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Friday 17 May 2024

The Ghost of the Ottoman Scourge: Ottoman Hauntology and Dystopia in Socialist Yugoslav History Textbooks (1945–1990)

A post by Bakir Ovčina

INTRODUCTION

In 1991, prominent Yugoslav Communist-turned-dissident Milovan Đilas reflected on how the egalitarian utopia of Marxism-Leninism was rapidly coming to its end. He pondered whether a ‘body of new and attractive ideas might arise – perhaps a call for a new utopia’ (Djilas and Urban 1991, 178). When the world was looking to the future, former Yugoslavia was in a deep crisis. Djilas did not believe Yugoslavia would fall apart (Djilas and Urban 1991, 175). He was wrong. The end of the Bolshevik utopia in Yugoslavia brought a devastating war. In that war, Serb forces sought to create their own new utopia, ‘a state cleansed of any “foreign” elements – a nationally pure Greater Serbia’ (Weitz 2003, 236). Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević’s promised state was bound up in utopian language of ‘all Serbs in one state,’ ‘fast railways’ and ‘Swedish job protection’ (Korać 2014). This utopia also meant wholesale genocide of the Bosniak/Muslim population in Bosnia, culminating on 11 July 1995 in Srebrenica, where the forces of General Ratko Mladić, in his words, ‘took revenge on the Turks’ by butchering some 8,372 men and boys (Suljagić 2021, 1). The ‘Turks’ he referred to were the Bosnian Muslims, identified with the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire (ca. 1299–1922) controlled much of former Yugoslavia, Southeastern Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. Its influence profoundly shaped the culture, customs and language, of especially the Balkan nations (Lory 2015, 391–404). Maria Todorova (1997, 46–47) argued it is ‘preposterous to look for an Ottoman legacy in the Balkans. The Balkans are the Ottoman legacy.’ However, this heritage has been often maligned, and the Ottoman Empire vilified.

This article argues that the Ottoman Period (1463–1878 in Bosnia) was very salient in the construction of utopian and dystopian narratives in socialist Yugoslavia. It asks: How and why did history textbooks printed in Socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1945 and 1990 construct dystopian narratives using the Ottoman period? It studies Bosnian history textbooks from 1945 to 1990, to show that they largely understood the Ottoman period as a dystopia, a society ‘considerably worse than the society in which the reader lived’ (Claeys and Sargent 1999, 2). This involved the stifling of the independence of the South Slavs, subjecting them to a foreign, unchanging feudal system, oppressing the Christian population and harshly punishing any resistance to the injustices. Socialist Yugoslavia used the constructed dystopia of the Ottoman Empire to highlight the desirable values and future intended for Yugoslavia. It presented a hauntology even, as the Ottoman period haunted Yugoslavia throughout the ages (Horn 2017). The article proceeds by examining scholarship on ‘utopia,’ how the Ottoman Empire was remembered, and the methods employed to study the textbooks. Finally, the textbooks are analyzed, and a conclusion synthesized. All things considered, the Ottoman Empire featured prominently as dystopian setting in the Socialist Bosnian history textbook.

HISTORIOGRAPHY AND LITERATURE

A ‘utopia’ is an imaginative projection, either positive or negative, of a society that is different from the author’s. Practically, they are impossible, as societies are never homogenous enough for any polity to be able to satisfy all constituents’ desires. A utopia can be taken to mean ‘some variation on an ideal present, an ideal past and an ideal future, and the relation between the three’ (Claeys 2011, 7). It is contradictory and can be a dangerous political tool outside of literary work (Sargent 2010, 21; Bonet and Style 2008, 55). However, as Wegner (2002, xvii) notes, the idea of the nation was closely linked to the idea of utopia. An example is former Socialist Yugoslavia (1945–1992). Marxism espoused a utopian phase of social development without national or class distinctions (Ulam 1965, 383). As a Balkan state composed of various nations and polities, Yugoslavia was a deeply ‘national’ society (Brubaker 1996, 6, 60). The Communists therefore promised a bright future for the Yugoslav nations, now finally as masters of their own fate and living in peace with one another (Buchenau 2005, 551; Sindbaek 2012, 43–44). This produced discourses that used othering to highlight who the Yugoslavs were and were not. The usual subjects of the othering were the Axis in WWII, or other Socialist regimes since the Tito-Stalin Split (Jović 2013, 281). Another one of the victims of this discourse was the Ottoman period in former Yugoslavia.

