Boise State University ScholarWorks

History Faculty Publications and Presentations Department of History

3-1-2000 The hiC ldren of Cain: Dobrica Ćosić's Nick Miller Boise State University EDITOR East European Politics and Societies '. Vladimir Tismaneanu (ISSN 0888-3254) is published three times University of Maryland a year in Winter, Spring and Autumn. It is sponsored by the Joint Committee on E.oITORIAL COMMITTEE Eastern Europe of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science J an T. Gross (chair) New York University Research Council, 228 East 45th Street, Sorin Antohi New York, NY 10017. It is published by the University of California Press, Central European University Berkeley, CA 94704. lvo Banac Yale University Business Offices: Subscriptions, address Daniel Chirot changes, mailing list correspondence, advertising, and requests for permission University of Washington to reproduce material should be addressed Melvin Croan to EEPS, University of California Press, University of Wisconsin 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA Vol. 14 No.2 East European Politics and Societies Grzegorz Ekiert 94704-1223. For permission to photocopy Harvard University for classroom use, see copying notice on page v Timothy Garton Ash St. Antony's College, Oxford Editorial Offices: All manuscripts and edi• 213 Nationalism in CentrafEurope -A Chance or a Irena Grudzi'lska-Gross torial correspondence should be addressed to Professor Vladimir Tismaneanu, Threat for the Emerging Liberal Democratic Order? New York University Department of Government and Politics, Michael Heim Stefan Auer University of Maryland, College Park, UC.L.A. MD 20742-7215. 246 The Politics of Me'mory: Constructing National Guy Hermet Subscription Rates: In the U.S. $37.00 Identity in:the Czech Lands, 1945 to 1948 Free University, per year for individuals, $82.00 per year KenJowitt for institutions, and $28.00 per year for Nancy M. Wingfield University of California at students (students must provide a copy of 268 Berkeley valid ID). Outside North America add The Children' of Cain: Dobrica CosiC's Serbia Tony R.Judt $20.00 postage. Please allow 3 months for Nick Miller delivery of first issue. Single copies are , New York University $13.00 for individuals, $30.00 for institu• tions and $13.00 for students. Domestic 288 Party Formation Process and the 1998 Elections in MichaelUniversityKennedyoj Michigan claims for non-receipt of issues should be Hungary: Defeat as Promoter of Change for the HSP Gail Kligman made within 90 days of the month of pub• uc.L.A. lication, overseas claims within 180 days. Attila Agh Thereafter, the regular back issue rate will Madeline G. Levine be charged. 316 Institutional Choice after Communism: A Critique University of North Carolina Norman Naimark Postmaster: Send address changes to EEPS. of Theory-building in an Empirical Wasteland Stanford University University of California Press, 2000 Cen• Michael Bernhard ter St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223. Kazimierz Poznanski 348 University of Washington Canadian g.s.t. No. R122058662 Informality Rules Ilya Prizel ]6zsef Boroez This journal is printed at Press Johns Hopkins University, SAIS on totally chlorine-free (TCF) paper. This 381 Roman Szporluk paper is bleached using hydrogen peroxide Expulsion of Integration:Unmixing Interethnic Mar• Harvard University rather than chlorine compounds thus elim• riage in Postwar Czechoslovakia inating the introduction of dioxin into the EDITORS, 1987-1998 Benjamin Frommer environment. This paper is acid free. Daniel Chirot lvo Banac © 2000 by the American Council of 411 The East Is Read: The End of Communism, Jan T. Gross Learned Societies. Articles appearing in this journal are indexed in ABC POL SCI: Slovenian Exceptionalism, and the Independent EDITORIAL ASSOCIATE A Bibliography of Contents: Political Journalism of Mladina . JoAnn Tamazinis Science and Government. Patrick Hyder Patterson SENIOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANT . Printed in U.S.A. Trevor Wysong EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 14,No.2, pages OOO-OOO.ISSN0888-3254 Beata Czajkowska © 2000 by the American Council of Learned Societies. All rights reserved. Jennifer Skulte Send, r.:q~~sts for_permi_s~~~n~o repr~nt t_o:Rights_an~ Perm!ssions, The Children of Cain: the 1980s. In establishing his framework for understanding Serbs' . .~:." ." ~. 'JI<> Dobrica Cosii:'s Serbia I~1; place in and in history, Cosic had to authenticate his Nick Miller':- own credentials as an outsider to the regime (no small feat), fash• } r ion his vision of Serbia's fate, and apply it directly as a litmus test ',) rr for those holding or contending for power in Serbia.

~I:~'i.('\f.1 .. '

