed to Soviet ideals than ever before, broadcast by the mass media and epitomized by the Russian language and culture imported by evacuees” (p. 7).     

Vicky Davis opens a new chapter in research on World War II behind the frontlines of the Red Army, drawing an apt conclusion on the universality of the war experiences of Central Asia’s inhabitants: “In many ways, though, the experience of Soviet Central Asia was representative of much that happened in the Second World War across all the non-occupied regions of the Soviet Union. With the increased state exploitation of its resources, Central Asia had much in common with Siberia and the Urals”(p. 6).The novel elements of her approach include elements such as specific personal stories from the lives of people who resided in Central Asia from 1941-1945 that illustrate each phenomenon analyzed, among others. Hundreds of people whose wartime adventures the author collected during the four years of working on the book bring into the narrative an element most important in historiography – the translation of key historical moments into the lives of individuals, not just the evolution of political organisms: “It is an analysis of a worldwide conflict as it affected these ordinary citizens of Central Asia on a day-to-day, individual scale”(p. 8). The wartime fates of individuals and entire families that Davis describes reveal also that the notion of a safe existence far away from the frontline was merely an illusion.

Naturally, the conscripted men also had their share of extreme wartime experiences presented in the book. After covering the distances they could hardly imagine before, they usually reached the frontline not only without basic physical training or technological and logistics skills but even without a rudimentary language course: “These naïve young men with little schooling were at first poorly equipped to fight a modern war, barely understood orders shouted or written in Russian and were completely out of their depth living and fighting amongst men from a totally different culture, who often regarded them as outsiders”(p. 42).As they faced the frightening, brutal conflict foreign to them (also with regard to language) and the poorly masked stereotypes about the “wild” inhabitants of Central Asia widespread in the Soviet army, those soldiers became characteristically withdrawn in relations to their Slavic military “comrades”: “Central Asians tended to be quieter and more gentle than Russian troops, keeping themselves to themselves in small ethnic and linguistic cliques. They were distinctly demoralized by the harsh weather conditions at the front, while their poor Russian prevented integration and led to accusations of backwardness – deficiencies for which they were definitely not to blame”(p. 65).

However, the adventures at the front and examples of military heroism, so beloved by the authors of Soviet coursebooks, are not Davis’ main narrative. The overview of military operations in which Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Uzbek soldiers participated is limited to the first of the four parts of the book, while its core are the traumatic experiences of those who stayed behind: families deprived of their main provider; women and children taking up work beyond their strength under pressure of the state apparatus and to the beat of patriotic propaganda; overcrowded towns, facing the subsequent waves of evacuees; distant provinces where forcibly deported communities of “enemies of the state” arrived unexpectedly. The monograph presents a picture of Central Asia fully caught up in the gears of war and bearing its costs while lacking reliable information on how the conflict was unfolding: “As the news from the west became unbearable, very little was published, with much of the front page devoted to provincial reports in the early months of 1942. Very few editions were published in 1942 – either due to the serious shortage of paper, or because the state wished to prevent readers from discovering the true progress of the war and the military failures of the Red Army”(p. 188).

Vicky Davis points to a number of problems generated by the war that so far have not been sufficiently recognized in historiography. She highlights the role of women, both those fighting on the front lines and those bearing the burden of new duties in the absence of their fathers, husbands, and sons. She describes numerous cases of anti-Semitism, of open  resentment against the Jews, coming from the west in fear of the Nazi policy of extermination. She also presents the fates of nations punished for collaboration with Germans and deported to Central Asia, not hesitating to use the strongest words: “The Stalin regime’s campaign of wholesale ethnic cleansing at various stages in the war was no doubt genocidal in character”(p. 307).

The adopted strategy of zooming in on individuals and their personal experiences of the Great Patriotic War does not prevent the author from noticing the most significant social results of the conflict, which are not necessarily negative. Davis repeatedly emphasizes that the four years of war did more for integrating the inhabitants of the region with the rest of the country and for social modernization of the Central Asian republics than the preceding two decades of Soviet rule. 

The accelerated learning of the Russian language in wartime conditions; the raised level of technological knowledge through work in the factories evacuated to Tashkent and Alma-ata; the direct contact with Russian culture and its representatives; finally, the sudden and externally enforced change in the social role of women – all this laid the foundations for the region’s new self-image of itself after 1945: “Having experienced the army and the Slavic culture imported with the evacuees, the population of Central Asia became more cosmopolitan in outlook, encouraged by a higher standard of education and supported by an ongoing campaign of modernization offering more opportunities. By the end of the Second World War the population of Central Asia was better integrated into Soviet society”(p. 212).

The analysis of modernization through war, both in its unintended and government-planned aspect, places Vicky Davis among such authors as David L. Hoffmann, Sheila Fitzpatrick, and Natalya Chernyshova, who established the motif of multi-aspect, top-down social modernization and its impact on the lives of individuals and societies, without including in descriptions and evaluations of the past element of ideologization, so characteristic of Soviet authors. 

