AIDA Nederland

 

Mileta Prodanovic

THE DISLOCATION OF THE WALL – THE MOVING OF THE IRON CURTAIN AND ITS TRANSFORMATION INTO A TRANSPARENT ONE

The fall of the Berlin Wall is certainly one of the most powerful images of the end of the twentieth century. The disappearance of the symbol of the divided continent has been the introduction into the far-reaching changes which marked the termination of suffering for a large part of Europe. However, we can say that there are certain parts of Europe on which – for the reasons beyond the framework, ambitions and possibilities of this text – the material of the collapsed wall fell. Belgrade is certainly part of this zone of collapse. If we compare the atmosphere in Belgrade ten years ago with the present situation we could conclude that Belgrade is one of the rare Central or Eastern European cities where this comparison would turn out to be in favor of the past.

But, if we want to envisage the depth of the fall – and the fall of Belgrade is total – in visual, moral, material, intellectual and all other aspects – we have to turn back and examine the moment we use as a measuring point. That should be the eighties, the decade which in Belgrade and in the whole former Yugoslavia was marked by an unrestrained, joyous and creative atmosphere. Behind that atmosphere, faraway from the eyes of common people, in the framework of party structures, the positions for the later bloody dismemberment of the country in the 90′s were already being established.

First of all, where can we find Belgrade on the map of Europe, and to what degree is its character shaped by its geographical position? In school children learn that Belgrade is a town born on the confluence of two great rivers, one European and one regional. It is built where the Balkan mountainous region meets the Panonian plains on the north. From antiquity up to the present Belgrade has been the crossroads of important European communications. It has been called "The Gate to the East" and at the same time "The Door to the West". As an important strategic point, Belgrade was in the focus of the interest of the great empires of the past. As such, it was leveled to the ground very often – in this century alone it has been heavily bombed four times – and that is why one cannot see many important old buildings. The buildings which have survived the destructive waves, those houses built during the periods of peace, were usually constructed quickly, bearing the stylistic influences from completely different regions, thus we can say that in the architectural and as well as in the mental sense Belgrade is a "patchwork-town", the thick sediment of patches and decontextualised fragments. Under certain circumstances, paradoxically, that could make Belgrade a charming and attractive place. And, as such, Belgrade perfectly fit into the self-image the socialist Yugoslavia had constructed.

The second, or "Tito’s" Yugoslavia had thought of itself as "something-in-between". The point of that phrase was not restricted to a geographical or civilisational position (between East and West, between Europe and the Orient, between Roman-Catholicism and Orthodoxy, between Christianity and Islam…) – the ideological position was the main content of that phrase. Between socialism and capitalism, between two antagonistic blocs of the divided world. The one and only party, the Communist one, was in undisputed power, but the skilled ruler, already in 1948, managed to set the country and his party apart from Moscow. This secession from the "Bloc" had brought a lot of sympathies for Tito in the West. That helped Tito create probably the most perfect system in world history – a so called "debtor socialism". The standard of the Yugoslav citizens gradually improved and the foundation of that growth was the endless sequence of the credits given by the Western countries. The position "in-between" was additionally underlined by the active Tito’s influence in the "third World" – in the movement of so called "Non-aligned countries". In the bipolar world that movement, and Tito himself, prevented a lot of newly liberated colonies to fall directly into the embrace of Moscow and fixed them to the ideologically neutral group of "non-aligned" countries. The West valued this contribution – there was no strict questionnaire for the credits, there was no control of the spent money. Tito’s other request, fulfilled by the West, was the blind eye to the soft totalitarianism in internal Yugoslav affairs. In the culture and in arts there was no official "zone of prohibition", but, of course, it was understood that the very heart of the system should stay out of serious criticism. Having that in mind, we can say that Yugoslavia (with one or two significant exceptions) did not have dissidents in the proper sense of the word. Of course, the multiethnic society had to have a kind of control of nationalism – the extreme one was fought bitterly, while the formally non-existing nationalism rooted in the structure of Communist party, divided by the constitution of 1974 into six republic parties, was tolerated. And this party-nationalism, connected with the governing apparatus of the state, ideologically helped by the nationalists from the intellectual, "anti-Communist" sphere, created the amalgam which ruined not only one country, but also the very idea of the unity of the Slavic South, the idea whose history was almost two centuries long.

