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IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE WORD: POLITICAL ENCHANTMENT AND MILOSEVIC'S RISE TO POWER

Marko Zivkovic, The University ofChicago

The starting point for what might be called the Serbian Communist leadership, led by Serbian and Yugoslav disaster is often traced Stambolic, was troubled by this awkward back to the fateful April 24, 1987 when during position and was already working to bring about his visit to Kosovo, Polje Serbian Party President constitutional changes that would address the Slobodan Milosevic, in Audrey Helfant issue. However, they were doing that behind the Budding's words, "experienced the political scenes and taking great care not to disrupt the power of national feeling first-hand, and began delicate balance of power that existed between his conversion from Communist apparatchik to Yugoslav republics. national leader" (Budding 1998:354).1 In 1981 the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo The story of Milosevic's rise to power took to the streets to demand their own republic. involves at least two separate "tracks." On one While the demonstrations were repressed, the track Milosevic was climbing through the Serbian ranks on the coat tails Kosovo Albanian campaign for republican status (with its clear secessionist implications) only of his mentor, then president of , Ivan increased. On the other hand, the Serbian public Stambolic.2 Commonly seen as typical was made increasingly aware of the protests of apparatchik ofdecidedly hardline bent, the Serbian and Montenegrin minorities over Milosevic initially pleased Serbian party their treatment by the Albanian majority. Kosovo conservatives by being tough on "dissident intellectuals, all demands for liberalization, and and were claiming that the Albanian majority was pressuring them to leave any manifestation of Serbian nationalism" by all kinds of means, ranging from covert (Djilas 1993:86). threats to overt acts of violence. This was a On the other track, an important drive, so the complaint went, to make Kosovo segment of Serbian intelligentsia, gathered "ethnically clean," and the Serbian minority in around the Serbian Academy of Arts and Kosovo had no redress within the province.3 Sciences, and the Serbian Writers' Association The two tracks merged when Stambolic was at the same time - mid to late 1980s­ dispatched Milosevic to Kosovo in April of 1987 increasingly engaging in the rhetoric of Serbian to quell the frustrations of and national grievances. At that point, the major Montenegrins. While Milosevic was meeting grievance had to do with the problems ofKosovo with various local functionaries and Serbs, whose voices were suppressed by the representatives of Kosovo Serbs, some fifteen Serbian Communist party for fear that they thousand Serbian and Montenegrin protesters would stir up Serbian nationalism. The Academy gathered around the building throwing rocks. As and the Writer's Association were the first police moved to stop the crowd from storming Serbian institutions that made this problem the building beating people with their public by promoting petitions and organizing truncheons, Milosevic stepped outside and protest gatherings in support ofKosovo Serbs. " uttered the sentence that miraculously Since 1974, Kosovo, as an autonomous transformed him from a gray apparatchik to a province within Serbia together with , Serbian nationalist icon: "No one should dare to had all the elements of a full statehood except the beat you." right to secession granted only to the six Whether he was genuinely moved by Yugoslav republics. Provinces were represented the plight of Kosovo Serbs or whether he both at the Serbian and the Federal Yugoslav cynically realized the potential of nationalism, level. Serbia as a whole could not decide from then on, Milosevic used his new status as a anything internally without the consent of its "tsar of Serbs" to oust his mentor, Ivan autonomous provinces, and the same Stambolic and rise to the ultimate power in autonomous provinces could (and often did) vote Serbia. against Serbia (of which they were constituent parts) in the federal Yugoslav presidency.

