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7-1-1997 Searching For a Serbian Havel Nick Miller Boise State University - - BALKAN AUTHORITARIANISM ------:' Searching for a Serbian Havel

Nicholas J. Miller

Serbian intellectuals must Betweenwas wrackedNovemberby demonstrations1996 and Januaryheaded1997,byBelgradeforces answer for their role in opposed to the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic, leading to bittersweet musings that the age ofliberal de• elevating nationalist hatred to mocracy may have dawned in Serbia. Early on, the West• ern press compared this movement to the 1989 Velvet the preferred language of Revolution in Czechoslovakia. Although such talk even• tually faded, the temptation was strong to attribute more cultural and political democratic potential to these demonstrations than they deserved. This was especially true in Serbia itself, where discourse in Yugoslavia. The the honest hope for a better future has combined with the rhetoric of opposition politicians to produce a false ex• Serbian people need to see pectation that this revolution not only would topple an contrition from the autocrat but would prompt the birth of a stable, demo• cratic, and tolerant Serbia. An example of this phenom• compromised before they will enon would be the announcement by the leaders of the Zajedno (Together) opposition coalition that they are embrace their role in the seeking a "Serbian Havel" who would lead the coalition

in the coming Serbian republican elections. J Zajedno destruction of Yugoslavia in all meant to link itself to the peaceful, liberal democratic transition engineered in Czechoslovakia in 1989-90, of its complexity. when dissident playwright Vaclav Havel moved from prison to presidency. There is an additional parallel to be made: Like most Serbian political leaders, Havel is an intellectual who became a politician. He is invoked because he is a symbol of peaceful and effective tran• sition from authoritarianism to liberal democracy. Serbia desperately needs its own Vaclav Havel. But what would it take to be such a leader? A Serbian Havel would be an intellectual in politics, someone who brings humanistic qualities to the cynical, often violent life of the politician. Since most of Serbia's leading politicians also began their careers as intellectuals, they have po• tential competitors for this role. But, unfortunately, NICHOLAS J. MILLER is assistant professor of history at Boise State Univer• today's Serbian intellectuals with political influence can sity. He would like to thank Jill Irvine, Sabrina P. Ramet, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a draft of this article. lay no claim to a past steeped in humanism. In fact, most

Problems of Post·Communism. vol. 44, no. 4, JulyfAugust 1997, pp. 3-11, © 1997 M,E, Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 107~216/1997$9.50+0,OO, Miller Searching for a Serbian Havel 3 ·of them helped destroy Yugoslavia. And with the wars The 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy over, Serbia's leading intellectual politicians have only of Arts and Sciences (excerpts) fitfully examined their own behavior over the past de• Over the past two decades, the principle of unity has become cade-and that only goes for those who have long been weakened and overshadowed by the principle of national au• of marginal influence in Serbia's political life precisely tonomy, which in practice has turned into the sovereignty of the federal units [the republics, which as a rule are not ethnically because they'are antinationalists. Serbia's Havel must homogeneous]. The flaws that from the very beginning were have come to terms with his own intellectual past. This present in this model have become increasingly evident. Not all article discusses the limits of responsibility of Serbia's the national groups were equal: The Serbian nation, for instance, was not given the right to have its own state. The large sections intellectuals for the brutal collapse of Yugoslavia and of the Serbian people who live in other republics, unlike the na• the degree to which they currently seem willing to accept tional minorities, do not have the right to use their own language that responsibility. and script; they do not have the right to set up their own political or cultural organizations or to foster the common cultural tradi• tions of their nation together with their co-nationals. (pp. 116-17) Inventing a Discourse Many of the troubles bedeviling the Serbian nation stem from of Serbian Humiliation conditions that are common to all the Yugoslav nations. How• ever, the Serbian people are being beset by yet other afflictions. There are good reasons to seek signs of introspection, if The long-term lagging behind of Serbia's economic development, unregulated legal relations with Yugoslavia and the provinces, as not remorse, from Serbian intellectuals following the wars well as the genocide in Kosovo have all appeared on the politi• in Yugoslavia. A generation of Serbian intellectuals, in• cal scene with a combined force that is making the situation tense cluding historians, philosophers, writers, poets, and if not explosive. These three painful questions, which arise from the long-term policy taken toward Serbia, are so dramatic that economists, invented the discourse of Serbian humilia• they are threatening not