Original scientific paper
CONFESSIONS AND THE POST-COMMUNIST CONFLICT OF CIVILIZATIONS
Mislav Kukoč
; Institute for Applied Social Research, Zagreb
Abstract
The war in former Yugoslavia has been often interpreted as a civil
and religious war. The originators of this interpretation readily produce
such a judgement with the intention of hiding the genuine cause
and purpose of the war, i.e. the factthatthis war started as greater
Serbian aggresion against particular former Yugoslav republics,
first against Slovenia, then Croatia,and finally Bosnia-Herzegovina.
However, some western scholars, as S. P. Huntington, accept such
a judgement about civil and religious war, using a ptioti their own
theoretical paradigm to explain these events, i.e. the war in former
Yugoslavia. The thesis presented in this paper is that it is neither a
civil nor religious war. It is about aggression of one particular militarily
strong nation and state against other militarily inferior nations
and states. The religious differences among various ex-Yugoslav
nations and confessions, although these are not the main cause of
the conflict, are the fundamental factors in identifying national and
cultural particularities. Those religious differences finally made inevitable
the dissolution of Yugoslavia as a multinational and multiconfession
al state. In the comparative analysis of the research results
the author shows dominant values presented in particular confessions,
as well as compatible attitudes towards ecumenism and
multiethnical and multiconfessional tolerance. The role of confessional
hierarchies corresponds with the trend of a dominant behavior
of particular national communities. It is interpreted from the point
of mentioned analyses, simultaneously as a cause and consequence
of particular social processes.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
32288
URI
Publication date:
1.11.1995.
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