While Davis’ work is based on archival materials dating back to the 1940s, it is surprisingly current. The author extrapolates the description of mass movements of people evacuated and deported to Central Asia to the symbolic heritage of the entire region that has been a witness of continuous migrations, both natural and forced: “Mobility has once again become the norm, as many ethnic Russians left Central Asia upon the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. Following them westwards, thousands of indigenous Central Asians became voluntary economic migrants, travelling to Moscow in search of work. (…) It has been followed, however, by a noticeable exodus of Russian citizens into Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, driven by the wish to escape the ramifications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as the republics of Central Asia continue to offer sanctuary to those fleeing war” (p. 308).

There are further comparisons with today’s Russian-Ukrainian war that come to mind when reading Davis’ book. One such connection between past and present is the depiction of Moscow’s actions, the images of national minorities and prisoners forcibly conscripted and then used as a primary blunt strike force, sent into pointless combat at the frontlines: “Many men and women died a hero’s death. Too many others, though, were deemed to be fit only for cannon fodder”(p. 59).

Lastly, Davis’ work is a testimony to the difficulties encountered during historical research in the post-Soviet area, unwilling to reveal to a foreigner its memory of traumatic past and often hiding the Soviet heritage behind the official stance of the authorities of a given republic. Kyrgyzstan, where Davis collected particularly large number of accounts, is by no means a statistical fluke: “If much of this work focuses on Kyrgyzstan, it is thanks to the wealth of historical material hidden in the Issyk-Kul’ archives: pure gold, in fact! Drawing on these previously undiscovered archival documents, this work reveals the true impact of war in Central Asia”(p. 11). After three decades of shifting transformation directions and ineffective experiments with democracy, this republic undoubtedly still is the door left ajar, enabling researchers to understand the problems of the inhabitants of Central Asia, building their post-Soviet reality. 

Michał Kuryłowicz, PhD, Institute of Russian and East European Studies, Jagiellonian University, Krakow

A Companion to the Intellectual Life of the Palaeologan Period, edited by Professor Sofia Kotzabassi, is a collection of essays that provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the intellectual life during the Palaeologan period (1261-1453). The book covers a wide range of topics, including rhetoric, philosophy, autobiography, history, poetry, epistolograply, Monasticism, Hesychasm etc., offering valuable insights into the complexities of Palaeologan scholarship. This makes Kotzabassi’s Companion an enlightening exploration of the cultural landscape during the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire and simultaneously an essential tool for researchers, students, and the general public interested in Byzantine literature and history.

Kotzabassi’s Companion is divided into twelve well-structured chapters, each exploring different aspects of the intellectual life of the Palaeologan period. In the Introduction (pp. 1-14), Kotzabassi, in addition to her contributions as editor, provides a clear and concise overview of the intellectual life of the Palaeologan period, focusing on the role of women, manuscripts as significant factors in the blossoming of the last centuries in Byzantium, the sciences etc. Kotzabassi also points out the role of Byzantine scholarsandtheir profound impact on the renewal and innovation of the long and rich intellectual tradition in Byzantium.

The first chapter by Eleni Kaltsogianni, “The ‘Legacy’ of Aphthonios, Hermogenes and Pseudo-Menander: Aspects of Byzantine Rhetoric under the Palaiologoi,” (pp. 15-75) refers to the fundamental role of rhetoric in Byzantine intellectual life and society in the Palaeologan era. Kaltsogianni concentrates on free-standing rhetorical texts and draws interesting conclusions for this period. According to her remarks, traditional forms continue to serve as the basis for rhetorical composition, while the rhetors of the Palaeologan period re-discovered authors of the Second-Sophistic and brought to light neglected forms. However, it is apparent that during the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire rhetoric assumed a more ‘pragmatic’ role occasionally presenting in a refined way state-of-the art events.

In the second chapter, “Intellectual Pursuits for Their Own Sake”, (pp. 76-111) Sophia Mergiali-Sahas examines five intellectual figures (Theodore Metochites, John Zacharias, Gregory Chioniades, Demetrios Kydones and Manouel Palaiologos), which at a time of irreversible political decline and decay of Empire, flashed about an exaltation and flourishing in learning. According to Mergiali-Sahas their pursuit of learning and mental growth, which go against the main currents of Byzantine traditional scholarship, was an alternative way of life and an exercise in making their life worth living, contributing in a way to the Renaissance.

In the third chapter of the Companion “Continuity and Evolution in Autobiographical Literature” (pp. 112-132), Kotzabassi delves into the autobiography genre during the last centuries of Byzantine Empire. After meticulous research, Kotzabassi refers to the autobiographical works from the early Byzantine period and highlights the way of this genre’s evolution. The chapter also analyzes basic elements in autobiography such as the title, the preface, and the autobiographical confessions with reference to specific authors and texts. Kotzabassi points out an extroversion in the Palaeologan era, evidenced mainly by the large number of copyists’ names on Byzantine manuscripts, which may have been a trend of this period or an interesting change of mentality.

