Conflict in the Balkans

Your editorial (“Imagining Peace in the Balkans,” Dec. 27) about the present Yugoslav conflict was excellent, but did not go back far enough in time. When you place the present crazy-quilt map of Central and Eastern Europe next to one from 1892 or 1893, an inescapable observation emerges: Far from archfiends, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman empires were stabilizing forces in these vast regions. The Hapsburgs reigned over the supranational federation of Central Europe, which by today would have become one of the major constituent elements of the European Community. And, modern Turkey, by its continued presence in the Balkans, would have provided an effective counterbalance to rabid, local irredentism.

Although the past cannot be restored, its understanding can assist us in shaping the future. And that understanding should not be based on the kind of misconceptions Rebecca West helped to create with books like the “Black Lamb and Gray Falcon” (Book Review, Dec. 27). Why haven’t you re-reviewed Ivo Andric’s “The Bridge on the Drina” instead? Written around the same time, but from the inside, it gives the reader an incomparably better guide to the land of the South Slavs.

MICHAEL T. GYEPES

Pacific Palisades