just the Serbian people but the stability tion: the narcissistic and novel interpretation of Serbian of the entire country. For this reason they must be given due at• history that Serbs have always been persecuted by their tention. (p. 118) neighbors. This discourse prepared Serbs for war. I do The expulsion of the Serbian people from Kosovo bears dramatic not intend to accuse the entire Serbian intellectual and testimony to their historical defeat. In the spring of 1981, open and total war was declared on the Serbian people, which had political elite of barbarism. But leading intellectuals and been carefully prepared for in advance in the various stages of cultural institutions in Serbian society, including the administrative, political, and constitutional reform. This open war Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU) and the has been going on for almost five years. It is being waged with a skillful and carefully orchestrated use of a variety of methods and Association of Serbian Writers, bear much responsibil• tactics, with the active and not just tacit support of various politi• ity for lowering the standards of public debate and intro• cal centers in Yugoslavia, which they are taking no pains to con• ducing aggressive nationalism into political discourse.2 ceal and which is more ruinous than the encouragement given by our neighbors. Moreover. we are still not looking this war in Beginning as early as the 1968 Albanian demonstra• the face, nor are we calling it by its proper name. (p. 126) tions in Kosovo, this group of dissidents conceived of its The physical, political. legal, and cultural genocide of the Serbian own activity as more pure and more enlightened than population in Kosovo and Metohija is a worse defeat than any politics. They imagined themselves to be the conscience experienced in the liberation wars waged by Serbia from the First of a Serbian nation that had been betrayed by bad lead• Serbian Uprising in 1804 to the uprising of 1941. The reasons for this defeat can primarily be laid at the door of the legacy of the ers and bureaucrats. They claimed to be purveyors of Com intern, which is still alive in the Communist Party of something akin to the antipolitics of the dissident intel• Yugoslavia's national policy and the Serbian communists' adher• lectuals in the rest of Eastern Europe, yet their activity ence to this policy, but they also lie in costly ideological and political delusions, ignorance, immaturity, or the inveterate op• became political in a critical sense: They roused apa• portunism of generations of Serbian politicians since World War thetic Serbs to oppose the Tito regime, which they claimed II, who are always on the defensive and always worried more had ignored or persecuted them. The most infamous ex• about what others think of them and their timid overtures at rais• ing the issue of Serbia's status than about the objective facts ample of Serbian nationalist discourse was the 1986 affecting the future of the nation which they lead. (p. 127) Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sci• Except for the time under the Independent State of Croatia, the ences. (See box.) The memorandum was produced by a Serbs in Croatia have never before been as jeopardized as they SANU committee. Although never finished or officially are today. Solution of their national status is a question of over• riding political importance. If solutions are not found, the conse• published, it was leaked to the Yugoslav press and has quences might well be disastrous, not only for Croatia, but for the since been the single most cited example of the growth whole of Yugoslavia. (p. 132) of Serbian nationalism in Yugoslavia. Many Serbs Source: Kosta Mihailovic and Vasilije Krestic, Memorandum of (mostly from the nationalist orientation) have lately in• the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts: Answers to Criti• cisms (Belgrade: SANU, 1996). sisted that the memorandum was nothing more than a suggestion for discussion and the fact that it was unpub-

4 Problems of Post-Communism July/August 1997 lished made it irrelevant. But until the ideas contained in the memorandum are repudiated by its formulators, who Intellectuals in Serbian Politics include many leaders of the nationalist revival, its status Dobrica (osic, born in 1921, is the author of many historical as an "unpublished proposal" is meaningless. novels, including Vreme smrt (TIme of Death), which has been translated into English. He was a member of the Central Commit• Dobrica Cosic, the Serbian novelist most often ac• tee of the League of Communists of Serbia (LCS) between 1965 cused ofleading the nationalist awakening in Serbia af• and 1968, when he left it as a result of his opposition to the LCS's ter 1968, recently evaluated his own actions: "In my life policy toward Kosovo and Vojvodina. Cosic was the first among Serbian writers to endorse nationalist opposition to the Tito re• I have tried to serve my people, but in which way? By gime. In 1992, he served as president of the Federal Republic of serving it as a writer, serving it by interpreting and speak• Yugoslavia. ing some truth about its existence. If! somehow helped Ales Debeljak has received the highest literary award in Slovenia in that way, then I have fulfilled my human duty."3 The (the Preseren Prize) for his books of poetry