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.

Around the Balkans in 20 Days – Part 5

We had an early start today, as we began our trip to Macedonia’s northern neighbour. We packed our remaining belongings after getting ready, and did a last minute look around the apartment for anything left behind. We hauled our backpacks on, the heft of which was added to with the weight of the bottles of Tikves wine I wanted to take home with me. As instructed, we closed all the windows, turned the air con off and locked our apartment door, leaving the keys in the hallway before departing through the main door on to the stairwell. One last trip was had in the rickety lift, my nerves on edge in case the bottom fell through with said backpacks. Luckily we survived to the ground floor and made our way out the communal door and on to the main square. Even for 7am, it was suffocatingly hot. I hoped and prayed this bus had air con!

With the heat in mind, John suggested that we take a taxi to the bus station. I was a little relieved he did ask, although I feigned a little bit of opposition at first (as is my demeanour) before capitulating and agreeing.  I let John do the talking, to a driver parked adjacent to the Arc de Triomphe. He helped us with our backpacks, and soon drove us down the familiar 11^th October Street. Smatterings of early risers were heading in the opposite direction to us, possibly to set up shop for the first day of weekend trading. Tracing the route we walked two days previous, we were at the train and bus station in no time.

After paying for our ride, we were met with the usual humdrum around a station, even at this hour. Bus engines where whirring in the background as we made our way into the departures hall to find information for our bus. Although the main boards were in Cyrillic, the front of the buses had English signs for their destinations. We spotted ours through the flimsy idea for a ticket gate, where a couple of small families had set up camp ahead of the driver opening the vehicle to let them on board. We had about 25 minutes, so we went to a kiosk in the hall to purchase some extra treats to add to our horde. We added sweets and crisps to our stash of water, sandwiches and beer – well, we were going to be on a bus for 8 hours!

We returned to the departure gate and showed our tickets to the clerk. Uninterested, he waved us both through, and over me moved to the front of our bus. We dumped our bags next to those of the waiting families. We were told two days ago when buying the tickets that a charge would be levied for the luggage, something we are not used to doing in the UK as the ticket price normally includes the luggage we bring. Not knowing how much this charge would be, I ordered John to take a stash of notes out so that we wouldn’t be one of those couples who searches for change and holds up a queue. I think John got out about £30 in Denar. When it came around to our boarding, the charge was a mere £2. Very reasonable, and set the bar for how much we would be paying on other bus journeys ahead.

We boarded a bus that was definitely a relic of the late 1980s/90s. Perhaps Communist apparatchiks rode in it themselves! Anyway, we placed ourselves on our dated purple and white moquette seats half way up the bus. My thinking was that the toilet would be located down the emergency exit stairwell opposite, so we would have ease of access. But as we unpacked our immediate travel necessities – headphones and the like – I noticed that there was no door either to the left or right, just the emergency door straight ahead to leave the bus. I turned around to see if there was a cubicle at the back of the bus. None existed. Shit.

So now I sat contemplating a bus ride for 8 hours without a toilet. Drinking beer was now out of the question. We didn’t know how many stops there were, where we were stopping, or even if the stops had toilet facilities. I was thinking how we would have to ration our water intake but balance it finely with our hydration needs, in order to reduce the need to go. John at this point darted out of the bus, departing in 10 minutes, to go for a last minute relief break. I ummed and ahed as to whether I should do the same, but decided my chance had now gone by the time John returned. I knew I would now be anxious for the entirety of the journey. The driver fired up the engine and the air con blew into action. So too did the Wi-Fi. Wouldn’t you believe it, no bog but there was high speed internet. Incredible!

The at-capacity bus reversed out of its bay, pulled forward through the barrier emerging from under the train platforms and on to the side street in the open air. We drove to the dual carriageway, and headed eastward. The sun was blazing through the windows, but we did have the use of curtains if we needed them. I quite enjoyed my window seat views as we swiftly passed from city suburbia to open country. The raised elevation of the road and coach meant I had a great view of the horizon. Our route would take us around the edge of the mountain range observed on Mount Vodno, which blocked our view to Serbia in the east two days ago. Now we would get to see what lay behind it. John made use of the Wi-Fi capabilities, which kept him entertained. We merged on to the E75, the road that connects Budapest to Thessaloniki and undergoing work for an additional east/west junction, to proceeded north.

