Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia - written by Rebecca West

[Risto the Great]

I am presently reading this book.
It is a travel book recording the experiences of Dame Rebecca West as she travelled throughout Yugoslavia for 6 weeks in 1937.

Written on the brink of World War II, Rebecca West’s classic examination of the history, people, and politics of Yugoslavia illuminates a region that is still a focus of international concern. A magnificent blend of travel journal, cultural commentary, and historical insight, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon probes the troubled history of the Balkans and the uneasy relationships among its ethnic groups. The landscape and the people of Yugoslavia are brilliantly observed as West untangles the tensions that rule the country’s history as well as its daily life.

This woman could seriously write! A little hard going and somewhat poetic but definitely provides an insight that is not normally written about.

Obviously, her visit to Macedonia is of most interest to me. But her assessment of ethnic tensions throughout the region and the undercurrents of political persuasions are utterly masterful. A very perceptive woman.

She describes Macedonians as Serbian Macedonians or Bulgarian Macedonians. This immediately annoyed me. Reading further she talks of the significant migrations from Serbia INTO Macedonia (particularly in "skopLje") and seems to call these immigrants the Serbian Macedonians. The "Bulgarian" Macedonians are another matter and much of this seems to be church related. Remember, we are talking about the 1930's here and there was a very strong Yugo/Serbian battle for Macedonian hearts. Ultimately she mentions how Serb monks were being removed from Macedonian monasteries and that only Macedonian ones were being retained. Confusing for her and the reader obviously.

I will add some quotes to this thread from the book. Some are worthy of further discussion in my opinion.

[Risto the Great]

I had only to shut my eyes to smell the dust, the lethargy, the rage and hopelessness of a Macedonian town, once a glory to Europe, that had too long been Turkish. The West has done much that is ill, it is vulgar and superficial and economically sadist; but it has not known that death in life which was suffered by the Christian provinces under the Ottoman Empire.

Said so eloquently.

[Risto the Great]

On Gypsies:

“They are Gunpowder gipsies,” said the Professor; “we call them that because they used to find saltpetre for the Turkish Army, and they are renowned for their cleanliness and their beauty.” “But they are like Hindus!” I exclaimed. “They might be from the Mogul court.” “They are something of that sort,” said the Professor; “when Gandhi’s private secretary came here he could make himself understood to our gipsies in Tamil. We think that they are the descendants of some conquered Indian people who fled out of Asia after some unrecorded catastrophe in the Middle Ages, and certainly these Gunpowder gipsies represent the ruling castes.

Tamil (or similar) speaking? I have not heard this before.

Gipsies are, in all but their appearance, particularly what I do not like. I am told that these at Skoplje are the most admirable of their kind, reasonably honest and wholly innocent of the charge, laid against all other Balkan gipsies, of stealing Christian children and deforming them so that they make appealing beggars. But I am cold towards them all, largely because they are the embodiment of that detestable attribute, facility. They never make music of their own, but they take the music of whatever country they happen to be in, play it so slickly that they become the recognized musician caste, and then turn music into a mere titillation of the ear, a pleasant accompaniment to an evening’s drunkenness. There is no design in anything they do.

[Risto the Great]

Slav this, slav that

“Most Western culture comes to the Slavs and to the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe through Germany and Austria, and so they respect everything German and Austrian, and are left with an uneasy suspicion that if Germans and Austrians despise the Slavs and the Jews there must be something in it.” “What you are saying is frightful,” said my husband, “for it means that there is no hope for Europe unless in a multiplication of nationalisms of the most narrow and fanatical sort. For obviously Slavs and Jews cannot counteract this influence except by believing themselves rather more wonderful than the truth can guarantee, by professing the most extreme Zionism or Pan-Slavism.“

Perhaps there should have been more of it to help avoid what happened only a few years later.

[Risto the Great]

Wtf

The prime cause of Macedonian violence is, of course, five hundred years of misgovernment by the Ottoman Empire. But it would never have assumed its recent extreme and internecine character had it not been for England’s support of the Ottoman Empire when it would have fallen apart if it had been left to itself; had it not been for the artificial Bulgarization of the Macedonian Serbs which was carried on, generation after generation, on money supplied by the Tsardom; had it not been for the Austrian Empire, which was so ambitious in its Drang nach Osten that it created by reaction a Serbian chauvinism, which made Serbs not the most ideal administrators of a province far from unanimous in its desire to be administered; had it not been that Italy had perverted the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization by finance and Villainous tutelage.

Quite a mouthful here that is worth discussing.

[Risto the Great]

Who got the jobs?

He himself had been appointed to this important monastery because he had been an active pro-Serb propagandist in Macedonia before the war and could be trusted afterwards to persuade to conformity such Albanians and Bulgarians as were open to persuasion, and to assist the authorities in dealing with the others.

The Serb and Serb lovers, naturally.

