Salonika Terminus: Travels into the Balkan Nightmare

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University, the
author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable Kingdom,
and the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste. Marie.

Having spent autumn 1994 and spring 1995 in the Balkans, Fred Reed lived
at Salonica in Greece and made trips to Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia,
and Kosovo. In this historical travelogue, he is critical of Greece for
its intransigence toward the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia.
Throughout the book, Reed is also supportive of Quebec nationalism.
Macedonia and Quebec, he regrets, “have inexplicably missed the
cut-off date for national legitimacy as decreed by their overbearing
neighbors or masters.” He blames Balkan rulers, Ottoman Turks, and
Western imperialists for creating an environment “where one man’s
national martyr is another’s war criminal.”

Pessimism pervades the book. Reed laments the disappearance (only
partially attributable to the Nazis) of Salonica’s once-vibrant Jewish
community. Renewed warfare between Greece and Turkey remains a strong
possibility. Albania is mired in chaos and poverty. Kosovo is an ethnic
Albanian time bomb about to erupt against Serb authority. Ethnic
Albanians in Macedonia are dangerously unhappy. Macedonia’s
neighbors—not only Greece but also Bulgaria and what remains of
Yugoslavia—covet its territory. Ethnic cleansing is a well-established
Balkan tradition. Balkan boundaries are short-lived. Democracy in the
post-Communist Balkans is frail to nonexistent.

Reed’s arguments are strong, and his gloom (unfortunately) seems
justified. An index would have been useful.