We pulled off the motorway after 30 minutes or so of travelling, with Kumanovo being our first stop. I could only pass a fleeting judgment on the city, but I did notice that the ethnic divide was somewhat lesser here. The odd mosque and church didn’t seem to conform to a logic that a certain group lived in one part or another. The bus station was a mere parking lot with an aged administrative building near the entrance. A number of travellers left us, but they were equally replaced with new people boarding. We then set off towards the Serbian border.

I wanted to test out this Wi-Fi, so I decided to FaceTime my mum. I logged on to the Wi-Fi and called her. I had quite forgotten that it was very early in the morning in the UK, but nonetheless my mother was awake. It had been just over a week since we left for Berlin, and although I had messaged her and FaceTimed once, we chatted about the past couple of days. John’s head would bob in and out of the camera at prompts to the conversation I was engaged in, but only because he could hear just my side of it as I had my headphones in. After 5 minutes, we said our goodbyes.

We knew we were approaching the border because the driver’s aid (or the second driver!?) started walking up the bus and collecting an assortment of documentation, passports and ID cards etc. We gave him our passports with the visitation paper. He then waddled back to the front of the bus prior to our stopping and starting through the slow traffic to the Macedonian border control. John and I anticipated observing a mass of migrants at the border, or a sense of chaos following the refugee crisis in the previous months. But there were only a handful of people at this particular crossing. I suspect the initial influx of refugees had either made it to Serbia or they walked alongside the border to a more open spot to cross and continue their journey. As we waited, I saw that we were now indeed on the other side of the mountains guarding Skopje, and were situated in an open valley. As I was on the left-hand side of the bus, I could only see the western hillside where a settlement nestled halfway up on the Serbian side of the border. If you climbed up and over that hillside, you would be in Kosovo.

We passed through the Macedonian side with ease, and the guide handed back our passports but without our visitation paper. We then progressed to the Serbian checkpoint. We all had to get off the bus and individually hand in our passport to the guard in a toll-booth like structure in order to be stamped. The bus may have been checked by a guard or two, I was unsure, but 10 minutes or so later it pulled up alongside us for us all to get back on.

We wound our way along the motorway, pulling off every 50 kilometers or so to drop off/pick up passengers at small towns along the route. The landscape was still that of wide floodplain expanses, with the odd hill here and there, or in the distance. At one stop, John dashed off with a fistful of denars to go to the toilet. He exchanged words with the driver before getting off. I was anxious in case it was lost in translation that John said he would only be 5 minutes but the driver would instead drive off. I was also worried of the reverse that John would dawdle and be longer than 5 minutes and risk the ire of the driver, who may have chosen to depart anyway. Luckily neither happened, and John rushed back. His description of the toilet had me fear for my personal hygiene for when I would be my turn.

The one thing that struck me as we dipped in and out of these towns were the continuous EU signs on new buildings or projects. They must be spending a huge sum as part of the initial accession package ahead of EU membership. This juxtaposed with my earlier assumptions of Serbia having a dislike of anything EU related. It also just reminded me of the unfortunate situation we found ourselves in the UK, only weeks before. Thankfully, thus far, we had avoided any forlorn faces or sympathetic conversations from locals about our current quagmire.

But then my need for a rest break soon came about, in-between stops. So I had to concentrate on my need to hold it in, whilst wishing for a stop to be on the horizon. When it indeed came, I signalled to the driver before I leapt off with two fingers and mouthed “two minutes”. He nodded with a sense of further frustration at delaying his intended immediate departure. I really needed to use the full facilities of the £1 entry toilet block, but was aghast at the cleanliness and the furniture I found in the cubicle – a floor level basin. I had neither the time nor inclination to try and navigate this scenario. After doing as much as I could to ensure a comfortable onward journey, I jumped back on the bus and off we set.

The last stop before Belgrade was Nis. Located in central southern Serbia, this was its third city. And it seemed as though it was the forgotten city in that it needed a bit of tidying up. Buildings looked creaky, and the bus station seemed to look like an imitation, yet run-down, petrol station from the early 1980s. It did the job I suppose. John had to dip out for another toilet break, but here we had 10 minutes to stretch legs. I dashed to the toilet too.

