““The Balkans I know is the Balkans from below: a space of bogoumils- these medieval heretics who fought against the Crusades and churches- and a place of anti-Ottoman resistance; a home to hajduks and klephts, pirates and rebels; a refuge of feminists and socialists, of antifascist and partisans; a place of dreamers of all sorts struggling both against provincial "peninsularity" as well as against occupations, foreign interventions and that process which is now, in a strange inversion of history, often described with that fashionable phrase, "balkanization." (p.11)””
![“[The Balkans] produce more history than they can consume.” quote by Winston Churchill](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/395/winston-churchill-95_balkans_the-balkans-produce-more-history-than-th_1780137.jpg)
![“The construct of a new, fictional 'Balkans' [is] a result of linguistic violence beginning with the verb 'to balkanize,' which most of the world's dictionaries define primarily as 'to divide.' Linguistic terrorism is only one part of the larger process of stigmatization that aims to establish…” quote by Andrej Grubacic](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/124/andrej-gruba-i-55033_language_the-construct-of-a-new-fictional-balkans_1808015.jpg)