The Ottomans in Yugoslav Historiography 

History in Yugoslavia centered on WWII as the ‘National Liberation War’, in which the peoples would no longer struggle against each other as pawns of foreign powers (Buchenau 2005, 551; Perica 2004, 96). The enemies were external – the Habsburgs, Ottomans, Germany, Italy, or local collaborators (Sindbaek 2012, 43–44). Foreigners were presented as the root cause of trouble and the peoples beforehand had supposedly lived in jovial harmony (Carmichael 2015, 100). Unsurprisingly, early textbooks in Socialist Yugoslavia focus mostly on the unity of the nations and bemoan historical episodes when ‘disunity’ ruled. These include the first major Bosnian textbook ‘The History of the Peoples of Yugoslavia,’ whose first volume ends with the Ottoman conquest. It decries the disunity of the nobles in Serbia and Bosnia in the late feudal age, saying how ‘the ruling feudal class had brought the state to such a condition, in which her further existence had lost any sense of justification’ (Babić 1947, 143). The book offers a cautionary tale of how disunity would weaken the state and make it ripe for conquest. Therefore, while the focus was undoubtably on modern history, earlier periods also featured prominently in Yugoslav history-telling.

Folk mythology, Aleksov (2007, 115–16) argued, influenced ‘scientific’ facts deeply in former Yugoslavia. Conversely, historiography related closely to the negative memory of the Ottoman Empire (Todorović 2010, 216). Two key literary figures in historiography were Petar Petrović Njegoš and Ivo Andrić. Njegoš’s infamous ‘Mountain Wreath’ poem detailed massacres of Muslim converts by Christian Holy Warriors and was a cornerstone text for the Communists (Hoare 2014, 258; Anzulovic 1999, 52). Andrić’s oeuvre decried how ‘Having fallen to Islam it [Bosnia] lost its possibility of fulfilling this, its natural role and of participating in the cultural development of Christian Europe’ (Buturović 2022, 22). This dominant nationalist ethos interpreted the Ottoman Empire as ‘religiously, socially, institutionally and even racially alien’ (Todorova 2009, 162). Islam was taken as foreign to the ‘European’ and the Ottomans became another Asiatic invader like the Mongols (Muršić 2010, 18; Lory 2015, 360). The Ottoman state came to embody the adversary the Balkan states had to overcome by removing, erasing or painting over their Islamic past (Bandžović 2019, 23). Todorova dubbed this process ‘de-Ottomanization,’ which ideologically aligned with its perceived opposite – Europeanization, or Westernization (Maria Todorova 1997, 59). This negation could, like it would in the 1990s, go as far as ethnic cleansing (McCarthy 1995, 1–5; Karčić 2015, 172). In Yugoslavia, Socialist historiography gradually merged with the ethno-nationalist one (Malešević 2019, 223). For Marxists, the Ottoman Empire was ‘an inhibitor,’ stopping the evolution of the natural transition from feudalism to capitalism. The Empire promoted regionalism, parochialism and religious fanaticism, juxtaposed to the ‘normal’ West (M. Todorova 1997, 72). Marx and Engels have plainly stated: ‘Turkish, like any other oriental domination, is incompatible with a capitalist economy; the surplus value extorted is not safe from the hands of greedy satraps and pashas’ (Marx and Engels 1952, 40). The irony is that Marxists pioneered comparing ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ societies, but their analyses were rudimentary (Kreutz 1983, 169–70). As Perry Anderson highlights, Marxism ‘inherited virtually en bloc a traditional European discourse on Asia and reproduced it with few variations’ (P. Anderson 2013, 478/563).

Textbooks and Education

Scientific literature is nearly unanimous on the importance of education as a form of socialization (Bacevic 2014, 7; Buric 1972, 22). Historical education also helps students use the past as a lens through which to interpret the world today (Lee 2013, xiii). It helps secure a loyal citizenry that would share a sense of belonging to an ‘imagined community’ (Rosa 2013, 64; B. R. O. Anderson 1991, 5–6). In Anderson’s terms, the community is imagined because one could not possibly know every single member of any given community. The Bosnian Muslims, Hajdarpašić (2015, 16) thought, inhabited a more ambiguous space. For Anderson, the fraternal national community is one you either belong to or do not belong to. However, the Muslims were co-nationals, speaking the South Slavic dialects, yet also Muslim stand-ins for the Ottomans. The question remains, how could this tension be depicted in textbooks? 