[Risto the Great]

The Abbot

He admitted it with a certain reluctance, as if he knew ambition was too strong in him, but went on to say that what he must do next was to reconvert certain Serb villages which in the last years of Turkish oppression had become Moslem and taken to speaking Albanian. He pointed to a village on the hillside opposite. “You see the minaret? It means nothing. Five years ago I made them see reason, and they turned the mosque into a church.” There was the expertise of Tammany about him.

"Serb villages" ... hmmm. I don't think so.

[Risto the Great]

Fostered disorder

The valley broadened to wide Biblical plains, stretching to distant mountains that were of no colour and all colours. The ground we looked on was sodden with blood and tears, for we were drawing near the Albanian frontier, and there are few parts of the world that have known more politically induced sorrow. Here the Turks fostered disorder, lest their subjects unite against them, and here after the war Albanians and Bulgarians fought against incorporation in Yugoslavia and had to be subdued by force. There was no help for it, since the Yugoslavs had to hold this district if they were to defend themselves against Italy. But to say that the conflict was inevitable is not to deny that it was hideous. This land, by a familiar irony, is astonishing in its beauty. Not even Greece is lovelier than this corner of Macedonia. Now a violet storm massed low on the far Albanian mountains, and on the green plains at their feet walked light, light that was pouring through a hole in the dark sky, but not as a ray, as a cloud, not bounded yet definite, a formless being which was very present, as like God as anything we may see. It is a land made for the exhibition of mysteries, this Macedonia. Here is made manifest a chief element in human disappointment, the discrepancy between our lives and their framework. The earth is a stage exquisitely set; too often destiny will not let us act on it, or forces us to perform a hideous melodrama. Our amazement is set forth here in Macedonia in these tragically sculptured mountains and forests, in the white village called the Sorrowing Women, in the maintained light that walked as God on the fields where hatreds are like poppies among the corn.

It seems any Macedonian who did not want to be called a Serb were immediately regarded as Bulgarians.

What interested me about this text above was the notion of "fostered disorder". That the Turks created the animosity in order to diminish the potential for revolt. It does make sense logically and is worth finding examples. This may even help Macedonia heal present wounds.

[VMRO]

Interesting stuff Risto.

I've been meaning to read this book for a while now but never got around to it.

PS: you seeing Michael Radin anytime soon?

[Risto the Great]

PS: you seeing Michael Radin anytime soon?

Valid. I probably should for a whole bunch of reasons. OK OK

[VMRO]

Valid. I probably should for a whole bunch of reasons. OK OK

Haha, hanging to read his book.

[Big Bad Sven]

I have read the book years ago, from memory it was a great read. Large book.

The author was anti german, anti Austrian, anti croat, anti Slovene but pro Serbian. Cant remember what her opinion was of Albanians and "bulgraians"

If I remember correctly she interviews a monk from Finland (probably Russian) that was moved to Macedonia to serbinize the population or "de-bulgarise" the population.

I also remember a part where the author talks to some Macedonian monks and how he explains the Serbian government realised only having the traditional Macedonian monks was the only way to run things.

There was an interesting part about how she mentioned Albanians were settled in Macedonia during the end of the ottoman empire. And another great gem was how she mentioned that Macedonians that converted to islam/were muslim were assimilated into "Albanians". If Risto could find that quote and publish it on this forum I think it would help us combat the Albanian lie of Albanians always being a 'majority' in Macedonia.

I think the author also talks about the famous serboman Jovan Babunski, and how when she saw him he was a weak and aging man because of the war (could be from another book I read years ago)

[Soldier of Macedon]

Her work is unfortunately riddled with pro-Serb perspectives on Macedonia. But then, this is during a period of time where Macedonia was occupied by a brutal Serbian regime, and it is likely that many of her guides or advisers were probably loyal servants of that regime. Anyway, here are some more quotes regarding Macedonians:

He (Alexander of Yugoslavia) had been a soldier from boyhood, and since the Great War he had perpetually been threatened with death from within, tuberculosis, and with death from without, by assassination at the hand of Croats or Macedonians who wanted independence instead of union with Serbia. [Pg 15]

These methods, as time went on and Mussolini developed his foreign policy, included camps where Croats and Macedonians who objected to incorporation with Yugoslavia, or who were simply rogues, were trained as terrorists in the use of bombs and small arms and financed to use the results of that training in raids on Yugoslavia in the alleged service of their separatist campaigns. [Pg 18]

When the Italians sent assassins from their training camps to murder the King, they went to great pains to make it appear that his murderers came from Yanka Puszta, even inducing a Macedonian assassin who had been associated with the Hungarian camp to come to Marseille and be killed, so that his dead body could be exhibited as proof of the conspirators' origin. [Pg 18-19]

I had been enchanted on my first visit with the lovely nature and artifice of Bosnia, and I had recognized in Macedonia a uniquely beautiful life of the people. When the Macedonians loved or sang or worshipped God or watched their sheep, they brought to the business in hand poetic minds that would not believe in appearances and probed them for reality, that possessed as a birthright that quality which Keats believed to be above all others in forming a 'Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously.'.........Macedonia had been under the Ottoman Empire until 1913; it had till then been stabilized by Turkish misgovernment in precisely those medieval conditions which had existed when it was isolated by its defeat at Kossovo in 1389. Macedonia should perhaps be looked on as a museum not typical of the life outside it. It had had only twenty-five years of contact with the modern world. Serbia had known no such seclusion. It was liberated in 1815. [Pg 482-483]

