We are extremely sad to announce that our director, Dušan T. Bataković, passed away on June 27, 2017. Prof. Bataković was a Serbian historian, diplomat and the director of the Institute for Balkan Studies SASA. He will be remembered by his numerous scholarly works, enthusiasm, dedication and vision in leading our Institute.

Дешифровање прошлости. Сведоци, писци, појаве, Чигоја штампа, Београд 2016, 436 стр.

“The Christian Heritage of Kosovo and Metohija. Historical and Spiritual Heartland of Serbian People” is a book published jointly by Sebastian Press from Los Angeles, the Institute for Balkan Studies, SASA in Belgrade and Orthodox Theological School in Belgrade. The main editor is bishop Maksim Vasiljević, with Dušan T. Bataković as a chief contributing editor to this monumental book (1007 pages). It is a richly documented, vibrant testimony to the tireless efforts made by Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox Church since 13^th to early 20^th century to create and maintain its highly sophisticated spiritual culture, preserved endangered monuments, and preserve Serbian heritage in Kosovo and Metohija, with almost 1,300 churches, monasteries, hermitages and fortresses. This genuine encyclopedia of Serbian heritage in Kosovo and Metohija is a telling testimony to the historic and spiritual heartland of the Serbian people, which has endured ongoing historical tribulations. This book, with best scholarly contributions on art, history and culture from Serbian, Balkan and Western scholars is an excellent historical reference book for Balkan specialists аnd students of history.

Contemporary analysis of Serbia’s foreign policy in the middle of the nineteenth century has remained in a deep shadow of the “Načertanije”, a document conceived in 1844 in Belgrade, as a result of collaboration between Serbia’s interior minister Ilija Garašanin and F. A. Zach, the representative of the Polish political emigration from Paris, led by Prince A. Czartoryski, in the capital of the autonomous Principality of Serbia. Prince Czartoryski, author of "Councils for Serbia’s foreign policy in 1843", considered Serbia, the sole semi-­independent state among Slavs in South­-Eastern Europe, a nucleus of a wider, Serbia-­led South Slav state that might endorse an anti-­Russian and anti-­Austrian policy as a support for his wider plans regarding the restoration of independent Poland. The overambitious pan­-Slav project of F. Zach ("Serbia’s Slavic Policy") was eventually modified by Garašanin to a more realistic and attainable plan, in accordance with Serbia’s modest demographic and military potential, limited international experience and still humble administrative capacities. Planning the unification of the predominantly Serb­-inhabited lands under Ottoman rule (Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-­Herzegovina and Old Serbia), Garašanin’s “Načertanije” (Draft) was appropriately adapted to the geopolitical realities of 1844. The foreign policy of Serbia under Garašanin (1843–1853), during the rule of the pro-­Austrian Prince Alexander Karadjordjević and Garašanin’s premiership (1861–1867) under Russophile  Prince Michael Obrenović, was balancing between various political options that were dominating Europe and the Balkans between the 1848 Revolution and the Crimean War (1853–1856) and the first Balkan Alliance (1866–1868).Garašanin was continuously prudent and bold in pursuing realistic political ambitions regarding large-­scale anti-Ottoman activities, by building a network of confidents and agents throughout Turkey-­in-­Europe that was to foment a joint insurrection against the Ottoman rule. During its last phase, Garašanin’s foreign policy gradually evolved into the direction of closer Yugoslav and Balkan cooperation.

Душан Т. Батакович - сербский историк и дипломат. Директор Института балканистики Сербской академии наук и искусств, в прошлом посол Союзной республики Югославии, Государственного содружества Сербии и Черногории в Греции, Канаде и Франции. Автор многочисленных книг и статей о Косово и Метохии, опубликованных на сербском, французском и английском языках. Д. Т. Батакович являлся членом миссии участников переговоров от Республики Сербия в Вене по вопросу об определении будущего статуса Косово (2009-2011) и руководителем делегации Сербии в Международном Суде ООН в Гааге по вопросу о легитимности самопровозглашенной независимости Косово (2009-2011).

«Межэтнический конфликт в Косово, примерно так же, как и в других частях Балкан, только в более острой форме, велся в рамках борьбы за территории, в отличие от современных концепций о совместном обитании народов и их взаимном сплетении в соответствии с моделью демократического, мультикультурного общества. Наряду с этим формировались две параллельные картины прошлого... Кстати, и само слово Косово имеет противоположные значения в разных этнических общинах. У сербов понятие Косово означает территорию «Сербского Иерусалима», блистательный культурный и экономический подъем которого в Средние века прервали османские завоеватели. Для этнических албанцев слово "Косово" является символом "древней албанской страны", который напрямую связывает античное иллирийское и современное албанское этническое сообщество... Идеал экстремистского [албанского] национализма [после бомбардировок НАТО в 1999 г.] предполагает как полное уничтожение сербских памятников, так и изгнание представителей сербского сообщества, что оправдывало бы наличие новой, неприемлемой для Сербии политической реальности - Косово как исключительно албанской страны».