History textbooks are the principal means through which the understanding of the past is influenced. They are composed of narratives nations use to define themselves and define others. ‘They represent a body of core cultural knowledge which the younger generation is expected to both assimilate and support’ (Foster 2013, 53). Apple (2002, 5) points out that, in a textbook, collective memory is articulated as ‘official knowledge’. Troch (2015, 12) argues that ‘teaching instruction and materials reveal how state authorities attempt to install national identity into young generations, and how they define the ‘cultural stuff’ that determines national identity.’ Textbooks usually take authoritative positions on issues, especially in nations where education is centrally controlled (Foster 2013, 53). In authoritarian Socialist Yugoslavia, this was very much the case and studying the textbooks should reveal this ‘cultural stuff’.

However, some authors are not as convinced of the value of studying textbooks. Bacevic (2014, 9–10) contends that the analysis of textbooks does not tell us necessarily whether those textbooks are a result of policies (her focus), or merely of their authors’ prejudices. However, having been examined and approved institutionally, they ought to be representative of what discourses were acceptable. Perhaps the textbooks can point us in the direction of an answer to the question of why the vitriolic 1990s propaganda seemed to fall on fertile soil (Lyon 2003, 225). Concerning textbook analysis in the Yugoslav context, the works of Tamara Pavasović-Trošt (2022) and Dubravka Stojanović (2011) are of significance. They mostly analyzed Socialist textbooks on WWII, however their work also presents significant issues. They focus on the 1980s, while they abstract the preceding period under the banner of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’. However, concepts such as ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ have not been de-constructed substantively enough and our views are influenced by the image the regime projected, rather than attempting to better understand its hegemonies and relationship between the groups it subsumed (Močnik 2016, 228; Daldal 2014, 149–67).

In any case, Yugoslav communists greatly prioritized education (Brown 1946, 55). The authorities passed laws eliminating private education entirely and limiting religious education. Primary education was from year seven to fourteen, followed by secondary and tertiary, all for free, on top of a new kindergarten system (Koren 2012, 70; Radić 2002, 196). In the decades after the war, reforms were gradually implemented with the reparation of the country’s infrastructure (Krneta 1966, 179). The quantitative effects were undeniable and almost on par with many Western education systems (Ognjenović, Mataušić, and Jozelić 2016, 29). Still, despite its peoples being better educated than ever, Yugoslavia’s breakup was horrifically violent. To better understand why and how this was the case, we ought to look at the textbooks and Yugoslav historiography.

METHODOLOGY 

Bosnian textbooks were selected for two reasons. Firstly, because Bosnia and Herzegovina was a unique Yugoslav republic. Constitutionally, as Hoare (2014, 288) outlines, it was a ‘nation-state’ without a single nation. Bosnia had effectively all common, unitary institutions, including a Ministry of Education and textbook-printing enterprises. Still, it was not the ethnic home to any one people, but to three ‘nations’ – Muslims (officially since 1968), Serbs and Croats. Of further interest is the native Muslim South-Slavic-speaking population that was, in Lockwood’s words, a ‘living legacy’ of the Ottoman Empire (Lockwood 1979, 209–25). This population converted to Islam during the Ottoman period and managed to survive the various waves of ‘de-Ottomanization’ (i.e., ethnic cleansing) since the late 17th and throughout the 19th century. In 1948, the Muslims comprised some 30.7% of Bosnia’s population, numbering 788,403, and would grow to 1.9 million or 43% of the population in 1991 (Duranović 2021, 252; Bougarel 2015, 76). Eventually, this population was recognized as a ‘nation’ within Yugoslavia, affirming an aspect of Ottoman legacy, further complicating the situation regarding the depiction of the Ottoman Empire in Socialist Bosnian textbooks (Lory 2015, 377). Therefore, Bosnian textbooks ought to be more extensive on the Ottoman period than their Croatian or Serbian counterparts, where the Muslim population was significantly smaller.

Secondly, literature about textbooks has avoided Socialist history textbooks in Bosnia. Much attention has been paid to modern textbooks and their depictions of the recent wars and late Socialism (Katz 2015; Plasto 2019; Stojanović and Kamberovic 2021). Others have focused on comparing Serbian and Croatian textbooks (e.g. Pavasović Trošt 2018a; 2018b), studying the Ottoman period in Croatian textbooks from the 1980s onwards (e.g. Mujadžević 2014) or Serbian textbooks in the late 1980s and early 1990s (e.g. Stojanović 2011; 2015). However, no work has been done on the Socialist period in Bosnia or the depictions of the Ottoman Empire, let alone dystopian narratives therein. The textbooks in question include primary and secondary school textbooks (gymnasium and vocational), as well as historical readers. In total, 16 textbooks published between 1945 and 1990, were examined in the Bosnian National Library and the Bosniak Institute in Sarajevo. They were usually from the third and fourth grade of four-year primary school, sixth and seventh grade of eight-year primary school, second grade of gymnasium, and first grade of vocational schools. Textbooks from all levels and tracks of education were used where appropriate to have as complete a picture as possible of the Ottomans in the textbooks.

