Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

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united we stand, divided
we fall
The Civil Religion of Brotherhood and Unity
Nations are held together largely by force and by emotion.
Reinhold Niebuhr
The art of government is the organization of idolatry.
George Bernard Shaw
T he president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and
chairman of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, Marshall
Josip Broz Tito, celebrated New Year’s Day 1980 in the company of
close aides at the Kardjordjevo hunting lodge on the Croatian-Serbian border.
Three days later Tito was admitted to the hospital in the capital of Slovenia,
Ljubljana, where he had to undergo a difficult surgery (leg amputation). Tito
died on 4 May 1980. During the last four months of Tito’s life, the Ljubljana
Clinical Center received thousands of letters for him from his fellow Yugoslavs.
According to a volume released right after Tito’s death, state and party
organs and firms dutifully wrote to the president, but the warmest letters
came from ordinary people, particularly from members of ethnic minorities.
“Most esteemed and dear President,” reads a letter signed by “two retired
women from Kosovo, the Turk Zehra and Albanian Ćeba Redzˇepagu,” and
goes on: “blessed are you who live in the hearts of the people of our country,
because we are all worried about your health, and we wish, if it were possible,
to make you immortal. But your deeds will live forever.” 1 Other letters
also mirror the vox populi, being written in a similar frank manner and
emotional tone, for example: “Dear Comrade Tito: I and my 45-memberstrong
family wish you a quick recovery and long life,” Rahim Hodzˇa, Belanica
village, county of Suva Reka, Kosovo. 2 “Our Dear Comrade Tito: Today
on Friday, 25 January 1980, as we gathered for our weekly worship; you
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