Vol. 19, No. 1. Spring 2001, Page: 91 Practically all accounts stress the way many components of the account. , however, Milosevic pre-empted, appropriated, colonized, agree with Verdery (1999) when she simulated, or, as Aleksa Djilas put it, argues for the enchantment ofpolitical analysis "carmibalized,,4 nationalist discourses. These as it is usually practiced. This implies a discourses were being developed by a significant recognition ofthe importance, even centrality, of segment of most influential Serbian intellectuals what is sometimes called "the symbolic quite independently of Milosevic' s rise through dimension" ofpolitical behavior. 5 party hierarchy, indeed initially in a fierce Most ofthe time these poets didn't to the Serbian Communist Party's speak through poems, but through slogans and anti-nationalist policies. When the two tracks sound-bites. And these slogans and sound-bites, met, it was not so much Milosevic who tried to in their turn, relied for their power on invoking attract the national intelligentsia as much as that certain larger narrative units, most importantly the intelligentsia eagerly embraced him. Some of the mythicized . those who supported Milosevic at the crucial time when he was rising to power soon sobered The crucial thing that intellectuals have up, but it was too late. They were no longer done for Milosevic as Budding said, was to important once the reins ofpower were firmly in "generalize" Kosovo, spreading the belief that his hands. As one of the major opposition not just Kosovo's Serbs, but all Serbs, were figures, Vuk Draskovic said four years after the deprived of their national rights, and urgently in event: "With his speech in Kosovo Milosevic need of a savior" (Budding 1998:358). mounted the horse that the Serbian intelligentsia had saddled long ago" (in Djukic 1992: 130). Here, I cannot possibly go into the details of the Kosovo mythology. I will just try It is the narrative logic of this "saddling to present, through the hyperbolic rhetoric of of Milosevic's horse" that I hope to address here. poets, how Kosovo, as the central mystery of It involved political rhetoric that drew its power Serbian national identity, was linked to from entrenched national narratives or what narratives of Serbian victimhood in and could be called a fund of ethnonationalist Bosnia. In a word, I'll try to show some of the mythology. But who were the people who most narrative logic underlying this "generalization" powerfully shaped these stories? Academicians of Kosovo to all the threatened Serbs in need of a were certainly among the most prominent. Savior. I will explore only one such link here, Certain eloquent archbishops of the Serbian the one I came to call the Kosovo-Jadovno axis. 6 Orthodox Church were another important group. In an interview given in August of Journalists, pundits and various TV personages 1991, , one of the most played a central role in disseminating this kind of prominent firebrand nationalist poets, offered his discourse. Yet, I would argue, it was a group of spatial summary of eternal Serbian victirnhood. poets who provided the most extreme, condensed and persuasive forms of the new mythicized He talked about the three parallel migrations of the Serbian people - to the heavens, into foreign speech in the mid-1980s. They were the prophets ofthe re-awakened nation, professional lands and to the depths, into the pits. These three wordsmiths whose poetic hyperbolae were so "migrations" correspond to particular clusters of extreme as to preclude any rational discussion. Serbian ethnonationalist mythology. Let me start They turned Serbian grievances, imagined and with the pits. real, into a poetically exaggerated metaphysics of Numerous deep pits are a prominent national victirnhood. feature of the limestone landscape of that area of Bosnia, Herzegovina and Croatia which was It is relatively easy to reduce all this populated by the Serbs ofthe so-called Krajinas enormous output ofSerbian national "bards" to (Military Borderlands) and which belonged to simple phrases like "resurgence of Serbian the Independent State of Croatia during WW II. nationalism" and relegate it to the "saddling of It Milosevic's horse" in the larger scheme of was in these pits that slaughtered Serbs were things. It might seem that the account of thrown by the Croatian U stase as a part of their Milosevic's rise to power gives us all we need to campaign to get rid of all the Serbs on their territory. One of the most notorious pits was know about Serbian politics of the last decade or called "Jadovno," and just as Auschwitz came to so. The service Serbian nationalist intelligentsia stand for all concentration camps and Holocaust rendered him at a crucial moment with its mythologizing discourses is then just one ofthe

