Balkan Chronicles – On the Road Less Traveled (3)

If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people (Chinese Proverb). All worthy goals meet resistance of some kind. Challenge is to retain a modicum of self-consciousness. As happens at full moon, something has loosened the flood gates of the collective unconscious and you are aware of the high tide as much as anyone.

Everyone is referring to "transition". Transition is the excuse - for everything. Nobody knows how long it will last. I from my part, I want to live in the final epoch and not in the transition. It has come as reply to question to myself. What is most important for the time I live in: the people who lived during this time.

ANGLES ON MY SHOULDERS. The slopes blanketed by thick forest and the meadows which during summer are filed with wild flowers. The people of mountain and valley still depend upon local land, forests, and fields for their live hood and are marginal participants in the institutions of modern society. Mostly consisting of rural communities as response. Habitat. Economy. Society. The unity of mountain and valley.

TRAIN: Border towns like Maribor in Slovenia, exert a peculiar fascination. Some embody clear national identities, marking the definitive last outpost of one culture, or the unmistakable first contact with another. Others are more ambiguous, particularly in places where borders have been fluid or were drawn artificially for political reasons. Here, traditions and language often overlap, forming a sort of hybrid frontier interface between the dominant national cultures behind them.

Most travelers who travel through Maribor do so only in passing, en route to somewhere else. This winter, though, I visited it on its own account. At first glance, the town seemed unremarkable, a sleepy outpost with a church or two, a large main square, and some typical Austro-Hungarian style public buildings. What had excited was not so much Maribor’s physical aspects, but the ways in which local activists were trying to reinvent the town's role and tap into its heritage to raise its profile. With Slovenia and Austria both members of the European Union, they hoped to transform Maribor from a frontier backwater on the edge of Yugoslavia into a cross-border regional center for culture, trade and tourism. They see their future in cooperation with the Austria. Trans- border communication is the word.

NEWS: Clinton could not land in Tuzla in Bosna due to foggy weather and Sarajevo would be too dangerous. Slovenia has recognized Serbia and Mont Negro, which names itself "Yugoslavia" now. The diplomatic relations were not yet established. The Chechens have taken hostages.

Will the people of once common country – Yugoslavia - be able to come out of their shell?

VIENNA. The sun shines through the windows of the beautiful house in Vienna, where I am staying. Everything seems unreal, and unusual, the place, this particular part of Vienna, the sun shining through the windows on a winter day in January, the hospitality. I think about the road and roads, in general. Of life, its meaning and the absence of joy. Perhaps, it is the time. A reflection of the place. Feelings and emotions are death. Just what would awaken them?

EMBASSY: The embassy of Serbia and Monte Negro, the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia in Vienna. Tito’s portret replaced with poet and reformer Vuk Karadzic. Long lines of people. Tired people. Humiliated and degraded. Faces without expressions. Waiting for all sorts of paper work. It is ice-cold, unpersonal, and unpleasant. As death is just numbers and names, and they do not count. Dreams are also irrelevant. Hope is hopeless, and love is off list.

This is war time, remember!

The theater play "The Slavs", I went to see prior my departure to Belgrade, had also another meaning. The end of an utopia. It was quite fitting. May be! But once they had the strength that provoked fear. It changed lives. Now they have come to be forgotten.

YAT: The first Yugoslav Airlines flight to Belgrade after lifting of sanctions on Serbia. Once the fastest growing airline has been reduced to a local airline. Below lay the tumultuous land. Russia, the homeland of Slavs and permanent revolutions, is just beyond horizon. The land of birch trees. Tree after tree. Row after row and wide plains. Land of revolutions, and disappointed parents. Whose children turned revolutionary. From there – from Kaluga – wrote Sergej Jessenin, a Russian, poet, a death poet, and remarked that "it is nothing new to die in life. But also to live is not really new. Life then, according to Jessenin, is a worthless thing. Jessenin expressed what it was felt by most during his time. Perhaps at all times. An old truth. And what is meant. Simplicity.

Is not to be able to laugh the greatest art in life, thought Jessenin.