and essays. He re• "truth" he spoke was that the Serbs were persecuted, ceived his doctorate in social thought from Syracuse University, and his work has been published often in the United States. His and the solution to Serbian suffering that he offered was book Twilight of the Idols: Recollections of a Lost Yugoslavia (New to reinvigorate the Serbian nation and effect its reunifi• York: White Pine Press), an indictment of nationalism, Serbia, and cation (specifically referring to Serbia, Kosovo, and its role in the wars of the Yugoslav succession, appeared in 1994. Vojvodina~an intensely political project, and one that loran Djindjic is a philosopher and the head of the Democratic Party in Serbia. He is now one of the three leaders of the Zajedno fueled the wars in Yugoslavia after 1991. In the 1980s, coalition in Serbia, which led the popular demonstrations of 1996• Serbian intellectuals led the way in the demonization of 97. In February he became mayor of Belgrade. Albanians. Then later, after 1988, they added Croats to Vuk DrilSkovic is the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement. their list of enemies, and finally, after 1991, they wid• Before entering politics in 1990, his novels, including Not (The ened the scope of their hostility, including Bosnia's Mus• Knife) and Molitva (The Prayer) contributed to the growth of eth• nic nationalism in Serbia. He is a leader of the Zajedno coalition lim Slavs. Today, at some level, in some way, these and will be the Zajedno candidate for the Serbian presidency intellectuals must answer for their role in elevating na• later this year. . tionalist hatred to the preferred language of cultural and Vesna Pesic is a sociologist who leads the Civic Alliance, an an· political discourse in Yugoslavia. Until humanistic in• tiwar, anti nationalist opposition party that emphasizes civic val• ues over national/ethnic loyalties. She is the third leader of the fluentialleaders step forward, people such as Dobrica Zajedno coalition. Cosic will remain respected in Serbia, not as living Nebojsa Popov was the youngest member of the "Belgrade testaments to the disaster to which they contributed, Eight" -professors at Belgrade University who were removed from but instead in the role that brought them to promi• their positions in 1981 after years of harassment as a result of their involvement with the journal Praxis and their opposition to nence-that of prophets of a mythical Serbian heri• the Tito regime. Since the outbreak of war in Yugoslavia in 1991, tage of suffering. he has been involved with the Civic Alliance. He is the editor of the journal Republika. Dragan Velikic is the author of the novels Via Pula and Astra• Peter Handke's Justice for Serbia khan, which was shortlisted for the prestigious NIN award as novel of the year in Serbia in 1991. Since the December 1995 Dayton peace accords were signed, intellectuals in Serbia have been torn between an inner struggle to understand and an external effort to fect me."4 He went in the tradition of the travel writer, justify their role in Yugoslavia's collapse. In the process moving about in an unknown land, enlightening outsid• of defending their own dignity, however, they oftenjeop• ers. Of course, he did in fact have an agenda, and it is ardize what is left of it by grasping at straws. This is not at all clear that Serbia has been misrepresented.5 illustrated clearly in the recent travelogue, A Winter Trip Handke's contribution is simply a collection of vignettes, Along the Danube, Sava, Morava, and Drina Rivers: often moving but usually naive, that attempt only (and Justice for Serbia (1996), by Austrian writer Peter patronizingly) to evoke pity for Serbs by critiquing Handke. Handke wrote A Winter Trip following travels hostile Western (especially German) media coverage. through Serbia accompanied by Serbian acquaintances But because the notion that Serbs are misunderstood has and friends. His intent was to understand how the war been a passion in Serbian culture and politics for gen• carne about and to determine whether the hope for gath• erations, most of Belgrade's journalists and its cultural ering Serb-populated lands into a "Great Serbia" was elite greeted Handke's travelogue with enthusiasm. His ever real. "I was drawn erotically," he said later, "to go banal ramblings were a godsend to Serbs smarting from to that country which stood despised before the world foreign criticism. public, not to observe and inspect, but to allow it to af- Excerpts from the book were published in the new"

Miller Searching for a Serbian' ,. suggested that the true story about the wars has been ,r', banished from German newspapers and that, in Handke's ~'1'a, « own words: "Germany is a land ofClarkness. Germany has always been a land of darkness." 10 While one logi• ,',\ ~+~~""1fiil'-.. ". ~.;;~~.