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Authors: Chris Hedges
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ideological iconography,â Obrad Savic, the head of the Belgrade Circle, a dissident group, told me. âThey have shifted from a Marxist paradigm to Serbian nationalism. We have failed to build an intellectual tradition where people think for themselves. We operate only in the collective. We speak in the plural as the Serbian people. Itâs frightening, especially in the young. It will take years for us to rid ourselves of this virus.â
As fervently as Western reporters sought, as they often do, to recreate the students in their own image as democraticreformers, the student organizers mocked them. This was no democratic movement, just as the Muslim-dominated government in Sarajevo had no interest in recreating a multi-ethnic city. Serbian flags proliferated in the crowd and many sang âGod Give Us Justice,â the anthem of the old Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The students requested an audience with Patriarch Pavle, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the institution that had helped give birth to the modern Serbian nationalist movement. They rejected a suggestion that they also see Belgradeâs Catholic cardinal and the mufti, the leader of the tiny Islamic community.
The nationalist virus was the logical outcome of the destruction of the countryâs educational system that began in the 1950s under Titoâs rule. Departments were purged of professors who refused to teach subjects like âMarx and Biologyâ and to adhere to party doctrine. Many of the best academics were blacklisted or left the country.
Following Titoâs death in 1980, academics, freed from party dogma, reached out to Western intellectual traditions. But this was swiftly terminated with the rise of Serbian nationalism, an ideology that replaced the rigidity of dogmatic Marxism. By the midâ1980s the History Department, flush with the new orthodoxy, was exalting Byzantine culture and using it, instead of Marx, as a tool to bash Western liberal democracy. The works of Serbian nationalist writers were taught in literature classes, and Serbian philosophers, who espoused theories of racial superiority, including the idea that the Serbs were the oldest human race, dominated university classrooms.
The war only accelerated the decline in the educational system. More than 400,000 Serbs, many of them young and talented, left the country in the first few years of the war.Academic standards fell as MiloÅ¡eviÄ put party hacks in charge of schools and departments and sliced government spending for education.
I developed a close friendship in Belgrade with Miladin ZivotiÄ, a leading dissident during the Communist era in Yugoslavia and one of the most prominent domestic critics of Serbian involvement in the Balkan wars. He was the leader of the Belgrade Circle, a small group of intellectuals and artists who condemned the Serbian role in the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. The groups, which he helped found in 1992 and which included Yugoslaviaâs best-known dissident, Milovan Djilas, tried to reach out to Muslims and Croats to create a common front against nationalist movements in the Balkans. It was often denounced by the authorities as being a tool of Serbiaâs enemies.
To register his disapproval of the siege of Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs, ZivotiÄ visited the city in 1993 to express his solidarity with those besieged by Serb forces. He was an outspoken critic of Serbiaâs treatment of its ethnic minorities, especially the two million Albanians in the Kosovo region. And when nationalists began to threaten Muslims in the Sanjak region of Serbia early in the Bosnian war, he went to live with Muslim families.
âThe first act any new president of this country must do is travel to Sarejevo and beg for forgiveness, just as Willy Brandt did when he traveled to Warsaw,â ZivotiÄ told me, referring to the West German chancellor who pursued a policy of reconciliation with the victims of German Nazism.
As fervently as Western reporters sought, as they often do, to recreate the students in their own image as democraticreformers, the student organizers mocked them. This was no democratic movement, just as the Muslim-dominated government in Sarajevo had no interest in recreating a multi-ethnic city. Serbian flags proliferated in the crowd and many sang âGod Give Us Justice,â the anthem of the old Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The students requested an audience with Patriarch Pavle, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the institution that had helped give birth to the modern Serbian nationalist movement. They rejected a suggestion that they also see Belgradeâs Catholic cardinal and the mufti, the leader of the tiny Islamic community.
The nationalist virus was the logical outcome of the destruction of the countryâs educational system that began in the 1950s under Titoâs rule. Departments were purged of professors who refused to teach subjects like âMarx and Biologyâ and to adhere to party doctrine. Many of the best academics were blacklisted or left the country.
Following Titoâs death in 1980, academics, freed from party dogma, reached out to Western intellectual traditions. But this was swiftly terminated with the rise of Serbian nationalism, an ideology that replaced the rigidity of dogmatic Marxism. By the midâ1980s the History Department, flush with the new orthodoxy, was exalting Byzantine culture and using it, instead of Marx, as a tool to bash Western liberal democracy. The works of Serbian nationalist writers were taught in literature classes, and Serbian philosophers, who espoused theories of racial superiority, including the idea that the Serbs were the oldest human race, dominated university classrooms.
The war only accelerated the decline in the educational system. More than 400,000 Serbs, many of them young and talented, left the country in the first few years of the war.Academic standards fell as MiloÅ¡eviÄ put party hacks in charge of schools and departments and sliced government spending for education.
I developed a close friendship in Belgrade with Miladin ZivotiÄ, a leading dissident during the Communist era in Yugoslavia and one of the most prominent domestic critics of Serbian involvement in the Balkan wars. He was the leader of the Belgrade Circle, a small group of intellectuals and artists who condemned the Serbian role in the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. The groups, which he helped found in 1992 and which included Yugoslaviaâs best-known dissident, Milovan Djilas, tried to reach out to Muslims and Croats to create a common front against nationalist movements in the Balkans. It was often denounced by the authorities as being a tool of Serbiaâs enemies.
To register his disapproval of the siege of Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs, ZivotiÄ visited the city in 1993 to express his solidarity with those besieged by Serb forces. He was an outspoken critic of Serbiaâs treatment of its ethnic minorities, especially the two million Albanians in the Kosovo region. And when nationalists began to threaten Muslims in the Sanjak region of Serbia early in the Bosnian war, he went to live with Muslim families.
âThe first act any new president of this country must do is travel to Sarejevo and beg for forgiveness, just as Willy Brandt did when he traveled to Warsaw,â ZivotiÄ told me, referring to the West German chancellor who pursued a policy of reconciliation with the victims of German Nazism.
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