There is a white column on the hillside not far from Ochrid which catches the eye from a long way off but which is never visited; it commemorates four hundred Serbians who stopped here on the 1915 retreat, being sick and starved and weary, and were shot down by the local Bulgars. Also the Serbs of Ochrid, including this woman, were interned in Bulgaria during the war and were dealt with untenderly. She was heartbroken because Macedonians of Bulgar sympathies should not have been united to the Serbs by twenty years of what seemed to her not at all harsh treatment, and that they should not have recognized that the tyranny which threatened them from without was far greater than any restrictions they had to fear from within. [Pg 752]

Just in relation to the above quote, clearly the woman she refers to is delusional if she thinks that the treatment of Macedonians by Serbs was "not at all harsh".

There were two main centres of disaffection in Yugoslavia, Croatia and Macedonia.........the Macedonians were at once more criminal and more innocent. Their case was pitiful, for it was the result of ancient virtues running to waste in an altered world. The Macedonians, a magnificent people, had prepared the way for the Balkan wars by a perpetual revolt, sometimes open, sometimes covert, against the Turk. This was organized by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization - known as I.M.R.O. - which was formed in 1893 by Bulgarian Macedonians, bloodthirsty men who were nevertheless great heroes and pitiable victims. When the Turks were driven out as a result of the Balkan wars Macedonia was divided between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria; and Bulgaria greatly resented the terms of the division. Some Bulgars wanted a purely Bulgarian Macedonia; others wanted an independent Macedonia, a dream state which was to be entirely free, though it would have had to be financed and to a large extent repopulated from abroad; others again wanted a federated state, similar to a Swiss canton. All these parties consisted of those who had been revolutionaries all their born days and who could no more have taken to a conforming way of life than an elderly seamstress could become a ballet dancer. They were also subjected to great provocation by the harshness of the Yugoslavs in forcing the many Bulgarian inhabitants of their newly acquired territory to speak Serbian and alter their names to Serbians forms, and the incompetence of many of the Yugoslav officials, which was, indeed, no greater than that which had been shown by the Turks or would have been shown by the Bulgarians, but was none the less (and very naturally) resented. [Pg 594-595]

Macedonians of "Bulgar sympathies", "Bulgarian Macedonians", etc, whatever. They were Macedonians who were once adherents to the Exarchate. These are annoying and unnecessary references made by West, especially given the fact that many of her contemporaries and earlier writers (not to mention those afterwards) clearly contradict her statements (http://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum...ead.php?t=3916). Her superficial observations beg the question of how much of an effort she really made to learn about Macedonians.

[EgejskaMakedonia]

I am presently reading this book.
It is a travel book recording the experiences of Dame Rebecca West as she travelled throughout Yugoslavia for 6 weeks in 1937.

Written on the brink of World War II, Rebecca West’s classic examination of the history, people, and politics of Yugoslavia illuminates a region that is still a focus of international concern. A magnificent blend of travel journal, cultural commentary, and historical insight, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon probes the troubled history of the Balkans and the uneasy relationships among its ethnic groups. The landscape and the people of Yugoslavia are brilliantly observed as West untangles the tensions that rule the country’s history as well as its daily life.

This woman could seriously write! A little hard going and somewhat poetic but definitely provides an insight that is not normally written about.

Obviously, her visit to Macedonia is of most interest to me. But her assessment of ethnic tensions throughout the region and the undercurrents of political persuasions are utterly masterful. A very perceptive woman.

She describes Macedonians as Serbian Macedonians or Bulgarian Macedonians. This immediately annoyed me. Reading further she talks of the significant migrations from Serbia INTO Macedonia (particularly in "skopLje") and seems to call these immigrants the Serbian Macedonians. The "Bulgarian" Macedonians are another matter and much of this seems to be church related. Remember, we are talking about the 1930's here and there was a very strong Yugo/Serbian battle for Macedonian hearts. Ultimately she mentions how Serb monks were being removed from Macedonian monasteries and that only Macedonian ones were being retained. Confusing for her and the reader obviously.

I will add some quotes to this thread from the book. Some are worthy of further discussion in my opinion.

I haven't read her book yet, but I have read most of Balkan Ghosts by Robert D. Kaplan. He mentions near the begging of the book that he 'would rather have lost [his] passport and money than [his] heavily thumbed and annotated copy of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.' Given his reliance/interest in Rebecca's account, it is no surprise that he too demonstrates a somewhat confused and inconsistent approach to the Macedonians. That aside, I love reading these Balkan travel accounts, it gives such an in depth view on how people really lived at the time and the tensions that existed among the people of various origins and religions.

[VMRO]

I can hook you up EM, i have the book in soft copy format.