Criticism of the nationalist model of culture in Serbia also attempts to demonstrate weakness of the vision of culture as a nationally homogeneous, self sufficient set of values in conflict with values espoused by other cultures
Nationalism is return of atavistic forces of blood and territory
Ernst Gelner
by Ivan COLOVIC
Milosevic even made an effort to visualize the catastrophe awaiting the Serb national identity in the event of his departure from power. That identity, he alleged, would be reduced to "a few national dishes, to the occasional folk song or dance, to the naming of foodstuffs or cosmetics after national heroes." The president knew this, for he was acquainted with the experience of other countries. "The experience of other countries", he explained, "tells us that the people would hardly be aware of the speed with which it would start to accept a foreign language, identify with foreign historical personalities, glorify foreign history while often deriding its own, come to resemble another rather than itself."[i]
Have events since October 5 confirmed at least some of Milosevic's pessimistic forecast? Some opinions regarding the future of the Serb nation and its culture expressed since then largely agree with his views. For example, historian Srdja Trifkovic from Chicago, who regularly contributes political comments to Politika, Knjizevne novine and Zbilja, is also convinced that Milosevic's departure will be followed by a 'de Serbianization' as a result of which Serbia will lose its national symbols and its greatest writers, and acquire instead a monument to a homosexual which, for Trifkovic, is the greatest possible insult to a decent, martial Balkan people. 'The cliche‚ that Milosevic is responsible for everything', he writes, 'cannot and will not be accepted unless accompanied by the so called de Nazification, which means de Serbianization.' Trifkovic, like Milosevic, takes pleasure in tormenting us by describing in great detail how Serbs will give up their national soul: 'For our own good, they will cure us of our mythomania and our complex of victimhood. For our own sake they will ban our epic poems and Victor Novak's Magnum Crimen, not to speak of Njegos's genocidal Gorski Vijenac [Mountain Wreath] (Alexandra Stiglmayer's ban on Ivo Andric in Bosnia is a sign of things to come). Concerned with our health, they will reduce the cholesterol in our food, replace alcohol and tobacco with Prozac and Viagra, and make jogging obligatory for all.'[ii]
Aleksandar Milenkovic, author of the feuilleton 'An oblique view of the Yugoslav experiment'[iii] also agrees with Milosevic's analysis of the danger threatening Serbia and its culture, of which his opponents were unaware. He argues that Serbia became a victim of the New World Order and NATO because of its national identity because 'supranational power ... strives to annihilate every value that contains a national meaning of any kind anywhere in the world.' 'Destruction of the cultural code', Milenkovic writes, 'leads to loss of roots and the social group's identity'. This aids the efforts of international hegemons to shape the human plasma of laborers and consumers. The main target is not the victim country's social system or ruling oligarchy (personified by the leader), but rather its resources and territory.' His articles in Politika could equally well have been given the title used for Milosevic's Address to the Nation of October 2 2000: 'They are not attacking Serbia because of Milosevic they are attacking Milosevic because of Serbia'. The quotation from Milenkovic's text, however, is interesting primarily because it displays very clearly the understanding of culture as the element that fixes the nation more strongly than any other to its territory ('roots'), which is why it becomes the chief target of attack by the new supra national world order, striving to eradicate implanted national cultures in order the more easily to seize the territories of nations thus enfeebled.
Vojislav Kostunica, with the thoughts on culture, 'spiritual renewal' and 'spiritual heritage and tradition' that he presented at the start of his term, agreed with his predecessor, in that he too placed concern with symbols of national identity at the centre of his political program, and warned of the danger incurred by a nation that neglects them. 'This is why we need a spiritual renewal', he said on the occasion of his visit to Hilandar [the Serb Orthodox monastery on Mount Athos] in early November 2000, since 'nations which fail to carry one out, and which accept indiscriminately what comes to them from without and from within, may disappear.'[iv] He did not offer details, but his warning is if anything more dramatic than those of Milosevic and Trifkovic, because it ends with a scary picture of the possibility of the Serb nation's actual disappearance. The picture delimits the nation as a community whose survival demands the suppression of dangerous diversity within the national 'spiritual' space, and reinforced control of the borders.
The new president, however, disagreed with his predecessor's pessimistic forecast in the sense that he did his best to show that Milosevic's departure did not signal the end of state protection of the national tradition, its holy objects and cults. On the contrary, Kostunica from the very start worked hard to outdo his predecessor in this regard. He not only continued to exploit results of Milosevic's close cooperation with the most influential bishops of the Serb Orthodox Church (SPC), with the members of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Science (SANU), and in particular with writers, but he also took that cooperation to a new level. He has surpassed Milosevic above all in his readiness to join in politically motivated religious and cultural rituals. Thus he marked the start of his term by participating in the ritual surrounding the reburial in Trebinje of Jovan Ducic's mortal remains, and by making the pilgrimage to Hilandar.