Epistemologically, this article approaches the textbooks hermeneutically to interpret them within and connect them to their political context. It aims to understand the textbooks and the dystopian narratives therein, as well as their function in the society that they inhabited. A chief practical method is ‘thick description’, which denotes using and describing source material in detail, using extensive quotations, to allow the nuances to emerge and the sources to ‘speak for themselves’.* Conversely, this allows the readers to interact with the sources and draw their own conclusions. It also employs triangulation by supplementing the data from the textbooks with scholarly sources and literature (Schwartz-Shea 2006, 101–2; Segesten 2011, 15/329). To answer the questions about dystopian narratives, narrative analysis is employed. A narrative, a written account of events, means not only ‘specific narratives’ but also ‘schematic narrative templates’ (Wretsch 2008, 123). The former is about unique spatial and temporal events (e.g., the Battle of Kosovo in 1389); the latter denotes a narrative temple which produces replicas that vary in detail but reflect an overall story. This approach helps paint a more extensive picture of the Ottoman period and its dystopian characteristics, rather than just focusing on single events. The article therefore focuses on the sections of the textbooks where the Ottoman period is mentioned and more so on the general conditions painted that characterize the Ottoman dystopia, rather than specific events. This is how I was able to read the textbooks with specific topics in mind and select the appropriate material from them.

*All translations are my own.

THE ‘TURKS’ AND THE TEXTBOOKS 

Yugoslav education functioned very similarly to the post-succession nationalisms – history was written according to political barometers to promote historical images that the regime wanted to project (Ognjenović and Jozelić 2020, 11–12). This is best evidenced by teaching plans, which universally underlined the importance of ‘Socialist’ patriotism and ‘the spirit of Brotherhood and Unity,’ (Republički zavod za unapređivanje vasiptno-obrazovnog rada 1988, 294; Republički zavod za unapređivanje školstva 1964, 191). Conditions brought about by the Ottomans were painted in vicious detail and hold elements of dystopian language, which remained constant throughout the years and despite all the political developments regarding the recognition of the Bosnian Muslims. The narratives about development presented in the textbooks leave little to the imagination. Even the titles of the lessons and sections dealing with the Ottoman period used heavily loaded and biased language, such as: ‘The Abuses of the Turk against our People’ (Ćurić 1951, 64). The Empire is referred to as Turkish, even though this term is historically inaccurate. The Ottomans (dynasty and notables) considered themselves Ottoman and ‘Turkish’ usually referred to the rural Anatolian population (Gabor Ágoston and Masters 2008, xxxvi). Below I sketch the key aspects used to present the ‘Turkish’ dystopia in the textbooks, how they fit into the historical context, and contrast them with academic literature.

Independent Development

The first major point the textbooks underscore is the ‘end of independent development’ of the South Slavic lands under a despotic regime. Former Yugoslavia valued its Cold War independence and inherited the Balkan nationalist tradition of valuing sovereignty vis-à-vis the old imperial ‘prisons of nations’. The textbooks underline that independence is crucial in any substantial and positive economic, cultural, and political development. One Bosnian economic history textbook from 1962, by high school professor Kemal Hrelja, highlighted how: ‘From a political perspective, Turkish lordship meant not only the end of independence of Serbia, Bosnia and parts of Montenegro, but also the end to their further independent development’ (Hrelja 1962, 185). This depiction serves two purposes. Firstly, it blames all negative development on ‘the Turk’ (Milošević 2011, 69). Secondly, it justifies all policies carried out by a state to overcome this ‘backwardness’ (Bandžović 2019, 28). It presents a sharp break between the epochs, characteristic of some Marxian conceptions of history, and the break as one between the medieval utopia and the Ottoman dystopia (explored below), which set on immediately upon conquest. Yet the reality was different. Pre-Ottoman administrative divisions and conditions were mostly preserved after conquest. The Ottomans created a sandžak (province) out of Bosnia and many of the Serbian princedoms they conquered (Ágoston 2021, 49). Ottomanists have moreover shown that economic conditions tied to development did not drastically change (Quataert 2003, 5–6). For instance, the first mining statutes in the Balkans were exact translations of their preceding laws. Halil Inalcik (2001, 32) finely explains how the Ottomanization of a newly-conquered region rarely happened overnight; it was a process, not an event. Therefore, it is not tenable to claim that simply falling under Ottoman rule on its own brought about total dystopia overnight. The textbooks, however, also attempt to explain how the dystopian conditions developed.

