GREECE / YUGOSLAVIA
The message is clear. In the name of the most idiotic nationalism, there is a tendency in the Greek political class which goes so far as to envisage military adventures to "profit from historic opportunities".
This tendency would not merit being taken seriously except for the fact that the times are ripe for such leaps in the dark.
BOGDAN Bogdanovic is Yugoslavia's best known
Despite having no political alternative, contemporary architect. His reputation extends well beyond society is in turmoil. Despite
Greek extraordinary sacrifices by the workers,
Yugoslavia's borders. A Serb born in Belgrade In 1922, he.
the economy continues to plunge into the fought with the Partisans during World War Two. A former abyss. This last month, towns and whole
Professor of Architecture at the University of Belgrade, he regions have been in a virtual state of was also the Mayor of Belgrade for a brief period in the early insurrection. At the same time the cohesion of the government and its small par-
1980s. A member of the central committee of the Communist liamentary majority are under threat, and
League of Serbia, Bogdonavic was expelled from the party the prime minister's popularity is lower when Milosevic came to power. The following interview with
What could be more tempting than a
Bogdanovic was conducted by Nedjeljna Dalmacija in Split on foreign adventure? This would not be the first time that the Greek leaders have been tempted by such a solution to their problems. Furthermore it is rather the
Socialist and Communist oppositions who are pushing for confrontation, baptizing as "agents of the Americans" both the Skopje leaders and the heads of
Greece's national minorities.
Serbian dictator admired in
Athens
This is why the Butcher of Belgrade has so many admirers in Athens. And it may be that a bloodbath in Kosovo and
Macedonia perpetrated by the Serb army will be greeted with "anti-imperialist" joy by the Greek left which is completely losing its sense of direction.
However the second wind that this whipped up chauvinism can offer to the government and other demagogues may well not last long. In particular it carries the danger of isolation from European and Atlantic partners.
The expansionist fantasies of Athens go beyond Skopje. In Albania there is also a big Greek national minority. However in this case Greece will run up against Italy, with its historic claims on the country.
Thus the more "realist" wing of the
Greek ruling class is inclined for now to rein in its ambitions, which it considers out of proportion to the country's real resources - which does not mean that it intends to abandon its
"protective role"
over new rightist regimes in Sofia and
Tirana. At the same time it stresses the
"stabilizing role" of Greece — the only
Balkan country which is a member of the
EEC and NATO — in the region.
Finally, the Greek bourgeoisie is slowly but surely drawing the lessons of the divisions provoked by the Yugoslav crisis in the EEC. It is no accident that Athens is showing a propensity to align itself on the British positions inside the EEC,
14 balancing the Born-Rome axis.
September 15, 1991.
• OUR entire architectural opus is dedicated to the victims of World War Two. Your monuments can be found in every part of Yugoslavia: Prilep, Krusevac, Mostar, Sremske Mitrovice, Jasenovac and Vukovar. It looks as though your services will be needed after this war too. Have you any idea what shape that might
I cannot predict the outcome of this tragedy so I cannot anticipate the kind of today's victims. Perhaps they will be sacral objects, or perhaps a new kind of realism will be appropriate. I don't know. I continually review my past, the way in which I carried out my previous work, asking myself whether what I did was right or not. Most of my monuments are Partisan monuments dedicated to the victims of fascism. They are never of a triumphalist or victorious character. They all reflect the enigma of death and the complexity of our feelings in the face of historic events. The very fact that I was never willing to use the five-pointed star - which resulted in my always having problems with veterans' associations — reflects my view of the last war in its horrible entirety.
Every day I listen to reports of the battle of Vukovar and fear for my Vukovar monument at Dudik, because it is one of the best I have done. Either side can destroy it — I make no distinction here. The issue of World Architecture I have in front of me printed a photo of this monument on the cover of the issue dedicated to my work. I don't know whether the monument is still standing or not. I do that the Vukovar museum which is housed in a beautiful Baroque building has been hit. Watching the beautiful center of Vukovar being destroyed bit by bit sends shivers down my spine.
What do my monuments mean? After completing them I discovered things about them which I have trouble admitting even to myself. It is as if they anticipated the present. They marked that earlier drama with a premonition that it could all happen again. This is particularly true about my last two monuments, the ones in Vukovar and Cacak. The one in Cacak caused me lots of problems with the people from the war veterans' association who couldn't understand it. It was an allegory — a house attacked by demons. It was completed in the 1980's when I was already daring to suggest that fascism could return. When you look at the Cacak mausoleum, with its granite monsters biting into the construction, you feel that you have been transported from the past into the present. • For some time now you have had more of a public profile in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, than in Serbia. Although the Serbian media spoke of the liberation of public expression, you were not present. Why was that?
