Around the Balkans in 20 Days – Part 7

The morning was slightly overcast as we peered out the window to test the sky, needing to judge whether or not we should have a day out and about. We discovered that there was a man-made lake on the outskirts of town, which Belgrade folk frequent. Despite no clear sunshine at the moment, we decided that the heat was enough for us to deserve a trip out to see what was on offer. After a few minutes of translating the Belgrade transit website, we found the details for the bus we would need to get us there. We packed a few essentials – sun cream, snacks that we had about the apartment, towels, books and sunglasses – and departed.

Conveniently, the bus stop was on Trg Republika. So we walked up to the square, and stopped at a kiosk that was adjacent to the bus stop we needed. We wanted to get a good supply of water, as we were unsure of the facilities available at the lake; handily this was also where you had to buy bus tickets. In English, accompanied with gesticulations on par with that of an orchestra conductor, we managed to convey, to the lady hidden amongst the confectionery and magazines, where we wanted to go. A few dinars later, we had our return bus tickets. The wait was not long, but the sun was starting to burn through the clouds, increasing the feeling of warmth somewhat. I was glad my gamble with shorts and a vest was starting to pay off.

Sadly not a trolleybus, rather a modern diesel ‘bendy bus’ came to carry us to our destination; and was quite busy too. I felt that other city dwellers or tourists thought this day might be a good one to head to the lake too. We sat two thirds of the way up, and I did my usual thing of tracking our route to ensure we were going in the right direction. Half an hour later, a bell was pressed ahead of the stop we intended to get off, upon which a sizeable number of people joined us in doing so. We were let off next to a bypass that headed southwest, on towards more suburban parts of the city. With our backs to the road, across from us was a rather unkempt marina for medium-sized leisure boats, and to our right back towards the city stood the newest of the bridges to span the Sava River. We walked left, and then bared right on to a raised dam-cum-road that separated the marina and the leisure lake now on our left. Once we walked over, we were on an island that sat between the lake and marina behind us, and the Sava River, hidden ahead of us by a wood. This was quite dense to our right, but thinned out as we gazed to our left, with leisure structures dotted around in the clearings. It was in this direction we walked.

We meandered along a windy path, intersected by bicycle lanes heading into the wood, as we approached a small collection of one and two storey concrete buildings housing a café, a non-descript indoor leisure hall, and a couple of stand alone kiosks selling food. There was a handful of uniformed staff amongst them, joined by an equal number of customers who seemed to be on friendly terms with them. The path turned towards the lake as we walked by these conveniences, and then curved back to run alongside the lake next to a 4 storey boating tower. The long and slim shape of the lake either proved coincidentally ideal for boat races or was built specifically for this purpose. We continued along this concrete walkway for a good mile and a half. Every 200 meters or so there would be a shack or small bungalow to our right, acting as a café or restaurant. The staff would cross over the path to customers sitting at the café’s tables hidden under a dozen or so parasols, on the pebble beach that sloped down at a fair gradient to the waters edge. Every now and again there would be a base for a functioning activity – a zip wire across the lake, pedalloes etc – and one or two that had been long forgotten. There was a mixture of activity going on along the lakeside; people paddling or swimming, many sunbathing, most lazily drinking pivo in the shade and conversing loudly. At some point we turned right into the wood to get some shade, and walked back on ourselves. We then rejoined the path and stopped for a soft drink to quench our thirst.

Not necessarily endeared towards the café’s we walked past, we decided to go around to the other side of the lake. We retraced our steps and returned to near the bus stop, and then took the path that ran between the bypass and the lake. The noise of the road soon faded as at first a car park, then another wood, emerged to our left pushing the road off into the distance. The bars on this side were a lot livelier; the clientele were a lot younger and mostly in groups. Evidently they were university kids who had returned and were catching up with their childhood friends. We perched near them and ordered some beers so that we could enjoy the camaraderie going on around us and indulge our pastime of people watching. We had now reached mid-afternoon.

We drank a couple more beers before we finally decided to walk back to the other side of the lake and see if the café’s there had a change in their clientele. A mixture of the beer and slight dehydration made us a bit giddy and woozy as we walked around in the early evening heat. I think we only had some crisps and a sandwich as a snack. We sat down at a generic café and ordered some more beers. In-between reading our books, we chatted and commented on passersby, many of whom were scantily clad whilst cycling or rollerblading. The background music pumping from the café across the path had now stepped up a gear, and was playing some terrible generic dance music. Our fellow patrons were somewhat older than us, and I am sure this was not their cup of tea either. To mix it up, we decided to walk to another café, and settled on one 300 meters closer to the start of the lake in the direction of the bus stop home.

We sat at a table by the waters edge. There was a small group of people in their late teens, which the waitress seemed to be familiar with. After our beers came, we continued our chatter and drew the attention of an older man in his 40’s who seemed to manage the bar. He started to talk to us about football. A strong point of conversation for John that could deflect away from why we were visiting and how we knew each other. However, the team that he began to talk about, according to John, had links to crooks and killers. The longer the conversation went on, and with no escape as we were at the waters edge, the more I felt uncomfortable. He soon had to attend to other patrons. We finished up, and made our escape.