The fourth chapter, “Writing the History of Decline” by Apostolos Karpozilos (pp. 133-171), deals with historiography and historical writing in the Byzantine Empire during the Palaeologan period. The chapter begins by discussing the historical tradition in the Byzantine Empire before the last centuries and then turns to the Byzantine historians of this era (George Akropolites, George Pachymeres, Nikephoros Gregoras, John Kantakouzenos and finally the historians Michael Kritoboulos, Michael Doukas, George Sphrantzes and Laonikos Chalkokondyles), their aims, sources, circumstances and the specific way in which each of them wrote their texts. According to Karpozilos, the historians’ intellectual dependence on the ancient historical texts with their pessimism for the future and the conviction that everything is the result of the divine providence raise the question of how faithfully the events are described.

In the fifth chapter, “Spirituality and Emotion: Poetic trends in the Palaelogan period,” (pp. 172-210), Ioannis Vassis examines the poetry in the Byzantine Empire during the last centuries. The chapter defines the causes and the circumstances of the poetic production in this era and points out the role of the intellectuals who showed off their skills to the members of the elite and their powerful patrons. Vassis deals with the poets who wrote for the court and then turns to specific genres and their writers, such as the Epigram with Manuel Philes, the Autobiography of Theodore Metochites, the poetry in the service of the church or for teaching purposes and other genres such as chronicles, satirical poems, romances etc. Vassis masterfully analyzes the poetry of the late Byzantine era and concludes that all the genres were cultivated with enthusiasm enriching and renewing the traditional characteristics and steadily leading to the Renaissance.

Τhe sixth chapter, “Epistolography, Social Exchange and Intellectual Discourse” by Alexander Riehle (pp. 211-251), examines Epistolography as a means of communication and expression in Byzantine society and a contributing factor to the social exchange and intellectual discourse. Riehle refers to the types of letters that were written in the Byzantine era, their purposes, and the ways in which they were used. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the history of Epistolography and continues with remarks on the theory and terminology. Riehle presents the letters within the microcosm of the Constantinopolitan intellectual elite, the evolution of this genre during the period of Civil Wars and also the letters not only in the last decades of the Empire but also until the 19th century.

In the seventh chapter, “The Reappropriation of Philosophy in the Palaeologan Period”, by Pantelis Golitsis (pp. 252-280), the factors that led to the reappropriation of philosophy, as well as the forms that this reappropriation took are presented. Golitsis notes that philosophy was always present in Byzantine society, but in the Palaeologan period was characterized by two specific features: autonomy and high sophistication. The chapter continues with the byzantine commentaries on ancient philosophical texts, which contributed to the accessibility to this genre and then refers to the efflorescence of philosophy in the last centuries as an essential educative factor for the Byzantine intellectuals. Golitsis also presents the rehabilitation of ancient philosophers by Byzantine authors and concludes that the reappropriation of Philosophy in the Palaeologan era cultivated a new generation of philosophers, such as Nicephoros Blemmydes, George Acropolites, George Pachymeres, Theodore Metochites etc.

In the eighth chapter, “Κόσμου θεωρία: Cosmic Vision and Its Significance in the Works of Theodore Metochites and Other Contemporary Intellectuals” (pp. 281-321), Ioannis Polemis defines the cosmic vision, or the perception of the universe as a unified and organized whole in the Byzantine texts of the Palaeologan period. Polemis analyzes the ways in which Byzantine intellectuals perceived the universe and the role of man in it. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the history of cosmic vision in ancient Greece and then Polemis discussing a number of specific examples of cosmic vision in the works of Theodore Metochites, delves into the ideas of Metochites, who incorporates elements of ancient Greek philosophy and Christian theology and envisioned the universe as a sacred and harmonious whole created by God. Then, Polemis turns to cosmic vision in the works of other contemporary Byzantine intellectuals, such as Nikephoros Gregoras. The chapter, after an overview of cosmic vision in Byzantine thought, concludes that the pessimistic approach to life in Metochite’s works had undoubtedly influenced his contemporary philosophers.

In the ninth chapter ,“Monasticism and Intellectual Trends in Late Byzantium” (pp. 322-344), Demetra Samara and Ilias Taxidis discuss the way in which monasticism influenced the spiritual life of Byzantine society during the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the history of monasticism and then Samara and Taxidis note that monasticism experienced a period of flourishing in the 14th century, as many people sought in monasticism a form of salvation and spiritual elevation in a time of political and social turmoil. The chapter continues with an in-depth presentation of the monastic centers in the Palaeologan era, such as the centers in and outside Asia Minor, and the role of spirituality in Constantinople and Thessaloniki. The authors offer valuable insights into the significant role of monasticism in the dissemination of knowledge and ideas in Byzantine society and generally in the intellectual movement of this period.

The tenth chapter, “The Hesychast Controversy: Events, Personalities, Texts and Trends” by Ioannis Polemis (pp. 345-398), is an in-depth analysis of a significant religious quarrel that took place in the late Byzantine Empire (14th-15th centuries). Polemis delves into the factors that led to the controversy, the protagonists, the basic ideas, the texts that were written, and the aftermath of this controversy. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the history of the Hesychasm, and then the spiritual and political factors are presented, which led to political and religious turmoil. Polemis presents each of the protagonists and points out the significant impact of this controversy, which strengthened the Hesychast tradition and established it as an important aspect of the Orthodox Christian tradition. Polemis draws interesting conclusions not only for the impact of the controversy on the late Byzantine Empire but also for the key role of the Palamas’ original theory about man’s union with God.