The eighties in Yugoslavia, in spite of Tito’s death at the very beginning of the decade, inherited the "red Yugoslavian passport" accepted in almost every country of the world without visas, and the relatively high standard of living of the citizens. Those who predicted that Tito’s death would bring the immediate break of the country were silenced for the moment. The dismemberment of the country was postponed – the time showed that the fuse cord had been nine years long. The main slogan was: "After Tito – Tito!" – Josip Broz was the ruler of the country in spite of the fact that he was dead and buried. "The Necrocracy", one of the local inventions, was formally executed through eight rotating faceless representatives of Tito’s charisma. That institution was called "the Presidency".

Being the capital of the composite, federal country, Belgrade gradually acquired multinational character. All these diverse elements had been built-in into the specific "Belgrade mentality" in which it did not matter where one comes from but rather what are one’s qualities. In that period Belgrade saw numerous exhibitions of foreign artists, theatrical and musical performances and festivals, rock-concerts. The presentations of the artists from all parts of the ex-Yugoslavia were numerous and welcomed. That gave a cosmopolitan dimension to Belgrade and enabled local artists the possibility of direct comparison with the highlights in the work of their colleagues. The other large centers of the ex-Yugoslavia, like Ljubljana or Zagreb, now the capitals of independent states, were turned more inward. Maybe we can say that only Sarajevo had a similar degree of the openness towards others. During the eighties, more than at any time before, Belgrade took the advantages of its geographical position.

Most of the people who had created this Belgrade today live in New York, Toronto, London, Vienna, in Australia or in the New Zealand. And in Amsterdam, of course.

The attempt of the last federal government headed by Ante Markovic to stress rational reasons for the survival of a multiethnic country had been frustrated in the confrontation with the strong national-communist oligarchies of the major Yugoslav republics, first of all with those from Serbia and Slovenia. Those two, opposed in public, had found mutual interest in the ruining of federal government. At the crucial moment for the success of the reform which would lead Yugoslavia into the European Community, as the first ex-communist country, the promises of help from Western countries remained just promises. This lack of concrete financial help was just the first in a sequence of imprudent moves and controversial signals sent by the international community to the desperate people of the Balkans and to their arrogant leaders. After being called "The Balkan Butcher", Milosevic would, in less then a year, acquire a new title from the very same people who gave him the first – he would become "The Guarantor of Peace and Stability in the Balkans". All those controversial signals have been lavishly used by the infernal regime propaganda. Even today you can hear from the nationalists in almost all new ex-Yugoslavian states that the program of economic reforms of Ante Markovic "could not work anyway" or that he had been "just a clown".

The Army, the virtual but very powerful "seventh entity" of a six-republic federation was also a strong anti-reform circle. The Army was mesmerized by the communist segment of Milosevic’s national-socialist rhetoric, and instead of preserving the country, it entered actively into the process of its destruction. The first materialization of that alliance, and also the first blood split on the pavements in the sequence of the Balkan Wars happened in Belgrade. On March 9th, 1991, massive demonstrations against Milosevic and, above all, against his television which had been in the process of the mental preparation of the nation for war with its neighbors for a long time, were smashed by military tanks. I say "military" on purpose, because some of the green tanks were later painted blue, so that Milosevic’s party guard, the police, now had their own armored vehicles.

By the end of the eighties the population of Belgrade approached two million. Even under the conditions of " war in the region" – that was how state television euphemistically called the engagement of the army in Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina – Belgrade has remained a multi-layered, complex city. While a part of Belgrade had thrown flowers on the tanks which went to Vukovar, the other part, smaller and frightened, lit candles in front of the Milosevic’s office – for the victims of the war on all sides, or took part in the mass action of carrying the giant black cloth, enlarged traditional symbol of mourning, through the central streets of the town. The flower-throwers were shown on TV broadcasts to encourage those who still had some doubts concerning the war – to the Belgrade with lighted candles, the parapolice were sent with knives and bombs. They were not on TV.

Running away from military mobilization and from the growing feeling of desperation hundreds of thousands young and for the most part educated persons fled Serbia. Their places were filled by refugees – after the fall of Milosevic’s self-proclaimed statelets in Croatia and Bosnia, Belgrade was crowded by the desperate and impoverished, by people not used to life in the city, abandoned by those who pushed them into the war. That was the way the social profile of Belgrade was changed.