The ‘Turkish’ Feudal System

A major inhibitor of development under the Ottomans, in Marxian terms, was the persistence of feudalism. European-style feudalism was supposed to engender the development of early capitalism, but the supposed backwardness and decadence of the ‘Turkish feudal system’ did not allow this. This ‘yoke’, the argument goes, cut off the potential for future development and froze in place the Balkan nations, who could not take part in ‘European’ developments. The early, more orderly Ottoman period is characterized by strict enforcement of regulation and exploitation, while the latter parts stress the lawlessness and arbitrariness (Sugar and Donald W. Treadgold 1996). Regarding the ‘Turkish feudal system,’ some textbooks underline how it brought a ‘stoppage to the further economic-cultural development of our lands […] in which lays the cause of the regressive role which the Turks played in the historical development of our peoples’ (Slipčević 1954, 287). Furthermore, they emphasize in very ethnocentric terms the benefits of ‘our’ feudal system – ‘Turkish feudalism was not developed in our lands. Thus, while European people progressed, most of our people and lands under Turkish rule stagnated’ (Slipčević and Kapidžić 1950, 215–16). Such an interpretation continued well into the seventies and eighties (Arslanagić and Isaković 1977, 67). This was not entirely the dominant image, as one textbook from the 1960s mentions how the feudal system was quite similar, if not initially more lenient. But even the other textbooks from this period stipulate that in the Ottoman territory ‘the connection with European economic development ended, which brought stagnation and backwardness’ (Ćirković 1980, 167–68). Conversely, the ‘European’ part of Yugoslavia, which was under Habsburg rule, ‘slowly developed a local bourgeoisie’ (Ćirković 1977, 167–68). Therefore, while foreign rule was bemoaned, it seems that some foreign rule, chiefly by Christian powers, was preferable to the ultimate religious other. The Ottoman Empire was externalized, presented as un-European and abnormal. Furthermore, branding the feudal system as inherently ‘Turkish’ also further underlines how the ‘Turks’ are blamed for the retrogression. Marx too deemed the society of the ‘Oriental Empires’ as fundamentally backwards and unable to change on their own, defined within the ‘Asiatic mode of production,’ characterized by villages, strict centralization and subsistence agriculture (Howard 2017, 132). This styling essentializes the system but also makes little distinction between an Ottoman, a Turk and a local Muslim.

This feudal system, the textbooks argue, was underpinned by draconic taxation. Some authors are adamant the ex-Ottoman Yugoslav lands did not develop economically, due to ‘great taxation and constant robberies which the Turks committed in their conquered lands’ (Salzer 1961, 132). Furthermore, taxation is characterized as unevenly spread among the population and therefore in a modern sense unjust: ‘The non-Muslim peasants pay poll tax to the Sultan, they pay tax to the governor and the judge, yet the judge is never just in his rulings, especially against the Turk’ (Đikić 1958, 27). Đikić also highlights how the Muslim population was privileged in the corrupt system, implying that the modern state of Yugoslavia was not corrupt and did not privilege one group. These extractions could be so severe that the peasantry ‘sold their children into slavery to pay the harač and other taxes’(Slipčević 1954, 294–95). The tax collectors too exhibited classical cases of Oriental arbitrariness in their collections, as they ‘went to villages with armed guard and took from the people not only the Emperor’s due, but also all that they fancied’ (Ćurić 1951, 65). Specific instances of this are never mentioned, but rather the textbooks follow a template according to which the Empire is necessarily portrayed as extractive and corrupt, which only fuels the antagonism between classes and underpins the dystopia. Under socialism, however, it is implied that these extractions are no longer taking place. The Ottomans’ extractive behavior, textbooks say, destroyed the towns and cities, and indicated that ‘Turkey did not possess internal powers which could lead her societal development towards industrial production and the bourgeois order, so the crisis which gripped the Turkish Empire and its military-feudal system led to its final destruction’ (Perazić 1984, 32). Therefore, in Marxian terms these unresolved contradictions inevitably led to the end of the Ottoman state in a strictly dictated teleological sense. Socialist Yugoslavia however, with its productive forces and industry, ‘the hallmark of any socialist nation,’ changed this extractive paradigm towards a more equitable distribution of income and resources, one that, in the eyes of the regime, would not collapse so easily (Calic 2019, 240; Friedman 1996, 146).