In the eleventh chapter, “Working in the Imperial and Patriarchal Chanceries”, by Giuseppe De Gregorio (pp. 399-457), the organization and operation of the imperial and patriarchal chanceries, the offices responsible for the drafting and issuing of official documents in the late Byzantine Empire (13th-15th centuries) are presented. De Gregorio discusses the employees of the chanceries, their duties, and their importance to imperial and ecclesiastical administration. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the history of the chanceries, which had a long history in the empire and had also developed significantly during the 13th century. Next, the author examines different aspects of chanceries such as their use in the service of Rhetoric, and the officials and intellectuals in the Imperial and Patriarchal Chanceries. De Gregorio concludes highlighting the importance of the chanceries to imperial and ecclesiastical administration.

The twelfth chapter, “Public and Private Libraries in Byzantium” by Ilias Taxidis (pp. 458-490), examines the history and operation of public and private libraries in the Byzantine Empire (330-1453). Taxidis discusses the types of libraries (Imperial Library, Monastery Libraries and Private libraries), their resources, and their users. He also notes that libraries were important forms of culture and played a key factor in the dissemination of knowledge and culture in the Byzantine Empire. The chapter, after a multifaceted presentation of the topic, concludes with two maps, where the Libraries in Constantinople and the Monastic Libraries in Asia Minor are shown as well.

Each of the twelve chapters is completed by a bibliography containing the primary sources and secondary literature. The meticulous research and analysis presented in the chapters of the Companion are complemented by a general bibliography (pp. 491-502) and three Indices: an Index of Manuscripts and Documents (pp. 503-506), an Index of Places (pp. 507-509) and finally a General Index (pp. 511-519).

Overall, Kotzabassi’ Companion constitutes a significant and useful collection that thoroughly examines the intellectual and cultural environment during a critical period. The chapters are well-organized, draw upon a wide range of primary and secondary sources, and offer a systematic approach to historical, philosophical, religious, and social dimensions of the Byzantine literature in the Palaeologan era. From the theological debates to the philosophical aspects and the autobiographical texts, each chapter contributes to a rich tapestry of insights, shedding light on the dynamic interplay of ideas that shaped intellectual thought during this time. Furthermore, the Companion’s chapters offer a captivating glimpse into the wealth of ideas and events, showing off the renewal and innovation of this era.

Kotzabassi’s editorial prowess ensures a cohesive narrative, guiding readers through a diverse array of topics, including philosophy, literature, theology, history etc. The editor emerges as a trailblazer, coordinating an exceptional collaborative effort, and her contribution proves pivotal to the success of the book. By examining the intellectual endeavors of key figures, Kotzabassi offers this companion as a valuable resource for scholars, students, and everyone interested in the Byzantine Empire’s intellectual legacy.

In conclusion, A Companion to the Intellectual life of the Palaeologan Period, edited by Sofia Kotzabassi focuses on different fields and their key role in the cultural life of the Palaeologan era, and covers a broad range of topics allowing readers to delve into the details of various facets of the last centuries in Byzantium. It is obvious that Kotzabassi’ s Companion stands as an indispensable addition to the literature on Palaeologan scholarship and elevates our understanding of Byzantine culture to new heights.

Dimitra Moniou, PhD, Assistant Professor of Byzantine Literature, University of the Peloponnese

Old and New Insights on the History of Intelligence and Diplomacy in the Balkans, edited by Bogdan Teodor, Jordan Baev, Matthew Crosston, and Mihaela Teodor and published by Peter Lang in the series South-East European History (Vol. 1, editor Mihai Dragnea) is organized into two parts. The first, which consists of six chapters, brings examples from the history of diplomacy and intelligence regarding cultural and human factors. The second part brings us papers about the influence of intelligence agencies and diplomacy on national and international relations. The articles are arranged chronologically, according to the time in which the analyzed activities took place.

The papers cover a wide time frame, from the Venice and Ottoman Empires in the 17^th century until the end of the Cold War at the end of the last century. The papers clearly show how the history of the Balkan states and nations is interconnected and burdened by numerous conflicting interests. The Balkan area, a meeting point where different civilizations collide from time to time, has a significant impact on all social, political, security, economic, trade, and educational processes until today. So, the term “Balkanization” (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Balkanization) has its political justification as an example of activities that tends to repeat in other areas.

In terms of content of the published articles, we can read personal testimonies, reflections and experiences of early intelligence officers sent to foreign territories to fulfill various demanding tasks. We witness the challenges they face, the dilemmas that force them to make difficult decisions, and the hidden motives they try to achieve while fulfilling the tasks that others have set for them. The activities of individuals, groups, organizations, and state institutions, as well as the states themselves, which are trying to obtain intelligence to effectively protect their own interests, are presented in these papers. The effectiveness of the mentioned intelligence operations is always difficult to fully verify without a complete review of the archives of the opposing states and organizations at the time. It is also necessary to analyze the archives of those countries from whose territory they operated, as well as the countries towards which the enemy’s activities were directed. Espionage is a hostile activity in relation to the goal of the action. Namely, it is quite certain that certain persons, organizations, and institutions of third countries (from which intelligence operations were conducted) had some opinion and information about these activities on their territory.