The next few hours were rather a haze. We managed to locate the bus stop back into town, mostly by following other people over a footbridge and waiting alongside them at a busy section of the road. The bus we boarded was packed, and had a certain drunken and friendly atmosphere as the bus swayed knocking people into each other. Unfocussed glances and half–smiles were the language of this bus ride. We arrived back at the apartment and showered and changed. We had arranged to meet Nemanja and Danilo at a bar around the corner from where we were staying. We had still only snacked by this point in the late evening. The bar was called Blaznavac and it was a 90 second walk away. It sat in the middle of the block, with an iron gate guarding its open courtyard, the main bar being some 30 feet back from the road. It had a mass of memorabilia and other trinkets scattered through out it. We saw Nemanja and Danilo perched on stools, on one half of an 8-seater table, straddled between the courtyard and the sheltered bar within.

After exchanging pleasantries John ordered a round of drinks and we continued our conversation of introductions from the other night. The way we were sat meant that Nemanja and I began to chat to each other separately, as did Danilo and John. We discussed a lot about the city, about its LGBT scene, and recent history – the latter only fleetingly. After an hour or so Danilo said he had to head off and catch his train. He was staying with family who lived in Nova Pazova, just outside the city but could only be reached by the last train at around 23:15. Nemanja accompanied him, so we said our goodbyes and off they went. We stayed for another round of drinks. After this, we returned to Bucko pizza from the previous night and ordered a whole one. We ate some of it whilst staggering back to the apartment and taking pictures of each other. We crashed into bed, leaning over its edge, feeding off the last of the pizza from the floor.

Social Democracy in Macedonia (4/5)

Having previously analysed social democracy in generic terms, the focus now turns to the nature of social democracy in Macedonia. Specifically focusing on the SDUM, I will look at its development from independence to 2012 through the prisms of legacies of nationalism, democratization and communism.

The SDUM – An Overview

The SDUM was founded in 1991 being the successor party to the League of Communists of Macedonia (LCM), and is an observer member to the Socialist International and associate member of the Party of European Socialists. Kiro Gligorov became the first President of Macedonia elected by democratic means in 1991 and held that position until 1999. At the time of writing, the President of the party was Branko Crvenkovski, who was the President of Macedonia from 2004 to 2009, held the position of Prime Minister from 1992 to 1998 and again from 2002 to 2004. One notable President of the SDUM recently was Radmila Sekerinska who held the position from 2006 to 2008 and led the party into the 2008 parliamentary elections. In 2012 the SDUM had twenty nine MPs of the Sobranie out of one hundred and twenty three, and all but three were of Macedonian ethnicity with two Vlach and one Serb. Eleven MPs were female and the age range was from twenty nine to fifty seven, with an average age of forty two. The party’s electoral support at the 2011 parliamentary elections was to be found in Skopje, the south, south west and parts of the north east of the country, and can be observed as poor in Albanian areas along with the support of the VMRO-DPMNE. However, during election time broad based electoral pacts, with the SDUM as the core, contest these elections. The executive board of the SDUM, which is elected by a central board of the SDUM that is elected at the congress of the party, is comprised of twenty three people, including six MPs.

Although the party came second in the first democratic elections in 1990, they gained power in 1992 following a ‘government of experts’ and when VMRO-DPMNE failed to garner support for a government. Crvenkovski invited Albanian party members to form part of his government. This initiated the informal establishment of a consociational model of democracy. Economic liberalization, the move to a ‘Euro-Atlantic’ direction, the easing of ethnic relations, as well as feeling the impact of a UN embargo on Serbia and an economic blockade by Greece, all occurred during this period. Although they won the 1994 elections, this was in fact a result of VMRO-DPMNE not contesting the second round of voting, even if some suggested that it was a sign that being a socialist or from the old guard was not a stigma. Defeat in 1998 was attributed to the perception of economic corruption during privatization. However, the acceptance of this defeat along with the Presidential election a year later was seen as a litmus test for the democratic idea to accept losing as elections. The party’s re-election in 2002 came after the 2001 ethnic conflict and the signing of the Ohrid Agreement, which it embarked on implementing.

Throughout this period, the party’s relationship with nationalist rhetoric and actions was fluid. Given its heritage, it is seen as the party that created the state of Macedonia and the Macedonian nation, and that it led the charge for independence during the collapse of communism, partially fulfilling the goal of nationalism in Gellner’s sense. But debates over identity and primordial links continued and are present even today. Debates over the constitution, decisions on the use of symbols and languages by minorities, relations with neighbours especially around the name issue, and the recent ‘Skopje 2014’ project in the capital, saw the SDUM develop its stance, which were in opposition to the line carried by VMRO-DPMNE. However, the nationalist rhetoric had moved somewhat from ethnic particularity to a more state-orientated patriotism. Some believed that this had simply bolstered the ethnic divide in the country and reified the mono-ethnicity of the party.

Internal party democracy and the relationship between the leaders, party organs and membership altered since independence. The side effect of having a less disciplined body, encouraging discussion and dissent, and some lack of acceptance of defeat, is that internal ideological splits became actual party splits; most notable was the departure of Presidential candidate Tito Petkovski in 2005 to form the New Social Democratic Party. This overview of the SDUM provided the contextual background for my fieldwork in 2012.