';'1 1,: Deobe: The Chill of Isolation .. ~: Today Dobrica Cosic, the Serbian novelist, is most often exploited I'"If.~. as a handy caricature, his name a code word for the ill effects of ',g.~ Several days after Tito died in May 1980, Cosic found himself walk• I~~' Serbian intellectuals' involvement in politics. But as code word, ing along Terazije in 'downtown as long columns of Cosic loses meaning and the nature of his influence is obscured .. Yugoslavs moved in procession to visit Tito's casket: "1 felt a chill While he clearly did something to inspire the growth and quality walking along the opposite side of the street from the people; 1 of Serbian nationalism in the 19808, establishing the nature of his felt alone, totally separated, the first time I had felt such isolation, inspiration is difficult, given the layers of mythology that have that division from the people, from th~ people oEmy country."! grown up around him. CosiC's influence appears to have been Cosic viewed it as his task to overcome that isolation, which was rooted in his abihty and eagerness to incorporate timeless Serbian a product of the Yugoslavs' deep love of Tito, whom Cosic viewed cultural symbols, his version of the history of Serbs in the twen• ij i as the" greatest enemy of [his] people in the last century."2 Cosic ",'(.:f !i: tieth century, and above all his own personalfate under commu• 'I~ felt that he, virtually alone, understood what had yet to dawn on nism into a single compelling vision. According to this vision, he 1\' his countrymen: that Tito, and communism, had left a fratricidal and his Serbian people, treachero,lls at heart, are plagued by a ten• imprint on Yugoslavia. One can only imagine how terrifying it dency to betray and kill one another. They are fratricidal. As Cosic must have been for him to possess a truth of such existential import believed he had emerged from the darkness of servitude to cor• for his nation, yet be unable to overcome the stubborn unwill• rupt communist masters, he believed that Serbs could conquer their ingness of that nati~n to perceive it. Cosic would gradually emerge own fratricidal past and eventually save themselves and their from that darkness of l\:1ay 1980 as more and more of his people nation through revival and cop.solidation along national lines. carrie to share his conviction that Tito hated Serbs. Division, betrayal, self-sacrifice, and fratricide are not novel But as with much of CosiC's autobiography, here he invented a themes in Serbian culture. Anyone familiar with the epic '~ ~ ~L' little. He actually thrived o? isolation, especially when it imparted will recognize them. CosiC's gift was to be able to distill these eter• moral superiority. Years before Tito's death, Cosic had already iso• nal images of division into a potion that modern Serbian society :m, lated himself from power in Serbia. In May 1968, he, a member of could understand and embrace. In the process, they became stan• the Central Committee of the Serbian League of Communists, dard components of the ~ationalist message imbibed by Serbs in delivered a speech at the meeting of that body's Fourteenth Plenum ~ !r which he knew would result in his exclusion from positions of " The author thanks Charles] elav!ch and Carol Lilly for their comments on earlier drafts 'I" !c.... power and influence in Serbian politics.' In that speech, Cosic of this article. He would also like to thank the following institutions for supporting the research for and preparation of this article: the International Research and Exchanges warned that the Leagues of Communists of Serbia and Yugoslavia Board, the American Council of Learne~ Societies, and the Boise State University Office were treading a dangerous path by allowing Yugoslav republics and of Research Administration. A :version of this article was first presented at a meeting on democratic prospects in Serbia sponsored by the Socrates Kokkalis Program on South• eastern and East-Central Europe, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Univer• ~, . I~. 1. Dobrica Cosic, Promene (: Dnevnik, 1992), 22. sity, on 9 April 1998. t ,2. Cosic, Promene, 19. I~

268 East European Politics and Societies, Vol. !4, No.2, pages 268-287. ISSN 0888-3254 "t' i· © 2000 by the American Council of Learned Societies. All rights reserved. ·lIl East European Politics and Societies 269 Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, Administrative changes in Tito's Yugoslavia constituted the provinces more substantial autonomy. After that meeting, the backdrop to CosiC's epiphany in ,1968. Specifically, territorial satirical biweekly Jez published on its cover a cartoon portraying division drove him to leave Serbian political life: he had come to Cosie sitting in isolation from his Central Committee colleagues believe that being a Communis't in Yugoslavia meant supporting in the meeting hall, with deobe emblazoned across the top.3 Deobe the spiritual and spatial fragmentation of Serbia. By 1968, Cosie means "divisions," and also happened to be the title of one of Cosie's was convinced that Tito and his regime were actually devoted to novels, the one that pormiyed the royalist cetniks who fought his the destruction of Serbia. Although he had perceived hints of this communist partisans during the Second World War. Cosie's Deobe concerned a Serbian people divided ideologically and fratricidally. divisive intent earlier, Cosie saw the first certain sign of this pol• What is more, in his speech Cosie fought against a,nother deoba of icy in 1966 with the purge of Aleksandar Rankovie, the highest the Serbian nation. Here, iri May 1968, Cosie himself was isolated ranking Serb in the Yugoslav leadership, the vice-president of Yugoslavia and the hea'd of intelligence in the state. Following either by the Central Committee or by his own will. Cosie might have been forced out (and thus betrayed), or he might well have Rankovie's removal, the regime gradually Albanianized the admin• istration of Kosovo, apart of Serbia populated mostly by Alba• committed a purposeful act of political. suicide. nians. In 1963, Kosovo had become an autonomous province of In fact, Cosie's defiance was purposeful and represented his first act of contrition before a Serbian peop'le whom he believed he had Serbia, a higher status reserved previously only for Vojvodina. Cosie feared that both Kosovo' and Vojvodina would thereafter betrayed as a Communist. At this point (1968), Cosie had already concluded that communism in Yugoslavia'was a corrupt and failed "be treated as ever more autonomous states controlled by non-Serbs endeavor.4 At the Fourteenth Plenum, he acted in accord with this (Albanians in KQsovo, Hungarians in Vojvodina), splitting them from "Serbia proper" forever. Other events stoked his fears: in 1968 conclusion, cleansirig himself morally and absolving himself of the League of Communists recognized a Muslim nation in Yugo• responsibility for future communist'transgressions against Serbs and Serbia. The cartoonist for Jei was p~rceptive: in his drawing, slavia; the Croatian mass movement began in 1967 and peaked in 1971; and finally, Tito purged the Serbian League of Communists not only was Cosie alone, but he also had his back turned to his in 1972, emptying it of its most capable leaders. All of these colleagues. He was not forced out of the party, he rejected it. Cosie since acknowledged that his separation from the party was his processes could be credited to some degree to Rankovie's fallS and all could be characterized as threatening to Serbs, because they own idea, a result of his disappointment with party policy.5 And promised to further divide the Serbian community ofYugoslavia.9 in his speech on the second day of the plenum, he insisted that he Many Serbian Communists accepted Rankovie's demotion would" not accept any political responsibility for the eventual neg• ative results of this plenum."6 Cosie harbored no hope that he could because it seemed to foretell more freedom of speech and thought in Yugoslavia. However, as one Serbian critic ofTito has remarked, affect party policy, so instead of remaining responsible for policies that expectation was not met: took a minim~m of four years he could not support, he sacrificed himself in the name of Serbia.7 ''It passing to see that this liberalization had not resulted in greater protection of individual rights and freedoms, but above all in 3, fei, 1510 (Belgrac!e), 7 June 1968. 4. See Nicholas J. Miller, "The Nonconformists: Dobrica Cosic and Mica Popovic Envi• greater respect for the rights of individual federal units as sover- sion Serbia," in Slavic Revie'lp 58:3 (Fall 1999): 515-36, for an examination of the ori• gins of CosiC's dissatisfaction. 5, Slavoljub Djukic, Covek u svom vremenu: Razgovori sa Dobricom Cosicem. (Belgrade: 8. For a clear recent statement of this thesis, from one of Serbia's most influential and responsible historians, see Branko Petranovic,Jugoslo'vensko iskustvo srpske nacionalne 6. FilipDobricaVisnjie,Cosic,1989),"Kritika185-200.vladajuce ideoloske koncepcije u nacionalnoj politici," in Co sic, integracije (: Grafika, 1993), 113-14. Swarno i moguce: Cianci i ogledi (Ljublana-: Cankarjeva zalozba, 1988),40. 9. At this point, it seems almost superfluous to note that there were in 1968 considerable 7. Cosic was not expelled from the party; he remained a member for several w'eeks before Serbian populations in Croatia and Bosnia. submitting his resignation.