This does not mean that the experience of failure to win through war Serb "ethnic territories" in Croatia, Bosnia Hercegovina and Kosovo has made the Serb nationalist elite less willing to wage war more precisely, to seek and promote wars over these territories. The fighting morale of its leading representatives appears to be untouched and unwavering. But the strategy for realizing the territorial and political unity of the Serb nation on all its "ethnic territory" has undergone a transformation. The main change is that the struggle for territory, which continues to be treated as the highest national and state interest, has for the time being been shifted from the military to the cultural front. "National workers" are no longer engaged in drawing maps of the future Serb lands, which used to be their main preoccupation before and during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia Hercegovina, but are instead concentrating on the preservation of the allegedly endangered Serb "spiritual space", i.e. of Serb national identity. In that, they rely on a model of national culture in which cultural activity is seen as an integral component of preparing the nation for war, as support for the war effort, or as a continuation of war by other means.
The notion of culture as a phase in preparation for war - or indeed its key dimension - was expounded by some of the participants at the Second Congress of Serb Intellectuals held in Belgrade on April 22 23 1994. The historian Milorad Ekmecic told the gathering that "cultural unification is indispensable for political unification"[v]. This was repeated almost verbatim by his colleague Vasilije Krestic, who stated that "without a true spiritual unity of our nation it will be difficult to realize its political and territorial unification". In Krestic's judgment, however, it is not necessary to wait for one to be realized before proceeding to the other, since "these are processes that have to advance in parallel". In this version of the strategy of Kulturkampf, the cultural front must be established at the same time as the political and military fronts[vi]. Ekmecic's and Krestic's idea of the need for a cultural, i.e. "spiritual", preparation for war in support of military operations aimed at unifying Serb territories was accepted and formulated in a stark and brutal form by the writer Radomir Smiljanic. "Science and intellect," he said, "must clear the path and in that way aid the business of politics and, if you wish, of guns."[vii] The outcome of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia Hercegovina showed, however, that scientists and intellectuals had not done their job properly, so Serb guns got stuck in the mud. This is the view of the poet Ranko Jankovic, who ascribed the non-existence of a unified Serb state to the absence of a unified Serb cultural sphere: if the "Serb nation, Serb church, Serb language, Serb poetry ... existed in each of us, then the Serb state comprising Serb territories would also exist."[viii]
Now that the war has been lost, the struggle for its unrealized aims is once again being reduced to the field of culture which had served earlier as the initial, preparatory front line in the war for territories. Culture has now assumed the role of a fall-back position to which the national forces have withdrawn, where they can re group while waiting for more favorable conditions to begin a new military offensive. Since the autumn of 1995, and especially since the war in Kosovo in 1999, the struggle for Serb ethnic space is being waged exclusively as a Kulturkampf a struggle for the protection and consolidation of a Serb "spiritual space". This reduction of war to the cultural domain and "spirituality" is mainly treated as a temporary substitute for a real war for territories, but in some cases also as something which in the long run could even replace actual war.
The image of Serb national culture as the arena to which the struggle for national interests - after having failed on the battlefield - has been transferred inspires, for example, the contributions published in Geopoliticka stvarnost Srba [Geopolitical Reality of the Serbs], based on the proceedings of the round table "The Serb people in the new geopolitical reality" held in Novi Sad on January 29 31 1997.[ix] A paper by Nikola Kusovac: "The importance of culture and education for the preservation of the Serb people's historical consciousness" displays open ambition to serve as a new program for national policy in the wake of its recent failures. The author begins by noting the "significance which education and culture have for the future of every nation, for the defense of its integrity and preservation of its historical consciousness". He is keen to stress the significant role which education and culture play in defending the Serb nation. "One can, indeed, assert," he writes, "without exaggeration or pathos that their importance equals that of the army and the police." He advises the Serbs, therefore, to unite "spiritually" in order to "preserve the spirit in their badly wounded body from stumbling and collapse". Thereby, they will preserve the basis for a renewal of the Serb national culture in a better future and (more importantly for Kusovac and other "nationally conscious forces") also the seed of the Greater Serbia project. "Only in this way, through organized work," he writes, "will it be possible to preserve in this evil time of great suffering and even greater pitfalls the creative spark which under better conditions and in a more favorable international situation will be able to set off a conflagration through which the state of all Serbs may be resurrected."[x] The metaphor, involving creative spark, fire and resurrection, is a good example of the morbid evocation of Serb national hardship common to Serb nationalists, of a Serb national Passion in which the nation must perish in order to be reborn. For in Kusovac's metaphor the "creative spark" preserved in the culture of his nation does not wait for moments of peace to flare up, but seeks instead the opportunity to start a new conflagration, so that the macabre play of Serb national death and resurrection can be repeated again and again.