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My visit to Skopje spanned 6 days during the end of August 2012. My contact was the Programme Manager at the Progres Institut for Social Democracy (Progres) who was also a teaching and research assistant at the Faculty of Law in the city, whom I have worked with previously. Along with interviewing him, he organized interviews with people in the following positions; a Project Manager at Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Macedonia (FES); an executive board member of the SDUM and economic policy adviser (Economic Adviser); an executive board member of the SDUM (Exec Member); the President of the SDYM (President of SDYM); and the International Secretary of the SDYM (International SDYM).

I also approached the Macedonia Project Manager of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy/Macedonian Centre for Parliamentary Studies (WFD) and the International Officer at the British Labour Party (Labour) in a personal capacity to provide further external observations in their work with the SDUM. These meetings were semi constructed in order for the interviewee to express more fully their opinions and observations. Notes of the interviews were taken, but not transcribed word for word. I will refer to them by the shorthand word that has followed their position titles in brackets above.

Social Democracy Movement

Upon my beginning the interviews I asked for general comments on the current state of the wider social democratic movement in Macedonia. Every person, apart from the Economic Adviser who wasn’t asked, responded by saying it was weak. The International SDYM person and Progres person both said that the SDUM party was essentially the movement. An explanation put forward by the Executive Member was that the transition period resulted in many losers because of the privatization policies that were enacted. On the other hand, the FES person looked to the political climate at the time as nurturing fear and repression for such a movement to have expressed itself. When asked about the roles of the trade unions in the wider movement, all the interviewees observed no link. The Executive Member believed that this was due to them being the losers during marketization, and the WFD person believed them to be weak during privatization so they ultimately could not resist such reforms. However, at the time, the Executive Member suggested that they were bureaucratized and did not support workers. Instead they worked with whoever was in government, and at the time that was the VMRO-DPMNE, sentiments which the Economic Adviser and WFD person agreed with. A link to the SDUM would only come when they returned to power. The Progres person highlighted the formal connections with the Trade Unions that Progres had, but he too acknowledged their function as an instrument of the government. This was the same opinion expressed by the International SDYM person in relation to the Students Union and student movement. Therefore the movement split because the trade unions were weak when the party asserted its renewed ideology during (and because of) the transition. A positive note was that Progres was the first official nongovernmental organization (NGO) set up that advocated political values and traditions, and could be seen as a satellite of the social democracy movement. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy were other NGOs that provided resources to engage with these groups also; the former to develop social democracy, the latter to develop civil society.

The relationship to civil society should be mentioned here, as it links to social movements that could potentially have been part of a wider social democracy movement. The Executive Member and WFD person saw the links with civil society as weak. This is the view the Labour person expressed and believed needed addressing. However, the International SDYM person believed that the movement in itself was weak. They organized on a small scale, but if it failed they would turn to the SDUM for organisational help. There was a crossover of individuals in civil society and the SDUM, but the civil society groups did not want a political association. As the International SDYM person described, when she went to engage with the very NGOs she worked amongst prior to holding a SDYM position, she was jeered because of this political association. The perception here, as the WFD person saw it, was one of a double-edged sword. They wanted support, but ultimately they wanted their issue dealt with so they could forgo building supportive capacity to hopefully catch the ear of the government at the time. Whilst I was visiting, a protest regarding the high prices for utility bills was conducted. There was no party political presence from the SDUM, yet the next day’s news saw the government link the protest to the machinations of the SDUM. According to the Progres person, the government would also do this to organizations that had foreign funding and claim them to be anti-national. Progres and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung were also trying to build these links with the work that they undertook.

Social Democratic Ideology and ‘Social Democratization’

The anchor of social democratic ideology is in the economy. This view was expressed by the Economic Adviser and was seen as a priority of the party under the government of the day. He linked economic inefficiency to the politicization of state institutions. The impact of privatization was felt badly, but the party had to carry out this process, and so it became motivated to develop reforms for the people. Given that social democracy is built upon the assumption that there will be economic growth to invest in core state functions, the response to a recession is crucial. He articulated that this was a possibility in 2012, however the SDUM had located €300-400 million in efficiency savings within the state institutions should they be reformed. He mentioned that there were cases where people were paid, but no work was done. The 30% unemployment rate meant that austerity wasn’t an answer, but job creation was. An example was the building of the statues for ‘Skopje 2014’. It cost €200 million, whereas the state budget for wages in the public sector per year was €360 million, so money could be better spent. He believed that there were not enough experts on the economy so that policies could have been fully developed. Therefore, at that moment the economy and specifically unemployment was seen as the priority of the SDUM. Even pursuing non-ideological policies, such as pushing the government to pay off its debt to private companies was needed because it would retain jobs for people.

Yet, the FES person believed that even if the impact of privatization was negative, the SDUM would claim it as their success. Her observation was that during the transition the SDUM were advocating policies that were the opposite of their ideology. In 2012, the VMRO-DPMNE was enacting ‘social democratic’ measures such as an increase in pensions. So there was a sense of ideological ‘cross-dressing’. So the SDUM needed to overcome this perception. The Executive Member explained this ideological incoherence projected by the party as a result of the transition to democracy and the appeal of Euro-Atlantic integration, which limited the extent to which an ideological and programmatic approach could have been developed. But in 2012 the SDUM had ideological markers to distinguish itself from the VMRO-DPMNE. He suggested that these ideological markers were starting to transcend ethnicity, although this was a long way off from completion.

