The Wish to be a Jew : The focus on the Ustasa genocide against Power of the Jewish Trope in Serbs during the Second World War. Here the Yugoslav Conflict* I outline some of the ways the "Jewish trope" provided a bridge between what I Marko Zivkovic call, in shorthand, the "Kosovo" and the Ph.D. candidate at the Anthropology "Jadovno" narrative cycles. Department, The University of Chicago. In order to understand the uses of the Jewish trope in Serbia it is necessary to When Serbian writer Vuk Draskovic situate them in at least three major proclaimed in 1985 that "Serbs are the contexts. First, the Jewish trope was a part thirteenth, lost and the most ill-fated tribe of the national discourse, produced by a of Israel", he was invoking an analogy that particular group of Serbian intellectuals, has long existed as one of what I call the that paved the way for Milosevic's rise to "stories Serbs tell themselves (and others) power. Secondly, Serbian national about themselves". I have tried to show narratives were to a significant degree in a elsewhere (Zivkovic 1997) how these (contentious) dialogue with the similar stories were resurrected and put to work in narratives of other Yugoslav nations, and the service of various political agendas in the way these competing narratives Serbia since the mid-1980s. I divided conditioned each other played an Serbian national narratives into three main important part in the dynamics of "cycles" – the Kosovo, WWI, and WWII Yugoslavia's dissolution. The second cycles. While it is true that, on the most context for Serbian uses of the "Jewish general level, the common denominator of trope" is thus uses of that same trope by all these stories is a theme of eternal other Yugoslav nations, most importantly victimization, I have made it my task to by Slovenes, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. investigate the actual narrative elements Finally, the importance of the Jewish trope through which this message was in all these discourses was immediately and enunciated. The "Jewish trope" as I will decisively conditioned by the importance call it here, was one of the most important of the Jewish trope in "Western" of these narrative elements, especially in (European and American) discourses. linking the central Serbian myth of Kosovo to the more recent cycle of narratives that MILOSEVIC'S RISE : "MOUNTING THE HORSE ALREADY SADDLED BY THE * A shorter version of this paper was first SERBIAN INTELLIGENTSIA" presented at the Ninth International Conference of Europeanists, March 31-April 2, 1994, in The story of Slobodan Milosevic's rise Chicago. I want to thank Milica Mihajlovic of to power involves at least two separate the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade for lines of development or "tracks" that are helping me with press clippings from the Yugoslav periodicals 1989-1993 collected by commonly seen to have come together at the Museum and other with other relevant his fateful speech in Kosovo Polje on April sources on Jewish life in Yugoslavia. 24, 1987. One track involves Milosevic's 70 climbing through the Serbian Communist some fifteen thousand Serbian and Party ranks on the coat tails of his mentor Montenegrin protesters gathered around Ivan Stambolic1. On the other track, an the Kosovo Polje cultural center, screaming important segment of the Serbian "Thieves, murderers" and throwing rocks. intelligentsia, gathered around the Serbian As police moved to stop the crowd from Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU) storming the building by beating people and the Serbian Writers' Association with their truncheons, Milosevic stepped (UKS)2, was moving from Yugoslavism to outside and uttered the sentence that Serbian particularism (Budding 1998). miraculously transformed him from a bland Aside from increased conflict with apparatchik to the Serbian nationalist icon : Slovenia, the major impetus for this "No one should dare beat you" (Niko ne movement was the plight of Kosovo Serbs. sme da vas bije). The mood suddenly The two tracks merged when Ivan changed and the crowd started chanting Stambolic dispatched Milosevic to Kosovo "Slobo, Slobo". Whether he was genuinely Polje to quell the near explosive moved by the plight of Kosovo Serbs (and frustrations of Kosovo Serbs and many analysts think that he indeed was) or Montenegrins. While Milosevic was whether he cynically realized the potential meeting with various local functionaries of nationalism, from then on Milosevic and representatives of Kosovo Serbs, used his new status as a "Tsar of Serbs" to oust his mentor, Ivan Stambolic, and rise to ultimate power in Serbia. 