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Anna Di Lellio
Published online: 7 July 2009
© Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract In 1989, as the countries of the Soviet bloc took a turn toward democracy and Europe, Yugoslavia and Serbia plunged into a bloody war and moved in the opposite direction. This article argues that the legacy of that era is still strongly felt in postwar and post-Milosevic Serbia. Now, like then, the choice is not simply for or against Europe. By holding on to the nationalism of the Kosovo myth, which territorializes both the Serbian ethnos and the opposition between Christianity and Islam, Serbia is tracing a tortuous path toward democratization and European integration. In the contemporary context, the Kosovo myth impedes Scrbia`s recognition of Kosovo as an independent state; it continues to fuel the rhetoric of fractious elites that never cease to tap its capacity for rallying the public; and it provides room for “pro-European” leaders to negotiate EU integration, stracldling the
fence between Europe`s Atlantic propensities and the resurgent power of Russia. This
nationalist myth thus plays a normative and an instrumental role, both domestically and
internationally. Outside Serbia, it also engagcs with a narrow and “thick” notion of Europe,
which gained traction within Europe itself in the post-9/ ll climate of heightenecl fear of
Islam, where cultural identity tmmps the values of liberal democracy.