At the celebration marking the restoration of the Vuk [Karadzic] Foundation Hall, held in February 1998, its president Dejan Medakovic explained the importance of the event and, more generally, of literature in conserving and keeping alive the Serb national program, i.e the program of territorial and political unification of the Serb people, which thanks to such nurture will quickly revive as soon as the right conditions are in place. "This," he said of the celebration, "is an all national festival that brings us together and alerts us to many unfinished tasks in Serb culture, particularly those that will stimulate our people's spiritual mobilization and unification. This is the only possible way and path through which we can also preserve for a happier future our unfulfilled hopes and aspirations."[xiii] Medakovic, it is true, did not use the term "national program" or speak of territories, but I trust I shall not distort his message by interpreting the reference to "our unfulfilled hopes and aspirations" as an allusion to the unrealized program of state territorial expansion.
More than a year later, but now in his role as president of SANU, Medakovic spoke more concretely and decisively of the defensive - indeed "front like" - function of Serb culture, including the Serb cultural heritage. In his talk delivered to the "Dijaspora 99" assembly held on August 4 5 1999 in Belgrade under the patronage of Slobodan Milosevic, Medakovic began by describing the new condition of the Serb people, whose "national being," he felt, "has been cut up and indeed fragmented as a result of a foreign political will". He then proposed a "combative" and "self-sacrificing" answer to the sorry state of the nation: i.e. "defensive, mobilizational measures to protect the totality of our endangered national being". For the Serbs, according to the recommendation of the SANU president, should now face the "foreign political will" with something that is stronger than weapons: the Serb cultural heritage. "In this combative enterprise fed by self-sacrifice," said Medakovic, "our cultural heritage, the spiritual testimony that has survived for centuries, will play a huge role."
The chief treasure guarded by Serb culture, and which can be used in the struggle against the enemy, is that of national "spiritual unity". This unity is not an aim in itself but rather an instrument, a "cohesive power" needed for the nation to realize another, more tangible, sort of unity: e.g. territorial and political - state - unity. Spiritual unity had played an effective role on an earlier occasion. "Thanks to this powerful cohesive power," Medakovic reminded his audience, "the Serb people witnessed in 1804 the resurrection of their lost state." With a little patience but also much greater spiritual unity, they can hope to see the realization of other - as yet unrealized - "hopes and aspirations". "Today too our spiritual unity," the president of SANU was convinced, "can and must replace the political unity, whose realization must evidently wait for other, more favorable times".[xiv]
The idea of culture as a space preserving the national unity and energy needed for the realization of political and state interests has been endorsed also by Cedomir Mirkovic, literary critic and Milosevic's minister for international cultural cooperation. He, however, placed greater stress on contemporary culture, and particularly on modern Serb literature. Mirkovic believes that contemporary Serbian literature "is the most vital part not just of our national culture but of the nation itself", and that "literature is our people's greatest possession". His explanation of why the Serb literature has acquired this high status deserves to be quoted in full. "I believe," Mirkovic writes, "that a nation, with its culture as its engine, perhaps, behaves like any other living organism: i.e. its most vital and most resistant organs can take over the role of other organs, or replace them by taking over their functions. Given the lack of opportunity for creative energy to pulsate in all areas, many of them - from industry, banking, trade or property ownership to politics - have atrophied and become deformed. Since, however, the energy of a historical nation, a nation with a rich history, is indestructible, it has manifested itself in the domain of the arts, especially in literature.'[xv]
The shift from an armed war to a Kulturkampf could be discerned also in the declarations of other luminaries of Milosevic's regime, especially after the war in Kosovo. Expanding in a clumsy and almost silly fashion on the idea of reverting to cultural heritage and national spiritual unity in preparation for a subsequent, more successful realization of another sort of unity, former Serbian minister of culture Zeljko Simic pressed Serb cultural workers - writers, performers and artists - to visit the Serbs of Kosovo and compensate with their cultural activity for what had been lost in war. He even argued that this cultural engagement by poets and actors marked the true beginning of the war in Kosovo: "The struggle which the envoys of culture wage in Kosovo with their activities shows that the war for this southern provinces has only now begun, and that an offensive of cultural events is about to take place that will show the international community in its own way that Kosovo remains part of Serbia."[xvi]
At the time when former minister Simic was making these absurd declarations, even the most committed among Serb nationalists knew that the Serbs had lost Kosovo for good. This fact forms the point of departure for "national workers" who, after the fall of Milosevic's regime, have pondered on the results of his war policy. Slobodan Rakitic, president of the Serbian Writers' Association, for example, has written with great bitterness about Serb losses in the recent wars. In keeping with other "patriotic" declarations that we have had the opportunity to hear during the past fifteen years, he is concerned exclusively with territorial losses, while lost lives, and the misery and shame that these wars have brought to the Serbs, are treated as topics that do not deserve a mention. "They have lost," Rakitic laments, "their historic territories in Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo. Other nations of the former Yugoslavia have erected on its ruins independent states that they never had in the past, while the Serbs have lost territories that had belonged to them for centuries." The Serbs, therefore, "have every reason to think of themselves as the most dispossessed nation in Europe". Rakitic, too, sees the way out of this situation in shifting the focus of the war for Serb interests to the cultural front; for, in his view, "cultural unification of the Serb lands - Serbia, Montenegro and the Republic of Srpska - as well as of Serbs living abroad is essential in maintaining national consciousness, and if not territorial then at least spiritual unity", in which "literature as art based on language plays a particularly important integrative role".