Ideologically, the Executive Member observed two currents in the party. One was progressive, liberal, and stood for individual rights and was seen in the elite-end of the party. The other was more in tune with the members and electorate and was ‘socially and economically conservative’ and more nationalistic. The Economic Adviser observed this split in the approach to the economy between pro-business and pro-worker/for the unemployed. A split emerged in 2008, and a proportion of the middle ranking strata of the party went with it. The FES person saw the splits less in terms of ideology and more in terms of leaders and the positions they could offer to followers. However, The International SDYM person didn’t observe an ideological split within the SDYM but acknowledged the strength of charismatic leadership as exhibited by Crvenkovski. This could be an indication of the SDYMs freedom from legacies and their more progressive outlook vis-à-vis the main party. The FES and Labour people both acknowledged this strength of leadership. The Progres person also believed that the party in the decade before 2012 had become more progressive and moved from the neo-liberal approach to the economy, but was still changing. He pointed to Radmila Sekerinska as embodying this progressive approach by inviting different external ideas into the party for debate, which the Labour person agreed with.

The Economic Adviser believed that the process of social democratization was ongoing, The Executive Member and the Progres person saw it as becoming more aware and concerned for socially marginalized groups such as the gay community; whereas the President of SDYM believed that the party had changed significantly in membership and attitudes. However, the FES person observed a general weakness in progressive thinking. Progres had been active in promoting ‘social democratization’ by helping to establish the SDUMs value statement in 2009 (along with Friedrich Ebert Stiftung), opening up to civil movements and pushing policies for social inclusion of socially marginalized groups. A close working relationship was evident between Progress and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. The FES person mentioned that the NGO had facilitated debates on social democracy and sent a Macedonian representative to a discussion on social democracy in Europe but the ideas never filtered down. The Labour Party didn’t direct the SDUMs political programme but simply highlighted the mechanisms it uses when developing its own. However, if they didn’t like where the SDUM were going it would review its links with it in line with SI and PES principles and membership guidelines.

Even looking outside of the SDUM, the WFD person didn’t observe social democratic ideology in the Albanian parties. This was a sign of the obstacles to building a non-ethnic ideological movement, and he didn’t believe that a solution was achievable because ethnic identity was so contrasting and divisive.

Party Organization and Leadership

The Executive Member outlined the structure of the party as having seventy seven functioning municipal branches, with those in the East and West either not operating or functioned for symbolic reasons. The party congress held every four years elected a central board, which then elected an executive board, and in turn elected the President and Vice Presidents. According to the International SDYM person, this was the same for the SDYM. The Executive Member explained that authority lay with the President and the executive board, whose decisions were ratified by the central board. No decisions had been struck down in the three years he had been a member. During elections, a Central Electoral Headquarters runs the campaigns centrally and transmits objectives to the six regional offices that in turn communicate these to the branches. Membership fees, donations and the state finance the party, with the latter reimbursing the party after an election depending on how many votes they got. The Economic Adviser, Progres person, FES person and Labour person all spoke of the topical changes, led by Sekerinska, which included the setting up of policy councils. This was one aspect of the ‘social democratization’ of the party internally. However the Economic Adviser said that party members were not interested and attempts were made to approach them, but the process needed to be improved. A sense of value, beyond improving their socio-economic lot, was what was needed for this to have happened. He did accept that it was a great way to receive input from academics and businesses into their policy processes. The FES person saw the difference in the approach Crvenkovski was taking at the time as a strong leader, in that going into villages and speaking to voters was altering the party’s image. She believed, along with the WFD person, that the SDUM were seen as an elitist party, whereas the VMRO-DPMNE were seen as closer to the people.

Internal party democracy was somewhat still in its formation. Instead of direct elections, a dialogue between members and the leadership occurred. For the Mayoral candidate selections, the Executive Member explained that the local branch selects four candidates, which the headquarters then choose one. This was based on a combination of the best person and the one least likely to cause division. He explained this as a by-product of a lack of understanding in democracy to losing as the reason for this mechanism. There was a one in three quota for the minority gender to be selected for elections, and there was a one in five quota for SDYM members. However this was seen as a stepping-stone and a place to be noticed for the future. There was no ethnic minority quota, as evidenced in the unrepresentative make up of SDUM parliamentarians at the time, but he explained that it was a mutual understanding that in mixed areas, candidates would be picked to match the community, especially for local government elections. The same quotas existed in the SDYM according to the President of the SDYM, but he mentioned the informal way of decision-making and influencing was by talking to the President or Secretary direct. The Progres, FES and WFD people all observed that party democracy was lacking and that this deafened any debate or criticism because member’s rights were not protected to do so. It would be a slow change but Progres and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung were working towards this goal. The WFD person hinted that party democracy was probably stronger when it was the League of Communist of Macedonia, as splits weren’t feared.

Having noted earlier of the overlap of people who were MPs and on the party executive board, this was also practiced by Progres. The Progres person noted that some held positions in the party and that at that point in time it was crucial so that they could influence the party internally. He suggested that in the future Progres could be more independent, but it depended on the progress of ideologies, a stable political system and if ideology overcomes ethnicity.