~~., .. .,. . cally wonders whether Handke exploits Serbia to get at more important targets, such as Germany, its media, and its culture of "darkness," many journalists and intellec• tuals in Belgrade have embraced him as a lone beacon of .'" f< light in their search for understanding. " '-' ~'"\ Serbian press commentaries critical of Handke were limited to the usual suspect sources, mostly Vreme, the weekly news magazine widely viewed as treasonous be• cause of its critical attitude toward the war and the ' Serbian government. Sonja Biserko, president of the Serbian President Siobodan,-Milosevic (left) and Dobrica Cosic (right) Belgrade section of the Helsinki Committee, said: during the Pan-Serbian parliamentary session, May 14, 1993, in Belgrade "[Handke's] text is missing balance, any sense of what to pressure Bosnian Serbs to accept the Vance-Owen peace plan. Courtesy of Reuters/Petar KujundziciArchive Photos. really happened in the war .... The text serves those who refuse to see Serbia as the main guilty party for the paper Nasa Borba in January and the magazine NIN in war. However, [Serbian guilt] is a fact. It helps no one to March. By April 1996 a Serbian translation was in print 6 point out distorted reporting in the media."I' Others Positive reactions to it have generally echoed the logic thought that Handke's tract would ultimately harm Serbia of Milorad Pavic, the Serbian author of The Dictionary more than help it. Svetlana Slapsak, a veteran human of the Khazars and Landscape Painted with Tea: "To rights activist, offered, "Handke did more harm to Serbian understand the situation in the Balkans today, one must culture by refusing to hear what the opponents of the remember one simple fact: ... Serbs have no interna• Serbian regime think." For Slapsak, Handke simply tional financial or religious support, and that means no lacked information: "It is just too bad that he did not media (support] either." Thus, Handke becomes a com• read the Serbian press from 1987 onward." 12 Republika, passionate and enlightened soul, resisting the pressure Nebojsa Popov's scarcely read biweekly associated with of financial and religious circles bent on destroying the Civic Alliance, noted: ''To find his 'deep truth,' Handke Serbia. "With his travelogue," Pavic added, "[Handke] pried around a little, incognito, in Serbia. But the least ap• has joined those great writers of the past who have opted propriate place to find out the truth about Serbia is Serbia for the truth about the small Serbian nation, from Goethe itself, sunk hopelessly in the fog of its self-deception and and Grimm to Victor Hugo and Tolstoy."7 Although many self-convinced 'truth.' ... Danke Handke! Your writing critical commentators have accused Handke of bringing is not to the good of Serbia but to its detriment." 13 an agenda to his work, his friend and tour guide Garko These lonely voices in Serbia are preaching to the Radakovic asserts: "Handke is not an ideologically in• converted. Anyone writing for Vreme or Republika is doctrinated person. His duty, as for every other artist, is considered by Serbian nationalists (and thus most of the to be critical toward society. In the center of his investi• old-guard intellectuals) to be a traitor to the Serbian gation is the media situation in Western Europe and gen• cause; their readership, and therefore their influence, is erally in the West and in America."8 exceedingly small. To focus on the negative responses to Feeding suspicions that he cared little for different Handke's book is to ignore the fact that it is one of the perspectives, Handke made comments about Slobodan few lifeboats in a very stormy sea for Serbs who are Milosevic in a Nasa Borba interview: "I think that all convinced that they are misunderstood. PaviC's remarks, that Milosevic said was that, with Serbs in Kosovo as a noted above, reflect the mainstream attitude toward minority under pressure, they need not tolerate blows, Handke. The book has nurtured the Serbian belief that defeat, and degradation. I understand that well. That does they are victims of conspiracies of all sorts. not mean that he supported' Great Serbia.' . .. But about the power-holders in Serbia I cannot say anything. I do Accusations from Slovenia not want to say anything negative. I won't!''') Handke and his supporters further appealed to time-honored While Handke helped to delay the Serbs' reconciliation Serbian convictions and conspiracy theories when they with their own recent past, an intellectuals' polemic il-

6 Problems of Post-Communism July/August1997 lustrated why Serbian (and for that matter Slovenian) literary figures might not contribute to such a settlement for some time. The polemic between the Slovene poet Ales Debeljak and several Serbian writers began with Debeljak's interview with Vreme in November 1995. Debeljak's comments were generally complimentary to his contemporaries throughout Yugoslavia: "[Yugoslav writers] succeeded in resisting the inflammable sirens of politics, nations, parties, states." In Slovenia, Debeljak blithely asserts, writers adopted a "sort of Joycian 'non serviam' [I shall not serve] where the state is concerned." However, the war in Slovenia changed things: ''That does not mean that we were apathetic and stood passively by when those ten fateful days [of war in 1991] happened, when our responsibility did not allow us to remain apo• litical." Whereas Debeljak believes that the Slovenes only leaders of the lajedno Coalition, loran Djindjic (left), Vesna Pesie responded to the nation's sirens when confronted with (center), and Vuk Draskovic (right), greet supporters during a protest in the center of the Yugoslav capital, February 14, 1997. Courtesy of Reuters! evil, he implies that Serbian writers made their state fas• Goran Tomasevic/Archive Photos. cistic and warlike. He sees "no possibility for any