Soon after we left the city, I started to nod off. I awoke about 40km outside of Belgrade, and the sleep meant I did not have to focus on my need for the loo. Outside, the bus meandered uphill through low, rolling green hills in weather that had now grown overcast. A steady stream of cars travelling alongside us soon grew in number as we approached the capital. We then came over the crest of a hill and started our descent into the city. The taller, modernist structures peered in-between the folds of the remaining hills obstructing our view, before the suburbs swept alongside us and our view of the burgeoning city was made clear. The motorway cut right through the southern part of the city, from east to west, and we departed at a main junction that sat next to the Sava River. We turned north into the city, running parallel to the railway tracks. The bus depot was adjacent to the railway station. We disembarked and collected our backpacks. There was little fanfare with our arrival, and our co-travellers seemed keen to go their different ways immediately. No hanging around!

Our new surrounds presented refurbished Austro-Hungarian architecture sat next to their patiently waiting neighbours. One building would be completely upgraded and finely pointed, and then the next would have its pastel coloured plaster partially missing and tired with pollution. The whole area was next to the Belgrade Riverside development, so was the natural next step for rehabilitation. We began to walk, crossing the main road in front of the station, to continue onward to Balkanska.

We walked past a two story covered car park, inside of which we noticed a gathering of about 70 or more men. It became apparent that these were all Syrian refugees. I mention men because there were no children or women present. None. They were huddled under the shade of the car park roof, amongst possessions that could be carried. So Belgrade was one of the centres the refugees congressed, waiting opposite the two methods of onward travel – train and bus.

We walked on and turned left up Balkanska. I recall the steep hill that this would become, and hated the idea of my backpack weighing me down. We plateaued next to the Hotel Moscow, and walked onwards to Trg Republika. We were early to check in, so we walked up Kneza Mihaila, the main shopping street, and sat down at a café to rest and quench our thirst. I opted for an elaborate Latte. We surveyed the scene and population. The street was bustling as shoppers and day-trippers leisurely went about their day. We were sat under a canopy with fans cooling us off. Where we were sat, at the top end of the pedestrianised shopping street, the buildings were low level copies of the pastel coloured ones near the station, some indicating dates of their construction. After a while, we returned to Trg Republika, and walked back downhill in the opposite direction into the Skadarlija. John appreciated a forgotten mode of transport that passed us by - a trolleybus.  I appreciated the breeze it gave off to cool me down.

The Skadarlija is a quarter adjacent to the popular Skadarska Street, which buzzes with restaurants and bohemian nightlife.  The cobbled street stretches from the Trg Republika at the top of the hill, down towards a green grocers market in the direction of the Danube. The end of the street, opposite the market, is marked with a Sebilj – a water fountain that was a gift of Sarajevo in 1989. The wider area seemed to be built pre-war, with raised one-storey houses resting next to tall four-storey apartment blocks formed on a grid basis. They were all constructed in the same dark grey stone and cement, with the unifying aesthetic of 1930’s modernism and the added flair of ornate stucco cornices every now and then; each with a touch of ageing decay.

A trolleybus whizzed by heading towards the town centre, as I made calls and sent messages on my phone to alert the homeowner that we were there. After 10 minutes, the cleaner for our apartment came down to let us in. She couldn’t speak English beyond the odd word or number. As we got into to our sizeable and modern apartment, on the top floor of a four-storey block, we had to use the aid of Google Translate. She hadn’t finished cleaning yet, so asked if we could come back in an hour. We left our bags and set off with a set of keys and left her to finish.

Although I had visited the foodie street before, I never really explored the quarter that would be our base for the next few days. I was excited to show John the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers from the Kalemegdan. So we walked through the side streets northwest, admiring the buildings and appreciating the shade provided by the narrow streets and tall buildings. On one corner we noticed an Art Deco/modernist building that seemed to house a cultural centre now, but when built contained the First Danube Steam Navigation Society, evidence of Belgrade’s key shipping status in the past.

We continued towards the Kalemegdan, walking via the Student Park, and entered via the main entrance opposite the top of Kneza Mihaila. At first, you walk through a small forest of trees before it opens up to landscaped gardens with monuments of Serbian and Yugoslav history.  People peppered the gritty pathways and benches as we walked along, the odd person stooping into the flowing water taps for refreshment. We bared left so we could begin our 180-degree walk from the east to the northwest along the ramparts of the fortress. The Sava is the first of the two rivers we see, travelling east towards the city, before turning gradually north as it arrives below us from the left. It then passes by towards the island created at the initial joining of the Sava and Danube, which was the furthest north we could see at present. Bridges heaving with traffic crossed over to New Belgrade with its brutalist architecture, hovering in the distance beyond the park opposite us. The old city loomed on our left, clinging on to the hilly riverside above the train station and beyond.