Consociational Democracy and Political Culture

The electoral and party systems work in dialogue. The consociational model of democracy, that results from these mechanisms of democracy that have been utilized, reaffirms national identity and ethnic difference. All interviewees whose opinion I asked of this agreed, both internal and external observers. The FES person believed that it also meant that these parties only mixed with their own people and didn’t communicate. The pre-election pact agreed in 2012 between the SDUM and DPA meant that a deal on where to place candidates would be made, according to the WFD person, and this limited the choice to ethnic parties. Some were pessimistic in their hopes for the future. The Executive Member saw the need in accepting the differences before co-operation could occur. But peace and security of the state took precedence, and acts of ethnic violence would cause instability. The President of SDYM believed it was hard to move to ethnic integration despite the form of governance, using the recent episode of the Albanian Defense Minister laying a wreath on the graves of the Albanian guerillas of the 2001 conflict with uniformed army personnel to highlight this tension. Also, electorally speaking, the Executive Member said that even if the parties sought to gain support from outside of their ethnic groups, they would be classed as traitors. Yet, the President of SDYM explained that the party did select candidates in mixed areas for the purpose of gaining ethnic votes, but only for local elections. The Labour person believed that the Albanian parties should move beyond ethnic rights and towards developing a different message, which the FES person said had only just begun.

Everyone apart from the Progres and Labour people and the Presdient of SDYM observed clientelism in the political culture of the country; and that it was expressed within the party structure, between the party in power and those in state positions, and between the state and civil society as mentioned earlier. The politicization of institutions acted as a function of the government to retain power. It also acted as a break on criticism being levied on the government by civil society through fear, according to the FES person, and by withholding state funding, according to the WFD person. What was lacking in the political culture was the acceptance of democratic norms, such as the recognition of losing so as not to act out of proportion, as explained by the Progres person. The FES person also believed that there was no political responsibility and accountability, and that politicians were not punished for wrongdoing. Even party politics was brushed aside to topple a government, as seen by the SDUM and DPA agreeing to this aim in 2012. The impression from all the interviewees was that ethnic cleavages were embedded, and even institutionalized, and thus would be hard to move to a more ideological party politics.

Legacies of Communism, Nation-building and the ‘Transition’

Legacies play an important role in how a party is constituted, and the SDUM was no exception. Ideologically, The President of SDYM said the party sought at first to distance itself from its communist past, but in recent years this had been seen as a positive connection, and some are even nostalgic according to the FES person. Electorally, distance was needed at first according to the Executive Member. Politically, he noted the unity of ethnic groups in the League of Communist of Macedonia with these networks remaining when ethnic parties emerged.

He also believed the SDUM saw itself as the party that built the state in 1945, so this legacy led to a belief in the priority of protecting the state. The SDUM also had people in positions in public groups thanks to the funding of these during the former regime thanks to the League of Communists of Macedonia. However the legacy of a strong organisation did not extend to the rural areas, where the League wasn’t as entrenched as in the urban areas, so it could not capitalize on this as much. The WFD person believed there to be individuals who were League members still in the SDUM, but the Executive Member said it was hard to gauge the number of members who were in the League, but he did have people who would say to him that they have been members for 50 years. The FES person observed a positive link through joint working between the social democrats of the former Yugoslav countries, which enabled them to share relevant best practice because of their shared experiences.

An ambivalent legacy had been privatization. The Executive Member, Economic Adviser and the WFD person all said that these reforms harmed the image of the party at the time, especially because of the emergence of an economic elite; but The FES person believed that the SDUM would claim credit for the changes even if the elite were still present. During this period, the party led the independence movement so it had a legacy of nationalism, but in 2012 it was moving to patriotic rhetoric, according to the Executive Member. The International SDYM person noted that SDYM relations with the Panhellenic Socialist Movement were sour because of the re-emergence of national historical issues including the name issue, but they were respectful to the recent imaginings of Macedonian history in ‘Skopje 2014’, even if they weren’t personally linked to those debates because of their youth.

National Identity and Ethnicity

To add to the previously mentioned presence of national identity and ethnicity in the processes and structures mentioned, the response to nationalist posturing by the government was an example of the SDUM displaying their approach. On ‘Skopje 2014’, the Executive Member said that they could not attack its national aspect, but to provide a socio-economic argument as to where the money could have been better spent, or to say that the ethnic tensions that could arise did not justify it, as the Progres person also believed.

Economically speaking, the Economic Adviser recognized the need to tackle poverty, either targeted to those worse off or more generally. He said that in the Albanian areas there was an economy, just not an official one that has a relationship with the state; so official figures of unemployment showed it higher in these areas. However, the SDUMs concern was with workers rights and protection, so it didn’t always involve an ethnic angle that needed to be appeased. He also believed that people understood that trade needed to occur between those states it had identity issues with, and that a functioning Greek economy was better for Macedonia. However, Greece wanted the name dispute to continue for its own internal political mobilization. 

And as such, these were there results of my interviews in Skopje in 2012.

Around the Balkans in 20 Days – Part 6

I arose in an excited and over zealous mood. Yes, I was partially still drunk from the night before, questioning how I got home alongside why I was awake so soon after having gone to sleep. 5 or so hours were enough for sleep, surely?