sort of cooperation with Serbian writers who were in the cradle was, in fact, just a history of waiting for the right of Serbian national socialism." Never explicitly condemn• moment, when each nation would slam the door shut ing all Serbian writers, he implies that support for the on its erstwhile neighbors." The unwitting author Milosevie regime or the nationalist upsurge in Serbia seems to have turned his own equation of Slovenes was widespread in Belgrade. Most importantly, he pos• with good and Serbs with evil on its head. One can its an essential moral difference between his own politi• only imagine his Serbian opponents laughing aloud at cal activism and that of his Serbian counterparts. He Debeljak's naivete.16 served good, the Serbs evil. When a storm from Belgrade Serbs could not find a better personification of broke after his interview, Debeljak professed surprise at Slovenian sanctimony than Debeljak. His Vremecondem• the intemperate response of some of his Serbian col• nation of Serbian writers provoked denials from some leagues. Belgraders who were never in the "cradle of Serbian Debeljak should have known better. Author of a liter• national socialism" at all. Dragan Velikie and Mileta ary indictment of Serbia and its intellectuals as the sole Prodanovie responded quickly and aggressively. But in• cause of the wars in Yugoslavia (Twilight a/the Idols: stead of arguing the importance of Belgrade writers in Recollections of a Lost Yugoslavia), Debeljak is a pure the Serbian antiwar movement or in supporting alterna• distillation of the sort ofSlovenian self-righteousness that tives to the Milosevie regime, they lashed out at Debeljak. Serbs will not suffer. As he wrote, "The obsession of the Prodanovie pointed out Debeljak's hypocrisy: "It is not Serbian intellectual, political, and military leadership-• clear to me how Debeljak's non serviam and his partici• not to mention the vast majority of the Serbian popu• pation in territorial defense go together." Velikie, at least, lace-with the megalomaniacal dream of a Greater Serbia concentrated on his own behavior since the wars began, may well cause the present genocidal war to be perceived noting how he has been marginalized for his anti• as a feat of patriotic greatness [by Serbs],"14 He contin• nationalist views by a Belgrade taken over by "paid ued, "Shamelessly exploiting the inherited fear of perse• Serbian patriots."17 But, most interestingly, Prodanovie cution and massacre ... most, though not all, Belgrade and Ve1ikie both claimed to have no interest in the state, poets sang in sync with populist ideology, igniting Serbian which they assert is not a part of the artistic realm they belligerence. "IS Those Belgrade poets react most strongly inhabit-a position that sets them apart from many of to the short memories of such people as Debeljak, who their elder colleagues in Belgrade. seems to have forgotten that the floodgates of war were Debeljak responded in kind, illustrating the inability opened when Slovenia, with the active support of its own of intellectuals in this region to overcome their national poets, seceded from Yugoslavia in June 1991. Further loyalties in spite of verbal commitments to civil society. on, Debeljak seems to miss his own irony when he notes, "[My interview] probably upset them," Debeljak wrote, "It appears that the history of the former Yugoslavia "because ... they obviously recognized themselves in

Miller Searching for a Serbian Havel 7 my description of existential disappointment in my pre-war period and for their implicit rejection of cultural Serbian writer colleagues." To his adversaries' claims pluralism. Velikic and ProdanoviC's rejection of politics that they wished distance from the state, he advised makes sense (even if it is misguided),cWhether their goal Serbian writers who say that the state simply does not is to evade responsibility or to sidestep the mistakes of interest them to "find their literary equivalent in Klaus their predecessors. But Debeljak's position is equally self• Mann's Mephisto. There too the hero constantly asserts serving: Of course he believes in the politicization of the that politics and aesthetics have nothing in common. intellectual-he conceives of his own activity as being Really, a simple but morally exhausted position."18 To in the service of good. But one of many reproaches of that, Velikic responded indignantly: "[My business is] to Slovene intellectuals is that their own self-heralded move write books as well as possible .... I am not like that toward civil society in the 1980s and 1990s was really a because of the war, I have been that way as long as I cloak for Slovenian nationalism and that their purity as have been a public figure."19 Prodanovic also reaffirmed, intellectuals was sacrificed in the national interest in 1991, "[I have] more interest in culture than the state. I want to have as little as possible to do with the state, let others worry about it." Debeljak might have responded that this It is the younger Serbs who are hiding generation of Serbian writers, if truly apolitical, has ut• from the golden opportunity that stands terly rejected the activism of its predecessor, which pro• before them: Having watched their duced Cosic and others who helped remake Serbian forebears make Milosevic possible, politics in the late 1980s. But