We turned right following the Sava northward along a slim boulevard towards the Danube. The fortress over the years had been expanded, and the terracotta/stone bricked walls we were walking alongside belonged to the 19^th century. We walked through an entry gate and climbed up to the older fortress plaza area belonging to the Ottoman period. We were now opposite the island and could fully take in the awesome view and power of the Danube swallowing the water of the Sava as it travelled eastward. In front of us now, to the north, a wall of forests guarded the Vojvodina, and in past times would have been the Military Frontier to the Austro-Hungarian Empire beyond. We decided to return to the apartment, so that we could recharge our batteries (technological and biological) and change for an evening meal.

I had chilled a bottle of the white wine we packed in Skopje, and John had done the same with the beer intended for the bus journey. We drank these as we changed, then settled down for while to play cards and trawl through social media to look for any gay nightlife. We found a Facebook page of a night that was located a mere 500 meters away. Google couldn’t locate it specifically, but we decided to give it a shot anyway. After getting rather merry whilst doing all this, we decided to head out and eat on the Skadarska.

Within 5 minutes we were there, so we walked up and down the cobbled street, looking at menus and agreeing at how reasonably priced it all seemed given the posh appearance of the restaurants. We decided on Dva Jelena – Two Deers. We had bread upon arrival and ordered a bottle of white. Our mains were rich and flavoursome, thankfully soaking up the equivalent of a bottle of wine we drank each by the dinners end. As we settled the bill of around £20, it was approaching midnight. We decided that rather than go to a bar for another, we would try and locate this club.

According to Google and other notable mapping websites, the building number for the club on this street did not exist. So we decided to trust street signs and instinct. We got to Dunavska and looked for the number, but we could only find a building that was two numbers before it, which ended at a crossroads.  In the low-lit street lighting characteristic of Europe, we were anxious not to be looking for a gay venue, in case haters were waiting for prey. So we circled a block of buildings to see if we could find a hidden set of numbers to mask the real location of the venue. We even tried to listen for the bass thumping sounds of music to guide us, but nothing gave away its location. We returned to the crossroads.

It was then that we spotted three men who we decided were heading for the club too. We hung around for 30 seconds so they were a good 200 meters ahead before following them. They took the road off the crossroads that was lined with wired fences separating the road from grassed over ex-industrial land, was hardly lit, and seemed to head towards an industrial park. Things became worrying when we had to cross a railway line. Relief came over us as we began to hear those bassy sounds. As we turned the corner of a building that reminded me more of a guardhouse, I noticed a police van parked across the way. Three people were on the door to the club, one in semi drag, and began to speak to us in Serbian as we went over. We gave our apologies and they then asked in English if we knew that this was a gay club. We said yes and smiled, showing our relief. They explain the cover charge and that it included two drinks tickets. Bargain! The officers in the police van seemed unperturbed.

Whether because the LGBT scene was rather small, or this was a place for regulars, or that we simply entered; a number of heads turned as we entered into the inner open-air courtyard of the club. A bar was opposite us, so we passed groups of friends as I ordered our first free drinks while John popped to the toilet. The Facebook group mentioned that three styles of music would be played, but we couldn’t see enough space for there to be three separate rooms. It later transpired that three DJs with different tastes of music played at varying times during the evening in the sole club space inside.

After finishing our first free drink, John grabbed the next as I set off for the loo. The interior was a small concrete bunker with graffiti and posters from events gone by plastered all over the place. It would be at home in east London. Upon my return John got speaking to two people, soon to be joined by a third. Nemanja was local to Belgrade and his friend Danilo was visiting family nearby and hailed from Dusseldorf. Voja, who joined us later, also lived in Belgrade. We got chatting about a whole host of things whilst in the courtyard, as the placed filled up even more. I asked about the police outside. Nemanja said that they were there to protect us, not intimidate us. This put my mind at rest. We stuck with these guys and exchanged numbers to potentially meet again while we were here. After a number of Vodka Cokes, we all went indoors for the pop music DJ set. My last memory was calling out at the top of my lungs, along with Voja, for Cher to be played. Not sure if the DJ obeyed.