Like Milosevic, Trifkovic, Kostunica, Kusovac, Medakovic and others before him, who warned what was at stake and conjured up the drama of the Serbs' fateful struggle for their cultural or spiritual identity, Rakitic too uncovers the dastardly intention of their globalist enemies to strip them of their culture and thus destroy them as a distinct nation. "The new cosmopolitans," Rakitic warns, "concentrate their attacks on the Serbs' tradition and past in order to change them. Their de personification of culture, repudiation of traditional values and destruction of fundamental myths leads to the creation of a culture without an identity."[xvii]
This evocation of the myth of a post Kosovo resurrection of the Serb nation from its indestructible language suggests that the same path to national salvation is on offer also today, after new defeats, new ruin and new persecutions. Milovan Danojlic, Beckovic's colleague and ally in the poetical political war of defense of the Serb nation from its internal and foreign enemies, sees in Serb poetry and language magic means of resistance and survival, a kind of secret and invisible weapon that can be used to great effect against the present day occupiers of Serb lands. "At the time when our national being is in danger," Danojlic counsels, "when we are deluged from all sides by mongrelized varieties of the English language, the poets return to the only treasure that sfor or kfor cannot seize, something that occupiers of our soil can never fully comprehend: they return to their native tongue, their secret and inalienable asset, their magic formula, their firm and eternal support".[xix]
Politika is always willing to publish readers' letters that spring to the defense of the Serb language, as the most important element of national and state security, and that condemn irresponsible attitudes towards it. "The issue of the language is never peripheral," writes one reader; "those officials who neglect this damage their own people. While the Croats are busily finalizing their own identity by way of language, territory and customs, we waste our time on other so to speak quasi political issues, which by their nature are transient, while language remains a fundamental and eternal question for the Serb people".[xx]
The views held by contemporary poets are not sufficient, however, to establish the credibility and hence persuasiveness of the idea that language is the essence of national being and a bastion of state defense. That idea can only become true beyond doubt if it acquires the veneer of ancient wisdom passed on through generations. It consequently came to be ascribed to the mythical founding fathers of the Serb nation state - Nemanja and Sava - and at the end of the 1990s texts appeared in the Belgrade press quoting their alleged views on language. These texts were intended to show that they, too, knew that the secret of the Serb people's survival lay in protecting their language from foreigners and foreign words, and that they were able to articulate this knowledge just as beautifully and ardently as some of their distant progeny, our contemporary poets. Over the past few years there has been a spate of articles in Politika referring to an alleged covenant concerning the language, penned on February 13 1200 precisely, which the ailing monk Simeon (previously Serbian king Nemanja) left to his people and his son Sava. The celebration of St. Simeon's day, organized by the Serb Orthodox Church at the Patriarchate in 1998, led one of its reporters to quote Nemanja's alleged language covenant because "it remains valid to this day". What the monk Simeon is alleged to have said about the language is strikingly similar, indeed, to what many nationally minded Serb writers and linguists write today on the subject. "My children, guard your language as you would your land," Simeon wrote to Sava and to the Serbs, out of concern for their future. "Language can be lost just as castles, land and the soul can be lost. But, can a people exist without language, land or soul? If you take a foreign word, you will not make it your own, but you will lose part of yourself. It is better to forfeit your grandest and strongest castle than the smallest and most insignificant word of your language." Nemanja then tells the Serbs that if they keep their language, they need not worry about military defeat, since such defeats are never final. This is not because by preserving its language the nation continues to live as a national collectivity, but because the language will give it the strength to return once again to the unfinished task of territorial and political unification. "When the enemy breaks down your walls and towers," says Nemanja, "do not despair, but maintain close watch over the language. As long as the language remains untouched, you have nothing to fear... Emperors come and go, states fall, but language and people are what remain; sooner or later the conquered part of the land and the people will return to their linguistic and national homeland".[xxi]
