Opinion
European feeling can help Serbians to find again their values
Can Serbia belong to Europe again after the crimes of Milosovic? According to Dejan Ubovic this is the hope in the flourishing subculture of Belgrade.
It is patently clear that Serbian society has experienced an enormous fall. We have fallen into our own belly, drawn down by a chain reaction of destruction and degradation of all possible values and norms, and of our life above all.
From the moment that this phenomenon started to spread, both the official and a hidden history were at work at the same time. Serbian society finds itself today at a major crossroads: it must confront the mistakes of the past, especially the enormous ones, and accept the consequences and responsibilities that ensue from them. Only then can the reconstruction have a healing effect.
This all sounds fine on paper. The truth, however, is that each generation grapples in its own way with the task of understanding and surviving the collapse of this country.
It started with the fall of Tito's Yugoslavia ten years after his death, a sombre time with barely the semblance of a national identity, eventually culminating in the period of criminal dictatorship under Milosevic, an inky black period, disastrous for our self-awareness.
Citizens and intellectuals who had grown up with a picture of themselves as Europeans were suddenly penned in like sheep, their freedom of movement, of speech and of working conditions was curbed, all activities that a normal person needs to stay in balance. For the majority of Serbs this was a great shock as a heavy lid was tightly closed over their lives.
We all remember very well the month of March 1990. The first big demonstrations took place in the streets of Belgrade and a 21-year-old was killed by a police bullet. He should now be regarded as the first victim of the civil war that was imminent, a bloodbath started by the crazy ex-Yugoslavian leaders. The chain reaction of the failure was set in motion. A period of ten years that can be summed up for those people in the street in March 1990 in a couple of words: poverty and the destruction of all values.
A generation has grown up in this ‘period of the black hole'. All the same, many young people have become successful ‘young Europeans', thanks to their own amazing abilities and their contacts with the rest of Europe. They discovered the world somewhat later than other Europeans did and this discovery created a heavy sense of frustration when they returned from exile to Serbia: any intellectual activity in their home country proved to be a waste of time, because there was nothing left to stimulate new ideas and creativity.
Under Milosevic politics had become the domain for fraud and abuse of power, instead of being a means for citizens to be given a hearing. In the desperate attempt to recover afterwards, however, politics widened the gap between citizens and government even further. An opaque reality with many gradations slowly took shape. In spite of these difficult circumstances, individual citizens have still managed to find a new sense of responsibility, an idea about what is good, and the will to learn what went wrong. Although society was destroyed and the family was destroyed, well-intentioned citizens have dedicated themselves to raising a new generation and helping one another to do so.
Teachers, doctors, artists, all help one another in their daily tasks. My own contribution to this is to make this phenomenon visible, this truth that a parallel society and a parallel reality has been built up by a pretty large number of people. In their everyday lives they are fighting in their own way against what some call ‘the dark fate' of Serbia.
Even in 1999, when the crisis had become so great that ‘the world' decided to bomb Serbia, it was not unusual to hear such remarks as ‘we deserved it'. On the other hand, this cyber war caused a vast emotional trauma and deeply wounded the souls of the Serbs that had already had so much to bear. For somebody like me, who had grown up with European values, it was a great disappointment that the ‘civilised world' could not think of any better of way of ‘helping' us.
Belgrade is a city with an unusually large supply of energy. It often loses equilibrium, but it also produces many honest, important initiatives, often by highly motivated individuals - the citizens.
Time passes. Bad memories are carefully tucked away. We have had the time to be dissatisfied and the time to complain. Now most of us think that it is enough and that we must look to the future. The good will is there. The political situation may often seem a farce, but it is not without prospects. And citizens are getting together in all kinds of ways to undertake initiatives that are necessary to get Serbia, in the sense of a community of citizens, back on its feet again.
Many norms and values have still survived in the hearts of the people of Belgrade, which no one has been able to damage. And I believe that the same is true of the citizens of Zagreb, Skopje and Sarajevo, who have suffered the most and who will have to work to become the cities that I knew when I was young: bustling cities of great beauty. Now a new beauty and energy are growing.
We must do everything to encourage that development and to resume the dialogue and cooperation.
Dejan Ubovic, a cultural activist in Belgrade
Dejan Ubovic (1974) is a controversial figure in the alternative cultural scene of Belgrade. He was one of the founders of the Cultural Front, a group of young artists, journalists and intellectuals, in 2000 (http://www.kfro.org.yu/). He is also the driving force behind Cross Radio, a radio programme that is broadcast by twelve local channels in the Balkans. It is the programme of the artistic subcultures and independent civil organisations (NGOs) in the region. His club of young activists also organises debates and art festivals. The Belgrade Forum will be held in the Serbian capital on 30 and 31 March 2007. It is part of the project A Soul for Europe, initiated by the Felix Meritis Foundation in Amsterdam. Young people from all kinds of alternative cultural circuits in the region will meet at the Belgrade Forum to breathe new life into the traumatised ex-Yugoslavian societies. (http://www.forumbelgrade.net/)
This article was published in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant of 17 March 2007.