Social Democracy in Post-Communist States (3/5)

Defining Social Democracy

Social democracy in its present form is the result of over hundred and fifty years of evolution, and breaks from its Marxist origins. Its ties to Marxism were broken after the October Revolution in 1917 in Russia because socialists disagreed on the means to reach socialism. There were those who sided with the revolutionary socialists in the ilk of the October Revolution, and there were those who preferred the democratic means to achieve similar goals. After this split, the former began to call themselves ‘communist’ whereas the latter became known as ‘democratic socialists’. This further evolved to become social democracy, as we know today (Andrew Heywood, and Bruno Coppieters and Kris Deschouwer).  Andrew Heywood states that ‘The social democratic tradition has therefore come to stand for a broad balance between the market economy on the one hand, and state intervention on the other.’ Although this is a theoretical development of social democracy, I seek to work with the definition of social democracy, advocated by Bruno Coppieters and Kris Deschouwer, in its practice as a social movement, an ideology and a type of society. I will focus specifically on the first two criteria.

The social movement is the unity of the wider, organised working class in political parties and trade unions. As a process it has its origins in the emergence of social cleavages as a result of the industrial revolution, and has developed and become institutionalised over the course of a hundred and fifty years advancing its causes slowly. However, this did not occur in the East. Reform was rapid and cleavages were blurry - hampered by other divisions, such as ethnicity, so as to weaken the movement. Ideologically, social democracy advocated a classless society like the communists, but this then altered after World War II to advocate an expansion of the welfare state within a liberal capitalist framework. Yet in the East, ‘socialism’ became discredited even when the ideological content was capitalist and populist. The transition saw a clash of principles where marketisation and economic liberalism rolled back the role of the state, especially in social welfare.   So social democracy developed into two different concepts between East and West based on its experiences of development, although they both face similar challenges today. These two defining features of social democracy will enable me to address its current form in Macedonia. Primarily, the point here is that one cannot directly or fairly compare the nature of social democracy in the East with that of the West.

The Socialist International experienced this problem of definition after the collapse of communism, when admitting members to the social democratic family. This is because the fluidity of the transition hasn’t harboured an environment to make lasting decisions, the concept of ‘left’ is defined differently in the East in ideological/policy terms, the differences between new and successor social democrats within a state make a decision difficult as to the trajectory of the party in the future, as well as a general inability by the populations to differentiate between revolutionary and democratic socialism. Hence a decision upon successor parties is based on the way they have structurally changed. This is evident in who these parties appeal to for support, the composition of their membership, and an experience of internal ideological splits due to democratisation. But the effects of these could lead to nationalist tendencies, the emergence of a small social democratic group within the parties led by individuals who are younger, and a pull to a strong party centre to maintain unity. However one observation by Heinz Timmerman is that successor parties retained a conservative approach to the economy during transition, albeit this may have altered since. Therefore, ‘social democratisation’ as a process of change within the successor parties can allow me to judge how far along this process the SDUM is at present.

Communist Successor Parties and their Legacies

Building on this issue of communist successor parties, as it is highly relevant given the SDUMs heritage, I look to arguments developed in Bozoki and Ishiyama’s ‘The Communist Successor Parties of Central and Eastern Europe’. In their opening chapter, they look at the transformation of political identities that these parties undertook during democratisation through the strategies they employed. The typology of four party positions comes from whether the party is still Marxist or not, and whether it is transmuted or not. Factors that impact on the strategy that is followed are either environmental or internal organisational. The former rests on the reaction a party has to certain stimuli such as election results or vying to dominate political space on the left from similar contenders. The latter, on the other hand, depends on whether the party is a mass or cadre party (as to whom can change its identity), the attitude of the former regime whilst in power, and events during the transition including the carry over of party personnel and internal ideological struggles. Therefore, Bozoki and Ishiyama write, ‘the evolution of the adaptation strategies of the successor parties can be seen as both the product of the interaction between political performance on the one hand and the internal organizational characteristics of the successor parties, on the other.’ These points will allow me to re-evaluate the party within the typology outlined to assess its current strategy.