The actual composer of purported Nemanja's testament was journalist Mile Medic. Apart from this one about the language, he has written several other "Testaments of Stefan Nemanja": about the land, blood, graves and bones, song and music, and Serb names. Nemanja appears in them as a distant ancestor and teacher of [World War II Serb fascist] Dimitrije Ljotic and other activists in the sphere of "blood and soil" politics. Medic worked hard to invest his literary concoctions with the aura of authentic historical documents - for example, by having them printed in an archaic form of the Cyrillic script and embellished with copious illustrations taken from frescoes found in mediaeval monasteries. He succeeded in having this stuff accepted as "Nemanja's Epistles to the Serbs", and they have now become regular fixtures in programs of patriotic nature organized in schools, churches and military barracks, including the St. Sava Academy in Belgrade. Mrs Medic, who wrote an afterword to the collection published by her husband of all his "Nemanja Testaments", reports on her husband's success: "I know you found this confusion delightful," she says in this afterword, written in the form of a letter to the beloved author and husband. The confusion that this pseudo Nemanja caused in the minds of his readers is for her the proof that his work represented "a direct continuation in contemporary literature of Nemanja's literary tradition, which was long ago so unjustly and brutally interrupted." This must mean that Medic's work is really authentic, albeit in a higher sense: though not written by Nemanja himself, it is written in his spirit, which is presumably far more important. For neither Nemanja nor Mile Medic speak for themselves or in their own name, but are rather the medium through which the Serb people itself speaks. So it is hardly surprising that the people recognizes itself in these texts, and does not care whether they derive from the 11th or the 21st century, or whether they were written by Stefan or by Mile. As Mrs Medic writes, in these texts "contemporary readers have discovered themselves and their own roots, and have identified themselves, you and Stefan Nemanja with the entire Serb people".[xxii] Anxious maybe that this "delightful confusion" may not last, Mile Medic decided to add to the confusion. In later editions of his "Language testaments" he quotes their supposed source: "the Hilandar Charter". Those who these days quote this pastiche habitually refer also to this false source, which as a result has become a real forgery.[xxiii]
A poem turned into an icon may also play a part in the military religious ritual. This happened, for example, to Dobrica Eric's "Ode to Defiance" presented by the Orthodox clergy to the naval fleet commander in Bar on May 19 1999, at the time of the war in Kosovo and the [NATO] bombing of Serbia and Montenegro. According to the Politika reporter in Bar, "Eric's poem, mounted on a background decorated with Orthodox motifs and set within a frame measuring one meter by half a meter [3 by 1.5 feet] was brought to naval headquarters by the representatives of the archbishop and the parish of Bar, and hung there in a conspicuous place." [xxv]
In the political rituals devoted over the past few years to the celebration of nationally important poets, less emphasis has been placed on their works and far more on their mortal remains, their graves, and the monuments in places where they were born, lived or died. Unlike their works, legacies of this kind may easily be connected to a particular territory by moving them around, or by erecting monuments and other varieties of memorial. Linking Serb poets - nationally defined - to some territory has a specific political and symbolic meaning when the territory in question is considered to be part of the Serb "ethnic space" but lies outside of Serbia. This was demonstrated with the transfer of Jovan Ducic's mortal remains on October 22, 2000, from the US city of Libertyville to Trebinje in Bosnia Hercegovina. In preparation for this event, the national elite exerted itself maximally in an effort to reduce the otherwise complex and contradictory nature of Ducic's work to its nationalist dimension. A few days before the ceremony, Slobodan Rakitic wrote that: "Ducic's poetry contains what is most beautiful in the Serb nation, what embellishes the Serb national spirit."[xxvi]
Preparations for the transfer of Ducic's remains to Trebinje had been going on for several years, but it was finally implemented two weeks after October 5, 2000. This led certain of the speakers at the ceremony for Ducic's reburial to point out the coincidence between the return of democracy to Serbia and Ducic's return to the Serbs: i.e. to stress, as Matija Beckovic did, that "Ducic and freedom had arrived together". The importance of this symbolic coincidence was not missed by the new president of FR Yugoslavia Vojislav Kostunica, who hastened to make a personal appearance at Ducic's second funeral. His gesture of kissing the poet's coffin was noted, as was the praise he won from Beckovic for being "not only the first national representative for half a century to have been christened, but also the first to cross himself".[xxvii]
The primary significance, however, of the transfer of Ducic's remains and the construction of a church cum mausoleum to house them in Trebinje, lies in their symbolic demarcation and consolidation of Hercegovina which - despite the war - remains outside Serbia as part of the Serb "ethnic space", of the "Serb lands". Ducic, or more precisely monuments erected in his honor, had served in previous years too to mark symbolically what were claimed as "Serb lands". It is not true, therefore, that one had to wait for "freedom to come" and power to change hands in Serbia before Ducic could "return to the Serbs". His "return" began with Milosevic's advent to power, and was part of a political strategy created by "national workers" in the field of culture, as they rallied to the regime's ambitious plans for re distribution of the former Yugoslav territories.