Though I am a citizen of Belgrade and Serbia, the fact is that I communicate more freely with the other parts of YugoSlavia. I don't speak in Belgrade because I am not allowed to. I am under the strictest censorship. My name cannot be mentioned in the press. The silence about me was broken a few months ago though by the publication Vreme with a small quotaton by me. They also recently published my open letter to Dobrica Cosic 1
I think this is because Milosevic has much better advisors now than he did a year ago, and also because after the March 9 events?, he realized that he had to allow at least a semblance of democracy. He
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demons
October 28, 1991 • #215 International Viewpoint now permits all kinds of public criticism of himself. You can laugh at him, tell jokes about him, but don't ask him where Kosovo is!
For him Kosovo does not exist or is somewhere on the moon. You certainly can't ask him what happened to those "easy promises"3 or what will become of Kosovo. These questions are taboo. Though some democracy exists, there are a number of people who are muzzled. I had the honor of being one of them. • Why the silence about Kosovo? What is it about Kosovo that Milosevic wishes to hide?
Milosevic came to power by saying he would resolve the Kosovo crisis. Not only has he done nothing about it, he has made tension there to a fever pitch. But we in Serbia have a right to know about the future of Kosovo; will we remain there and under what condi-
How can we communicate with this people who number not a few hundred, but two million? I assume that the media ban on my name is partly because of Kosovo, because on several occasions I publicly stated that we must accept the fact that Kosovo is not ours. If we accept the ethnic principle as the only modern principle, then Kosovo is no longer Serb. Do we need a De Gaulle to explain this to us? If we had only found the courage to say this ten years ago, we could have left Kosovo as friends and acquired new friends there in some acceptable to Europe. But instead, Milosevic made enemies there, sowing ever-lasting seeds of evil between Serbs and Albanians. He has done the same for Serbs and Macedonians, and is now doing the same with the Hungarians — not to mention of course, • You have described this as "Serbia's road to self-humiliation and self-destruction".
It is no secret that Milosevic is psychologically a self-destructive, suicidal type, but the trouble is that he is transfering his suicidal madness onto the nation whole. He does not want to fade away from the scene. If he has to go, then the whole Serbian nation must disappear as a Is there a force in Serbia that can stop this?
The occult power of dictators doesn't lie in the fact that they're clever frequently limited, and I think Milosevic is a very limited man — rather, their power lies in the fact that they can bring into the circle of their mad ideas a great number of people and even whole nations. Hitler also had the brains of a gnat, yet he managed to bring the great and wise German nation to the point of madness. I think there is a sense in which the Serb nation is under the spell of Milosevic's
In the streets, cafes, and homes of Belgrade you can hear constant war cries and appeals to hatred and killing. All of this is the result of a grave psychological malaise. We have some politicians who are also psychiatrists.4 They should try and cure this malaise - provided that they themselves are not consumed by hatred. But I personally deeply suspect the sanity of these psychiatrists turned politicians.
Your question is a very difficult one. The intelligent young people feel a great sense of betrayal; even those who first believed all this. Unfortunately, they are few in number. They are mainly young intellectuals who might have had a career, but now cannot. They have this potential within them — this power to do something - but are horribly suppressed and frustrated. I no longer count on the Serbian opposition. Such as it is, it provides Milosevic with a cloak of legitimacy.
At the moment there is a litmus test for every Serb; Kosovo. If a party like the Democratic party cannot say a word about Kosovo, then that party is not conducting real, honest Serb politics. It may mumble this or that, support this or that carsija S mood, but de facto it only supports Milosevic. Its leaders frequently say in a more moderate and benign way the same thing that Milosevic says sharply and brutally. • As far as I can tell, only the "Reformists" have not avoided the Kosovo issue.
I not only support the "Reformists" but consider myself a member. Theirs is a tragic party; the only one that could foresee what was going to happen, the only one who knew what had to be done, and the only one who had a chance of turning what Europe had to offer into a reality. But you can see how much they are hated; they are the most hated people in Serbia. • Why do you say that Serbia has lost the war?
YUGOSLAVIA
Serbia has lost this war. When I say "this war", I am not thinking only of the current one, but of all our modern wars and our entire modern history from the Hatt-i-Sherif to the present day. One hundred and seventy years have passed since the proclamation of the Hatt-i-Sherif and in the course of all that time a state like Serbia, in Europe, should have made a far greater civilizational, cultural and economic leap.
Today we should be at least where Hungary is, or where the Czechs are. A feeling of failure lies at the very heart of Serb nationalism, and with it come all the various justifications for this failure: all the various Cominterns, Vaticans, Free Masonries and their unbelievable plots. There is indeed a sense of having missed OuL.
This century and a half of wasted history can be described as a lost war. But when I speak of the lost war I am also speaking of the events taking place today. Whether we like it or not, when we watch TV and see the various maps showing Serb and non-Serb villages, and we see how far the "defenders of Serb" towns have advanced, we see that these "defenders of Serb villages" are attacking towns! The "defenders" "defenders of Serb villages" are attacking Osijek. grade press presents this as some kind of victory. They write about advances, liberation, and so on, and the ordinary, already deeply indoctrinated people acquire the feeling that we Serbs are winning the war. This is a terrible misconception.