Vol. 19, No. 1. Spring 2001, Page: 92 in general, so ladovno came to stand for all the Kosovo is the equator of the Serbian planet. pits and for the genocide itself. 7 The roof of the lower and the foundation of the upper world. Kosovo is a hearth that Archbishop Atanasije levtic of the assembles, a pillar that congregates the made a pilgrimage in Serbian people. Kosovo is the crossroads on 1983 from Kosovo to ladovno and published his which the Serbs found themselves and found travel diary under the same title in 1987. In the their path. Kosovo is the deepest wound, the introduction, his colleague, Archbichop longest remembrance, the most vivid Amfilohije Radovic wrote: memory, the most beloved ash - the spiritual Kosovo is the beginning and measure of cradle of the Serbian people (Beckovic Serbian ladovno, and ladovno is a continuation 1989:19,23). ofKosovo. Between them, the cross-bearing path On the mystical body of Serbdom, the of a people, a path of the Cross which, like an Archbishop Atanasije leftic inscribed the Cross arch, as ifby a heavenly rainbow, conjoins our of Serbian suffering by making a pilgrimage old and our new torments ... In ladovno, Kosovo from Kosovo to ladovno and back. It was a culminates; the word and reality of ladovno is journey both in time and in space, both the full revelation of the secret ofKosovo and horizontal and vertical. Kosovo is the bottom, confIrmation ofthe Kosovo choice and Kosovo the base of the Serbian Golgotha, but also the covenant. Up until then Serbian fate unfolded peak, the ascension of the whole people to the under the sign of Kosovo; from then on it would Heavenly Kingdom - the migration heavenwards unfold between these two poles, Kosovo and that N ogo talks about. Beckovic' s juxtaposition 1adovno, the base and the peak of [our] Golgotha of pillars and wounds, equators and hearths, (Jevtic 1987:5). crossroads and cradles induces the same kind of Now let's hear what the "Prince of motion sickness. Kosovo is both above and ," Matija Beckovic had to say on below, it is in the past, in the present and in the Kosovo. Beckovic, a distinguished looking, future, it is the alpha and omega of the Serbian white-haired Montenegrin living in national being, and it is fundamentally identical whose poetry was steeped in regional and to ladovno. "Montenegrin metaphysics," was a pre-eminent One ofthe major premises that national poet enjoying near divine status as both underlies the Kosovo and ladovno narratives is a member of the Serbian Academy of Arts and the premise that links bones, graveyards, and Sciences, and the president of the Serbian spilt blood, with soil, borders and territory. Writers' Association. Beckovic, as ever, succeeds in giving one of the "Kosovo is the most expensive (dearest) most succinct formulations: Serbian word," proclaimed Matija Beckovic According to our popular belief, the in the speech he gave in Canberra, land where there are graves is not for sale. in 1989 as a part of the celebration of 600th Householders without progeny, or those who anniversary of Kosovo Battle. feared that their descendants might sell the land It has been paid for with the blood of the would prevent this possibility by burying their whole people. With that price in blood it dead in the yard. Both the buyer and the seller became enthroned on the throne of the would balk at the grave. In the Kosovo graveyard Serbian . Without blood it couldn't the whole Serbian people have been buried and have been bought, without blood it couldn't that's why Serbs can neither sell nor trade that be sold. land (Beckovic 1989:28). The Kosovo Battle has never ended. It is as Beckovic fIrst gives us what seems to if the Serbian people fIght only one battle ­ be a sober ethnological information about enlarging the Kosovo boneyard, adding Serbian beliefs regarding the relationship weeping upon weeping, joining new martyrs between the graves and soil and then, in his to Kosovo martyrs. Kosovo has long since trademark fashion, he shocks us with his reached ladovno and it is a miracle that the metaphysical paradox: if the whole of Serbian whole Serbian land hasn't assumed the name people were buried in the Kosovo graveyard, of Kosovo. who is then left (to sell or not to sell the land)? This is a brilliant example of yet another code phrase that jolts the listener into entering the