A monument to Ducic was erected in Trebinje just before the end of the war, a copy of the poet's bust (sculpted by Risto Stijovic) installed at Kalamegdan in April 1993, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his death. In 1996 the bust in Trebinje was joined by a large bronze statue of Ducic sculpted by Darinka Radovanovic. The bronze statue too acquired a copy, which in 1997 was placed in Sombor [Vojvodina]. Speaking of this dispersal of Ducic's monuments to outer limits of the Serb "ethnic space", Dragomir Brajkovic offered the thought that the poet's work too had been formed in close contact with that space and created to serve its symbolic fortification. "Ducic's poetry," Brajkovic said, "from the Adriatic Sonnets to the poems about the Montenegrin littoral, from the Imperial Sonnets to the images of Dubrovnik, covers and infuses the totality of the Serb spiritual space, just as the monuments erected in his memory crisscross and permanently conjoin it. The two statues, one erected in Trebinje and the other in Sombor, link symbolically the northernmost and the southernmost Serb cities through Ducic's own charisma."[xxviii]
When describing this symbolic integration of the Serb space through Ducic's monuments, Brajkovic mimics in fact the poet Rajko Petrov Nogo, who credited Matija Beckovic with the idea of turning Ducic into a symbolic guardian of Serb lands in spe [hoped for], since it was he who "discovered in Sombor, where the poet went to school, the copy of Darinka's statue from Trebinje, and thus joined up the Serb north and south". But Nogo sees other poets and other monuments too as markers of the Serb "ethnic space", though he clearly prefers gravestones to all other forms. In his eyes they so to speak mark out the ethnic territory in a deeper and more reliable way than ordinary monuments beneath which there is no grave, no mortal remains of a poet, so that they lack the magic power ascribed to these. The transfer of Ducic's remains from the United States to Trebinje (during which it was repeatedly emphasized that his embalmed body appeared exceptionally well preserved) greatly increased the poet's symbolic potency, which up to that time had been embodied solely by his "empty" replicas; it has now attained the kind of power possessed only by the few great men of Serb literature whose mortal remains rest in mausoleums. These monuments of the highest order, of the highest power, are singled out also by the fact that they lie not in graveyards but on higher ground, if not on mountain peaks. With the two other chief markers of Serb ethnic territory already in place, Ducic's transfer permits Nogo to say: "Let them shine like beacons: Branko [Radicevic] on Strazilovo, Njegos on Lovcen and Ducic in Crkvina."[xxix]
Ducic and his embalmed body in their role as suitable markers of the "Serb south" had a competitor in the poet Aleksa Santic and his mortal remains. According to the writer Nedjo Sipovac from Nevesinje, for the Serbs of Hercegovina it is "Santic [who] appears as the marker of Serb spiritual space, its integrative, magnetic representative". This was proved in the last war, since "among our fighters and people Santic was far more present than any other poet, including his Mostar brother Jovan Ducic from Trebinje". "Consequently," says Sipovac, "during the armed conflict I tried, together with friends and colleagues, to ‘transfer' Santic to the Mostar Nevesinje battlefront, but the military operations prevented this. We managed it three years ago, by bringing him here, to Nevesinje." Santic, nevertheless, was sidelined. Sipovac admires the mausoleum in Trebinje, but does not fail to add that Ducic owed this "most beautiful final resting place [to] his sudden fame". Santic's case was not helped even by the fact that "the Santic family derives from Nevesinje, as does that of President Kostunica, who wrote about our poet a few years ago in the journal Hriscanska misao [Christian Thought]."[xxx]
In addition to the dead celebrities whose monuments and graves serve as sentries on the frontiers of the Serb land, their descendants, the contemporary poets, also act as watchmen of the Serb ethnic space. Their poems too stand in a direct relationship with Serb ethnic territories, and their integration into a single cultural area - and it is to be hoped also a single state. According to Nogo, Serb poets regularly meet in Trebinje to celebrate "Ducic poetry evenings", in order to demonstrate the spatial extent and unity of Serb poetry and culture, which greatly surpasses the political and state unity of the Serb people. "They all arrived, Ducic's many literary descendants," Nogo writes, "on a visit to Ducic - to the Ducic poetry evenings - in order to fashion a mountain wreath out of Lovcen and Leotar, Avala and Strazilovo, Ozren and Romanija, Dinara and Sara." Nogo pays homage to the many patriotic poets who took part in these events, thanks to whom there still remains "a single Serb poetic archipelago", a symbol of the unity of the Serb space. But he cannot resist posing at the end what for him must be the main question: that of political and state unity. All the work of the Serb poets, he believes, has always served that aim. "After all these misfortunes, when - if ever - will this single spiritual and cultural space finally become a single state?"[xxxi]