Yet, it is the existence of legacies which allow me to return to the period prior to independence because ‘If epistemological criteria for causal explanation require a minimum of temporal causal depth, only institutions, structures, processes, and actions that antedate the “proximate” events of the transition qualify as the ultimate causal variables of regime change.’ (Herbert Kitschelt) Yet these legacies do not overcome exogenous ‘shocks’ and internal party maneuverings of ambitious politicians. Understanding the impact of legacies, in their variety, upon the party today helps to assess the extent to which the SDUM are hostages to their legacies, if at all. Kitschelt’s typology of predicting the strategies and organisations of communist successor parties starts his causal chain from the era around World War I. The variables include: the strength of precommunist political society, the professionalization of the state apparatus, whether it was a newly independent country seeking Western support, if the party strategy was programmatic or clientelistic, its ideological clarity, its electoral support, the ratio of members to voters and citizens, as well as the extent of internal party centralization. He describes Macedonia’s typology as ‘paternal communism’, a group marked different because of their association with independence movements.

The impact of legacies on the strategies of the Macedonian successor party show that because they emerged from dominant ethnic rulers, the regional leaders turned to independence, democratisation and reform. Because of weak precommunist political society and a weak state apparatus there was no mobilisation in opposition to communism, and the party was partial to promote clientelistic practices. This may have stymied the ideological renewal of the party. Yet a consociational form of governance possibly cut across these legacies because of internal ethnic divisions, external threats and international instability.

Those in the three-tiered hierarchy of the party may have felt the impact of legacies in the organization of the Macedonian successor party. The leaders (first tier) in newly independent states could expect support for politico-economic reform. The middle ranking bureaucracy (second tier) could lose out, so some may leave parties governed by reformists, as was the case in Macedonia. The members’ (third tier) incentives to remain would be reduced, but sentimental and clientelistic factors play a role in their staying.  The parties in newly independent states may lose members who lose out to reform and clientelist links, but nationalist-minded supporters will join. This was a consistency in membership during transition. The distribution of power within the organisation is also impacted by legacies because differences in political outlooks of the three tiers of the party may increase or decrease internal democracy. In Macedonia, centralisation has occurred, but wholesale purging of the old guard was avoided by a new membership intake. The link to trade unions is tenuous as they tended to be present in those industries that would lose out from reform, and thus proved problematic to parties who pursued economic liberalization such as Macedonia. But to what extent is this typology assigned to the Macedonian case still relevant today?

Around the Balkans in 20 Days – Part 4

Our last full day in Skopje, and we had our sights set on leaving the city limits. Following our prompt to the taxi driver yesterday, her enthusiasm for Matkasee drove us to wanting to visit even more. So we followed our usual morning routine, including packing a lunch, and left the apartment, heading for the Ramstore. Another still and warm day, ideal for an outdoorsy day within a ravine and amongst the forest.

We dipped in to the supermarket at the Ramstore and bought plenty of water. We didn’t know how long our trek would be, so wanted to be armed with enough liquid to see us through. Now, instead of calling the chirpy taxi driver from yesterday, we decided to go rogue and just call at the taxi rank. After a minute or two of standing on the opposite side of the road to the taxi rank, with faint hope of eyeing up a suitable driver that agreed with us (and that those who didn’t would have picked up custom and moved on), we inevitable had to get in the New York style cab of a guy who was there two minutes previous. I’m sure he was baffled by our indecision!

We communicated effectively enough for him to know that we wanted to go to the Matkasee, so off we sped. The air con was a godsend, filtering us with its chilling breeze as the sun shone forcefully through the untinted windows. We coasted along the main route west out of town, lined with 1960’s, post-earthquake brutalist constructions, and over the Vardar. Once over, we followed a road that ended at a junction. To the right was the main route eastward, north and around the city, to the left the road headed towards Tetovo. We turned left and ran parallel to small parades of shops on either side of the avenue. The suburb we entered was definitely distinct from the city centre. It was a lot more of a suburb, every road leading off the avenue leading to low-rise brutalist residential accommodation. I know this because we had to detour through the side streets as the main avenue was dug up for resurfacing. As we passed through, the sanguine effect of the sun was ever present on the residents. Lackadaisically, they ambled around, perhaps from a household chore or to the shops. It was the summer after all, and the temperature was rising.

As we skirted through the suburbs, we stopped off at a petrol station so the up-til-then silent driver could fill up the tank. Swiftly back on the road, and no sooner that we were back on the main avenue, we turned left down what I would call a country road. This was our route to Matkasee, off the beaten track. Originally, I had hoped we could have taken the bus, and that would have been cheaper and a rather more real experience. However, the further away from the city we travelled, the lesser the confidence grew in me as we entered unchartered waters. I was glad of a local to guide us through.