Belgrade, a city spatially and spiritually proportioned as the capital of a middle sized, ethnically and culturally diverse European country – ceased to be that. Its framework had become a new, autistic country. The economic sanctions imposed by the international community were a gift from
heaven to the ruling circle of that new autistic state. The concept that the sanctions would weaken the regime was simply a mistake – the sanctions made the ruling structure stronger, and at the same time they made the people desperate. They helped the wild redistribution of capital and erased the last traces of the middle class, the only part of society capable of carrying on the project of denazification and democratisation of society. Belgrade had forgotten that the gas station was the place where one buys petrol – the streets were then crowded with burglars and petrol sellers, just as they are now in this time of new sanctions and after the destruction of all the refinery-plants in the recent bombing campaign. The regime had found the way to deal with the international sanction controllers very quickly – so the prominent members of Milosevic’s party and family seized the monopoly in smuggling. Every liter of petrol sold on the streets, packed in plastic Coca-Cola bottles, made the ruling circle happier, more rich and more arrogant, more ready for new war projects. The money they’ve moved from the pockets of the citizens to their own bank accounts is the same money that the international community is now trying unsuccesfully to trace in the accounts of various banks in Switzerland, Cyprus and Malta.

Of course, the black market and the smuggling monopoly have not been the only way of pumping money out of the people’s reserves – the almost metaphysical inflation of 1993 had been a program created by the state for the linear taxation of the citizens. Together with inflation came the project of "the pyramid savings banks", a phenomenon familiar to people from other post-communist countries. Attracted by the incredibly high interest rates the citizens even sold their property hoping that they would soon become millionaires. The consequence was that the depositors lost everything, and the persons who conceived and organized those "banking" chains became far richer than before. In neighboring Albania the breakdown of the pyramid savings institutions provoked riots and also the change of government. In almost every country the outcome would probably be the same. Not in Serbia. Robbed citizens just shrug their shoulders, used to the fact that state robbing of private property is a normal thing. Just two or three years before Milosevic’s regime deprived them of their money in regular banks, by imposing a moratorium on hard currency deposits and, of course, blaming others for that.

Absence of any reaction would be strange to people living in normal countries. But no one in Yugoslavia had been seriously shocked. That passive, fatalistic attitude of the people can be compared to one medical experiment. If you want to cook a living frog you can do it in two ways – you can put the animal into a pot of boiling water and the frog will, naturally, squirm. But if you put the frog into a pot of cold water and start to heat gradually up to the point of boiling, the frog will be cooked without any resistance. This slow but steady decay, impoverishment and anesthetisation of people is the main characteristic of life in Yugoslavia during the last decade.

This mental pattern of the population and the ruling class is naturally a determining factor in the outlook of Belgrade. The large, capital objects are not being built anymore. The reason is general poverty. There are no great changes in the urban views, but as a parallel of the social corrosion there is also urban corrosion – it is visible through prolific "overbuilding" of existing houses. Additions to houses are executed without any control, without plans and regulation, so the city is slowly becoming similar to the average African or Middle Eastern, quickly-built megalopolis.

A separate chapter in the history of Belgrade’s recent urban changes are the recently built houses of newly rich war, sanctions and party profiteers. The new wealth chose an older residential area of town called Dedinje. On that privileged hill were the residencies of the Karadjordjevic royal dynasty, Josip Broz Tito and, of course, president Milosevic. Villas made in the first half of this century are being enlarged, modified, or replaced by pretentious eclectic edifices whose only purpose is the public showing of newly acquired financial and any other power. Those examples of postcommunist architecture, similar ones have been built in other East European countries, have an additional cynical and monstrous dimension in Yugoslavia – that is because they are constructed not only on stolen money, but also they have the death of innumerable innocent people built into their walls. Here, the architecture has the role of theatrical sets, it is the sign of arrogant emptiness, in short, the architecture here is the caricature, the agglomeration of balustrades, Corinthian capitols, extravagant domes, usually surrounded by tall garden wall and secured by armed body-guards.

A strange coincidence of events made another face of Belgrade visible – a face which almost everyone thought had been exiled, erased or silenced forever. In the perfect system by which the ruling party orchestrated all the multi-party elections after 1990 appeared a small crack. In the 1997 autumn elections, more specifically in the elections for local councils, the Socialist party had been caught in the theft. The mass protests of the citizens surpassed the 1991 demonstrations in number and in intensity. The daily rallies lasted almost three months. The frozen streets of Belgrade had suddenly seen the other face of the town – funny, imaginative, cheerful, strong in the intention to have the stolen votes back. Whistles and eggs, the sound of the masses and a multitude of drummers giving steady rhythm to the protests, made nicer – if even for a moment – the decayed facades of Belgrade houses.

The outcome of this protest was the change of power in favor of the opposition coalition in local councils in more than three-quarters of Serbia, mostly in densely-populated urban areas. Milosevic’s national-socialist government diminished the result by constant changes of the legislation which deprived the local councils of any trace of real power. The new opposition governments of the big cities had their hands tied. Anyway, there arose a hope that it is possible to remove the brutal police regime whose killing hand had been known not only to the neighboring nations, but also to Serbs.