SCENT OF PLACE, SCENT OF ROSE, SCENT FROM ABOVE

DAYTON: Changes in Socialist Party of Serbia. Milosevic, having returned from Dayton, shook the Main Board of the SPS (Socialist Party of Serbica), cleaned up what had to be cleaned up, scolded whom he had to scold and withdrew peacefully. The Statute of the Socialist Party of Serbia, in which the word "party" is always written with a capital "p", prescribes that the Main Board may decide on elections in SPS. The Main Board will propose the candidates who suit the president of the party and Serbia for the head positions in the local, municipal and regional organizations of SPS. These people will be elected and SPS will go on as if nothing happened.

This is why everything that has been happening in SPS - dismissal of Borisav Jovic, Mihajlo Markovic and Milorad Vucelic, the latest warnings to Radovan Pankov and Slobodan Jovanovic, reduction of Minic's office, weakened opposition and a gradually pushed nationalist part to the margin of the political scene. JUL has the real information; it has been strengthened by people from SPS. Mira Markovic has been allowed to control some of the most influential media. All that needs to be done for the job to be completed is to form "new force" within the Socialist Party itself. All they had to do is to wait for the referee to signal the start. The arms and legs of their opponents were tied anyway.
The only one who perhaps realized what was going on was Borisav Jovic. Only a few days before the boss arrived from Dayton, he published the book titled "The Last Days of SFRJ."

BELGRADE. Night falls in the capital of what is now former SFR Yugoslavia, and left over of Yugoslavia. Music fills the air. Across the water, the lighted dome of St. Sava Church and illuminated stone walls of the centuries-old Kalemegdan fortress hover over the capital`s skyline now and before. The nostalgic strains of Frank Sinatras’s "My Way" floats from the hands of an outdoor pianist. But no, with their back to the world, the Serbs were not yet ready for a party. The Dayton Accords will end the vicious war in neighboring Bosna. And later thousands of protesters would flooded Belgrade’s square, burn the Parliament building and forced Milosevic to abdicate.

Treading streets lined with Cyrillic signs, passing the venerable Art Nouveau exterior of the hotel Moskva, gazine at the Byzantine saints of the Orthodox Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel. Belgrade seem very much as Rebecca West saw it in her "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon". Restaurants with succulent peasant –style masterpieces. The city is full of passionate, vigorous people. Who now seemed tired, exhausted. Who speak and laugh and eat and drink a great deal.

Belgrade sagged once more under the weight of its history. The stench of empires. For more than a millennium, the city squirmed in the crosshairs of its hostile neighbor" Byzantines, Bulgars, Hungarians, Austrians and especially Ottoman Turks, who conquered Belgrade in 1521 and administered it ruthlessly for most of the next three centuries.

In 1941, just after West’s Balkan travels, the Nazi Luftwaffe swooped into the city with more than 900 planes, leveling half of its buildings in a single day in April 6. Milosevic’s deadly campaign in Kosovo – brought later in bombers once again, this time NATO`s.

Seven decades after West composed her lines, her description of Serbia as "a new country that has to make its body and soul" seems as valid as ever. There is a kind of hidden hope and a belief in Serbia’s wondrous resurrection. Rusty trams, drab mid-century buildings and stately blocks dominate the gray cityscape. Knez Mihailova, a boulevard of fountains and Art nouveau are showrooms of Italian furniture and Gypsy musicians thrill the passing throngs with virtuoso fiddling. Elderly women in headscarves selling sausages, produce, nuts, batteries, hair dye.

You feel it especially in crowded Kalemegdan Park, a green swatch overlooking the confluence of Sava and Danube rivers that West called "the special glory of Belgrade and indeed one of the most beautiful parks in the world. Formerly the citadel of Belgrade, Kalemegdan was long the bull’s eye that foreign invaders variously charged, captured, built up and eventually lost. The Roman well, the Turkish mausoleum, the Austrian clock tower and other abandoned relics form vanished dynasties. But come dark, a number of outdoor bars and nightclubs spout in the recesses of the park, and the cemetery of empires is reborn as the booming, cocktail-soaked cradle of Belgrade decadence. Like Kalemegdan, the rest of the White City, reaches the zenith of its energy at night.

The City of White, Belgrade, during the present epoch meant federal government, meetings, Serbs, different language, different alphabet. Guardian Slavs, the Serbs. Proximity of Russia, plains, and the ashes of some other empire (s). Grey socialist office building and apartment block, spacious avenues, boulevards. The bond meant revolutions, the October revolution, The Yugoslav revolution, self-management, and non-alignment.