1. Milosevic was still a student at the Belgrade Practically all accounts stress the way Faculty of Law when he first befriended Stambolic. As Stambolic rapidly ascended the Milosevic appropriated, simulated, or, as rungs of political power in Serbia, he typically Djilas put it, cannibalized3 nationalist arranged for his protégé to succeed him in his discourses. These dis courses were being previous position. When Stambolic became developed by a significant segment of president of the Serbian League of Communists most influential Serbian intellectuals quite in 1984, he appointed Milosevic as head of the Belgrade Party Committee, and when he became president of Serbia, Milosevic succeeded him as 3 "The mass movement of Kosovo Serbs... was a chief of the Serbian Party. not openly anticommunist, though it could 2 The Serbian Writers' Association (Udruzenje easily have become so. Milosevic only knjizevnika Srbije – UKS) was the most gradually overcame his caution and started prominent stage for the new prophet-poets of supporting it, but he was nonetheless the first Serbdom. In the early eighties, the Association leading communist to do so. With the help of publicly confronted the Yugoslav regime over the party-controlled media and the party book bans and political persecution of writers machinery, he soon dominated the movement, and dissident intellectuals in general. By 1987, discovering in the process that the best way to however, UKS discourse changed from that of escape the wrath of the masses was to lead freedom of speech and democracy to that of them. It was an act of political cannibalism. The Serbian victimhood as it organized "protest opponent, Serbian nationalism, was devoured evenings" in support of Serbs from Kosovo and its spirit permeated the eater. Milosevic who sought redress for their persecution at the reinvigorated the party by forcing it to embrace hands of the Albanian majority. nationalism" (Djilas 1993: 87). Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 The wish to be a Jew : The power of the Jewish Trope in the Yougoslav conflict 71 independently of Milosevic's rise through Numerous deep pits are a prominent the party hierarchy, indeed initially in fierce feature of the limestone landscape5 of the opposition to the Serbian Party's anti- area of Bosnia, Herzegovina and Croatia nationalist policies. And when the two that was populated mostly by the Serbs of tracks met, it was not so much Milosevic the so-called Krajinas (Military who tried to attract the national Borderlands) and that belonged to the intelligentsia as much as that the Independent State of Croatia during WWII. intelligentsia eagerly embraced him. As It was in these pits that slaughtered Serbs Vuk Draskovic said four years after the were thrown by the Croatian and Muslim event : "With his speech in Kosovo Polje Ustase as a part of their campaign to Milosevic mounted the horse that the eliminate all Serbs on their territory. One of Serbian intelligentsia had saddled long the most notorious pits was called ago" (in Djukic 1992 : 130). "The crucial "Jadovno" and, just as Auschwitz came to thing that intellectuals have done for stand for all concentration camps and the Milosevic, says Budding, was to Holocaust in general, so Jadovno came to "generalize" Kosovo, spreading the belief stand for all the pits and for the genocide that not just Kosovo's Serbs, but all Serbs itself. were deprived of their national rights, and Archbishop Atanasije Jevtic of the urgently in need of a savior" (Budding Serbian Orthodox Church made a 1998 : 358). pilgrimage in 1983 from Kosovo to Jadovno In terms of the national narrative, this and published his travel diary in 1987. In "saddling" was accomplished by the introduction, his colleague, connecting what I call the "Kosovo Archbichop Amfilohije Radovic, wrote : narrative cycle" to the "Jadovno narrative « Kosovo is the beginning and measure cycle" – a task eagerly and quite of Serbian Jadovno, and Jadovno is a successfully taken up by novelists and, continuation of Kosovo. ... In Jadovno, even more importantly, by a few highly Kosovo culminates ; the word and reality influential poets4. of Jadovno is the full revelation of the secret of Kosovo and confirmation of the 4 It was poets who provided the most extreme, condensed and persuasive forms of the new mythicized speech in the mid-1980. They were 5 It is interesting to note that most poets and the prophets of the re-awakened nation, writers who were active in assimilating Kosovo professional wordsmiths whose poetic to Jadovno actually hail from those regions hyperbolae were so extreme as to preclude any (Beckovic is Montenegrin and Draskovic is rational discussion. Preeminent among them, from Herzegovina). The WWI cycle, with its enjoying near divine status as both an emphasis on the Serbian peasantry, however, is academician and president of the Serbian predominantly promulgated by novelists (not Writers' Association, was Matija Beckovic, a poets) hailing from the Serbian heartland of distinguished looking, white-haired Sumadija. This is an interesting case of Montenegrin whose poetry was steeped in Highlanders vs. Lowlanders (and limestone vs. regional dialect and "Montenegrin mud), a dichotomy very relevant to Serbian (as metaphysics". well as Croatian) politics (See Ûivkovic 1997a). Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 72 Kosovo choice and Kosovo covenant.