We entered a village called Saraj, the first that was evidently Albanian. This was the first time I had seen the Albanian flag being flown in what seemed a more official capacity. The village itself stretched about half a mile or so. It obviously suffered from a lack of investment. The road was bumpy, there were pavements for all of about 400 meters of the village, a bus stop that was basically a pole in the ground, and a public building that was either run down or was never completed. You could feel the resentment, and I would too, from the lack of attention from the Government. And this from a Government that had an ethnic Albanian party as its coalition partners. Romantically, I became fond of it as we travelled through. Once Saraj passed by, we drove along a flat, country road then started going up hill and into another even smaller village. This one was more tightly knit architecturally as the road whisked past the edges of peoples houses and near to their front doors. We finished climbing as we approached a small river, heading upstream as we were. We then entered a flatter floodplain, the road and river snaking along side each other. Part of the river was now more man-made, with kayaking facilities clearly visible, but also a gathering of individuals and families bathing and sloshing around in the river. We carried on.

We scaled another small hill and before us appeared the hydroelectric dam. Signs warned not to take pictures. I couldn’t fathom what the state secret could have been! As the dam disappeared behind us, we came to a halt. Our mute driver soon explained that we should walk 500 yards or so and that would be where our trail would begin. We paid him our rather cheap £9 for a 40-minute taxi ride, and walked up a narrow path into the mouth of the ravine. A couple of groups passed us walking in the opposite direction as we weaved along a narrow path that sheltered under hanging cliffs – a momentary respite from the sun.

As we turned a corner, we opened up from a bottleneck into an open expanse. To our right, the continuing path reached a canopied bar terrace and long stone building. In the centre was a turquoise green lake that stretched on ahead. To our left were what looked like scar-damaged, chalky white-gray cliffs that rose out from the lake like pyramids to the crystal-blue sky. As we approached the canopied area, it appeared the long building was a bar and restaurant. Before reaching there and ordering a drink, we noticed that we could hire kayaks to go up the lake.  A few visitors were ambling into them as we walked on, others beginning their voyage. We decided over our beer and cola to hire a kayak from the end of the trail, so that we could return in style after visiting some caves. There was a nice mix of people there – families, couples, groups of lads, tourists – but mostly locals of Albanian background, which cheered me immensely.

After our drink we decided to set off. I used the wifi to try and map our walk but, with little satellite mapping, only a limited amount could be done. After we passed the restaurant there was a large sign for walkers. Mostly in Cyrillic, but accompanied by pictures. The one that shone out for me was of a snake. Bloody SNAKES! Poisonous or not, I didn’t care. Their slithery bodies would freak the hell out of me anyway. Included in this collage were the flora and fauna of the canyon, as well as lizards. Surely I could deal with them. So our walk began with my heart rate at a rather higher pace than anticipated.

My movements through the rocky and dusty path were commando-esque. I flinched at any sound I heard, and recoiled at any movement that emanated from the steep hillside or rock face to our right. The only promising escape at times was a 50-foot drop into the lake. John just giggled most of the way at my paranoia and hysteria. The start of the walk was beautiful, the water twinkling in the sun, and the historic cliff faces showcasing scars from an age gone by. Kayakers paddled on by, with the odd accompaniment of a diesel powered boat chugging through. The first lizard really did make me jump. It was the more the realisation that it was there that scared me, not that it could do anything to me. On the contrary, it merely scarpered as it saw me. We continued.

After 30 minutes or so we started to question where the end was. After 45 minutes, we did so even more. After an hour, we asked people coming back the other way if the end was near. In patchy and unclear English, they said “Yes, not far” and pointed ahead. Thrilled that the end was near, we walked on with more of a spring in our step. 20 minutes later we reached the end - a green barrier, and a path that evaporated into the ether. An exhausted and exasperated look crossed our faces, similar to Wily Coyote when he fails to catch Roadrunner and the anvil lands on his head instead.  After holding our toilet break for over an hour, we climbed a few yards into the lizardy mountain and relieved ourselves. We could both see and hear the boats mooring nearby for the promised caves, on the opposite side of the canyon. No bridge or boat to connect us, and no boats for us to hire to take us downstream.  So now my thoughts turned to those wretched snakes, almost as if they had planned this trek, leading me to a dead end so that they could haunt me further on my return to sanctuary. My initial relief at reaching the end of the walking element of our exploration now turned into an even more insufferable return to a tortured path littered with imaginary snakes. As usual on a return journey, it seemed shorter. And so, I celebrated my return with a drink or two, John paying for a couple of rounds of beers to relive my stress.

