THE SERBIAN QUESTION
by
Dobrica Cosic
(translator R.K.Kent)
Translator’s
Introduction
Toward the end of 1986,
a Belgrade newspaper found its way into an as yet unfinished Memorandum. Penned
by several members of the
Serb
Academy of
Sciences and Arts it was attributed
to its animator, Dobrica
Cosic, Academy’s president at the time. It drew
out roughly the same
anger from the ruling elite
and media as did the more famous and
earlier text of Milovan Djilas, “The
Ruling Class.”. The Memorandum was iconoclastic as it touched
upon subjects that were not to be discussed. Among them was the
view that
decentralization of
Yugoslavia,
implemented by Tito before he died in
1980, was a prelude to its disintegration. It expressed concern for the safety
of Serb minorities in Croatia and in Kosovo. It stressed that, under
Tito, Serbia was
deliberately left behind when compared to the industrial
advances in
Slovenia
and Croatia. It
was not kind to the economic system under Tito, across the board. As it
eventually turned out, the Memorandum was broadly right in these areas of
concern. To this day, Cosic has been subjected to all sorts
of criticism.
He
was accused of “resurrecting”
Serb nationalism, while Tito’s
successor regime was still in power. His
words and writings
were skewed to make him say what he did
not say, after the fall of Milosevic.
In his 2003
speech about. “The Serbian Question,” printed in the
Knjizevne Novine (Belgrade, 15 March –
15 April), Cosic responded to such practices in
dignified and, at times , superbly crafted
language. In rendering
his entire statement into English the present translator is attempting to
capture its ebb and flow, to find the sense of meaning rather than provide a
mechanical translation. .
The
Speech
An
invitation to discuss the “Serbian
Question” provides, in my sense of
understanding, an occasion to openly embark , with some
competence, on a journey searching, at the
same time, for truth that can be verified and context of the
“Question” which I have endeavored to address, viva
voce and in writing, during the closing
decades of the Twentieth Century. Some of my contemporaries have taken it upon
themselves to
misinterpret my ideas
and intended meaning and continue to so do in ways which are in serious
conflict with their intent and which bring
them no honor.
Thus, what
merits to be discussed are
aspects of truth to be found in my texts and in addresses to
the public. What requires to be aired are the perversions of
truth, the skewing of ideas which I favor,
along with aims to which I donate
my labors.—all of which are under siege by people who simply
do not share my views.
I have known, for a very
long time, that there are many who react to truth with hate.
Undoubtedly, they have a number of reasons to harbor such a feeling. There are
also those who could not care less for truth. Yet, the greatest danger comes
from those who come to believe that lie is truth; and they constitute a distinct
majority in the present world.
I have known, for a
long time, that truth as well
as lie are used for the
highest and basest human aims. The right to
establish what is true or false has been in the
exclusive monopoly of an
intellectual class -the Intelligentsia, if you will— that
legitimizes itself on the grounds of superior education and
concern for what is of particular interest
to its members.
The world of our moment
in time is dominated by totalitarian, technological and satanic ideological
advocacy. . There are compelling reasons to perceive the Twentieth century as an
Era of Imperialism- by- Lie while the century just entered
into is marked by the Globalization - of - Lie. I have had to live under
“Titoism” which has been,
in reality, the tyranny of Lie. As
the Serb society transits, on its way to a capitalist one, it is in the
same ideological bind –an extension of the
tyranny of lie-- marked by lies which are “professionally organized.” The
Communist lies have
been displaced, at the same time, by their anti-Communist and
Democratic analogues, remunerated financially from the center of world- class
Power. In this way, our societal grasp of
truth, despite the change of regimes, remains essentially
unaltered. In the public domain, truth has been
abrogated by lie;
and lie is the ardent passion of individuals who would
otherwise escape notice altogether.
As proof of this claim I
focus on Nationalism itself. It is an ideological construct, a sort of straw man
one can beat to death in the most vulgar fashion, in order
to adversely affect the survival and the future
of the Serb People. It has
been depicted as
manifest evil, manipulated throughout the Twentieth century as well as today.
According to
ideological reductionists, Nationalism is
simply atavistic. Its driving engine is hatred of other populations and
addiction to endemic violence.
The very mention of the
“Serb People” suffices to identify a person as a confirmed nationalist . This
deliberately poisonous perception solidifies when the
rights and freedom of the Serb People are mentioned, along with the harshness of
their existence and the injustices they have had to suffer.,
The mere search for historical truth and
reporting of the
findings constitutes –for the Communists and professional
anti-nationalists—proof of evil nationalist endeavors. This is precisely how the
Serb nationalism was ideologically interpreted between 1945 and
2003.
Anti-nationalism can
have cosmopolitan roots, leading to perceptions in politics
and culture, for which I have an appreciative understanding. Their humanistic
dimension does not
deserve to be dismissed.
It so
happens, nonetheless,
that the dominant anti-nationalism is a provider
of career rewards, of elevated
moral pedestals, of access to the widest public media. All of
this inter-combines through
myriad international
functions, from ad hoc symposia to directorships in a variety
of Funds, Foundations,, Firms and Committees financed by the centers of world
powers. This professionalized anti-nationalism is a potent
factor in shaping public opinion when
Serbia is
brought up. It saturates the press, radio and, above all, Television. Today’s
Serbia
has a surfeit of. anti-nationalist
robots, noted only for their
anti-nationalist and anti-Serb stance.