then, it seems likely might they not play an active role in that the example of that generation is precisely what cleaning up the mess? Apparently not; has driven Ve1ikic and Prodanovic into the sanctuary their business is writing better books. of their writing cubicles. A breath of fresh air in the atmosphere of mutual recrimination was offered by Belgrade writer Milan when Slovenia seceded from Yugoslavia. Thus, Debeljak Djordjevic. Djordjevic admitted the obvious-that has no simple task when rounding the comers off his Serbian writers did in fact support the regime or the war argument that his own support for his state was qualita• in startling numbers: "The readiness of these intellectu• tively different than the support Serbian writers gave their als and writers to serve, be employed by, minister to, be own state. But it is the younger Serbs who are hiding ministers, write programs, and interpret official policy, from the golden opportunity that stands before them: and, with that, stop really being intellectuals and writ• Having watched their forebears make Milosevic possible, ers, is amazing." Djordjevic continues: "Isn't their mo• might they not play an active role in cleaning up the mess? rality the morality of those who always crave social Apparently not; their business is writing better books. power, nearness to the centers of power, performances from podiums, which they then call the battle for prin• The Old Guard Since the War. ciples?" Having readily acknowledged the existence of the collaborationist intellectual/writer in Serbia, The old guard that Debeljak probably intended to attack Djordjevic then asks the single logical question: "Why as the true tribunes of "post-communist Serbian" na• didn't the Belgrade polemicizers leave the vicious circle tionalism is hardly dead and buried, even though its au• of their narcissism and, instead of condemning Debeljak, thority in Serbian politics and culture has waned in the speak of the instinctive antiwar convictions and support past year. It has become trendy to dismiss them, as though for civil society here. "20 One reason might be that sup• their time has passed. As if to remind us that there were port for civil society in Serbia was so muted (even once Serbian intellectuals who willingly mixed in poli• though antiwar efforts were present) that the value of tics and in fact viewed it as their prerogative and duty to such a response would have been minimal. effect political change when necessary, in June 1996, Unquestionably, the most important theme in this po• twenty-four members of SANU affixed their signature lemic is the relationship between culture and politics, or to the "Declaration on the Protection of the Person and intellectuals and power. Here Debeljak and his Serbian Work of Radovan KaradZic."21 Dignifying KaradZic as counterparts disagree, and one is hard pressed to ignore the "authentic leader of all Serbs," these intellectuals de• the logic of self-interest at work; after all, it is Serbian manded that all attempts to remove the Bosnian Serb writers who have been most widely condemned for their political leader to The Hague Tribunal be stopped, given active participation in the nationalist movement of the his contributions to the Dayton peace agreement and the

8 Problems of Post-Communism July/August 1997 high repute he enjoys among Serbs. The list of signato• decided to reorganize Yugoslavia in harmony with their ries' names reads like a who's who of late-1980s interests or to secede from it."2s Thus, the memorandum mythologizers of Serbian history and culture-philoso• was irrelevant to the fate of a Yugoslavia whose death pher Mihailo Markovic, historians Milorad Ekmeeic and had already been sanctioned by the Slovenes. So again, Vasilije Krestic, linguist Pavle Ivic, professor of law the reader is forced to choose between Serbian guilt (the Smilja Avramov. While literary critic Nikola Milosevic genocidal memorandum, which, it is asserted, foretold explained that his signature reflected his belief that The of the ethnic cleansing of parts of Yugoslavia) and Hague was picking on the wrong man-Milosevic, Franjo Slovenian responsibility (the cold decision to abandon Tudjman, and Ilija Izetbegovic were the real criminals-• Yugoslavia set the wheels of war in motion). Neither others insisted that their actions were simply patriotic. side is repentant, but still the reader has to decide Although the declaration found critics in Serbia, com• which acts, the Serbian or Slovenian, require absolution. plaints came from isolated writers with well-established With Debeljak and Kermauner, we suspect that the Serbs antinationalist resumes.22 have more to answer for but are unwilling to do so. Perhaps more to the point, the press in Serbia in re• But these older intellectuals are lost to the cause of cent months has published scattered interviews, meeting introspection in Serbia. Recently asked to assess his own notes, and other articles relating to relations between responsibility for his political and intellectual activity in Serbian and Slovenian intellectuals throughout the 1980s. the past, Cosic stated: "There is no need to seek my re• As if meant to re-emphasize the fact that the Debeljak sponsibility in other fields of endeavor [than the artis• polemic did not occur in a void, writers such as the tic). I am not prepared