Nous avons affaire ici, au-delà du titre même de ce livre, à une véritable histoire du développement politique et institutionnel de la Serbie avant 1914, dans le contexte de ses rapports avec la France.

Le grand livre de Dušan T. Batakovic’, dont les conclusions sont toujours actuelles, montre admirablement l’évolution progressive et la modernisation d’un pays qui doit résoudre à la fois son problème politique interne et son problème national, cas fréquent à cette époque. Mais la Serbie disposait d’une base de départ, la démocratie agraire, qui n’existait pas ailleurs dans cette partie de l’Europe. Elle recevait d’autre part des influences multiples, françaises mais aussi britanniques, et pas seulement russes et austro-hongroises. Ce qui contribue à expliquer la situation très particulière de la Serbie dans cette partie du monde. Plus que d’autres pays de la région, la Serbie s’est montrée très tôt ouverte aux influences de l’Europe occidentale, et on comprend que l’alliance privilégiée franco-serbe reposait sur des réalités profondes, et pas seulement sur des considérations tactiques transitoires.

The thousand-year long history of Serbia's troublesome province of Kosovo (Kosovo and Metohija) is a case study of conflicting narratives and opposing versions of history.The case of Kosovo became famous worldwide after the Kosovo Albanian minority in Serbia, within the wider federal, communist Yugoslavia, organized separatist movements, fully backed by communist Albania, openly demanding, since 1981, secession from Serbia, and claiming the status of a constituent nation. It was an announcement of the coming collapse of Titoist Yugoslavia in 1991 .The violent dismemberment of communist Yugoslavia, followed by the series of wars for Yugoslav succession (1992-1995), had its last chapter with the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia and FR of Yugoslavia in 1999,followed by the UN protectorate over Kosovo, administered by UNMIK under UN SC Resolution 1244 of June 1999, and militarily protected by the NATO-led KFOR.
The following study, covering the period from the medieval times to unilateral proclamation of independence of Kosovo by the Kosovo Albanians in 2008, illustrated by a series of lesser known Kosovo-related documents, provides relevant historic insight into important elements of the Kosovo drama, in particular from Serbian, rarely quoted or deliberately neglected sources.

Méconnue et souvent interprétée de façon tendancieuse, réputée pour les controverses et les incompréhensions qu'elle suscite, l'histoire du peuple serbe s'inscrit au cœur de l'histoire européenne. Établis sur la péninsule balkanique depuis le VI^e siècle, construisant leurs États successifs, les Serbes se situaient au carrefour des civilisations orientale et occidentale. Région sensible par sa situation géopolitique, la Serbie était le point de passage direct entre l'Europe centrale et le Proche-Orient. Les intérêts des grands empires, byzantin, ottoman et habsbourg, s'y heurtèrent pendant des siècles. Appartenant par des alliances diverses à Byzance au Moyen Âge, majoritairement de confession orthodoxe, les Serbes eurent une histoire ponctuée de migrations et d'affrontements; leur défi identitaire résida dans leur opposition aux prosélytismes catholique et islamique. Cette identité, plongeant ses racines dans le Moyen Âge et la culture populaire de tradition orale, a été modelée à l'épo'que moderne par son ouverture à l'Occident. Ainsi la Serbie prit place dans l'ensemble des nations d'Europe. « Piémont des Slaves du Sud », la Serbie a payé son indépendance au prix de nombreuses victimes dans le projet de la création de la Yougoslavie.

The questions regarding the status of the minorities in the Balkans over the past two centuries, seen against the backdrop of various government policies and ideological patterns, or simply as a vital test of interethnic relations, have remained a focus of both political and scholarly attention. The state context and the status of various national and ethnic groups have often undergone dramatic changes.

The Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire, two dominant multiethnic and multicultural empires encompassing most of the Balkans, were seriously challenged by the rising national demands encouraged by the 1804 Serbian Revolution against Ottomans, and followed by a succession of wars for national liberation and the establishment of nation-states. In that context, the relationship between the new Balkan states and their majority nation (or majority nations), on the one hand, and their internationally protected minorities or other minority groups, on the other, were, throughout nineteenth and twentieth centuries, difficult and strained.