Vol. 19, No. 1. Spring 2001, Page: 93 metaphysical world ofthe nation. What we Serbian Writers' Association in 1989, he cannot grasp with our ordinary logic must famously stated that in the case ofYugoslavia's therefore pertain to some greater mystery. Nation breakup, the Western borders of Serbia will can obviously perish completely yet continue to actually extend as far as the Serbian pits and exist. It dies only to be resurrected. And the graves in Croatia. IfYugoslavia disintegrates, he native soil, drenched with blood and strewn with said in a typical poetic exaggeration, the right of the bones ofancestors or martyrs, obviously vote will be extended to Jasenovac and Jadovno, plays an important mediating role in this to all our pits" (Draskovic 1990: 111). In this resurrection process. ghoulish metaphor then, the dead will vote under the ground and will claim the part ofCroatia Belgrade ethnologist Ivan Colo vic made framed by their pits and graves for a new, a detailed study ofthe major components ofthis enlarged Serbia. 10 national metaphysics and came up with the following summary ofthe logic underlying the Kosovo and Jadovno were connected by relationship between nation, bones and soil:s means of ritual performances and pilgrimages. In public discourses the nationalist poets like Nogo The mythical regeneration ofthe ethnos and Beckovic connected them in pithy, is realized by the fertilization of the native soil paradoxical formulas. Victirnhood in its with native blood. This is a magic, or archetypal, metaphysical, eternal power was the precisely, a sacrificial fertilization through the main message ofthis discourse. Launched by medium ofthe blood spilt in the war for the poets, multiplied and disseminated massively living space, that is to say, for the ethnically through regime media, the story of how "they" defined state territory. This is the blood with slaughtered "us" has bombarded Serbian citizens which, it is said, "every foot of our land is incessantly at least since 1988. Needless to say, soaked." The soil fertilized by the blood ofthose such "monumental evil" done to "innocent who fell for the native land is given the role of victims" cried out for redress. Yet, hate towards the ethnic uterus, while the wombs ofindividual Serbia's enemies (mostly "our own brothers"­ biological mothers are reduced to the role of and Bosnian Moslems) was usually not relaying the embryos that come ex terra....The enunciated explicitly in the poets' discourse. But survival ofthe people takes place in two revenge and reconquest were precisely the secret installments, as the eternal alteration between message ofthis whole barrage ofbloodcurdling two times, the time of death and the time of metaphors. resurrection. To encourage their fighters, the promoters of war like to borrow the image ofthe In one ofhis poems, Branko Miljkovic resurrection from religion and transform it into a once asked "How can I jab a tender word into a propaganda slogan: "There is no resurrection hard ear? The poet was despairing ofhis subtle without death!" (Colovic 1997:23) messages ever penetrating the crass sensibilities of ordinary people. Miljkovic's suicide in 1961, In 1988 and 1989, as a part ofthe at the age of27, surrounded him with a comprehensive preparations for the Romantic aura and made him a favorite poet commemoration of the 600th anniversary ofthe among adolescent rebels and dreamers. The Kosovo Battle, the holy relics ofPrince Lazar, poets of 1980s and 1990s led by Beckovic and the leader ofthe at Kosovo, were Nogo, however, were, on the contrary, jabbing carried from the Patriarchate in Belgrade through hard words into ears made "tender" by their parts of Croatia and Bosnia, back to Serbia and eagerness to receive the message ofvictimized finally returned to the monastery Gracanica in Serbdom. Kosovo. The relics were passing through the same areas in which the pits were being This avalanche ofextreme words did excavated and the bones ofWWII genocide not necessarily make ordinary people in Serbia victims reburied. The Serbian Orthodox Church into rabid nationalists ready to fight for Greater organized both. There was no question that these Serbia, as evidenced, for instance, by widespread rituals were marking the extent ofwhat was seen draft-dodging in most Serbian cities. Most as the maximal potential range of Serbian people under most circumstances in most places territory. hold onto views that under close inspection are heterogeneous and often outright contradictory. It was Vuk Draskovic who formulated A great variety ofoften logically incompatible the relationship between graves and territory ideas about Milosevic, , Serbia, most clearly.9 In the speech he gave at the

