A year after the outbreak of the first world war, Grigory Trubetskoy, head of the Near Eastern department of imperial Russia’s foreign ministry, wrote: “Many Serbs sincerely believe that they are the first nation in the world and that they have the best army in Europe. They think the same about their literature and learning.”
Bear in mind that Russia at this time was Serbia’s ally. The tsarist diplomat’s condescension towards the Serbs, recounted in Marko Attila Hoare’s Serbia: A Modern History, serves as a reminder that the ostensibly warm ties today between President Vladimir…