This image is more constructed than real. Contrary to the extractive nature of the Ottoman state presented in the textbooks, the Ottoman law codes compare quite favorably to the local ones. Serbian Emperor Dušan’s legal code from the mid-14th century made serfs work the lords’ manor twice a week, but under the Ottomans this was only three days a year (Miljkovic 2012, 135). All other taxation aside from that in the Ottoman kanun (civil law) was abolished, which reset feudal privileges. While the Ottoman guilds and crafts are rarely mentioned in textbooks, some historians in Yugoslavia studied them, like Hamdija Kreševljaković (Vucinich 1955, 293, 297). His work would later be included in a sixth-grade reader from 1978 onwards, but the idea of the inevitability of the failure of the Ottoman Empire remained (Isaković 1978, 75–76). This change is congruent with trends noted by Apple and Christian-Smith (1991, 12): textbooks rarely substantively change their ideological underpinnings. They simply integrate certain selective elements into the dominant group tradition by associating, in this case the guilds, with the values of the dominant group. Therefore, with the value socialism placed on industry and workers, coupled with the increasing valorization and recognition of the Muslim nation since 1968, the crafts under the Ottoman period were repurposed as a positive, albeit futile factor in the grand scheme of history.

The Wretched of the Earth in Ottoman Bosnia

Dystopian narratives are most visible in how the Christian population of the Empire is presented. The Christian population is portrayed as a victim of the regime and without any rights. Conversely, the ‘Turkish regime’ is shown to favor the Muslim population to sow discontent between the Yugoslavs. The regime looked to present this ‘divide and rule’ strategy as particularly perfidious, as communist authorities in Sarajevo and Belgrade wanted to be seen as fair and evenhanded to all the peoples and religions in Yugoslavia. One textbook argues that ‘the Turks considered the Christians as slaves without rights’ (Ćurić 1951, 65). Another source details how, around Sarajevo, ‘Only Turks live in houses, and Christians in huts. […] The Turks keep an eye out for somebody not to make a better house, and if they do, they prosecute them’ (Perazić 1987, 36). This social inequality begs the reader to consider how miserable the position of the Christians was and how improved it is today, serving the double function of legitimating the socialist system, while vilifying the Ottoman as especially hostile to the Christian population.

Similarly, the (Orthodox) Church too is shown as being pressured by the Ottoman government. A 1954 high school textbook writes: ‘The representatives of the Church were routinely mistreated by Turkish feudal lords’(Slipčević 1954, 291). Another 1950s high school handbook writes: ‘The Church was a subject of exploitation by the Turkish feudal order. […] Heads of the Serbian Church were thrown into dungeons’ (Slipčević and Kapidžić 1950, 217). In the later 1970s, the textbooks continue: ‘The Church was robbed, the priests thrown into dungeons and murdered’ (Arslanagić and Isaković 1979, 119). No cause is given other than the arbitrariness and hostility supposedly inherent to the Ottomans. Interestingly, the unfair treatment of religious communities here is decried, while the communists too were usually suspicious of religion and prosecuted many religious figures (Perica 2004, 26–27). This outrage can be explained by the historical linkage between the religion and the nation, as the ‘mistreatment’ of the Church, presented in the textbooks, illustrates the mistreatment of the constituent nations, chiefly the Serbs. This is hardly surprising, as Yugoslavia inherited the overwhelmingly negative Serb conception of the Empire. Presenting the Ottomans as uniquely intolerant towards religion and by proxy, the Serb nation, without any context, served to underline how different the modern regime was and prompt the students to detest the dystopia the Ottomans fostered.