East European Politics and Societies 271 270 The Children of Cail1: Dobrica Cosic's Serbia ojl)'

"'. f

.... J ;.'" :'.... t ?If!.~ - . eign national states. "10 As post- Rankovic reforms strengthened the we should have the "freedom [to know] the truth about society and man" (1968);12."creative freedom ... must include freedom power of regional bureaucracies in territories populated by Serbs or considered vital to Serbian existence, includ"ingKosovo, Croa• [to seek] the truth 'and the right to struggle against all types of tia, Bosnia, and Macedonia, Serbs came to equate Titoism with anti• lie" (1974);13 "in an ideological society, for a decent life andfuture, Serbianism. As Serbian communities saw walls of bureaucracy and the most dangerous thing is the tyranny of lies" (1987);14 "[Tito] firmer borders built up between them, the proposition that Tito's persecuted me because of the truth I told ... " (1992).15 Most ·1~1 regime was purposely anti-Serbian grew more tenable. recently he said:

Cosic saw in the provincial bureaucracies the promise of divi• '.:~ In my life I have tried to serve my people, but in which way? By ::~~ serving it as a writer, serving it by interpreting and speaking sO,rne sion-destruction not only of the socialist experiment in Yugo• '·t slavia, but of a unified Serbia. In his 1968 speech, he asked plain• truth about its existence. If I somehow helped in that way, then I have fulfilled my human duty. (1997)16 . . tively, "Will the Sava and the indeed be for our generation .'}, the border between Belgrade and Novi Sad, Maeva and Srem, Edward Said recently wrote that the intellectual "speaks the tnith and Danubia?"11 In other words, would Serbia be diminished to to power. "17 By that definition, Cosic was a prototypical intel• include only Belgrade and the Sumadijan core? The question res• lectual, one of a cohort of East Europeans who from the late 1960s onated deeply among history-conscious Serbs. Nineteenth- and to the collapse of communism in Europe viewed truth as the most twentieth-century Serbian political leaders had favored the cre• virtuous and dangerous weapon aga'inst the oppressive state. But ation of Yugoslavia because it was the only feasible geopolitical where many tellers of truth (Vaclav.Havel, Adam Michnik) pro• solution to the dispersion of their community throughout the west• duced a humanistic vision, something went wrong in CosiC's ern . As long as a Yugoslav state provided for Serbian unity, search. As it happens, there was nothing dishonest or consciously it was desirable. The fate of Serbs in the Second World War, espe• manipulative about CosiC's understanding of his role; it was the cially in the Independent State of Cr'oatia, where they were sub• truths that he chose to tell that foreshadowed Serbia's shattered ject to genocide, guaranteed that the i'mperative to unity would future. For, as Said also wrote, "Speaking the truth to power ... be as strongly felt under the Tito regime. Co siC's interpretation of is carefully weighing the alternatives, picking the right one, and .< RankoviC's fall and events in Kosovo through the prism of the fear then intelligently representing it where it can do the most good

of division was the catalyst for his speech to the Fourteenth ~;'i ~. and cause the right change." 18.Cosit's choices were different from Plenum of the Central Committee of the League of Communists i~' those of Havel and Michnik, and they brought harm to Serbia and of Serbia in May 196:8. ','IR to Yugoslavia. As a public intellectual, Cosit would claim that novelists were ,~\f:' b·:.;i. Cosic as Outsider ; ~ most capable of plumbing the depths of a nation's history, pro• .,) !,:. ducing through fiction a picture more truthful than the factual CosiC's speech signaled his m~ve from regime insider to outsider. record. When Cosit was admitted to the Serbian Academy of Arts From that point forward, he could attack the party with the unique authority of the apostate, and he did so with a clear sense of a I 12, Cosic, "0 knjizevnosti i mladoj generaciji hiljadu devet stotina sezdeset osme," in Cosic, higher purpose, which he articulated as the search for truth in the Stvamo j moguce, 46, . face of authoritarian attempts to suppress it. On numerous occa• 14·,13, Cosic, "Tiranija"Kultura lazi,"i revolucija,"in Cosic,inStvamoCosic, Stvamoimoguce,i moguce,184. 118, sions after 1968 he referred to the writer's role as speaker of truth: 15. Cosic, Promene, 20. 16. "'Vreme vlasti' i 'vreme lazi,''' in Nezavisna Svetlost 54, 6-12 (October 1996). 10. Kosta Cavoski, Tito: Teh';ologija vlasti (Belgrade: Dosije, 1991),76, 17. Edward Said, Representations o/the Intellectual (New York: Pantheon, 1994),102. 18. Ibid. . 11. Cosic, "Kritika vladajuce," 33.

