Belgrade. -- With Bosnia poised on the brink of further disaster after months of relative calm, reading the minds of the Serbs has again become an important, if risky, business for Western watchers of the Balkans.

But from the top reaches of the Serbian government on down to the farmers of the patriotic heartland, the laments and logic of the Serbs can seem universally baffling. In short, how can one understand a people who don't seem able to understand themselves?

In one moment they complain of being criticized and quarantined by a misunderstanding world. In the next they cordon themselves off with propaganda, stubbornness and provocative acts.

For months they stand together across Bosnia and Serbia proper, building morale with defiant talk of pan-Serbian unity. Then in one tumultuous week they split apart over the fate of Bosnia, torn asunder by the pressures of economic sanctions.

And whenever they have a valid point to make, it is often overwhelmed by an Us-Against-the-World mentality that has led to centuries of prideful defeat.

"These people will never accept being humiliated," said Vladislav Jovanovic, foreign minister of the Republic of Yugoslavia, made up now of only Serbia and Montenegro, and dominated by Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. "Maybe this is not good policy, but this is a characteristic of the people, a basic one. . . . As an adversary you cannot destroy us. You can only cause much suffering."

Western diplomats in Belgrade are familiar to the point of weariness with such talk. "It is a siege mentality that stretches back in their minds 600 years," says one.

A search for the tortured soul of Serbia might begin with Milan Boskovic, who sits in the shade of a pear tree on his farm, 50 miles south of Belgrade, pouring a plum brandy.

"It is not surprising that the Serbs are misunderstood," he says. "News media can cause more damage than artillery."

Like many Serbs, Mr. Boskovic senses a worldwide media conspiracy against his people. Also like many, he draws these conclusions from the "truths" of Serbian government television, even though he believes firmly, "State TV cannot and should not broadcast material against the state. The one who holds the power in the country rightly owns the television."

But the Serbs of the former Yugoslavia are not monolithic in their opinions. The ones in Serbia proper, led by President Slobodan Milosevic, sometimes claim to be as befuddled as the West when it comes to understanding their Serbian neighbors next door in Bosnia, or those further west in the disputed Krajina region of Croatia.

"The Serbs in Bosnia and Krajina are complex to us as well," Mr. Jovanovic says. "These are people with their own history, their own legends, their own perceptions and illusions, their own superstitions. They have had their own experiences with Muslims and Croats. Unlike us in Serbia, they had their own terrible experience in the Second World War (when tens of thousands were massacred by an alliance of Nazis and ultra-nationalist "Ustasha" Croatians).

"This contributed to the development of special feelings of fear, or irrational fear which we cannot understand."

It was this fear that the Western powers underestimated at the beginning of Yugoslavia's disintegration. When Germany and then the United States moved quickly to recognize the new nations declared by Croatia and Bosnia, the frightened and outnumbered Serbs in those new states decided it was time to kill or be killed. Because they dominated most of what had been the Yugoslav National Army, they became the aggressor, and were soon known for ethnic brutality.

Now, backed into a corner by world public opinion, the Bosnian Serbs "have developed a Masada syndrome," Mr. Jovanovic says. "If you insist that they do something which they are convinced is against their essential interests, they are ready to commit mass suicide rather than surrender."

This past week, Serbian President Milosevic finally acceded to Western pressure by threatening to cut off supplies to the Bosnian Serbs unless they accept a pending international peace proposal that would give them nearly half the territory in Bosnia.

Although popular internationally, the move may have put Mr. Milosevic at risk domestically. Not only did he thrust himself into power by appealing to pan-Serbian nationalism, but he is also threatened by opponents just as skillful at manipulating nationalist zeal.

This has made the government afraid of carrying out even smaller symbolic acts that would play well in the Western news media. Why not, for instance, arrest alleged war criminal Zeljko Raznatovic, better known as "Arkan."

Arkan, previously linked to bank robberies and other international crimes, led irregular Serbian units that carried out some of the worst atrocities documented in the war against Croatia. His anti-Muslim rhetoric then got him elected to the Parliament, but the electorate eventually turned against him and voted him out. He now lives comfortably in Belgrade, where his huge, gaudy new house is rising amid construction scaffolds on a downtown street.

"In fact he [Mr. Milosevic] played with that idea once, early on," says Mihajlo Markovic, a guru of the ruling Socialist Party and a former vice president to Mr. Milosevic. "But there were those who thought that he would be winning in the West and losing at home if he did this. So, it was decided that justice could wait a while."