Anyway, John, who was not eager to leave the apartment anytime soon, did not receive my mood well at all. He worked around it as best he could. I was very keen to visit Tito’s resting place, given that I missed out on that the last time I was in Belgrade. Through the miracle of washing away the vestiges of last night’s debauchery with a shower, and John now more carried by his need for food, we left the apartment around 11am. We descended the communal staircase, admiring the art deco style windows and peered nosily into the courtyard that was the heart of the square block of buildings. A space of serenity in the middle of the city.

We ventured up to Trg Republika, getting a coffee and a pastry on our way as we found our bearings. I managed to look up the bus route to get to the House of Flowers, the formal name for Tito’s resting place, which said to go to a bus stop near the Federal Parliament. So we crossed to Makedonska, and turned immediately right onto Decanska that led to Trg Nikole Pasica. The municipal buildings that dominated this stretch were built at the turn of the century, and had early Modernist styles with minimal ornamentation. This would have been Serbia’s own attempt at emulating the capitals of Western Europe, and in putting distance between them and their Ottoman heritage. Upon approaching the square, the opulent green dome of the Federal Parliament came into view. You would have imagined the Skupstina to be larger, but in fact it stood out from the buildings that surrounded it by being smaller than they. The dark behemoth that was the main post office loomed behind the pale Skupstina.

We walked in front of the parliament to look at the banners that were laid out in front of it. We deciphered the Serbo-Croatian to understand the thrust of the message was the plight of the Serbs in Kosovo. A denunciation of NATO was also thrown into the mix. However, no people accompanied the banners. They had been put up and left by their owners, and evidently in no way to the annoyance of the parliamentary authorities. We didn’t want to linger in case we looked interested in the subject matter and guilty by association, so continued to our bus stop.

After only a short wait in the sunshine next to a rather busy road, our trolleybus greeted us. John soon perked up at the immanent experience he was about to have on his first trolleybus ride. We boarded at the front, behind two people we presumed were local to the city. Once our turn arrived, I asked the driver for two tickets to the Tito Mausoleum. Not initially catching what I was saying as English, the driver motioned to repeat my request. I changed tack and asked if the bus went to the Tito Mausoleum. He said yes, but by the time I offered him some Denars through the small opening in his driver’s booth, he waved both my money away and the two of us into the bus. I suppose the double complication of having to explain the cost and the evident need to depart meant he would save time and effort just to let us on - perhaps with some knowledge that no ticket inspectors were patrolling today.

We went all the way to the back of the bus, where two seats were located behind the final set of bus doors and presumably perched on top of the engine. Straightaway, we were heading downhill on a long and straight road heading in a southerly direction, which soon flattened out. I had looked up the route to get there; to verify that the bus route went as intended, and indeed to check our bus was corresponding to that. We passed a number of prominent buildings, some smaller but displaying flags of different countries. We assumed this must be the government quarter with a smattering of embassies. We sped over a bridge that passed the intersection of the main motorway on which we arrived to Belgrade on the previous day. We then bared left on to a leafier thoroughfare that ran alongside Hajd Park – yes, eponymous with London’s own city lungs.

Although I knew our stop was close by, prepared by my pressing the bell and standing up, when the bus came to a full stop the driver peered through his window to beckon us off. How very helpful and friendly of him. I disembarked, still fuzzy in my head with the last ebbs of being drunk now merging into a hangover.  This was not how I imagined turning up to the mausoleum that I was always intrigued to visit.

The grand façade of the main building of the complex was upon us as soon as we began the walk uphill from the bus stop. Its large, wing-like expanse was typical of the theme of brutalist architecture we seemed to be pursuing, but was less severe than its contemporaries of the 1960s. This building, the 25 May Museum, was the main complex that was opened in 1962 to house gifts Tito had received up to that date. This was to be the last of the three buildings we were to visit. We approached a small building on the left that contained the ticket office and shop. For a small fee, we could access the aforementioned museum, the House of Flowers, and the Old Museum. We walked up the path, flanked by the odd statue here and there, and came around to the entrance to the House of Flowers, water fountain trickling in the background as we entered.

Whether the interior had been refurbished or not, the décor was very 1970s conservatory chic. Concrete and glass, with magnolia washed walls, meant that the odd pieces of 1970’s Danish furniture stuck out prominently. The marble tomb of the late dictator lay it the centre, sun shining from up on high, but secluded from us periodically by Mediterranean foliage acting as guards. In one wing of the room there were displays of Tito’s personal belongings. In the other there was a hoard of what looked like 1980s darts trophies. It threw me to try and recall why I had not picked up during my studies on Tito that he was a keen darts player. It turns out that they were in fact batons. Originally, these were symbols of youth in Socialist Yugoslavia, that were carried around the country to arrive in Belgrade on Tito’s birthday, which he shared with the Day of Youth national holiday. But then the idea expanded, so that all of the formal socialist and communist organisations – national through to local – would present them to Tito when he visited.

Onwards then to the Old Museum, that contained oddities from Yugoslavia’s past, particularly from the founding of Socialist Yugoslavia in the 1940s. My favourite was a wall mounted geographical relief map of Yugoslavia. I really wanted it. We then visited the final building, but not before my buying a coffee cup and saucer and Yugoslavia tote bag from the gift shop as souvenirs. The last building had less content, and what there was of it was in Serbo-Croatian. However, what I did enjoy was a minimalist map that was painted onto the wall. I bizarrely find fascination in different language scripts, and the names of the major cities on this map I really appreciated. I was mystified what this map could possibly represent. By process of elimination I gathered the names of some of the cities that weren’t capitals, and noted Jasenovac. I also noted that one of the words said ‘Revolution’ – so perhaps it indicated sites of monuments to the revolution that I knew dotted the former Yugoslavia. I took a picture so I could study it later on.