to accept it."26 Others might not Serbians Mihailo Markovic, DobricaCosic, and Nebojsa be lost causes, however, and it is to them that one might Popov and the Slovenian Taras Kermauner reviewed their turn for an indication that the peculiar guilt of the Serbian own shared past in an attempt to define exactly who had intellectual will ever be addressed. Unfortunately, their condemned Yugoslavia to death first: Had the Serbs for• imaginary wall of separation between politics and litera- mulated a genocidal program of Great Serbianism with the infamous 1986 SANU memorandum? Or had the Slovenes, in fact, decided as early as 1985 to leave Yu• Older intellectuals are lost to the cause goslavia if it did not reform in a fashion acceptable to of introspection in Serbia. Others might them?23 In the case of the older generation, which in• not be lost causes, however, and it is to cludes intellectuals clearly culpable for the growth of an them that one might turn for an aggressive nationalist movement in Serbia (including indication that the peculiar guilt of the Cosic and Markovic, but not Popov), the debate is both Serbian intellectual will ever be addressed. more important because these intellectuals must bear the burden of their own behavior rather than that of others (unlike Velikic and Prodanovic) and pointless since they ture acts as protection for them. When Velikic and obviously will not do so. Prodanovic claim distance from politics and the state, Here Kermauner (playing Debeljak's role ofself-righ• they are undoubtedly responding to the disastrous teous Slovene) noted, "Cosic, Markovic, [Ljubomir] politicization of intellectuals before the war and attempt• Tadic, [Svetozar] Stojanovic, [Antonije] Isakovic, and ing to mimic some of their East European predecessors Popov, of my good friends who recognized Slovenian in the 1970s and 1980s, who demanded rejection of the equality, were transformed overnight-around 1986• societies that existed and the creation of a zone for plu• into people who offered the Slovenes only one possibil• ralism alongside the state. But, in other contexts, such ity--disappearance."24 Kermauner indicated that his as Serbia today, the rejection of politics might not be disillusionment with his Serbian friends was caused by appropriate; rather, it could be viewed as complicity. both the 1986 memorandum and conversations with Serbia today is governed by a conspiracy of bureaucrats, Popov (also in 1986), in which the latter allegedly sug• police, and criminals with little ideological sophistica• gested that Slovenes utilize Serbian as their language of tion or appeal Furthermore, the Milosevic regime is administration and education. To these intimations, growing shakier, and it might yet succumb to a real and Kermauner's Serbian ex-friends responded that, as early open opposition in Serbia, which could not be said of the as 1985 (a year before the famous SANU memorandum), Gierek, Husak, or Kadar regimes of Poland, Czechoslo• in conversations that resembled negotiations on the fu• vakia, and Hungary in the 1970s. Can Serbia's intellec• ture of Yugoslavia, "Slovenian intellectuals ... had firmly tuals (even if of a new generation) now retreat from

Miller Searching for a Serbian Havel 9 politics to their book writing? No one can accuse Velikic ity to be a Serbian Havel. Unfortunately, if Serbian writ• and Prodanovic of having contributed to the warlike at• ers are incapable of challenging the self-pity of Serbia's mosphere in Yugoslavia in the late 1980s, but if young intellectual elite, Serbia's opposition politician-intellec• writers refuse to address the phenomenon openly, who tuals appear even less likely. Vuk Draskovic, the head of will? DobricaCosic? Mihailo Markovic? Debeljak's smug• the nationalist Serbian Renewal Movement, was last rel• ness can be only weakly challenged without the active evant in his atavistic nationalist-warrior phase before the engagement of Serbia's new intellectual leaders, who wars beg~n in 1991. Vesna Pesic's rhetoric and ambi• would face up to the responsibility of their predecessors tion seem to annoy Serbs more than inspire them, even if for the aggressive nationalism of the late 1980s and early her Civic Alliance speaks the language of West Euro• 1990s. pean liberalism and appeals to Americans. Zoran Djindjic, whose Democratic Party has consistently spouted the same nationalist rhetoric as all other parties Intellectual Opposition Emerges but the Civic Alliance, may have the only real chance to Just as there is an identifiable consensus of nationalists challenge Slobodan Milosevic. But neither Djindjic nor among Serbian intellectuals and politicians, there is a DraSkovic could qualify as the Serbian Havel: Their pasts discernible opposition to that consensus that has existed are too compromised by aggression and intolerance. As in Serbia since the nationalist movement began. Were Slobodan Inic, a Belgrade political ari'alyst, recently the Serbian Havel to embody the moral authority of the noted, Vuk Draskovic helped invent the warlike nation• Czech one, he or she would have to emerge from this alist politics of Slobodan Milosevic, and until recently contingent--eomposed of Serbian liberals, anti• Zoran Djindjic led the attacks on Milosevic for selling nationalists, pacifists, and old-guard Yugoslav social• out the Bosnian Serbs. As