These papers shows that diplomatic and intelligence activities are closely related and interdependent. When they are tied into a meaningful part of integrated activities, they can significantly help decision makers. However, when they are not coordinated and when there is a difference in the wishes and desires of various interested parties, internal conflicts occur. In such cases those differences quite often become publicly visible. Then they significantly burden both society and the state. Diplomacy (as an indispensable part of peace processes) negotiates to establish peace with the aim of strengthening one’s own political, economic, and security ties with the support of information obtained through intelligence. This points us to an interdisciplinary approach in the study of the history of international relations, that is, to the model known as new diplomatic history. This is the only way to get to the real cause-and-consequences relationships of individual processes and events from international history, which must be known to avoid their negative consequences in the future.

Starting from the first to the last paper, the historical development of intelligence activities can be traced, from translators (called dragomans in that time) all the way to modern intelligence communities that represent part of the state structure. It is especially important to study early diplomacy because the first forms of intelligence activities can be recognized in these activities.

The first article provides an understanding of the importance of having one’s own translators with the aim of a proper, clear and complete understanding of the other party, while simultaneously collecting information/intelligence about the other party while protecting our own information from possibly more aggressive approaches from those who want to obtain data and information necessary to strengthen their own positions, both in diplomacy and in trade, as well as in all other forms of activity. Translators also held important diplomatic roles, although they were not called diplomats but “dragomans” – practically modern diplomats in conveying important messages between ruling regimes: “this dragomans were used as a messengers of important communications, mediators in peace agreements or negotiations, even as advisers.  (…) They received access to “confidential discussion and to sensitive documents.”

The articles that follow show us how the first diplomats were at the same time intelligence officers and how, over time and through the development of diplomatic relations, intelligence activity also adapted. Diplomacy and intelligence were not only in the hands of diplomats and intelligence officers, but within the working frame of other experts that also participated in the processes of gathering data and information as well as in the processes of strengthening understanding between different parties as one of the diplomatic and intelligence tools.

These papers further show us that there is no such a thing in practice as fabled James Bond stories. The issue of intelligence activities, especially abroad, is directly related to several skills that must be developed in persons preparing for foreign intelligence: an acceptable level of communication skills; knowledge of culture, customs, habits and especially the language used by the inhabitants of the area in which, or towards which, the action is taken; the ability to remember the culture of communication; etiquette; the existence of safe and reliable communication channels for the transfer of information; analytical skills and in-depth knowledge of the thematic area in order to be more efficient in separating the essential from the non-essential information and knowledge; the ability to travel safely and undisturbed, and find adequate accommodation in the areas of operation. The papers also show how important it is to have real and contextual knowledge about the space, people, rules, customs and processes of the territory in which one operates as well as the one towards which one operates. It shows crucial importance of real knowledge.

Moreover, the papers demonstrate the demands of historical research activities that require an in-depth look at certain issues and processes from many different sides, and how much the history of conflicts of different interests is reflected in the actions of different intelligence centers or individuals. And all this is accomplished without introducing personal emotions or unscientifically flattering daily politics.

These papers clearly show how much history repeats itself to those who do not know it. Thus, we witness an analysis according to which it is evident that Russia recruited Serbian agents and sent them to Montenegro, all in order to organize a rebellion against the Montenegrin rulers who were fighting against Russia (page 90-91): “Czartoryski was a member of the Russian foreign Office and was entrusted with the task of organizing a spy network in Montenegro. (…) with the aim of rebelling against Montenegrin Elders: ruler Petarov I Petrović Njegošovi (1747-1830), who dangerously fought Russia alongside the French. Soon more agents came to Montenegro, creating a Balkan bridgehead for Russian spies.”

The twelve chapters of this book clearly show all the complexity of the history of the peoples, nations, and states in the Balkans, how the Balkans was, is and will be – an area where many different interests, ideologies, religions, and social structures collide. How much this area is burdened with the past and emotions, how much it lives on myths and prejudices, are also issues outlined throughout. Without in-depth and contextual knowledge of the real history of the Balkans, it is difficult to understand modern political national and international relations, as well as to foresight the future activities of political, social, religious, and other important actors that can influence reality.

As it occasionally happens in historical analyses, the personal emotional attitudes of individual authors can be clearly observed. As well as the excess of their targeted prejudices that have no basis in historical facts or in previous parts of the paper. In this paper authors wrote a sentence that is completely taken out of the space-time context, which favors the creation of further prejudices. On page 128, the authors state, “Croatian politicians showed their true face”. This shows their non-objectivity and lack of professionalism. Namely, the topic of the article was not Croatian-Serbian relations during the second Yugoslavia, but something quite different. The “Croatian” part of the paper simply is presenting Jovan Dučić as a “key figure” for “Western historical literature”, using mildly pretentious diplomatic language. Namely, Croatian-Serbian relations were full of many challenging processes and events before the second Yugoslavia, as well as after it. Ultimately, among other causes, they led to the bloody disintegration of the third Yugoslavia. Making decisions based on generalization should not be a tool in scientific research, especially of history. Generalization should be avoided, especially those that have no basis in fact.