If, in accordance with the theory of a clash of cultures, antagonisms, conflicts and wars are viewed as the consequence of deep, unbridgeable and irreducible cultural differences, then the wars at the end of the 20th century in which the Serbs took part acquire a new and planetary dimension. They are no longer territorial wars between former Yugoslav republics, but rather the eruption of a new flashpoint in the global clash of civilizations. Those who interpreted the war in Bosnia in this manner find confirmation in the often quoted statement by Huntington that the 1991 5 war in Bosnia Hercegovina is but "an episode in a perpetual clash of civilizations"[xxxiii]. However, unlike Huntington, who even when writing about "Islam's bloody frontiers" does not treat Islam and non European civilizations with derision and contempt, his followers among the Serb nationalists refuse to acknowledge some of them - and the Islamic one in particular - as civilizations, treating them instead as forms of barbarism. As noted by Mirko Djordjevic, Huntington's Serb followers, having grasped only his basic idea, simplify it further before applying it to our situation, so that one gets a caricature of an already poor theory. Therefore, their interpretation of the concept of the clash of civilizations is as a rule reduced to an alarming description of a clash between civilization and barbarism. In this conflict, the Serbs are seen as playing a heroic role in protecting European and Christian values, which at the end of the 20th century became threatened by a new Islamic onslaught, a new Asiatic invasion of European soil. The struggle for the Serb national territory, as measured by the Serb ethnic and cultural space, is thereby given the additional meaning of defense of Europe as an area reserved for Christianity.[xxxiv]
The 9/11 attack on New York and Washington encouraged these alleged defenders of European civilization to remind the Europeans and the Americans yet again of the old and new Serb contributions to the war against Eastern barbarism, and to castigate them anew for not properly recognizing this, because of an incorrect assessment of their own interests or because of stupidity that the common enemy was able to use and abuse. According to Djordje Kadijevic, the three most important attacks by Asia against Europe were the burning of the Alexandria library in 640, the capture of Constantinople in 1453, and the "return of the Asiatic hydra to Europe" during the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia. In all three cases, Kadijevic writes, "the same Asiatic hordes attacked European civilizations", while in the last two their success was "aided by the Latin West with its malicious refusal to help".[xxxv]
The failure to recognize the true ally in the war between civilization and barbarism - i.e. the motif of the dastardly refusal to help the Serbs who man the front line - lies at the centre of the presentation of a conflict that, albeit fought within the same civilization, is at least as dramatic as the clash between civilization and barbarism. This is the conflict between the authentic values of European civilization - which is apparently to be found today only in its birthplace, the Balkans - and the false culture of the European West, alienated from the true European spirit. The authentic European civilization is imperiled not so much by the external enemy, but by its alienation from its own self, its loss of memory. The Serbs derive the strength to persevere in the struggle against barbarism from their national culture, which they have turned into an invincible citadel of their identity, to which they withdraw after a military defeat and which they leave to wage new wars for territory. Western nations, in contrast, having underestimated the defensive capacity of their own national Christian cultures, have allowed them to degenerate, which is why today they lack an effective defense against foreigners. "One of the greatest weaknesses of Western civilization is its internal degeneration, caused by the growing strength of communities that belong to a foreign civilization", writes Milorad Ekmecic[xxxvi]
This degeneration of Western and especially West European civilization has been described at some length by Cedomir Popov. "The barbaric products of its own civilization," he writes, "overwhelm it, suffocate it, destroy its conscience and its consciousness, its reason and its emotions. They enslave its culture, politics and economy and take away its soul in return for buttered bread sprinkled with opium, sweet but destructive vices, loss of memory...". This dramatic description of the fall of the European spirit, in which we unexpectedly encounter also buttered bread, serves to highlight the civilizational merits of Milosevic and the Serb nationalists who, naturally, appear as "Serbia" for short and to justify the war they were fighting in April 1999, when Cedomir Popov was penning the lines quoted above, against the degenerate West. The description ends with an evocation of the catastrophe that would ensue if "Serbia" were to lose the war. "This is what Serbia is confronting and what it is sacrificing itself for," writes Popov, "defending, of course, first of all itself, its people, its state and its nation. If it succeeds in gaining support for this struggle in the world, and especially in Europe, that will also give a strong boost to others who love freedom and humanity. If it loses, mankind will come under threat. This is why its struggle has a universal significance [and] why its defeat could mark the beginning of the creation of a universal empire based on slavery." [xxxvii]