Those who converted to Islam during Ottoman rule, such as the Janissaries, were vilified as well. The Janissary Corps were an elite unit made up of Christian boys who were taken at a young age (a practice called devshirme – ‘collection’), converted to Islam, and made slaves for military and political service. This caused a deep trauma in the Balkan populations. Strong familial bonds were perceived as broken by having one’s children abducted and trained to fight against fellow Christians. Serbian historiography interpreted the Janissary corps as an attack and converse loss of the ‘biology’ of the nation (Lory 2015, 365–66). The textbooks bemoaned that the Janissaries have ‘forgotten their kin, their language and their faith and fighting only for the Sultan and Islam,’ as well as committing the gravest sins against their people (Ćurić 1951, 65). The gravity of this supposed betrayal should not be surprising for a country whose national anthem’s closing lyrics were ‘damned be the traitor of his homeland’. Earlier chapters on the so-called ‘blood tax’ contain fragments taken from Andrić’s Bridge on the River Drina, an eminently literary work of dubious historical accuracy (Mehanović 1953, 156–57). The same extract in the fourth-grade textbook by Đikić underlined the horror of the practice. It shows the pathos of the parents to the extent that they ‘crippled their children’ (Đikić 1958, 27–28). The appeal to children especially is used to emphasize how inhumane the conditions imposed by the Ottomans were, highlighting their practice of splitting families apart, but also that a parent crippling their child is preferable to serving the ‘Turks’ and betraying ‘the nation’. Thanks to such dystopian presentation, pupils would surely have placed themselves in the roles of the children. The ‘Turk’ features as a conniving trickster, rarely differentiated from the local Muslims, mentioned only in a handful of textbooks. The textbooks argue that the Ottomans used Islam to ‘tie the conquered people to their [Ottoman] rule’ (Omanović 1974, 98), and the term reserved for the converted is poturčenje – ‘Turkification’ (Salzer 1961, 92). Conversion is shown in a similar light to collaboration with the foreign power, a betrayal of the national fraternity by the very nature of the act. It also implies that the essence of the Yugoslav Muslims was fundamentally changed and presents them as remnant of a dystopia, somewhere on the wrong side of history.

However, the Ottomans never forced their Christian subjects to discard their heritage, but rather looked to integrate them as stakeholders of the state. Christian nobility could initially provide military service and keep their properties. The peasantry could be integrated in Christian vojnuk or martolos forces and be excluded from the ‘blood tax’. Ultimately, the Empire was incredibly complex and flexible (Gábor Ágoston 2021, 50–51). Yet another textbook in print from the late sixties bemoans how ‘under Turkish rule, local population, apart from those who accepted (primio) Islam, remained in the position of near rightlessness’ (Ćirković 1977, 167–68). This extract reemphasizes the egalitarianism of the modern Yugoslav state, but again, this frame is not entirely correct. The various Christians in the Empire were considered a millet (nation), with considerable autonomy in matters of religion, taxation and internal politics (Lory 2015, 387). Of course, this was not a form of modern human rights. However, when mentioning these privileges, the textbooks juxtapose it to modern concepts of tolerance the state nominally adheres to, rather than understanding the Ottoman system in context. The context was largely that of relative ‘European’ intolerance towards religious difference, as for example the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 had settled in the Ottoman lands (Todorović 2010, 217). This and many other intricacies of the Ottoman state were known, but were ignored in the textbooks, which had a very clear ideological goal – to present the Ottoman Empire as a uniquely intolerant dystopia, which had to be resisted and dismantled to engender the socialist utopia.

Resisting the Ottomans

Finally, the textbooks present those who resisted Ottoman rule as heroic figures, since the regime wanted to present its own resistance to the Axis in a historical continuity with them. The major group were the hajduks, brigands and resistance fighters. Their story of hardship and covert actions parallels those of the Partisans (WWII Yugoslav guerrillas), who also fought a much stronger force, namely the Axis and chiefly Germany. This folk tradition was unsurprisingly used by the Partisans in WWII, who saw themselves as the hajduks of yore (Brkljačić 2013, 199–200). The connection with WWII is clearest in lines like: ‘As our people never willingly submitted to any type of foreign rule, so they did not bow down to the Turkish’ (Salzer 1961, 94). The 1951 third-grade textbook by Ćurić mentions that the hajduks, in response to ceaseless ‘Turkish’ violence, ‘killed Turks, especially those that committed violence and injustice against the conquered people’ (Ćurić 1951, 67). When seen with the passages from previous paragraphs, the dichotomy between the ‘just’ Us and the ‘arbitrary/unjust’ Them is obvious. The textbooks also paint vivid images of the punishments that resistance entailed: ‘the Turks hunted them [the rebels] and the captured hajduks faced horrifying punishments: impalement on the stake and hanging on hooks’ (Omanović 1974, 101). To highlight the brutality, scenes of vivid torture are present, in textbooks for the fourth grade no less:

Every feudal lord abused his serfs. The serfs were locked in the pig styes or attic, then damp hay was burned to choke them with smoke until they promised to sell all their property to settle the extorted sum. Lords could, at will, beat and kill a Serb, take their property without repercussions. (Đikić 1958, 99) 