272 The Children of Cain: Dobrica Cosic's Serbia East European Politics and Societies 273 11'-" and Sciences in 1977, he delivered a speech that embodied his sub• sort of scrutiny reserved for 'political figures.23 But whether his jective view of history and the novelist's task.19 activity is or ever has been explicitly political, his intellectual and The striving for the universally human and lasting is included in cultural offerings to his Serbian people have long produced polit• the striving for the timeless; in the aspiration to know the unknown ical results. and to remember, we conquer our own death. Before such a goal the writer is compelled internally to found and actively create his In his search for and declamation of the truth, in novels, public own form of expression .... In the multiplicity of its motivations, speeches, and academic essays, Cosic provided abundant examples the historical novel is a search for a lost individual and collective of his fixation on division, both spiritual and geographic. CosieS identity, a search through time in which that identity can be found. would assert that division and fratricide are peculiar characteris• Cosic viewed this task as of critical import, quoting Tolstoy: tics especially of Serbs but also of Yug'oslavs. He found his most "Write the real, true history of this age! That is life's goal! "20For telling examples of fratricide in events provoked by the twentieth• Cosic, history becomes revelation, the novelist's task to express century ideological extremes of communism and fascism. For a truth that transcends facts and interpretations-a subjective instance, in his 1977 speech, CosieScharacterized Serbia's recent past:

truth emerging from within that c~ptures the essence of human [Twice in tIlls century ... J unsatisfied sons, who wished to change eXIstence. the world, rose up against their unhappy and disappointed fathers; bu.tfor the sons as for the fat~ers, victories on battlefields were'in Thus one of the keys to Cosies engagement in Serbian cultural vam. and intellectual affairs is his insistence that he never was and still is not political. He has always viewed his work as primarily cre• The worst example of this rebellion was the Second World War, ative, inspired by a vision separate from and superior to politics. during which Serbs chose to fight on opposing sides: He has always seen himself as an inwardly directed thinker, reluc• at the beginning of the revolution of 1941, political movements arose' tant to give interviews, perhaps in his mind reflecting his peasant representing perhaps the deepest spiritual and moral decline for Serbs origins in a small village in the Morava . Cbsic has carefully in recent centuries .... we slaughtered and crushed each other with incomprehensible cruelty in the fratricidal war of 1941-1945.24 cultivated his image as a man of few words, sometimes taking it to the point of self-parody.21 Indeed his demeanor has been a sub• But it was not only fratricidal warfare that reflected Serbia's ject of derision for many. Draza Markovic, one of Serbia's most degradation. CosieS believed that in victory Serbs and Yugoslavs powerful men in the late 1970s, once referred to Cosic as "unsym• were also divided and humiliated, this time'by themselves, as vic• pathetic, with his pretentious pose and behavior like Buddha."22 tors: "peace was conceived of as an opportunity to ... realize var• Markovic could not be expected to appreciate Cosic, but his char• ious and selfish intentions in the name of common interests. "25In acterization remains vivid and apt. Twenty years later, after being other words, peace brought to power in Yugoslavia false prophets heckled by demonstrating students during Belgrade's fleeting who would betray their stated ideals in a search for personal enrich• anti-Milosevic movement of November-December 1996, Cosic ment. Again CosieS insists that Serbian history is filled with divi• refused to answer a reporter's questions on the spectacle, claim• sion and betrayal-here, the betrayal of the very victory over divi-·. ing simply, ''1 am a writer!" as though the burdensome task sion during the war, this time at the hand.s of the Communists who begged the empathy of outsiders and also protected him from the won the war but who continued to reinforce divisions among the peoples of Yugoslavia. 19. Cosic, "Knjizevnost i istorija danas," in Cosic, Stvarno imoguce, 20. Ibid., 129. Cosic was a part of that selfish generation of revolutionariesthat . 21. See the interview of Cosic by Matija Beekovic, "Klub umetnika ujutrti," jei, 1393 (Bel- 23. "Ne sme se proJiti nijedna kap krvi, " Nasa borba,,24 November 1996. grade), 11 March 1966,J . 22. Dragoslav Markovic, Zivot ipolitika: 1967-1978, vol. 2 (Belgrade: RAD, 1987),260. 25.24, Ibid.Cosic, "Knjizevnost i istorija danas," in Cosic, Stvarno imoguce, 126.

274 The Children of Cain: Dobrica Co sic's Serbia East European ?olitics and Societies 275 he described above. He understood that he was complicit in the among the peoples of the state. Therefore, given his conviction that most recent betrayal of Serbia, perpetrated by the Communists Serbophobia was rampant in Yugoslavia, he concluded thatfrat• of Yugoslavia, both Serbian and of other national origins. Tito• ricide was inherent in any multinational state: ism, he believed, was the modern demoralizing force that divided In these "brotherly associations" built on the torment of survival Yugoslavs and, more important, divided Serbs within Yugoslavia. or for ideological reasons, there is not brotherhood; our century and our dailt; livesconvince us that in the dark recessesof any genus, So Cosic could claim a peculiar expertise as one of the original Ser• Cain lurks. 7 bian Communists, a wartime partisan, a member of the first post• war Serbian agitprop team and, finally, as a member of the Cen• This was a powerful image: Cain, the archetypal fratricide, lying tral Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia. Cosic is in wait to destroy any as~ociation of nations. The notion was thus able to this day to provide the most formidable defense pos• embraced by most Serbs who, with the able assistance of intel• sible for his thesis that Serbs and Yugoslavs are fratricidal: he was lectuals like Co sic, became convinced that their brother Yugoslavs wished their destruction.' part of the Titoist machine, guilty himself of betraying his -people. Having experienced his own revelation in 1968, he set out to enlighten his fellow Yugoslavs. The Children of Cain: Traitors and Heroes Although CosiC's central theme was the fratricidal nat~re 6f Serbs, ultimately division .and betrayal became highly mobile A critical part of CosiC's ~ultural bequest to the Serbian people phenomena. Cosic and others who followed would also identify was a hierarchy of traitors and heroes; traitors played on the Ser• these tendencies in the relations among Yugoslavs. In so doing, bian tendency to fratricide, heroes resisted it, acting purely in the interests of the nation. At the most basic level, that of the indi• they accepted the rhetoric of the Tito regime, which emphasized the fraternal relations between the South Slavic peoples, as vidual Serb, Cosic established a litmus test: if one acquiesce'd in enshrined in the phrase that symbolized the Titoist approach to the gradual creation of sem~-sovereign republics and provinces in the national question, bratstvo i jedinstvo (brotherhood and Yugoslavia, one was a traitor to the Serbian people. But he built unity). Having been immersed in the rhetoric of brotherhood and upon that foundation of traitors to Serbia a more inclusive struc• unity, many Serbs would later conceive of conflict among Yugoslav ture of historic enemies, those who 'exploited the Serbs' willing• national groups as fratricidal, and always directed at Serbs ("Ser• ness to betray each other. These historic enemies were the Habs• burg monarchy and international communism (Bolshevism), and bophobia" and "genocide" became all-too-common accusations they provided the context and conditions for individual Serbian by the late 1980s). In 1987, as mistrust among Yugoslavia's once• acts of betrayal. brotherly nations simmered, Cosic revisited the theme of fratri• cide, but also suggested that any attempt to bring nations together In his famous address to the Serbian Academy in 1977, Cosic was destined to fail: included Austria-Hungary in a list of perpetrators of genocide against the Serbs.28 A rather alarmin.g claim in any context, it is Yugoslavia is the political consequence of both world wars; it was created in trenches and across trenches; it was created in fratrici• especially startling to find it so early in CosiC's progress.29 His accu• dal battles in both world wars, in genocide, religious wars, and civil sation of genocide against the Habsburgs laid the foundation for war.26 subsequent portrayals of the Austrian dynasty as fundamentally By this time, Cosic had rejected Yugoslavia altogether-it was a 27. Ibid., 176.. product of historical conditions, but not of any relationship 28. Co sic, "Knjizevnost i istorija danas," 126. 29. However, it must be said that in Time of Death, he introduced the theme of Austrian genocide against the Serbs in the specific context of the First World War. 26. Cosic, "Srbi i Slovenci nekad i danas," in Cosic, Stvarno i moguce, 175.