To my own considerable
discomfort, I am obliged to remind you
this evening of my nationalist career.. I was denounced as a
nationalist in 1961 by the Slovene separatists
when I defended
South-Slavism and
Yugoslavia.
I was denounced as such by Tito’s Communists in 1968 because I
discussed Albanian chauvinism and possible
loss of Kosovo. I was again vilified by all
Communist vassals in the same year because
I held that the anti-Titoist Memorandum of the
Serb
Academy of
Sciences and Arts did not at all aim at the dismemberment of
Yugoslavia.
The vilification came up again in 1991 and 1992 when I was denounced as a
promoter of “Greater Serbia” just because I sought to secure for the Serbs and
Serbia the same right of self-determination demanded by those who wanted out of
Yugoslavia, All of those who slandered me and deformed my thoughts, shared the
very same argument, namely that I am a nationalist because I took it upon myself
to discuss the Serbian Question. Why am I devoted to this subject? Well. I will
inform, this very evening, in just a few sentences, those who do not hate truth
and those who are not addicted to spreading a lie.
For myself, as a
writer, the Serbian Question is a Human Question. Because individual destinies
within Serbia are
intertwined with the collective, national destiny and the wider historical
determinism. All of the Serb generations in the preceding Century ended up as
‘cogs in wheels of the great historical mechanism.’ Through
avenues of events in history, in national and social
circumstances, in the domains of freedom, justice and human rights we arrive at
a determining point. It defines our very being, our ambitions, professional
careers, the levels of creative endeavor, families,
marriages, love and friendship.
For a
literary person devoted to the search for truth about human existence, as a
writer, following intensely the fate of mankind , it became my imperative task
to transpose the human drama into the novel. The key theme of
my novels has always revolved around
man’s confrontation
with history and reality, around man seeking to
face the national and social ideologies, around man as
a victim of history and ideology.
Still, the reality and
the society, in which I lived primarily as a writer of novels, was above
and outside the
novelist’s fiction. I felt deeply slighted in an
already downgraded people in Tito’s Yugoslavia
and could not agree to live so slighted without resistance. I had a highly
developed sense of responsibility for countering the betrayal of major ideals
that marked my generation—freedom, justice, human rights , truth and the dignity
of man.It became an obligation to humanity to pit myself against the Brionian
despotism(1) and the destructive shapers of a future reserved
for the people in whose language I think and I write. That is
why I became a dissident and
oppositionist. I focused on culture, on national and on state
issues. This, in turn, produced a number of books –among them one on the
“Serbian Question’ (in two tomes) which, I believe, has been discussed this
evening with conviction and received in understanding at the forum accorded
me.”
Translator’s Post Scriptum
The translator has
selected this speech of Dobrica Cosic to add to a
question transcending Serb People as the center-piece and one which, most
probably but not inevitably, has to do with survival of the
Planet Earth. “Nationalism” is nowadays a dirty word here at
home, within our Intelligentsia and within
our four-year Administrations. . We seem culturally incapable
of perceiving our own behavior and declarations of our ruling elite after 9/11
as harbingers of an almost omnipotent but
modernized nationalism bent on
reshaping the world to its own liking by any and all
means available.The term “modernized” is
meant to stress the fact that, today,
economic globalization and explosion in communications
tend to mask the realities of economic dominance, cultural and political
invasions which are intended to dilute and even
erase national identities . Man (in the common sense of both
sexes) must replace specific nationalities
and ethnicities by becoming a sort of universal
consumer. without roots anywhere. Even an interest
in History comes under suspicion of promoting atavism.
Under this obvious, even
glaring, reality much of the mankind finds itself in the same 1000corner into
which have been boxed Arabs and Muslims,
unable and unwilling to part with their own spiritualism. The
constant material progress in the West did not only create a huge gap. It has
posed a seemingly impossible challenge to the Arabs and Muslims in general. In
order to move into modernity, they must dilute and give up the Kuran to be
preserved only as a relic of antiquity, forgetting that it came into being in
order to quell inter-tribal wars in the Arabian Middle East. This challenge has
been met
with violence since
the Crusades and right to this day. Only today, the weapons have changed to such
a degree that a single person can destroy the population of a large city.
The Arab Nationalist
reaction in Iraq, now
visibly naked and without embellishments, is at the boiling point which will be
reached, sooner or later, all over the globe in open revolts and rebellions
against attempts to de-nationalise Nationalism itself. Not because it is an evil
without positive aspects but because such aspects cannot penetrate the minds
that are closed on this subject, minds actually capable of not seeing their own
image in the mirror.
(1)Brioni is the island
just off the upper Adriatic coast near Pula. Tito considered
and used as personal property to which he would retreat from
time to time. (Tr. Note)
Raymond K. Kent,
Emeritus
History
Department,
University of
California,
Berkeley, CA. 94720.
(tel.510/642-1971)
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