Nearby was the Partisan Football stadium and I suggested we pop by there, knowing John was a football fan, and that his dad may appreciate a visit to something non-politics/history orientated. In the fragile state he was in, and knowing the violent history of the fans of the team based there, he decided we shouldn’t go. Yet we also decided to walk back to the city, despite our sorry state, as we wanted to get a closer look at the buildings we saw on our journey over. It was definitely not the case that we were put off from having to negotiate a bus ride back.

So off we walked towards the motorway intersection. A new railway station was being built to our right, perhaps to replace or complement the old one what will sit next to the newly regenerate riverside development. Over the motorway we returned, and the avenue of the government quarter began with a harsh reminder of recent history. After consultation by John of Wikimapia, the bombed out building before us was the former Ministry of Internal Affairs. It was the target of NATO bombing in 1999 in order to get Milosevic to submit to demands for his regime to withdraw from Kosovo. This placed the somewhat visible resentment towards NATO through graffiti in context, but was not acted out through resentment towards nationals from those countries that made up NATO, as evidenced by our bus driver earlier. It was eerie witnessing my first example of a missile attack and the scale of the destruction that it can cause.

We walked along the traffic-jammed artery towards the Parliament ahead, commenting on the architecture and using our new found friend in Wikimapia to feed us details of buildings that intrigued us. Many of the buildings were built after the Second World War, so were modernist in design and emblazoned with images of communist warriors or socialist stars. As we started to incline again back to the city proper, another bombed out building bookended this segment of the avenue. This time it was the Armed Forces building. A few hundred yards on, we decided to take a left and walk amongst the tight-knit buildings towards the Kalemegdan, as it would provide much needed shade from the sun and not have as steep a walk to get to the main high street. We meandered through blocks of housing and offices, noting a few al fresco-dining establishments for future reference. We then appeared alongside Hotel Moscow again. Its vibrantly coloured and glazed tile façade stood out from the brutalist monotony surrounding it.

Back at the fortress, we took a bit more time to do some exploring. After rounding the fortress wall as before, we wondered within the grounds to look at some of the buildings and monuments. One was a small hexagonal building, topped with terracotta roof tiles, with a plaque in Serbo-Croatian and Arabic above a caged wooden door. It was a mausoleum for a Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and two other muhafiz (Belgrade Governors). It was nice to see one of the few historical reminders that the Ottoman Empire had a presence here. As we continued our walk around, we came across a roof terrace bar built into the ramparts. The negative side of having a tourist attraction is the rampant commercialisation that accompanies it. We avoided it.

After a while, we unconsciously found ourselves heading back to the apartment. Before departing for another late dinner, we played a few games of cards again, drinking the remains of our alcohol. We picked another restaurant on the Skardalija to eat, deciding on a bottle of Tikves white wine to accompany our food. Towards the end of our meal, the house band that was doing the rounds came nearby to serenade the table behind us. They added to the jovial mood that the diners were in, including us. On a roll from last night’s ability to locate a gay bar, we decided to try and find another. However, we were not so lucky this time. We wondered through and around a block of buildings that had the Parliament building, Hotel Moscow and Trg Republika surrounding it. At times I thought we stood out a mile, looking for a place we couldn’t locate but passersby would know our secret mission and destination. After circulating 3 times, we abandoned our search and went home. But not before stopping by a hole in the wall that was a small pizzeria, selling only capricciosa pizza with a handful of choices for toppings. It was delicious.

Thoughts on Saviours of the Nation by Jasna Dragovic-Soso

Essentialist views accounting for the rise of nationalism in the Former Yugoslavia have taken a myriad of paths. Whether they be the return of ‘ancient hatreds’ ingrained in the people, the economic decline during the 1980s fuelling social discontent, the fall of communism more generally in the east, the actions of political actors wishing to consolidate power and using any tool at their disposal, or others.

However, if we are to understand how nationalism forms as an ideology, as opposed to a movement as it often becomes, then there have been few analyses of the role of academics in Yugoslavia, and Serbia specifically, in how they (re)constructed and projected Serbian nationalism during the 1980s. Jasna Dragović-Soso goes further than the usual sign posting of events, such as the leaking of the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She describes how nationalism developed among the intelligentsia, and traces its origins from the 1950s when they originally formed as an opposition movement to the regime that subsequently called for human rights and democracy in the immediate post-Tito era. She observes how many of these opposition intellectuals, a potential political alternative championing the human rights causes of Serbs in Kosovo, mutated into nationalists and became neutered as the ‘opposition’ when their cause received acceptance and promotion in the social and political realm. It was this capitulation that allowed Milosević to gain a tighter grip on power during the 1990s, and suffocate any building of a political alternative.