Such reticence would seem to suggest a countryside awash in nationalist fervor, with people ready to back the Bosnian Serbs to the finish.

Not so.

Even Mr. Boskovic finds fault with the Bosnian Serbs, for instance.

And a few miles from his farm, at a hilltop bastion of Serbian heritage overlooking the town of Topola, Prvoslav Majstorovic says he has become wary of nationalism anytime it becomes the clumsy tool of politicians.

Mr. Majstorovic has a good vantage point for evaluating such things. He helps manage the historic site of Oplenac, on a wooded hill overlooking Topola. Topola itself was home to Karadjorjde, the almost mythically celebrated 19th-century leader of Serbian uprisings against the governing Ottoman Turks.

Oplenac has an Orthodox church built by Serbia's King Peter early in the 20th century, with colorful mosaics linking the king to the medieval days of Serbian glory. Managers of the place have had to fend off the eager offers of several political parties that wanted to be the site's sponsor, and in the last few years Mr. Majstorovic has seen their high officials come trooping through, one after the other.

"I am sick and tired of most of them," he says. "Whatever they say about national interests or anything else is only used to gain power, because all Serbs have a soft spot in their hearts for things like that. But I am an honest man, and I am not an extremist."

The mystery is why such viewpoints never seem to be translated into government policy.

"It is a difficult, socially paranoid situation where people who think like this have found themselves in a vacuum," says Predrag Simic, director of the Institute for International Politics and Economics in Belgrade.

"Those who have tried to put together some sort of reasonable vTC alternative -- using European or Western models of ethnic tolerance -- have failed to gain credibility."

It's not for lack of trying.

Nesa Jovancevic, a writer and political organizer in Topola who opposes the Milosevic government, was among those who helped to engineer an opposition victory in last year's local elections. His district was one of only five out of more than 200 in which the Socialists lost.

"I would describe myself as a cultured nationalist, more like American-style patriotism," he says. "I love my country, but I don't hate anyone else. In this world today there is no place for concepts like Greater Serbia or Greater Bulgaria."

A knot of Belgrade intellectuals that preaches similar arguments in the name of its small movement, the Civic Alliance, has managed to win a handful of seats in Parliament. But don't expect it to move much further.

"I like the guys [in Civic Alliance], but they're way ahead of their time," the Western diplomat says. "They're very smart, they have a lot of good ideas and they have no political skills at all.

"There is also a phenomenon here where once an opposition party reaches a certain critical mass it begins to split and consume itself. They get to the point where they can't even agree on a wallpaper scheme, much less a political platform. It's a Balkan disease, and these guys all have it. The old saying is true: Two Serbs, three parties."

A deeper reason may be found in a tale from last year's campaign trail. Opposition presidential candidate Vuk Draskovic was speaking with a farmer. The two seemed to agree on everything, including their dislike of Mr. Milosevic, and as Mr. Draskovic departed he said, "So I can count on your vote?"

"No," the farmer replied. "I'm voting for Milosevic."

"But I thought we agreed on the issues?"

"We do," the farmer affirmed. "And as soon as you're in power, then I'll vote for you."

Mr. Simic, the think-tank director, says this respect and continued yearning for a single-party strongman is prevalent, and the government stranglehold on television only tightens the grip of this mentality.

Government TV also helps guarantee that Serbs think they're being persecuted by worldwide media. When the Serbs leveled the mostly defenseless Croatian city of Vukovar in August 1991, with a bombardment that even Mr. Jovanovic admits was "illogical," government TV showed no footage for two months.

Yet, those with the chance to break through this information blockade show little inclination to do so. When Mr. Boskovic's son-in-law offered to help him get seven additional channels by paying for a satellite dish, Mr. Boskovic didn't want them. "I'm happy with what I've got," he said.

In response to this lock-step thinking, even the seeming voices of reason sometimes spiral into nationalist rhetoric. This only deepens mistrust of the outside nations pressuring for change.

Mr. Simic likes to explain this phenomenon with a one-liner that has gotten a laugh for years on U.S. bumper stickers, but which in Yugoslavia only seems grimly revealing: "Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean everybody isn't out to get me."

The problem with this philosophy, says the Western diplomat, is that, "After a while, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Dan Fesperman is a foreign correspondent for The Baltimore Sun.