277 276 The Children of Cain: Dobrica Cosi'c's Serbia East European Politics and Societies anti-Serbian (as in his earlier novel A.Time of Death ).30The Hab• of the virus of serbophoQia, but was it-one asks oneself-possible for him to forget overnight that which he was taught for the first sburgs' crime was to have created persistent borders between com• fifty years of his life?3! munities of Orthodox Christian Serbs: Bosnia, Vojvodina, Croa• tia, Dalmatia. The Habsburgs of course had worked mightily Just as important as outsider-enemies, however, were the enemies before 1914 to contain Serbian nationalism and connections within, upon whom outsiders relied. Although CosiC's ultimate between the Serbs of Croatia; Bosnia, and Serbia itself. They had condemnation for policies dividing Serbia would be reserved for engaged in divide and rule policies in order to control Serbs and Edvard Kardelj32 and Tito (that "Stalinist, tyrant, power-lover, Croats, and the fact that Serbs often abetted that process only aided hedonist, merciless and corrupt demagogue, skilled tactician . CosiC's analysis. ' that status-seeker, ignoramus, careerist, unprincipled statesman . Cosie also fingered the Communist International as an outsider- bureaucratic monarch ... "33),he spotted the willingness to destroy enemy of the Serbs. He blamed the Comintern for its interwar pol• Serbia even among Serbs themselves. Those Serbs who favored or acquiesced in the fragmentation of Yugoslavia, including the icy of supporting national movements as revolutionary movements and for labeling the Serbian monarchy and the Serbian bourgeoisie potential achievement of full 'republic status by Vojvodina and as the primary culprits inhibiting progress in Yugoslavia. Tito Kosovo, were supporters of srbijanstvo, which in Serbian refers exploited the same images of Serbia. After the war, Tito, a Stalin• ..to a Serbianism that reduces Se'rbia to a place south of the Danube ist, had allegedly crushed national sentiment in Serbia while fos• and east of the Drina(thus, not including the Serbian communi• ties of Croatia, Bosnia, and Vojvodina). Those Serbs who were will• tering it elsewhere (Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Bosnia). The shared crime of the Habsburgs and the Bolsheviks was to have ing to support such a narrow vision of Serbian interests were for sown divisions between South Slavs and among Serbs: they played .Cosie perpetrators of "that shameful cadre and personal policy that upon the divisiveness of Serbs to find collaborators; they capital• follows provincial affinities and criteria" -that is, nepotism, nar• ized on the divisiveness of South Shivs, and especially hostility rowmindedness, and corruption.34 Since Yugoslavia's federal struc• towards Serbs, to keep Serbia fragmented. ture after 1974 rei~forced precisely that narrow srbijanstvo, Cosie The ease with which the Habsburgs and the Comintern were identified those who favored the federalization of Yugoslavia as not only integrated into the pantheon of Serbia's historic enemies, virtual traitors to the Serbian community. Those Serbian Communists who survi"ed three tumultuous but equated, was rather stunning and involved a common calcu• lation among Serbs: Tito, a Bolshevik, a Stalinist, was also half• years-1966 (when Rankovie was removed), 1972 (whenTito Croat, half-Slovene, and his tactics harkened back to those of Franz purged the remainder of the Serbian party), and 1974 (when the Joseph. How, Vuk Draskovie (one of CosiC's many heirs) later 1974 constitution federalizing the state was proclaimed)-come asked, could Tito help but be a Serbophobe? in for CosiC's harshest condemnations, because those were the Raised in school and in childhood on official serbophobia, as an Austrian soldier sent to the front in 1914 against schismatic and 31. Vuk Draskovic, "Jugoslavija i srpsko pitanje," in Kaekude, Srbija (Belgrade: Nova knjiga, 1990), 43. ". hegemonistic Serbia, and later, asa communist and prospective cadre 32, Cosic wrote: "[Kardelj) systematically, cleverly, evolutionarily, and, I would say, in a of the Comintern, given the opportunity anew to listen to the ser• machiavellian way worked to create a Slov.enian state in the framework of Yugo• bophobic lectures of his youth-such a Josip Broz, nonetheless, slavia .. , . After the liquidation of Rankovie, those thirteen years [until Kardelj's death] grew into a great Yugoslav, and perhaps it is improper to doubt the represent Kardelj's absolute political dominaton of Yugoslavia " (Slavoljub Djukie, Slam srpskih liberala: Tehnolagija politiekih obraeunaJosipa Broza [Belgrade: Filip Visnjie, decency of all of his intentions. He,probably never freed himself 1990], 155). 33. Cosic, Prom ene, 23. 34. Cosie, "Kritika vladajuce," 31. 30. Dobrica Cosie, Vreme smrti. 3 vols. (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1972-75).