Firstly, from a political-military point of view they cannot possibly win since nobody sensible would allow anything to be changed by force at the end of the twentieth century. Sooner or later, those who are there will be forced to shamefully withdraw unless they are thrown back by the Croat defense effort which, if the war spreads, will be aided from the outside. Secondly, this war has been lost at 1. Vreme, an independent weekly founded at the end of the 1980's is the only significant dissenting voice in works celebrating Serbian national history.
1991, there were mass demonstrations against Milosevic's regime throughout Serbia. 3. A reference to Easily Promised Speed, the book by Dragisa Pavlovic, once head of the Belgrade branch of the Communist League of Serbia, who in 1987 was thrown out of the party because he attacked Milosevic's Kosovo policy and Serb nationalism in general. 4. Reference to Jovan Raskovic, an early leader of the Serb Democratic Party in Croatia, and to Vuk Karadsame party in Bosnia-Herzegovina, both of whom are psychiatrists by train5. Literally "bazaar", but also refers to the informal system of public opinion manipulation. 6. "Reformists" here refers to the members of the Alliance of Forces of Reform who support Ante Markovic, Yugoslavia's Federal Prime Minister. lished Serbia's autonomy within the Ottoman Empire.
International Viewpoint #215 • October 28, 1991
YUGOSLAVIA another, even more terrible level - it is destroying our Serb belief that our wars were just wars, and that we behave honorably. The war now being waged is not an honorable war. I say "fuck this war", a war in which the "defenders of villages" carry out a skirmish and then army tanks and personal carriers come in to protect what they have done. From this angle too, this is a shameful war. • How would you characterize the army's behaviour?
Negatively, horribly so. Those fanatics [the Serb irregulars] may be waging war for some mad reasons - in the name of a sick, morbid and fanatical nationalism. But the army is making war not out of any fanatical nationalism, nor, as it is frequently accused of, out of ideological fanaticism. The army is simply fighting to maintain its privileges!
The other day I walked through Dedinje for the first time in a long time. I felt as if I had entered a completely unknown part of the city. I saw illuminated spaces, heard music, and I felt I was in another world - maybe somewhere in Switzerland.
There are tennis courts on which the children of high officers and generals play tennis during the night. At that moment I understood that the army in the field with its tanks aiding those madmen and these pitiful people defending their immediate right to life are not defending anything that can be described as a social or national cause. They are simply defending their own caste interests. This caste army is oppressing us greatly. • Why have you called this an "old
It is a well known fact that this is an old man's war. It is based on old men's ideas, old men's ideals and frustrations. I am talking about the Belgrade connection - of the old men in the Academy® who wished to complete Serb history because it seemed to them that it had not been properly completed back in 1918.
When this old man's ideology starts to be transmitted into literature, and from literature into popular writings, and then into the press and the mass media, it begins to slowly form the opinions of the people. The young people infected by the madness of war are in fact, prisoners of this old man's mentality which has seduced them.
Unfortunately, many wars in history have been old man's wars. I doubt that these young men, had they been able to form their own world view and their own understanding of national history, would have voted for this bloodshed. Those who bear the blame are the old men - men who know what war is like. But the young people don't know, which is why they are often its victims. 16 with road bocks whose guards drank a bit This war began quite innocently - and joked a bit; "We'll ambush the Croats, then they'll try to do the same to us." It looked almost like a tourist attraction. But now there is a real war, autumn is here, then winter will come.
The intrusion of the old man's spirit into the inexperience of young people is a great crime. When I wrote about this in my open letter to Dobrica Cosic, I focused on him because he is the person most guilty for this Serbian drama. He has charmed and educated this nation. He has succeeded largely because for the past fifty years we have produced no real history, and in the absence of such real history people read historical novels and learn their patriotism from them.
Look at those coffins on both sides! No young man can remain untouched by them. The old men attack such wretched pacifism. Ljuba Tadic and Dobrica Cosic of the Academy cry "Pacifism is treachery"! They have become warmongers and one day this will rightly be described as a • What can be done?
The worst thing is the breakdown of communications between parts of the country. For me Yugoslavia is, in a nutshell, twenty great friendships all over Yugoslavia. These people have remained my friends and I can still talk to them.
I think that now all we can do is remember our friends, maintain contacts, and see what we can do together politically. The situation is being internationalized which is a good thing; the great leaders may yet sign something, and then again they may not, but it will take time before this filters down to the little leaders, the little commanders, the little bosses.
I fear a fragmentation into ridiculously small statelets. There's that idiot who'll say "I, President of Eastern Slavonia...." I might as well go into the street and say "As President of the Republic of Cubura' I demand half of Cubura". It's crazy and that is what is so frightening. This war has another side. I have said that it is a miserable, dirty, and very bloody war. But it is also a meaningless war. I come from a family many of whose members fought in the last war - but at least that was a serious war. Now we are confronted with a war that has no aim from a Serb point of
The Croats are defending themselves, their aim is clear. This war, apart from its lack of aims is also undefined from a military point of view.