Whilst there, and with access to wifi, I decided to FaceTime Michelle from the lakeside. A drunken call for 20 minutes went by in a blur. Back I went – now onto cocktails. 20-something Albanian lads occupied a rock jutting out into the lake partaking in camaraderie and diving into the lake. It then dawned upon me that I had no cash, and John had just spent his last on the drinks. No kayaking for us, although we had enough for the planned bus we planned to take back to Skopje.

So we departed, I slightly annoyed that we couldn’t go kayaking, but relieved that the organiser in me knew we had scant information on when and where to get the bus back to Skopje. We walked back where the taxi dropped us off earlier in tandem with other visitors now heading back home. We walked down towards the man-made kayaking facility as no bus stop seemed evident up to that point. A little further on, a busy car park was emptying slowly – cars doing u-turns and queuing whilst spitting up dust from the chalky road. We carried on past a couple of buildings, one housing a pedestrian bridge to the other side of the river, and onwards to a restaurant placed opposite an exposed, wooden hut. This may be our bus stop, as there were a couple of people there who looked like tourists. I persuaded John to go to the restaurant to double check. The waiter confirmed this.

It was getting late in the day, deceptively so as the sun was ‘setting’ behind the hills to the west. After 30 minutes or so, 4 young lads came to join the small but growing contingent in the wooden shack. After overhearing their conversation, we knew they were British. At a guess, they were 19 or 20. One asked if this was the bus stop, and John replied yes. This opened up conversation starting with the Matkasee and led on to our travelling plans. It seems that they were heading from Skopje to Belgrade by night train, then Berlin via Budapest, and onwards to Amsterdam. John and I affectionately called them the ‘In-betweeners’. They had the same characters in each of them – Briefcase, English ‘lad’, the dopey one, and average one obsessed with Carly. After 20 minutes a clapped-out old bus with no passengers onboard came from the direction of Saraj and passed us. In the immediate confusion of whether the bus stop was actually back up the road, one of the In-betweeners went off to explore just beyond the bend where the pedestrian bridge was. He came back and said that it was attempting to turn around.

A taxi soon passed by with the driver offering anyone a lift to Skopje for about £14. We declined and said that we would wait for the bus, to which he replied that it was broken down. We didn’t want this potential ruse to lure us into paying over the odds, so we declined again. No one else took up the offer. The In-betweeners were relying on the bus, as they hadn’t brought enough cash for a taxi. Our conversation with them soon drifted. After another 25 minutes of waiting, John unilaterally decided to take the next taxi – we could get cash on the way.

One passed by soon enough and John leapt into it, no doubt getting tired and restless. The taxi was metered and the driver suggested the fare would be about £12. We just nodded and off he drove. As we coasted along towards Saraj, we had hit upon a turned over truck in the road with a set of tyre marks veering off to the right. A black, expensive car was at the end of these marks, down a steep embankment. Clearly the car was trying to overtake the lorry but must have misjudged and ended up on a sort of car park area below. We skirted around the chaos, with the driver expelling grunts of disapproval. We sped on through the village and onwards to the main boulevard. As we merged onto a roundabout, a car to our left veered on to our lane and clipped the taxi. A near miss that sent our driver off on another tirade of grunts. We just wanted to get back, undamaged preferably.

A shattered John asked the driver to pull up at an ATM near the police station we registered at. He came back with a wad of cash, happy to be able to pay for the easier journey home. However, he got ten times as much cash out as needed. Instead of 10,000 denars he got 100,000 - £100. His tiredness was clearly showing. He found an exchange office and changed the rest into Serbian dinars ready for our bus journey north.

We headed back to the apartment, where we showered, changed and undertook some preliminary packing of our belongings. We had our last drink on the balcony as the sun was setting before returning to the police station. We had the police officer complete our small registration form to say that we were exiting the country in the morning, and he signed this off in his official book. We then returned to the main square and onward to Carpe Diem again for food. The halloumi with honey and sesame seed starter was to die for. As we had to get up very early, we finished up our food and wine and decided to get as much sleep as possible ahead of our mammoth trek tomorrow.