279 278 The Children of Cain: Dobrica Cosic's Serbia East European Politics and Societies years when Serbia's divided fate became obvious. In his view, were that they were Serbs, they had fallen from grace, and, per• "mediocrity and political cowardice" defined them.35 Here Cosic haps coincidentially, they were centralists. For instance, he per• would exhibit a fondness for the historical metaphor: the vast sonally rehabilitated Aleksandar·Rankovic. Similarly, Cosic would majority of Serbian communist leaders after 1974 were, for Cosic, praise Blagoje NeSkovic, who was removed from the politburo heirs to the mantle of Prince Iylilos Obrenovic, whom many of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1949 under accusations Serbs, including Cosic, liked to compare unfavorably to his rev• of Stalinism, and Slobodan Pertezic Krcun, a regime watchdog olutionary rival Djordje Petrovic (Karadjordje). Milos viewed whose reputation as a defender of Serbian interests grewposthu• "politics as skill," while Karadjordje was "representative of the re• mously (he died in 1964 in an automobile accident). But Rankovic bellious, epic, freedom-seeking, revolutionary tradition. "36Since must appear at the head of CosiC's list, as Rankovic has long been the skilled Milos had the fre,edom-seeking Karadjordje executed the subject of polarized opinion in Yugoslavia. The official ver• in 1817, the purpose of the image is clear-Serbia is plagued with sion accused Rankovic of bugging Tito ;llld other leaders, but that amoral masters always ready to sacrifice Serbia's true revolution• accusation was pure theater, designed to demonize the regime aries. Post-1974 Serbian leaders, including Petar Stambolic, Draza policeman. Some have argued that Tito had to be rid of Rankovic Markovic, Milos Minic, Tihomir Vlaskalic, and Dusan Petrovic because Rankovic had built himself up as a riva1.40 Most likely Sane, Cosic believed, were interested in power only for the sake of Rankovic had to be removed because he would not go along with power, even at the expense of the heirs of Karadjordje. Stambolic more substantive federalization of Yugoslavia when such federal• symbolized "the political and moral ruin of the revolutionary move• ization had become policyfor Tito and Kardelj. Whether his resist• ment and the Serbian nation."37 Markovic was "a representative ance. was. a product of. his. love of Serbia or his centralist convic- of the negative in Serbian political tradition, that 'marketplace tIOns IS an open questIOn. Serbia' ... of which I am ashamed."38 Vlaskalic reflected Tito's Rankovic is hard to picture as a victim of Titoism, given that "unerring talent for finding political tickeys. "39These men, nearly he headed state security after the liberation of Belgrade in Octo• universally loathed in Serbia after 1980, were guilty of working ber 1944 and thus was responsible for the purge of Stalinists and with rather than against the federalization of Yugoslavia, and there others after 1948, the prison camp for" cominformists" on Goli is little doubt that they were above all politicai survivors. But they Otok, and the suppression of dissent in general in Yugoslavia. reflected for Cosic the timeless divisions in Serbian society. In However, by the early 1980s, Rankovic had become a cause cele• working with and not against the 1974 constitution, they con• bre for anti- Titoists. As Cosic himself noted, RankoviC's funeral tributed to a plot drawn up on high to fragment Serbia and cre• in August 1983 was "ab.ove all a nationalist demonstration. It was ate small states within Yugoslavia's borders. When Stambolic, a true, widely effective gesture, a real nationalist uprising [of] sol• Markovic, Vlaskalic, Petrovic, and others collaborated with Tito idarity with a noted Serbian communist who was the victim of a and Kardelj, in CosiC's mind they worked for the destruction of great injustice. "41 The question that begs an answer: Where is the Yugoslavia and Serbia. injustice? Why was RankoviC's demise not just another round in As Cosic established his enemies list, he also built a list of mod• the bolshevik game he was playi.ng? ern Serbian heroes, victims of Titoism, whose unifying features Two reasons explain why RankoviC's demotion was perceived by many Serbs as more than just a bolshevik hatchet job. First,

35. Djukic, Slom, 149. the Tito regime linked Rankovic to interwar Serbian hegemonism, 36. Ibid., 156. 37. Ibid., 157. 38. Ibid., 161. 40. Cavoski, Tito: Tehnologija vlasti, 50. 39. Ibid:, 165. 41. Djukic, Covek u svom vremenu, 178.

