[ Mient Jan Faber (ed.), The Balkans: A Religious Backyard of Europe, Ravenna, Longo Editore, 1996.]

The savage wars that raged on the territory of former Yugoslavia have become a very fruitful source for the media. They also brought the Balkans into the focus of the attention of international scholars, which resulted in numerous international conferences and round tables, as well as and edited volumes of papers from these conferences. This book, edited by Mient Jan Faber, is a result of the second Summer School for Interreligious Dialogue and Understanding (SIDU-2) in former Yugoslavia. It was held in Struga, Republic of Macedonia, in 1995. The final result is a very good book, which includes 18 contributors from United Kingdom, Holland, Denmark, Bulgaria, Italy, USA, and Macedonia. It was published as fourth volume in a Series of Balkan and East-European Studies. The success of the volume The Balkans: A Religious Backyard of Europe lies in the fact that it managed to gather a number of exceptional scholars and, at the same time, to present a number of useful perspectives for the understanding of what was going on in this part of Europe in the last 6-7 years.

The second part of the title (A Religious Backyard of Europe) might struck some people from the former Yugoslavia as surprising. This due to the fact that they were used to thinking of themselves as living in the very center of events, since the official communist ideology postulated Yugoslavia (as a member and one of the co-founders of the Non-Aligned Countries Movement) to occupy the center stage of the whole world. It was neither East nor West, but, as official discourse put it, in the very center. One of the consequences of this legacy was a firm belief of many people that all that has happened has primarily to do with the world powers and the quest for the strategic hegemony. Conspiracy theories are still quite popular, and people tend to see the events as a result of the decisions made in Washington, Moscow, etc. - not as a result of decisions in which many of them participated as well.

The international surrounding was, of course, a factor, as is quite clear from the articles by Mihajlo Minoski ("The Balkan policy of the great European powers and the political changes in the region") and, in a larger context, by Håkan Wiberg ("Divided nations and divided states") and Mark Wheeler ("East-European revolutions of 1989-1991"), but never a decisive one.

The main value of this volume lies in the fact that it connects (in a very elegant manner!) a perspectives, ranging from the religious legacy (the Foreword was written by Mihail, Archbishop of Ohrid and Macedonia; there are also articles by two Orthodox priests and a Franciscan), through historical perspectives on the problems of dealing with stereotypes (a thesis by Robert Hayden, which he espoused in several earlier articles as well) as well as problems of (and with) minorities (quite impressive contributions by Martyn Rady and Stefano Bianchini). Nikolas Gvosdev adds a more general note on the understanding the relationship between Orthodox Christianity and a pluralist democracy, and Kyril Haramiev contributed with a more specific case of Bulgaria. The part of the book which also makes it exceptional compared to similar volumes is the one dealing with the marginalized social groups (such as the young and women). Finally, the articles of Mient Jan Faber ("Thinking in the Peace Movement between 1800 and 2000") and Mary Kaldor ("Cosmopolitanism versus nationalism: the new divide?"), put the general theme of the interreligious and intercultural dialogue in a somewhat broader context.

The quality of the contributions and the breadth of perspectives covered make this volume, in my opinion, by far the best one dealing with the horrors of former Yugoslavia. It all makes it a book that will have its readership in all the contexts where the issues of multicultural tolerance, pluralism, and dialogue are concerned.

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