Vol. 19, No. 1. Spring 2001, Page: 94 Communism, Kosovo, etc. have circulated Djukic, Slavoljub. 1992. Kako se dogodio among the citizens of Serbia during the last vodja: borbe za vlast u Srbiji posle decade or so, and were often held by one and the Josipa Broza. Beograd: Filip Visnjic. same person without any clear sense of Draskovic, Vuk. 1990. Koekude Srbijo. 4th inconsistency. Even if, in general, one can say ed. Beograd: Nova knjiga. that the avalanche of hard words coming from the poets of Serbdom had indeed effected a turn Gordy, Eric. 1999. The Culture ofPower in from widespread to Serbian Serbia: Nationalism and the particularism, that turn was slow, torturous, Destr,uction ofAlternatives. University hesitant, incoherent, and subject to reversals. Park, P A: the Pemlsylvania State After all, the ideological work ofbuilding University Press. Yugoslav ism was immense and of longer Hayden, . 1994. Recounting the Dead: duration. The slogan of Yugoslav brotherhood The Discovery and Redefinition of and unity was driven into tender ears for more than 40 years before the message of Serbdom got Wartime its turn. It was hard work turning the tide. Massacres in Late- and Post-Communist Yugoslavia. In Memory, History, and References Opposition Under State Socialism, Beckovic, Matija. 1989. Kosovo najskuplja edited by R. S. Watson. Santa Fe: srpska rec. Glas crkve: casopis za School of American Research Press. hriscansku kulturu i crkveni zivot Jevtic, Atanasije. 1987. ad Kosova do (Vidovdanski broj):19-28. Jadovna. Sabac: Glas Crkve.Silber, Budding, Audrey Helfant. 1998. Serb Laura, and Allan Little. 1996. Intellectuals and the National Question, Yugoslavia: Death ofa Nation. TV 1961-1991. Unpublished Ph.D. , Penguin USA. dissertation, History Department, Verdery, Katherine. 1999. The Political Life Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. ofDead Bodies: Reburial and Cohen, Lenard. 1993. Broken Bonds: The Postsocialist Change. New York: Disintegration of Yugoslavia. Boulder: Columbia University Press. Westview Press. Vujacic, Ve1jko Marko. 1995. Communism Cohen, Lenard J. 1997. Slobodan Milosevic. and Nationalism in Russia and Serbia. In The Serbs and their Leaders in the Ph. D. Dissertation, Sociology Twentieth Century, edited by P. Radan Department, University of California, and A. Pavkovic. Aldershot: Ashgate Berkeley, Berkeley. Publishing. Woodward, Susan L. 1995. Balkan Tragedy: Cohen, Lenard J. 2001. Serpent in the Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold Bosom: The Rise and Fall ofSlobodan War. Milosevic. Boulder, Colorado: Washington, D . c.: The Brookings Westview Press. Institution. Colovic, Ivan. 1997. Politika simbola: Ogledi Zivkovic, Marko. 2001. Serbian Stories of o politickoj anthropologiji. Beograd: Identity and Destiny in the 1980s and Radio B92. 19905. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Denich, Bette. 1994. Dismembering Anthropology Department, The Yugoslavia: nationalist ideologies and University of Chicago, Chicago. the symbolic revival of genocide. Notes American Ethnologist 21 (2):367-390. Djilas, Aleksa. 1993. A Profile of Slobodan Milosevic. Foreign Ajfaris 72 (3):81­ 1. This is a slightly expanded version of the 96. paper read at the San Francisco AAA Meetings in November 2000. The original version was written before the September 2000 elections and October "revolution" in Serbia that brought

Vol. 19, No. 1. Spring 2001, Page: 95 Milosevic dO\vn. I am, however, leaving the of comparative politics" (Verdery 1999:26). I paper as it was - a " from the dark past." will not enter into abstract discussion about the symbolic or sacral or cultural aspects ofpolitics The best single source in Serbian for here, but will let my eloquent poets and writers Milosevic's political career is Slavoljub Djukic' s weave their word enchantments on their own. Kako se dogodio vodja (How the Leader Happened) (Djukic 1992), but there is now a 6 Other narrative links, such as those that draw number ofgood accounts available in English on the analogies to Jewish history, are explored (e.g. Cohen 1993, 1997, and especially Cohen in greater length in Chapter 5 of my dissertation 2001, Djilas 1993, Vujacic 1995, Woodward (Zivkovic 2001). 1995, Silber 1996, Budding 1998, Gordy 1999). 