That "Belgrade of Resistance to Milosevic" which appeared in the winter protests of 1997-8 received, after its initial success, two serious blows – the first was the dismemberment of the victorious coalition in the City Council of Belgrade, which returned people to desperation and brought a new wave of apathy. The other was the recent NATO-bombings.

The bombing of Serbia, from the first moment, gave to Milosevic and his regime immense propaganda opportunities; it lead to real or simulated homogenisation of the people around the wise and the only possible leader. On the other hand, for the opponents of the regime the bombing has been the real disaster. Milosevic’s regime is a system which is constantly fed by blood and the bombing has given new power to it. The beginning of the air campaign was immediately used for the brutal annihilation of the infrastructure of the resistance to totalitarianism: free radio stations were cut off, censorship of all newspapers was introduced, and the brutal assassination of the famous journalist in front of his house in the center of the town, at high noon, was a clear sign. While in the south of the country people were being thrown out of burning houses, with killings on all sides, the idea to organize public concerts in the town squares as a way of showing that "the aggressor is powerless", was born in someone’s sick mind. Those manifestations of bad taste were later moved to the bridges; the bridges were "protected" by singing bodies, but those were just productions for TV cameras, performed during the safe hours.

During the NATO air campaign the regime propaganda had its moments of stardom. That happened in spite of the fact that "Tomahawks" and other clever projectiles ruined almost all the transmitters and the central building of State Television where they also killed sixteen workers, left there by the bosses to become the example-victims. Serbian TV consumers, for example, did not have any chance to learn that something bad was happening to the ethnic Albanians in the southern province, and by the careful selection of international news, one could conclude that the people of all the world countries were strongly opposed to military intervention. But in spite of the distorted image served to the media auditorium in Belgrade shelters – the image that Yugoslavia was bombed by two or three powerful maniacs against the will of their nations – it is true that some European governments had greater or lesser problems with public support for military action. To improve the public support for an unclear action, global networks started to use the very same language and propaganda patterns which characterize the national televisions in ex-Yugoslavian countries. In that language there is no place for gray tones – so the overall impression was created that Serbia is populated exclusively by people who do not deserve anything better than to be hit from the skies or to die from cancer provoked by the impoverished uranium, an inevitable component of penetrating missals. The characteristics of impoverished uranium were not discussed much during the Alliance press conferences, of course. On a value scale the position of Belgrade today is only slightly higher than the position of the second to the last circle of Hell. That space deserves to be surrounded by the high and impenetrable wall. So, we slowly find out that the Wall was not ruined, but just removed. The Wall does not exist as an artifact anymore, it does not exist as a brick or stone wall – it was just transformed into virtual obstacle. Those who are willing to pass the sanitary cordon are going to be confronted by the endless and often very imaginative ways of bureaucratic humiliation. President Milosevic is not particularly enthusiastic about the idea that his subject travel around the world – so he is charging the bearers of Yugoslav passport with tax for GOING OUT OF THE COUNTRY, probably a unique achievement in world terms – so we can say that there is at least one point where he is in the perfect harmony with the governments of the "international community", for they also don’t want to see the Serbs around.

The media coverage of the NATO action created interesting patterns which are very close to racism – during the bombing, young Serbs in Britain were followed, and their bank accounts were watched. We have to have in mind that those young emigrants were the people who fled from Milosevic. The prominent world intellectuals who had been, during the nineties, amazed by the low level of resistance of Balkan people to media manipulation, now, affected by their own TV programs, became fanatic supporters of the laws of primitive retribution typical to the Stone Age. They suddenly discovered that the impoverished uranium was not so dangerous as is sometimes rumored. Pacifists became the lovers of clever bombs. Thus we are slowly approaching the news sent by a world news agency reprinted in the Belgrade daily newspapers. The text goes like this:

One famous international fashion company is broadcasting a TV-advertisement whose content, retold in brief, looks like this: One can see two persons swimming in the sea after a shipwreck. One is white, the other is black. The rescue boat is approaching, and from the gestures of people in the boat we can conclude that there is place for only one man. And that they are willing, of course (it is written like that), to rescue the white man. Grabbing his upper arms they started to pull him out of water. Then, suddenly, one can see the large inscription: "And what if he is a Serb?" In the next frame one can see the laughing black man waving from the boat which is moving towards the horizon.

This small masterpiece of politically-correct racism can give us the grounds for our final conclusion – on the eve of the third millennium, Belgrade is a ghetto encircled by a double wall.