At IOS, a PhD research project will study the perception of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the ensuing wars in Czechoslovakia and its successor states. The Yugoslav crisis and the war received a great deal of attention in Czechoslovakia. The ČSFR and its successor states participated in the UNPROFOR mission, while Czech NGOs provided humanitarian aid. The country, itself in the process of dissolution, thus actively participated in European and international interventionism in the war region, and so the traditionally close relations between the Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were once again evident in this specific historical moment.
We will explore the views and assessments of Czechoslovak (or Czech and Slovak, respectively) state actors of the developments in (the former) Yugoslavia. Amongthe possible research questions here are: what was the impact of these perceptions on political debates about the development of Czechoslovakia and the route of the Czech Republic and Slovakia into the EU? Apart from the political arena, the planned research shall also examine media discourses. In so doing, it will make an important contribution to a comprehensive European history of the Yugoslav Wars. The subproject shall ask, against the context of a long and intense relationship, what constructions of political, social, and cultural identities and alterities were evident in relation to Yugoslavia? Was the (post-)Yugoslav space constructed as the Other and contrasted with Czechoslovakia’s (or its successor states’) own decidedly European self-image? Did Czechoslovaks (Czechs, Slovaks) see themselves as an integral part of “Western” humanitarian interventionism? Or did they also refer to older traditions, such as the pan-Slavic solidarities that had been promoted in Yugoslav-Czechoslovak networks before the Second World War? What role was played by the various contacts that had emerged due to tourism and labor migration during the Cold War or by the transnational networks that had formed when Czechoslovak opposition figures found political asylum in Yugoslavia after the violent suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968?
The subproject will thus examine the political repercussions of the Yugoslav Wars on the Czechoslovak process of dissociation. To what degree did the negative example of the violent disintegration of the Yugoslav state strengthen the Czechoslovaks’ will to dissolve their own state by peaceful (“European”) means? How can apparently contradictory positions be explained, such as Havel’s efforts to preserve the Czechoslovak on the one hand and his advocacy of the swift recognition of Slovenia and Croatia on the other? What role was played by refugee movements from the region and media coverage of the escalation of violence? Did the Yugoslav Wars prompt reflections on Czechoslovakia’s own nationality conflicts and minority issues? And to what extent did this influence Prague’s and Bratislava’s positions in the negotiations on establishing an international minority regime in Europe?
Finally, the project intends to assess the influence of the Yugoslav Wars on Czechoslovak (or Czech and Slovak) policy objectives with respect to Europe. How did the events in Southeastern Europe affect the approaches of the governments in Prague and Bratislava towards European security structures? What role did these governments foresee for the United States, and how did they view Russia’s influence? To what extent did the Czechoslovak (or Czech and Slovak) government instrumentalize the Yugoslav Wars and its participation in the UNPROFOR mission to successfully advocate its own EU and NATO membership?
Research on these questions will draw especially on archival materials and media sources. Relevant archives to be explored are those of the foreign ministries, party archives, and national archives in Prague and Bratislava. For its analyses of contemporary public debates, the project will work with the records of the joint digital archive of the parliaments of both states as well as memoirs and national daily newspapers.
IOS project leader and PhD supervisor: Ulf Brunnbauer