The presented papers show the extent of intelligence’s role of conducting both gray or secret diplomacy. Therefore, as it was clearly emphasized in the introduction, it is necessary to study international relations through the history of intelligence activities as well because they are strongly interrelated and connected in cause and consequences. In many cases, having background in intelligence history is very helpful for international relations history analysis.

Moreover, some of the articles open up the issue of writing names in foreign languages. Namely, in several articles the names and surnames of historical figures were misspelled. As a rule, the names of persons should be written as they are written in the native language of the person mentioned in the article. If the article contains the names of persons who come from areas, times and countries where the Latin alphabet is not fundamental, it would be good to write those names in English using the English rules for writing personal names. This rule applies to the Latin alphabet and in those cases where the work is written in the same alphabet. In the case when the paper is written in a different script, then it is necessary to write personal names following the rules of writing in the language in which the article is written.

The following errors were found in this book:

Page 67: Ćorće should be written Đorđe; Corcevic should be written Đorđević.

Page 71: it is not general Sergei Tumanov. He is general Simeon Tumanov (Macedonian by ethnicity) as it is correctly written on page 276.

Page 77: it is not Karaćorćević – it should be written as Karađorđević.

Page 88: footnote 6: name is Mate, not Mete.

Page 91: Petar I Petrovć Njegoš, not as it is written.

Additionally, a comment on the chapter written by Krasimira Todorova. In her paper, on page 262, the author mentions the operations “Labrador” and the “Opera” as “operations of Yugoslav Army Counterintelligence (KOS) – (…).” It is important to correct those mistakes that quite often appears in Croatian papers also.

The real name of military institution that was responsible for counterintelligence activities in that period was Uprava za bezbednost Ministarstva narodne odbrane (Department for Security of Ministry of Peoples Defense). KOS is an abbreviation that was used from March 13, 1946 until reorganization in December 14, 1955. KOS was the official abbreviation for the service that existed until 1955 but remained as an acronym in public knowledge.

“Labrador” was a code name for an operation that was initiated at the end of 1989, and the beginning of 1990 still during the existence of Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. The operation was initiated by the head of the State security service of Republic secretariat for internal affairs of the Socialist Republic of Croatia. At that time, the head of the Service, Josip Perković, received an operational information that the Department for Security of Yugoslav MoD has moles within service in Croatia. Internal operation was initiated to check that info. Soon they were confirmed, and the key person was identified. It was Branko Traživuk (his codename as an agent was S3) who was a director of the 2nd department (responsible for fighting against emigrants) of State security service in Croatia and one of the deputies of the head of the service. Surveillance of Traživuk confirmed that he, while he was quite often going around with his dog, had undeclared and covert contacts with officers of Yugoslavian military responsible for counterintelligence activities, with officials from Second detachment of Counterintelligence group (KOG) of Yugoslav army Airforce and Anti-Aircraft defense that had headquarter in Zagreb, Croatia. His dog was a Labrador breed. That is the reason why the operation, whose aim was to identify sources and agents of military counterintelligence service within the institution in Croatia, had that name. After the elections in April 1990, and when the new democratic government was elected, activities to identify and interrupt illegal and counter-Croatian activities intensified. After several terrorist activities that author mentioned in her paper, regular uniformed members of Ministry of Interior initiated operation raid against KOG group headquarter in Zagreb and arrested first group of army officers and their agents. After several terrorist activities that the author mentioned in her paper, Croatian military counterintelligence service, named Sigurnosno – Informativna Služba (Security and Information Service – SIS) and the newly created Service for Protection of the Constitutional Order (Služba za zaštitu ustavnog poretka – SZUP) joined the uniformed police after the operation begun and started to collect significant quantity of KOG documentation that they did not destroyed. They were not informed about the intention of uniformed police to raid this offices and arrest these officers and their agents.

On page 274, footnote 53 of the same paper it is written that “Opera is short for Odeljenje za propagandni I Elektornski rat (Department for Propaganda and Electronic Warfare).” This is not completely true. There is no mention of “Electronic warfare” in this phrase, only the Department for Propaganda Warfare). The group “Opera” was, at the end of 1991, established within the structure of Yugoslav People’s Army Airforce and Anti-Aircraft by the order of commandant general Zvonko Jurjević. With the same order a supervised body was established, “Council for Information and Propaganda Activities”, which consisted of: General Živan Mirčetić (head of the Council), General Vojislav Radović, Colonel Slobodan Rakočević, Colonel Mirko Vučinić, Lieutenant Colonel Marjan Ziherl, and Slavko Malobabić and Radenko Radojčić. More about “Labrador” and “Opera” group was written in Akrap, G. Specijalni rat – Knjiga 3, Večernji list, Zagreb. 2012 (Special Warfare – Book 3), and Akrap, G. Hibridne prijetnje I izazovi – Operacije utjecaja I moderno sigurnosno okružje, Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada, Sveučilište u Mostaru, Zagreb, Mostar, 2023 (Hybrid Threats and Challenges – Influence Operations and Modern Security Environment).