Miroslav Hroch’s Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe is clearly an influence in Dragović-Soso’s work. Although his empirically backed theory is indicative of novel nationalist movements, his three-stage process of nationalist mobilisation is evident in this book as its accounts for the re-emergence of Serbian nationalism in the 1980s. It is the first stage, the 'heightened cultural awareness of national distinctiveness among intellectuals and the literati' that Dragović-Soso captures superbly.

The example of Serbia in the 1980s must be viewed in the context of the history of Serbian nationalism. It had existed and thrived before, and had been a leading element in the struggles of the first Yugoslav state. The inability to challenge official historical thought during the Tito era meant that Serbian history was both petrified and silenced. It sat alongside other nationalisms, historic and new, that bubbled under the surface in a similar manner during the second Yugoslavia. The Croatian Spring that ended the liberal period in academia in the 1960s, was followed by a liberal period in Serbia, whilst the crackdown ensued in Croatia. Slovenia gradually liberalised and reached its zenith in the 1980s. These environments set the scene for how the republican intelligentsia’s interacted and began to diverge in their outlook. Dragović-Soso’s hones in on the situation in Kosovo and the subsequent split between the Serbian and Slovene intellectuals as the two occurrences that allowed the intelligentsia in Serbia to move from being a political alternative to one in the keeping of Milosević.

Kosovo came to the fore in the early 1980s following years of disgruntlement regarding the now majority-Albanian’s demand for republican status. Violence and civil disobedience resulted in a brutal crackdown. The Serbian intelligentsia championed the desire for human rights to take precedence in Kosovo, which rested mostly on the situation experienced by the Kosovan Serb population. But Dragović-Soso emphasises that the key issue was about human rights, and had the support from other republican intelligentsias. This was also a manoeuvre by the Serbian intelligentsia to show that they could critique the existing regime and pose alternatives. Prior to this, the intelligentsia debated the revision of official Partisan history, therefore rocking the foundations of the myths of the establishment of Socialist Yugoslavia in 1944. In tandem with this, the wider demand for democratisation emerged, whether that would result in internal party pluralism or multi-party pluralism.

It was following this that certain individuals within the formal institutions of the intelligentsia – the Writers Association or the Academy of Sciences and Arts – began to bring forth arguments that put Serbian history and identity as a solution to the demise of the Socialist Yugoslav regime. Past events such as the Serbs being eternal victims of others and renegotiating the numbers of Serbs killed during WWII struck a nerve during the topical issue of Kosovo and the plight of the Serbs there. The infamous ‘Memorandum’ was seen as the fusion of these ideas with the wider alternative programme sought in opposition to the current regime.

But how did this Memorandum make the leap to the political sphere? Dragović-Soso plays down the direct link to the growing power of Milosević, and critiques the timing of events. She points out that Milosević had no part in the Memorandum’s writing or leaking, and actually dismissed it as ‘Serb chauvinism’. It wasn’t until a year later that he espoused themes from it. So the intelligentsia were still acting independently of party politics in 1986. Moving from the document itself, the authors themselves provided the link. Dobrica Ćosić and Mihailo Marković were two of the main writers who would eventually go on to become political leaders in the 1990s under Milosević’s newly created Socialist Party of Serbia. The document itself caused a public sensation and fed into public discourse on the issue. I do not share the same view that Milosević could not have known about it, as he socialised in similar elite circles in Belgrade. Instead I feel he allowed it to play out in the public arena first to test the waters, and then come in with his own version of it sometime later.

Parallel to these events were the relationships between the republican intelligentsias. The one relationship singled out is that between the Serbs and the Slovenes. Slovenians were at one with the Serbs on the issue of Kosovo at the beginning and, separately, both moved towards developing their own renewed sense of national identity and history. However, in Slovenia this also went in tandem with democratisation in society (for example youth organisations being able to criticise the regime), but this did not occur in Serbia. It got to a point where Slovenians began to criticise the situation in Kosovo in opposition to the claims of their Serbian counterparts. Slovenes stuck to human rights and democratisation as fundamental ideals. The Serbs stuck to them only in the context of protecting the Kosovan Serbs.

The Slovenes experienced their national renewal coming about through democracy. Serbs saw theirs coming about through Milosević. Dragović-Soso concludes that the Serb intelligentsia for the most part chose the nation over democracy after Milosević sang a similar tune to the Academy’s Memorandum.

One question that Dragović-Soso fails to account for is how the regime in Serbia allowed the proliferation of dissent to occur in regime-controlled institutions. Although partially explained under the general ‘liberal’ period that followed Tito’s death, it is not explained why the regime acted leniently towards these individuals and their work. Did personal relationships exist between middle and top ranking regime officials and the intelligentsia, particularly on the Belgrade scene, which meant rebukes were mild ‘slaps on the wrist’? Or was the weakness of the regime so much so that they did not have the ability to instil conformity as they had done in the past? It is plausible that some in the regime wanted this dissent grow to in order to bolster their hand in the wider political games being played during the period to consolidate personal power.

What Dragović-Soso delivers is an in-depth account of the leading players in the intelligentsia and their institutional bodies in Serbia, and how their critical thinking in the 1980s turned from human rights and democracy to nationalism by the 1990s. Once this project was taken up by leaders wishing to direct the future of Yugoslavia, the dissident intellectuals who would have been natural alternatives to the regime, instead made a choice and became co-conspirators in promoting Serb nationalism they originally, perhaps naively, articulated.