DINNER: Everybody knows me now, said Jovic humbly over the home cooked dinner. Because of the diary. We remember Dom Mintoff, Malta’s Prime Minister. Do you remember, remembered Jovic, when he said, how everybody seemed surprised that Malta established its own airline? But Mintoff replied, we are even making money. Jovic remembered details of Tito’s visit to Malta, which was to be his last trip abroad. Buttigieg’s wife, Malta’s poet president, who insisted to see Tito. Otherwise the Maltese President was not allowed to return home. Do you remember all this? I nodded.

KALIMEGDAN. The wind is blowing, but there is no snow this winter. No dramatic changes. Perhaps alone my presence there could be called dramatic. A walk all the way to the tip of Kalimegdan. This is the point where Sava meets the Danue. I treat myself with a delicious kiwi cocktail and buy two Danilo Kis books in the nearby bookshop.

MEMORIES: Jovic brings out albums and photographs of his visits abroad. Malaysia, Korea, China, Japan, China again. Italy and Malta. There is one taken during the Titos visit of Malta. China is one of the most interesting countries in the world. For me it was one of the most interesting experiences.

MEETING: You don’t ruin the institution of an established state, one demands the rights due within, though Jovic. In Serbia, we have preserved Yugoslavia, in the form of Serbia and Monte Negro, and helped the Bosnian Serbs to get half of Bosna. Smaller states can be easily manipulated and this was precisely the German strategy with the immediate recognition of Slovenia and Croatia. To be independent is one thing. But how independent one really is, is another. Most of smaller states are managed from "outside" wherever that 'outside' may be. Local markets are small, and they should be "free".

Germany is Europe’s new economic and political power. Their aim is - via the Balkan to have access to the Middle East and Far East. This is the reason that they have immediately recognized the smaller states of former Yugoslavia. See, we were four years under sanctions, but managed relatively well. We even have surplus of food. Our populations is over 11 Million now.
He makes coffee, pours juice.

After the collapse of the Communism and the Soviet Union, a new role for NATO was needed, he continued. If other peoples would be as stubborn as the Serbs, matters in the Balkan, would be quite different, he thought.

His is a modest place, old fashioned furniture. The place lacks life, joy and color. Fitting for the time. An Edelweiss from Slovene Julian alps is framed in a thick brown frame in his study. Articles, books, Jasenovac, Nepal. Serb monasteries. Presents, paintings from Albanian artists, family photographs. Two water colors from an Russian artist, birch tree in autumn and the birch tree in winter. Both are master pieces. Once felt cold while looking at the birch tree in winter. On a separate table, the telephone. Once perhaps the busiest phone in all of Serbia, not a single call comes thru.

If you have freedom and love, in that order, that is worth something, says Jovic one of a sudden. We continue this meeting from yesterday. It is both different and the same. Hidden stretches of events that were buried. What happened in between? In between history returned and laid down laws as how and where one should life in reality. To say what, I think to myself. That all this madness had to happen! War, killings, collapse. Missing are over thirty thousand people, for most an awful trauma, uncertain future, devastated region.
He cooks lunch and I wash the dishes after.

My book "The Last Days of SFRY" is of historical importance, it is a document, explains Jovic. It clears what happened. People do not know what has happened, are confused. My diary offers reply. It was a bomb shell when it was published. Nobody denied its content. Not a single comment! They cannot! It also shows whose guilt it is. He writes dedication into a copy in passes it to me.

The Socialist Democratic Party of Serbia has the support and trust of our people, he continues. See how we managed the four years under the sanctions. In Serbia people are not very wealthy, but the basic are here. Food for, example, is plenty.

HUMILIATION: He says how he was stripped of his duties. It came as surprise. Out of the blue, sudden. There is no logics in it. Within the party, my case stands out as black dot… Jovic says. Financed by criminals and the new rich, during the up-coming elections, will join forces with the Social Democratic party. It is a catastrophe. He repeats it all over again. There is no alternative.

We walk along the re-named named street "The Serb Rulers" previously "Marshal Tito Street.", and talk...