Gordan Akrap, PhD, President of the Hybrid Warfare Research Institute in Zagreb

Georgia Xanthaki-Karamanou’s book, Dionysiac Dialogues: Euripides’ Bacchae, Aeschylus, and Christus Patiens, is a masterful and insightful exploration of the complex and multifaceted world of Dionysus in ancient Greek tragedy. In this meticulously researched work, Xanthaki-Karamanou examines the interplay and the intricate connections between seemingly disparate works: Euripides’ Bacchae, Aeschylus’ fragmentary Dionysiac plays, and the Christian text Christus Patiens. Her analysis unveils the pivotal role of Dionysus and the rich tapestry of religious and cultural dimensions associated with this enigmatic deity in ancient Greek poetry. Besides that, this book delves deep into the rich tapestry of ancient Greek drama and its influence on later religious and philosophical thought.

Xanthaki-Karamanou’s book is divided into two well-structured parts: the reception of Aeschylus’ Dionysiac plays in Bacchae and the refiguration of the latter in the Byzantine drama Christus Patiens. In both sections the common denominator is Euripides’ Bacchae, which is approached as a receiving text in the first unit and as a source text in the second.  After the introduction, where the author presents the aims of her study according to a systematic approach to historical, philological and mythographical data, Xanthaki-Karamanou in the first part refers to the Dionysiac Plays of Aeschylus (the Lycurgeia and the so-called Theban Tetralogy) and Euripides’ Bacchae. In the second part the author refers to two different texts: Bacchae and Christus Patiens, so as to highlight the transplantation of Bacchae into Byzantium, given that Bacchae provides a valuable exemplum for aspects of dramatic technique, plot-patterns, that also exist in a similar way in Christus Patiens. The meticulous research and analysis presented in the book are complemented by four Appendices, a rich and useful Bibliography, and finally the Indices.

Overall, this book offers an illuminating journey through the history and culture of Dionysus, revealing how this god is presented in distinct works and how the pagan play was transformed to bring forward new pillars of thought and innovative values in different cultural and ideological contexts. Xanthaki-Karamanou unravels the intricate web of influences that Dionysus exerts on the characters’ actions and reactions, providing readers with a profound understanding of the god’s role in shaping their destinies. Her analysis goes beyond surface-level comparisons, delving deep into the nuances of each work to reveal their unique perspectives on human nature, religion, and spirituality. She also employs a comprehensive methodological approach, drawing from linguistics, literary criticism, religious studies, and social history, shedding new light on the multifaceted nature of Dionysus as portrayed in these ancient works. It is apparent that Xanthaki-Karamanou’s careful and thorough examination of these texts demonstrates her commitment to rigorous scholarship.

Additionally, Xanthaki-Karamanou meticulously examines the symbolic importance of madness and ecstasy in the context of ancient Greek society, offering fresh interpretations of these themes within the texts. Her scholarship highlights the spiritual dimension of the religious content embedded in these works, making a compelling case for their enduring relevance. It is also noteworthy that through Xanthaki-Karamanou’s expert lens, these themes are not just historical artifacts but mirrors reflecting universal human experiences and enduring questions about faith and the human condition. By providing rich historical and cultural context, she ensures that readers can fully appreciate the significance of these dialogues, even if they are new to the world of ancient literature.

In conclusion, Georgia Xanthaki-Karamanou’s Dionysiac Dialogues: Euripides’ Bacchae, Aeschylus, and Christus Patiens is a magnum opus that elevates our understanding of ancient Greek literature to new heights. Her commendable scholarship, comprehensive methodology, captivating prose, and ability to synthesize diverse perspectives is a testament and breathe life into these ancient dialogues which make this book an essential read for scholars, students of religion, and anyone not only with a passion for thought-provoking literature but also with interest for ancient Greek tragedy, mythology, and religion. This extended review merely scratches the surface of the book’s depth and richness, leaving readers eager to embark on their own transformative journey through the Dionysiac dialogues. It is obvious that this book not only deepens our understanding of these ancient texts but also invites us to engage in timeless questions about the human spirit and the divine. In an era where interdisciplinary research is increasingly valued, Xanthaki-Karamanou’s research stands as a shining example of how a multifaceted approach can illuminate the rich tapestry of ancient literature and culture, making the book a valuable contribution to multiple fields of study.

Dimitra Moniou, Assistant Professor of Byzantine Literature, University of Peloponnese, Kalamata, Greece

Alexios Savvides’ Byzantino-Russica: Six-and-a-half centuries of Byzantine-Russian relations covers precisely what the title suggests, and is divided into two segments.

The first part comprises the following sections: the introduction; the Christianisation of the Russians and its importance; The Primary Chronicle or Russian Primary letopis as a source; a chronology of Byzantine-Russian relations; invasions and trade relations before, during and after the Russian Christianisation; the ideology of the “Third Rome” and the Byzantine heritage in Russia; research perspectives on the theory of the “Third Rome”; studies of international bibliography on Byzantine-Russian relations; the study of Russian culture and civilisation in Greece today; Greek translations of works of Russian Byzantinology and their importance. The first part also includes an appendix with the names “Rus,” “Russians,” and “Russia” and a concise chronology covering the years 838/839-1589.        