280 The Children of Cain: Dobrica CosiC's Serbia East European Politics and Societies 281 which was an integral part of the Yugoslav Communists' attack (Cosic himself has been credited with an intuitive understanding on the interwar Serbian monarchy. At the Sixth Plenum of the Cen• of the Serbian peasant).47 tral Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia, convened While the intellectuals and the entire party bureaucracy believed after the Brioni Plenum that saw the demotion of Rankovic, that it was good that Rankovic fell, the peasants saw in him a man Dusan Petrovic Sane remarked that "Rankovic and his group who defended Yugoslavia and represented Serbia at the head of the party, convinced that he was an honorable and statesmanlike are ... a living example of the hegemonistic tendencies which they man.48 tried to bring to life in Serbia. "42 When another Serbian Com• . munist announced to the central committee of the Serbian League Rankovic was bad, according to Cosic, but" no more cruel or m'er• of Communists following RankoviC's fall that he was "ashamed ciless than Tito, Kardelj, Djilas,.Kidric, Blaze]ovanovic."49 CosiC's to be a Serb," he revived language used to blacken the reputation view was not entirely clouded-he recognized that ideology could of interwar Serbia: that the Serbian bourgeoisie and the Serbian not monarchy had behaved shamefully in the interwar period.43 Sec• justify the many, many evils which we committed "in the name of ond, as the cases of Kosovo, Bosnia, and Croatia all demonstrate, good."Among the first to submit to that judgment, that respon• the demotion of Rankovic initiated a period of profound change sibility, is Aleksandar Rankovic. But the tragedlo of his fate will in Yugoslavia, which' could also be viewed as anti-Serbian. Ran• remain to Writers and philosophers to interpret. 0 kovic, demonized by those whom Cosic labeled lackeys of an anti• Cosic, writer and occasional pJ:1ilosopher, seeker of transcendent Serbian regime, later prosper~d as a result of his alleged resistance truths, determined that RankoviC's fate was an injustice. CosiC's to the federalization of Serbia, but also, importantly, because of attitude to Rankovic was founded upon his dual understanding his very demonization. He played the heroic Karadjordje to Tito's of the function of division in Serbia: Rankovic resisted Serbia's miserable Milos. . geopolitical division, and both Rankovic and Cosic were cast out As Co sic progressively concluded that Tito was fundamentally of Tito's brotherhood~ fratricidally. anti-Serbian (by 1980 he was "the greatest enemy of my people in the last century"),44 he found ever more noble qualities in Cosic's Children: Rankovic. In 1988, Co sic asserte.d (presumably with a straight The Fratricidal Metaphor Gains Appeal face) that he "had never heard anyone accuse [RankovicJ of injustice, of vengefulness, of playing personalities, of moral dis• While much of the fratricidal imagery might seem to have roots honor. "45Further, this coarse revolutionary, the head of the state in other powerful cultural forces among Serbs, there are qualities securityservice (UDBa), had'a special place in his heart for writ• to CosiC's explication that set it apart from other explanations ers, personally saving some authors from imprisonment and of Serbian victimhood, including those rooted in the history of authorizing others' publicat{ons (as CosiC's interviewer noted, Kosovo and in alleged Catholic anti-Serbianism. Surprisingly, one "such breadth is not often in'cluded in the typical picture of the searches in vain for any meaningful reference to the battle of chief of police and organizational secretary").46 Rankovic, accord• Kosovo in CosiC's written record. Also absent is religion, any sub• ing to Cosic, was only fully understood by the Serbian peasant stamive mention of the . CosiC's frat-

47. As his friend Mica Popovic put it, Cosic could be "in the middle of nowhere" and feel 42. Zoran Sekulic, Pad icutnja Aleksandra Rankovica (Belgrade: Dositej, 1989), 151. at home among the people there (Milo Gligorijevic, Odgovor Mice Popovica [Belgrade: 43. Sekulic, Pad icutnja, 186. Nezavisna izdanja, 1984] 55). . 44. Cosic, Promene, 19. 48. Djukic, Covek u svom vremenu, 172-73. 45. Djukic, Covek u svom vremenu, 174. 49. Ibid., 177. 46. Ibid. 50. Ibid.

282 The Children of Cain: Dobrica Cosic's Serbia East Europe,an Politics and Societies 283 ricidal system is rooted entirely in the modern history of the inter• catalyst; it provided a stage on .which the victimization of Serbs play of nationalism and communism. More to the point, Cosic has could be demonstrated. The emigration of Serbs from Kosovo in . built his edifice upon his personal experience of the twentieth cen• the 1980s became a staple of nationalist symbolism.52 After 1985, tury. He can speak of betrayal because, in his view, he both per• the virtual flood of puhlications devoted to the question of petrated and experienced it. He can point a trail to liberation from Kosovo's proper place in Serbia, ranging from the scholarly to the the yoke of divisive ideologies because he himself blazed it. His purely and provocatively sensational, was matched by a petition own seduction by communism and by Tito then explains the vio• campaign dominated by Serbia's intellectuals demanding protec• lence of his reaction when he discovered that Tiroism had no place tion for the Serbs of KQsovO and the reincorporation of Kosovo for him. Any perusal of Cosie's writings of the 1980s reveals a nar• into Serbia proper.53 The discourse was heavily influenced by the cissist who reads his own persecution (which was actually mini• fratricidal metaphor, which in the case of Kosovo is at least under• mal) as the persecution of Serbs, his own alleged 'lackof freedom. standable, given the parallels between the Kosovo mythology and as a lack of freedom for Serbs. The truth that Cosie tells is explic• fratricidalism.54 . itly Cosie's truth, his personal possession. The metaphor was varyingly reinforced in Serbian cultural, Those who came to share CosiC's vision that Serbs are fratrici• intellectual, and political life. Serbian historians and others, schol• dal adopted his core beliefs, while expanding, manipulating, and ars and non-scholars, followed the of Cosic and those who ultimately popularizing his metaphor. A peculiar characteristic of first enunciated:the theory of Habsburg/Bolshevik anti-Serbian• the contemporary fratricidal vision in Serbia is that it has made Serbs ism. By the time that the wars in Slovenia and Croatia began, Ser• willing to admit, even exult in, their own degradation (as has Cosie), bian scholars with solid credentials had produced analyses illus• as though the deeper they descend as a people, the greater their trating some aspect of the consistency of Croatian, Habsburg, and redemption. As Vuk Draskovie noted, "It is as if we outstrip all communist Serbophobia.55 An excellent example of one permu• peoples and nations in our bearing of pain and misfortune, in that tation of the fratricidal vision is Vasilije KrestiC's pioneering work, specifically Serbian, accepting [type of] fatalism .... What if we written in the conviction that there should be no taboo themes, Serbs have already crossed the outer limits of our suffering and "The Genesis of the Genocide of the Serbs in the Independent State honor in bearing pain, such that it is no longer a virtue but a shame, of Croatia."56 Put simply, Krestie ascribed a genocidalpredispo- no longer perseverance but humiliation, no longer even meekness before the sword but paralysis and self-mutilation?"51 52. Langdon Healy has noted that photographs of Serbs leaving Kosovo and of amassed The fratricidal vision of Serbia worked its way into public dis• Serbs petitioning Belgrade mirrored artwork portraying the flight of the Serbs and their patriarch from Kosovo in the late seventeenth century. Healy, "Visualizing the Bor• course and political opposition to the League of Communists of derland: Pictorial Images of Serbian Emigration from Kosovo" (paper delivered at the Serbia in the 1980s. One critical reason was that Tito died in 1980, annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Pacific Coast Branch at Fuller- ton, Ca., 11 August 1994). . which released Serbia and Yugoslavia 'from the presence of the 53. Branka Magas presents an excelJent account of this phenomenon in The Destruction leader. But the Albanian rebellion of 1981 in Kosovo acted as a . of Yugoslavia: Tracking the Breakup, 1980-92 ( and New York: Verso, 1993). 54. Examples: Milos Misovic, Ko je trazio republiku? .l\osovo, 1945-1985 (Belgrade: Nar• odna knjiga, 1985); Dimitrije Bogdanovic, Knjiga 0 kosovu (Belgrade: Srpska akademija 51. Draskovic was a novelist who would later lead the Serbian Renewal Movement. This na~ka i umetnosti, 1986); Atanasije jevtic, Stradanje Srba na kosovu imetohiji od 1941. do 1990 (: Jedinstvo, 1990). quote comes from a 1986 talk entitled" Are There Limits to Our Degradation?" before the Serbian Writers' Association. This passage, I think, captures the euphoric nature 55. Some examples include articles in Vasilije Krestic, Srpskohrvatski odnosi ijugosloven• ska ideja u drugoj polovini XIX veka (Belgrade:' Nova knjiga, 1988), 339-68; and of Serbian suffering; Vuk Draskovic, "Are There Limits to Our Degradation?" in Dragoljub Zivojinovic, Varv:,rstvo u ime Hristovo: Prilozi za Magnum Crimen (Bel- Koekude Srbijo (Belgrade: Nova Knjiga, 1990), 13-14. See also the intriguing article • grade: Nova knjiga, 1988). See Iv