tempting as it is today to hope ists. Its leader today is Nebojsa Popov, a member of the for real change from the current crop of political leaders old socialist-humanist Praxis group (which included in Serbia, the fact is that they do not have the moral Mihailo Markovic, who now represents the nationalist authority necessary to provoke introspection among Serbs consensus). The Civic Alliance is its political arm, and who are exhausted by nationalist hysterics but are inca• related civic, antiwar organizations include the Belgrade pable of seeing past the wrongs they have suffered. Circle. The opinions of these people can be most easily Regardless of the fact that Zajedno gained power in found in the biweekly magazine Republika (edited by some Serbian cities as a result of the demonstrations, Popov). Nasa Borba and the weekly Vreme also present Serbia faces real problems that require a firm commit• their views, although without the idealism of the ment to civic values: integrating refugee populations from Republika crowd. While it would be unfair not to point Croatia and Bosnia, coming to terms with the existence out that this group of Serbs attempts to do exactly that of large Hungarian populations in the north and Alba• which this article requests--to face their past squarely, nian populations in the south, and mediating the inevi• acknowledging the excesses that Serbs have sponsored table conflict between the various hostile political and rationalized away-it would be similarly mislead• factions (led by those described in this article as well as ing to act as though these organizations and individuals Vojislav Seselj, the leader of the extreme nationalist have great influence in Serbia today. In fact, they have Serbian Radical Party, who has publicly disavowed the long been considered virtual traitors to Serbia, agents of demonstrations and attributed them to pernicious for• foreign powers, and therefore fundamentally irrelevant. eign influences). Serbia must be led by more than ambi• They have resolutely resisted the demands of their soci• tious politicians who shed their skins as needed. Serbia ety to respond to the threat to the nation, but their voices requires something better than the cynical, winking dismissal are unheard. Regular features inRepublika point out the of the pld guard ofDobrica Cosic, Milorad Pavic, Mihailo flaws in the Serbian body politic and among its leaders. Markovic, and the others guilty of convincing Serbs of their A recent large collection of essays addressed precisely own modem martyrdom. Serbs need to see contrition from the phenomena that are the subject of this article.27 But the compromised before they will embrace their role in the these are not the people who need to come clean; only wars of Yugoslavia's destruction in all its complexity. those who led the movement rather than resisted it from the start have the credibility to produce a real self-ex• Notes amination among Serbs. 1. Nedeljni telegraj[Belgrade] (January 22,1997). Candidates included Then there are those individuals who have the politi• Vuk DraSkovie, Zoran Djindjic, and Matija Beekovie, none of whom compare cal prospects but lack the humanism and moral author- favorably with the Czech president/playwright.

10 Problems of Post-Communism July/August1997 2. Svetlana Slapsak, "When Words Kill," Uncaptive Minds (winter- 15. Ibid., p. 29. spring 1993): 18. 16. Ibid., p. 32. 3. Nezavisna Svetlost (October 6-12, 1996). 17. Vreme (December 11,1995). 4. Nasa Borba (March 6, 1996). 18. Vreme (January 6, 1996). 5. Handke claimed in A Winter Trip that he had been to Belgrade only 19. Vreme(January 13,1996). once, years before, for an afternoon, and implied that he had no real conception 20. Vreme (February 3, 1996). of Serbia or Serbs. Yet, in an interview in Vreme (May 18, 1992), he noted, among other confident assenions about Serbia, Slovenia, and Yugoslavia, "It is 21. Naia Borba (June 12, 1996). a fact that in Serbia, in Belgrade, there was a European openness that in Ljubljana 22. Naia Borba (June 14, 1996). simply did not eltist." It appears that Handke did come with a few preconcep• tions. 23. Nasa Borba (February lo-ll,1996);NaiaBorba(June 15-16,1996); and Nede/jni Te/egraf(July 31, 1996). 6. Peter Handke, Zimko [sic] putovanje do reka Dunava. Save. Morave 24. Naia Borba (February 10-11, 1996). iDrine ili Pravda za Srbiju (A Winter Trip Along the Danube, Sava, Morava, and Drina Rivers: Justice for Serbia), trans. Ziatko Krasni (Podgorica: Oktoih, 25. Nede/jni Telegraf(July 31, 1996). 1996). Handke's book has now been published in English asA Journey to the 26. Nezavisna Svetlost (October 6-12, 1996). Rivers: Justice for Serbia (New York: Viking, 1997). 27. Neboj!a Popov, Srpska strana rata (The Serbian Side of the War) 7. Vreme (February 24, 1996). (Belgrade: Repub1ika, 1996). 8. Vreme (January 10, 1996). 9. Naia Borba (March 6,1996). 10. Nasa Borba (March 5, 1996); and NIN (March 8, 1996). II. Nasa Borba (February 17-18, 1996). 12. Vreme (March 30, 1996). 13. Repub/ika (April 1-15, 1996). To order reprints, call 1-800-352-2210; 14. Ale! Debeljak, Twilight of the Idols: Recollections of a Lost Yugosla• outside the United States, call 717-632-3535. via (New York: White Pine Press, 1994), p. 23.

Miller Searching for a Serbian Havel 11

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