7 The notorious concentration camp Jasenovac 2 Milosevic befriended Stambolic while still a run by the Croatian Ustase is another such term, student at the Belgrade Faculty of Law. As and arguably in much wider use than Jadovno. Stambolic rapidly ascended the rungs of political The numbers of people who perished at power in Serbia he would typically arrange for Jasenovac (and the percentages of various ethnic his protege to succeed him in his previous groups therein) were hotly disputed in the late position. When Stambolic became president of 1980s - with Serbian side exaggerating and the the Serbian League of Communists in 1984, he Croatian side minimizing (Tudjman's role in this appointed Milosevic as the head of the Belgrade minimization was notorious). Jasenovac had party committee, and when he became the visibility, even during Tito's rule when such , Milosevic succeeded him as disputes were suppressed. The appeal of Jadovno a chief of the Serbian party. - a pit among many pits - for the nationalist poets in the 1980s, I would argue, was precisely 3 It is in this context that the term "ethnic in its character of suppressed memory. Here was cleansing" originated. It was used in Serbia to something presumably as terrible as Jasenovac describe the supposed program of ethnic but excluded from public awareness. Poetic Albanians in Kosovo to eliminate all the non­ pilgrimages and homages to Jadovno thus had an Albanian minorities in the province, most additional appeal of bringing the forbidden to importantly the Serbs and Montenegrins. light. This is not to say that Jasenovac was 4 "The mass movement ofKosovo Serbs ... was absent from the poetic slogans. One of the most not openly anticommunist, though it could easily bloodcurdling of Beckovic' s metaphors, for have become so. Milosevic only gradually instance, proclaimed Jasenovac "the largest overcame his caution and started supporting it, Serbian underground city." but he was nonetheless the fIrst leading 8 These summaries are given in a playful, communist to do so. With the help of the party­ -in-cheek spirit and with the full controlled media and the party machinery, he awareness of their artificiality. It is a thankless soon dominated the movement, discovering in task, in addition to being methodologically the process that the best way to escape the wrath wrong, says Colovic, "to decompose myths into of the masses was to lead them. It was an act of a set of clearly distinguished motifs and topoi, or political cannibalism. The opponent, Serbian into a catalogue of clearly formed ideas and nationalism, was devoured and its spirit representations, for mythical discourse is permeated the eater. Milosevic reinvigorated the characterized by fragmentariness, fluidity and party by forcing it to embrace nationalism" ambivalence. This inherent "resistance" of the (Djilas 1993:87). myth to analytical interpretations, however, is 5 This is of course, the territorial claim that somewhat reduced when we talk about modem cultural anthropologists like to make against political myths because they are a result of realist or rational choice political science. As mythologization, that is to say, ofthe reworking Verdery puts it, arguing for the inclusion of the of the "original" mythical material under a study of "dead bodies" in postsocialism, "I hope particular angle, whose magnitude could be to show how we might animate the study of determined" (Colovic 1997: 13). politics in general, energizing it with something 9 The following joke that I heard in Serbia attests more than the opinion polls, surveys, analyses of to the notoriety of this formula while providing a "democratization indices," and game-theoretic highly ironic and self-reflexive commentary on formulations that dominate so much of the fIeld

Vol. 19, No. 1. Spring 2001, Page: 96 the whole graves=territory logic: Bosnian spaceship lands on the Moon. The Bosnian space team is comprised of three delegations, Croat, Muslim and Serb, and they have to stake their claims to the Moon territory. "Weare used to mountains," say the Muslims, "so we will take all the mountains." "We cannot live without the sea," Croats say, "so we will take all the Moon seas." Nothing's left for Serbs. One of them takes out his gun and shoots his fellow Serb. "Where there are Serbian graves, that's Serbia."

\0 Denich (1994), Hayden (1994) and, drawing on both, Verdery (1999) have wri11en extensively about how in the late 1980s and early 1990s, exhumation and reburial of those slain in WWII helped symbolically revive the genocide and played an important part in the nationalist mobilization that led to the dismemberment of Yugoslavia.

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