La Serbie et la France. Une alliance atypique: les relations politiques, économiques et culturelles 1870–1940 is the latest publication of the Institute for Balkan Studies. Under the editorship of Dušan T. Bataković and contributed by twenty-five Serbian and French historians and historians of art and literature, the collection sheds light on all major aspects of Serbo-French relations in the second half of the 19th and first half of the 20th century.  This atypical alliance between the Principality, later Kingdom, of Serbia and France, the main source of political doctrines and revolutionary movements in 19th-century Europe, was never made formal, nor were its terms ever defined, but its genuineness overcame all trials and tribulations and was crowned in the Great War, when the two armies fought side by side. The alliance remained atypical even during the First World War; it rested on an identity of values rather than on political and territorial concessions at the expense of neighbours.

Dušan T. Bataković has published his fourth book in French, Kosovo: un conflit sans fin?, a monograph encompassing the past of Kosovo and Metohija from the middle ages to the status negotiations in 2006–2007. A historian above all, but also an eyewitness and a participant, Bataković provides a reliable in-depth account of the past of Serbia’s southern province (with new documentary sources for the period of Tito’s rule) as well as a detailed overview of UNMIK administration in the province (with emphasis on little known facts concerning the position of Serbs and other non-Albanians) and a brief summary of the status negotiations conducted 

The Institute for Balkan Studies has published an edited volume of European relevance, fully in English, Kosovo and Metohija. Living in the Enclave. The editor Dušan T. Bataković has shaped the volume around the themes that have been marking the life of the Serbs, Goranies and Roma in the province not only during the last nine years, but also during different periods in the past; under Ottoman rule or foreign occupation (First and Second World wars), living a life of confinement in enclaves emerges as one of the gloomy features both of the past and present of Kosovo and Metohija. The volume brings to light these complex realities, consciously ignored or unspoken in the West.

"Nova istorija srpskog naroda"  "The New History of the Serbian People"

Kosovo i Metohija u srpsko-arbanaskim odnosima" ("Kosovo-Metohija in Serbo-Albanian Relations")

Berceau de l'Etat médiéval et de la civilisation serbe, orné de centaines d'églises et de monastères, et peuplé depuis VII^e siècle par des Serbes, le Kosovo-Metohija fut en 1389 le théâtre d'une bataille fameuse de l'armée serbe et les Ottomans au Champs des Merles avec les conséquences  lourdes, qui sonna le glas de l'indépendance de la Serbie.

Près de cinq siècles de joug ottoman s'ensuivirent au cours desquels les Serbes, de religion chrétienne, eurent à subir une dure répression, le plus souvent menée par les Albanais musulmans et armés, au service des Ottomans. Au fur et à mesure que les Albanais descendaient de leurs montagnes et s'installaient de force dans la plaine du Kosovo, les Serbes étaient contraintes de quitter leur terre pour émigrer vers le nord de la Serbie et même au-delà, en Empire des Habsbourg (1690,1739). Ainsi, la situation démographique au Kosovo se modifiait au cours des siècles en faveur des Albanais. Cependant les Serbes restaient majoritaires au Kosovo jusqu'au début du XX^e siècle.

Considérée depuis sa fondation comme un modèle encourageant de communauté multiethnique et multireligieuse, la Yougoslavie k fini par se disloquer dans la guerre et le chaos.      

Pour comprendre toute l'ampleur de ce drame, il fallait dépasser la sur­face des événements pour sonder leurs profondeurs politiques et histori­ques. L'étude de D. T. Bataković, qui est en même temps un préèis d'histoire, explique l'évolution des idéologies nationales des peuples sla­ves du sud depuis leur émergence au XIX^e siècle jusqu'à la moit de Tito ën 1980, analysant avec rigueur les traces qu'elles ont laissées sur la destinée yougoslave. Situé aux confins de trois civilisations — l'Europe catholique, l'Europe orthodoxe et l'Orient musulman —, objet de toutes lés convoiti­ses stratégiques, le territoire yougoslave résume, dans son histoire, tous les conflits politiques et religieux de la civilisation européenne.         

"Kolubarska bitka" ("The Battle of Kolubara 1914")

The third volume of the Kosovo Trilogy by Dušan T. Bataković covers the key phenomena of the realities of Kosovo-Metohija from the end of the nineteenth century to the Vienna status negotiations 2005–2007 inclusive. Very well documented, based on the available and verified sources, the book considerably and with scholarly rigour contributes to our knowledge of Kosovo and Metohija. The volume is additionally enriched with a selection of authentic documents.

"Savremenici o Kosovu i Metohiji 1850-1912" "Contemporaries on Kosovo-Metohija 1850-1912"

Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji" "Kosovo-Metohija in Serbian History" 

"Decansko Pitanje" ("The Decani Question")