284 The Children of Cain: Dobrica Cosic's Serbia East European Politics and Societies 285 sition to all Croats. Also typical was Kosta Cavoski's intriguing the 1980s and 1990s, nor '(more important) an attempt to reduce anatomy of Titoism, Tito-The Technology of Power. Cavoski's all those ills to Dobrica Cosies influence. Rather, this article rep• . expose described the methods Tito u~ed to play brotherly nations resents an attempt to identify Cosies actual contribution to the off each other. He explicitly acknowledged Cosies influence, creation of a Serbian self-image that reinforced the growth of Ser• .thanking Cosic for reminding him "that the KPJ [Communist bian nationalism and the destruction of Yugoslavia and, sadly and Party of Yugoslavia] and Tito formulateq the Serbian national ques• ironically, of Serbia itself. Nonetheless, if Cosies influence were tion in the same way that the former Austria-Hungary, and then merely one among many sources for this·world view, I would still the Austro- Marxists, did. "57And then there is Cosies trilogy Time argue that his role was paramount among writers, whether nov• of Evil, which contributed to the illumination of the effects of the elists, poets, essayists, or historians. divisiveness of Bolshevism. Finally, Serbia's journ~l~~ts, often in As a final comment, ironic but not meant to be tongue-in-cheek, the guise of scholars, proved equal to the task of rehabilitating some of CosieS's words can stand as a directive to Serbian writers people like Rankovic. Aside from journalistic accounts, several today: memoirs were published by people purged along with Rankovic Today in this country nothing meaningful and great can be done in 1966 and after.58Equally important were assessments of the work if we do not experience a spiritual renaissance. And it begins with of the sponsors of the 1974 constitution and memoirs by various the selection of those national traditions which have the energy for heroes and villains in the drama, including Draza Markovic (vil• a new era and the establishment of a hierarchy of lasting values for lain) and Latinka Perovic (demoted in 1972 and thus saved from the individual and society. On that assumption it is reasonable that in the ethos of our culture we consolidate also the bravery to tell infamy).59 truth, above all about ourselves.60

Moving Beyond Fratricide Of course, Cosic wrote these lines in October 1990, at the height of his own reinvention of Serbian national identity. Serbs today Dobrica Cosic initiated and established the historicization of Ser• should not reject his laudable goal simply because Cosies own bian suffering at the hands of enemies who preyed upon a preter• project produced such a tragically flawed.consensus. "Spiritual naturally divided and divisive people. Admittedly, the notion of renaissances" are possible, as Cosic has shown us. Serbia's cultural the nation as divisive, as suffering betrayal, as victimized by out• community today must' find and develop new cultural qualities, siders, is common to nearly all nationalisms, but that should not equally resonant in Serbian history, in order to rebuild a sense of preclude investigating its sources in individual cases. It took more connectedness and community with those with whom they share than the work of one writer to construct a vision of Serbs as a borders and fates. betrayed people. But Cosic; so often blamed so irresponsibly for 60.. Dobriea Cosic. UNe macem-nego duhom," in Knjizevne novine, 1 November 1990. So many of Serbia's excesses, deserves attention if only to isolate and evaluate those excesses for which he was responsible. The intention here is not to diagnose all ·the ills of Serbian society in

57. Cavoski, Tito-Tehnologija vlasti, 5. . 58. Books o~ Rankovic include.Sekulic, Pad i eutnja Aleksandra Rankoviea; Vojin Lukic, Seeanja isaznanja: Aleksandar RankoviCi Brionskiplenum (Titograd: NovieaJovovic, 1989);Jovan Kesar and Pero Simic, LEKA: J;leksandar Rankovie (Belgrade: Akvari• jus, 1990);Selim Numic, Dobra zemljo, lazu: Do istine u brionskoj aferi prisluskivanja (Belgrade: Filip Visnjic 1989).' . 59. Dragoslav Markovic, t.ivo{ ipolitika; Latinka Perovii, Zatvaranje kruga: Ishod ras• cepa 1971-1972 (: Svjetlost, 1991).

286 The Children of Cain: Dobrica CosiC's Serbia East European Politics and Societies 287