Peace (full), dreamy and distant. Croatia is the Balkan new super power. Croatia will take over Yugoslavia, OR what is left of it. The West has created an armed Croatia, it surpassed all expectations. The Dayton agreement seemed to have signaled only the beginning of another war. East – West tension, and fight and the Western aim to root out Communism. Finding a new role for NATO. Privatization as a method where by the governments, or the common property is sold off for nothing, or cheaply.

Monte Negro too now wants independent, says Jovic. Half a million people, but it has the sea port and probably could even feed itself, could live on transit trade, customs duties and tourism. There are more violent confrontations to come. Croatia supports it. Croatia is the new super power in the Balkan.
And where are now the Serb lands?

THE RED THIN LINE. The "Croats', 'the Serbs', 'the Muslims' were not as homogenous as they may appear. There were Croats who genuinely supported an independent Bosna-Hercegovina. They were defeated militarily by the Croat separatists. There was a small minority of Serbs, mainly concentrated in certain areas of Sarajevo, who supported an independent Bosna- Hercegovina. Most importantly, however, the Muslims themselves were divided.

The man widely regarded as the father figure of Muslim nationalist consciousness, Muhammed Filipovic, had come to an agreement with Milosevic. The leader of the main Muslim party, the Social Democratic Alliance, Fikret Abdic, favored an agreement with the Serbs and formed a pro-Serb Muslim army in his stronghold around Bihac in Western Bosnia, a drama that eventually resulted in the expulsion, at the hands of a government army, into Serb-held territory, of some 30,000 Muslims living in the area.

Izetbegovic's policy, resulting in a war fought simultaneously against the Croats and the Serbs, was a desperate gambit that could only ever have succeeded with strong international support. The Muslims were at first unarmed and, unlike both the Croats and the Serbs, they had no sympathetic neighbor to arm them. Yet the government, duly recognized by the 'international community' as legitimate, was subjected to the same arms embargo as their enemies, now defined as rebels. This was a piece of the most breathtaking cynicism. The "international community" intervened to prevent Sarajevo and the so-called 'safe havens' ¬ Srebrenica, Bihac, Zepa, Gorazde (the sixth, Tuzla, was in fairly clearly defined Muslim territory) ¬from falling. Their fall, especially that of Sarajevo, would have ended the war. The Serb forces were tied down in sieges which could never come to a resolution. They could not take the towns, but nor could they afford, militarily, to raise the siege.

Sarajevo was the seat of government and, notionally at least, the nerve centre of the Muslim military effort. Tuzla was garrisoned by the Muslim Second Army. Srebrenica also had a substantial army presence. Bihac was garrisoned by the Muslim fifth army, which eventually broke out and destroyed the Muslim forces of Fikret Abdic. Gorazde had an important munitions factory.

GUILT. Borisav Jovic has published his diary which he kept during the period May 15 1989 through June 8 1992, while he was a member of the Presidency of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ). Titled "The Last Days Of SFRJ", he chronologically publishes a number of plastic details on the decision-making technology in the Serbian government, his conversations with Milosevic and Kadijevic, endless prolonging and quarrels in the Presidency of the time, the constitutional conflicts.

Contrary to first impressions, the disintegration of Yugoslavia is not the main theme of Jovic's book. The question posed now, is not who were the disintegrators of Yugoslavia, but who were the Balkan butchers.

Jovic is attempting, on the verge of the inevitable establishment of guilt for the war and the national tragedy to show that there was a substantial difference in the guilt of individual actors.

REFERENCE:
Dr Borisav Jovic, Poslednji Dani SFRJ (Belgrade: Politika, 1995). The Last Days of SFRJ, Srb original, Slovene, Croat and English translations

Dr. Borisav Joviæ (pictured), born 1928, Serb politician, who served as the Serbian member of the collective presidency of Yugoslavia during the late 1980s and early 1990s. He served as chairman of the presidency of Yugoslavia from May 1990 to May 1991. He is perhaps best known for helping to negotiate the Brioni Accord in early July 1991, which gave Slovenia its independence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borisav_Jovi%C4%87

Dr. Anton Buttigieg, The Lamplighter, Poems, Translations from the Maltese, The Aquila Publishing Co. Ltd., 1977. Born in Qala, Gozo, 1912. Doctor in Law from University of Malta.
27th December, 1976 elected President of the Republic of Malta