The second part includes: the introduction; a detailed analysis of research and bibliography on Byzantine-Russian relations and Medieval Russian history; a chronology; and an appendix with the representation of Byzantine-Russian relations in secondary education.

On pages 25-28, the author explains the importance of the Russian Christianisation for World History. Based on current research, the Christianisation of the Russians took place between 987 and 989. The marriage of Grand Prince Vladimir the Great with Anna Porphyrogenita, and Vladimir’s and his people’s Christening are two critical events. However, according to the author, current evidence does not clarify the chronological distance between these occurences. Another important event which needs to be taken into consideration, as the author explains, is the arrival of the Varangians who helped the Emperor Basil II Bulgaroktonos to face the uprisings. Again, current research does not shed light on which event preceded the other. As regards the disagreement on the actual year of the Christianisation, the author explains that scholars of Slavology point to the year 988 or 987, while Byzantinists refer to 988/989 or 989.

On pages 29-31, the author provides some background information on how Vladimir helped the Byzantine Emperor Basil to defeat the revolts, and how the former applied pressure to Basil to keep the agreement.  

On pages 31-32, there is important information about Vladimir’s actions after his Christianisation to impose the new religion on his people. Vladimir accepted the administrative power of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople over the newly established Russian Church. The author cites Dimitri Obolensky and Zinaida Vladimirovna Udaltsova, who also explain that Russia built its culture and new identity on the Byzantine tradition. On page 33, the author cites Enno Franzius, who claims that Byzantine civilisation contributed to the creation of the Russian nation.

The use of the Russian language in Orthodox life is another landmark. On pages 33-34, Savvides refers to Levčenko: the connection of Orthodoxy with the Slavic language meant that the Byzantine Church established the foundations of a Russian spirituality. In an era when the Roman Catholic Church persisted in the use of Latin, the Byzantines allowed the Russians to introduce Christian teaching through the Slavic language. The Byzantine Empire implemented an effective system of foreign policy and church policy, promoting Orthodoxy. 

On pages 37-44, the author explains the importance of The Primary Chronicle, as primary material for the Christianisation of the Russians. Russians’ turn to Christianity changed the whole of Russian History, in a similar fashion to the case of Boris I of Bulgaria and his people.

On pages 45-56, Savvides analyses the chronological framework. He explains that Byzantine-Russian relations precede the Christianisation of the Russians by several years. One can detect the first encounters between the two nations, during the years of the Emperor Theophilos and in particular in 838/839-840-842. During these years one can see the first appearance of Russians in Asia Minor and the Black Sea. Also, in the summer of 860 Rus’ fighters appeared for the first time in Constantinople. Soon after, the Byzantines would start their missionary work with Saints Cyril and Methodius. The author refers to the administrative divisions of thémata as an important measure for the protection of the empire’s borders, and the contribution of the Khazars during the great Russian attack of 860. The author aptly asserts that a comprehensive table of Byzantine-Russian relations should include earlier stages of Christianisation, prior to the official event. However, this is a topic which needs further examination and research. The author also discusses the role of the Patriarch Photios and his missionary work.

The ideology of the “Third Rome” is discussed on pages 79-88, with references to the views of other prominent scholars. As the author aptly notes, this ideology of a “Third Rome” developed after the siege and fall of Constantinople in 1453. Two important primary sources are Nestor Iskander’s Tale on the Taking of Tsargrad and the Russian Narrative on the Siege of Constantinople. The author juxtaposes effectively different views on how far Moscow was a continuation of the Byzantine Empire, giving the reader the opportunity to read them with a critical eye.

On pages 89-94, Savvides deals with the limitations of the theory of a “Third Rome”, and again, juxtaposes views by different scholars on the adoption or rejection of this theory. Especially important is, perhaps, Meyendorff’s view that even after the fall of Constantinople, the Grand Prince of Moscow did not claim to be the successor of the Byzantine Emperor.

On pages 103-106, the author refers to the contribution of university departments and other centres in Greece which focus on Russian studies, Balkanology and Slavology. These are: the Department of the Russian Language, Philology and Slavology at the Philosophical School of the University of Athens; the Hellenic Association for Slavic Studies (Thessalonica); the Department of Language, Philology and Culture of the Black Sea Countries at Democritus University; the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies at the University of Macedonia; the Greek Committee for South-East European Studies; and the Institute for Balkan Studies, supported by the Ministry of Culture, Education and Religious Affairs.         

On pages 269-275, the author gives information about the different textbooks used in History for Secondary Education. The analysis is rather critical of the Greek education system, as according to the author most of these textbooks do not provide sufficient material for study on themes relevant to Byzantine-Russian relations.                                                      

Overall, Alexios Savvides’ book is a comprehensive study which meets its goals. This is a book for academics and specialists in Byzantine and Medieval Studies and for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Medieval History. It is also a very important source for researchers in general and for those who have a personal interest in history.

Iakovos Menelaou, PhD, Balkan History Association