Again, this not a single event, but a general illustration of the unfair treatment of the Christian population endemic in the Empire. Another textbook highlights how the harshest punishment was ‘impalement on the stake’ (Slipčević 1954, 284). The stake presented a very explicit method of torture, sexual and national humiliation. However, while presented as common, the stake was mentioned only once in Andrić’s 1945 novel Bridge on the River Drina, and never in any historical source. That text, a staple on the curricula, thus spread the falsehood across the Balkans to where it is now a commonly-held myth (Boose 2002, 82). This practice occurred in Austria and Hungary and gave the name to Wallachian Prince Vlad the Impaler, but there is no evidence that it happened in the Ottoman Empire as well. The imagery of the stake and the impalement of the (Serb) nation would serve as a rallying cry in their ‘war of vengeance’ against the ‘Turk’ in 1990s Bosnia (Boose 2002, 85). Images in the textbooks show the Ćele-kula, the Ottoman tower of Skulls in Niš (Southern Serbia), after the crushing of the First Serb Rebellion. It is dubbed the ‘haunting witness to the bitter battle of the Serb people for its freedom’ (Perazić 1984, 39; Salzer 1961, 143;). Perhaps it best represents the Ghost of the House of Osman that not merely roamed but raided and pillaged through Yugoslav textbooks. 

CONCLUSION 

This article does not mean to say that the Ottoman period in ex-Yugoslavia/Bosnia was pleasant or without historical controversy. Like any Empire, it was much more complicated, but this was not presented to Bosnian pupils. The period featured as a focal point for dystopian narratives about the past. Even in Muslim-inhabited Bosnia, the Ottoman period represented a dystopia of injustices. From the exploitation of the land, the conversion of the people, resistance and the punishments it wrought, the picture was almost entirely grim. The Ottoman past was cast as a uniquely backwards and dark time that only now would be overcome, to highlight the desired qualities of the state and her citizens. Despite increased enfranchisement of the Muslim population from 1960 onwards, this did not fundamentally change the ideological underpinnings, both nationalist and Marxist, which saw the Ottoman dystopia as everything the modern utopian regime – nation-state, communist dictatorship, or something in between – was not.

The Ottoman period is still to this day presented in similar terms. Serbian textbooks continue to portray the period as a ‘five hundred year yoke,’ a bona fide dystopia (Vukomanović 2008, 21). Other contemporary textbooks have attempted to understand the Ottoman period not as a ‘Dark Age’ nor as a corrective but misguided ‘Golden Age’ (Koulouri 2012, 13–14). Yet their impact has been limited. In Bosnia, due to ethnic governance and fracturing of the curricula into Bosniak, Croat and Serb, the picture in the Serb and Croat curricula still vilify a major segment of their own peoples’ past (Alibašić 2007, 58; 2008, 69). The reproduction and use of dystopian narratives, in hoping to engender a utopia, can have the adverse effect of bringing about that dystopia in practice, (Carmichael 2002, 22). Adams and Halilovich (2021, 14) already demonstrated how popular culture of the later 1980s and 1990s – media, literature and music – stereotyped the Bosnian Muslims/Bosniaks to mobilize political action against them. While more research should be done on the real mobilizing potential of textbooks, they should be added to this list of platforms. This article has at least begun to problematize and open a discussion on the understanding and depictions of the Ottoman Empire and the Bosnian Muslims, especially in former Yugoslavia, even under the beloved normative banner of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’. If we do not engage critically with utopian or dystopian narratives and present alternatives, we are no better than those who create and misuse them.


This article debuted on JUNCTIONS.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

My eternal gratitude goes to the immensely friendly, helpful and kind staff of the Bosniak Institute – Adil Zulfikarpašić Foundation in Sarajevo, who kindly hosted me during a large portion of this research. Similar thanks go to the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose help has been instrumental to this article and my RMA thesis project more broadly. Finally, my eternal gratitude is to my RMA thesis supervisor Dr. Iva Vukušić for all her time, studious advice and feedback, as well as help and patience.


Bio

Bakir Ovcina is a first-year graduate student in Modern European History. He is especially interested in nation-building, memory, and land reform in the lands of former Yugoslavia from the 19th century onwards. Bakir's supervisor is Professor Emily Greble.

Contact Information

bakir.ovcina@vanderbilt.edu

Education 

BA in Liberal Arts and Sciences, University College Utrecht (2021)

RMA in History, Utrecht University (2023)



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