When we first interviewed Slobodan Milosevic in 1989 he described himself as a “keen reader of history”. In the 10 years that followed he became the author of some of the darkest chapters in Europe’s chiaroscuro story.
At the time “Slobo”, as his fans called him, had just played host in Belgrade to Ali Khamenehi, Iran’s president, on what was to be the latter’s first and only state visit to a European capital.
Slobo envisaged a world in which “ the West”, led by the United States, would dominate. He believed that the only way to prevent that was a revival of nationalism in both its secular and religious forms.
He believed that the Serbs were the only people left in Europe capable of feeling and acting as a nation.
In Slobo’s political cosmos nationalism was the sun while Socialism represented the moon and Orthodox Christianity the sky itself.
But what did Serbian nationalism consists of? And how could it be transformed into an instrument for war, genocide and, ultimately, political and economic gangsterism?
Like every system that is corrupted by excess in its basic principle, nationalism is also destroyed by extremism. Too much nationalism kills nationalism.
Serbian nationalism is based on a number of fundamental myths. The first of these is that the Serbs are racially the purest people in Europe. This, of course, is pure nonsense. The Institute of Demographic Studies in Belgrade, which was a for years used as an instrument for justifying Milosevic’s ethnic-cleansing policies, has itself published numerous research papers showing that the Serbs are as mixed a people as any in Europe. More than a third of all Serbs are of mixed parentage and the remaining have at least some Turkish, Hungarian, German, Albanian and Italian blood in their veins.
The second myth is that the Serbs are a chosen people of God. As a “ chosen people” the Serbs were not supposed to get any special advantages in this world. On the contrary they were destined to suffering and self-sacrifice. Their reward would come in the next world. It is thus that the Serbian shrines are placed in or around the battlegrounds where they were most decisively defeated. Serbia is the sacrificial lamb; its heroes are not conquerors but martyrs. This myth, too, could be easily debunked. Serbian history is as full of ups and downs as that of any other European people. And to claim that the Serbs saved Christianity from destruction in its heartland is certainly far-fetched.
The third myth is that the Serbs created the “ model Socialist state” based on true justice and fraternity. The Yugoslav federation was supposed to be the only place on earth where Marxian ideas had been realized without massacres and concentration camps. This myth is also easily refuted. The chief architect of Yugoslavia was Josip Broz Tito, a Croat and not a Serb, who had managed to defeat his Serbian rival Mihailovic with the help of money and arms from Britain. Later, the Western powers helped sustain Tito and Yugoslavia because it presented a rampart against Stalin’s ambitions in the Balkans. Socialism in Yugoslavia claimed its own victims. An estimated 3.5 million people were forced to emigrate over a period of 30 years. Over a million others spent various periods of time in prison for their political or religious beliefs. After half a century of socialism, Yugoslavia was still one of the five poorest countries in Europe.
Slobo may have been a keen reader of history. But he never learned any lessons from his readings. He did not understand that one people’s nationalism is bound to trigger the nationalism of other peoples. Nor did he realize that the Balkans was not a blank sheet on which he could draw his dream map of “Greater Serbia”.
That Greater Serbia was supposed to annex Kosovo permanently, swallow Montenegro through demographic advantage, seize more than two-thirds of Bosnia-Herzegovina, detach Kraijina from Croatia and, in time, absorb the whole of Macedonia. Slobo’s dream state would have a population of almost 22 million and would stretch from the heart of Europe to the Adriatic Sea.
Despite a series of wars that claimed the lives of at least a million people and made a further five million homeless, Slobo’s dream was not realized. The mass graves and accounts of rapes, murders and massacres in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo will now for ever feature in Serbia’s history with Slobo as the chief, though certainly not the only, villain.
Subject to frequent fits of depression, Milosevic was an unhappy man. Both of his parents had committed suicide and he himself had attempted to follow them on at least two occasions. He was also in awe of his awesome wife who acted as his eminence grise. Like most other manic-depressives Slobo was vulnerable to attacks of hubris.
He genuinely believed that he had forged “an eternal pact” with the Serbian people.
“ I am with them and they are with me, for ever,” he told us with a proud smile.
Once again he proved that he had not read his history properly. Otherwise he would have realized that there never is an eternal love affair between a people and its leader. And a leader who is loved most tenderly is almost certain to be betrayed more decisively. Toward the end Milosevic had virtually no support apart from the organized criminal gangs that had come to dominate the black market with the help of his Socialist Party machine.
Milosevic’s end came at a speed that he could not have imagined. A $10 million grant from the American Foundation for Democracy helped unite and organize his opponents. A few mostly American election experts were despatched to Belgrade to provide technical support for the opposition candidates. A dozen or so military and police chiefs were quietly bought, sometimes for just a few thousands dollars, and, then all of sudden, Slobo found himself almost alone. now that Slobo is expected to spend the rest of his life in prison for his crimes against humanity, he will have time to re-read his history.