The philosopher Mihajlo Markovic was thinking along the same lines as bombs were falling on Belgrade and other parts of Serbia. In his view the main aim of the bombing was destruction of the Serb national spirit, which if realized would have catastrophic consequences for humanity. "If NATO were to succeed in destroying the magnificent spirit of the Serb people," warned Markovic, "the consequences would be quite horrific ... Mankind would return to a state worse than the original anarchy described by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau." [xxxviii]
The recent wars in the Balkans also encouraged the philosopher Mihajlo Djuric to ponder gravely the fate of humanity and of European civilization. In his view, in these wars Serbs were the victims of Europe, which has become separated from its roots, from its own authentic spirit. "We should be concerned not only because we as a people are threatened with annihilation in our own land," says Djuric "The world as a whole is in danger; our suffering is only one example, perhaps the most painful and dramatic, of the nihilistic essence of the contemporary world. We are deeply affected by our fate, the terrible tragedy that has happened to us, but we must not forget that the whole world is in trouble."[xxxix]
However, the world, or at least Europe, need not be entirely lost, and our philosopher tells where salvation lies. "Our European future," he writes, "can be creatively transformed only by reclaiming our Greek past." His advice to Europe to build its future by seeking inspiration in antiquity would not be included here, were it not for the fact that Djuric includes it in his scenario of the Serb Kulturkampf. Europe, in his opinion, can find the preserved precious remains of the Greek past in Serbia, its true heir and guardian. If Europe were to turn towards its Greek past, "in that setting and under those symbols it would be able to regain its old glory, acquire a new bright illumination and together with it our authentic Serb heritage, especially the precious Kosovo bequest of our great mythological past, which in the largest possible manner is inspired by Greek epic poetry and Greek tragedy." Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen for now, this possibility of returning to itself, so Europe once again lost the chance during the recent Balkan wars to recognize itself in the Serb cultural heritage. The worst of all is that during these wars, and especially the one in Kosovo, it took part in the destruction of Serb cultural monuments, of the Serb heritage. This heritage, Djuric alerts us, "was the main target of the criminal demolition and destruction conducted by NATO during its recent undeclared war against the Serb people and the Serb land. With that act of madness contemporary Europe struck a mortal blow against its own self."[xl]
The critics of nationalism in culture, gathered around some non-governmental organizations (among which the oldest ones are Belgrade Circle, Center for Antiwar Action, Fund for Humanitarian Law, Belgrade Board for Human Rights, Helsinki Board of Citizens, and Center for Women Studies) and around independent radio stations and press (Radio B92, Danas, Vreme, Republika[xli], Helsinki Charter, Rec, Mostovi, ProFemina) subject to criticism certain aspects of nationalist manipulation of culture. For example, the topic of the pilot issue of the magazine Dijalog, launched in 1995 by the Democratic Center, was "Culture as self-defense of society and individual", while the articles published in the pilot issue were actually papers presented at the homonymous conference held the very same year in Belgrade. "Although culture was the first target of attack during the development of the crisis," says the editorial in the pilot issue, "it also turned out to be the first significant means for defense against decay". The same idea is developed in the editorial by Dragoljub Micunovic, explaining his conviction that "resistance to imposition of backward cultural modes can come most effectively from culture, because culture relies on freedom, mutuality, tolerance and progress of the humankind". Interestingly Micunovic also sees in culture a shelter for an endangered community, but unlike in the nationalist discourse about culture (where culture is recognized as the last stronghold, the last rampart of the nation) he offers a cosmopolitan, universal model of culture as a foundation of humanity. "When a human community is endangered," Micunovic says, "it attempts to survive and achieve progress in culture and through culture"[xlii].
Critics of nationalism question certain concepts that provide theoretical basis and legitimacy for the nationalist manipulation of culture. Their attention is drawn, among other, by the concept of cultural identity which is usually referred to as static, substantialist or primordialist, the concept that views the national culture as an expression of the autonomous spirit or character of a national community. Critics emphasize that there are no self-created, autonomous cultural identities based on the specific soil or language, but that all cultural identities are constructed through communication with other cultural identities and are a product of that communication. Arguments backing this type of criticism were provided among other by sociologists Branimir Stojkovic. "It is certain," he says, "that the attitude towards other is a constituent element of identity and that only in relation to other/others one can acquire a consciousness of separate identity"[xliii].
This criticism of the understanding of cultural identity as an autonomous and self-created phenomenon, besides having general theoretical importance, is also important because nationalists use that understanding to interpret contacts between cultures, influences coming from other cultures and intertwining of cultures as something that endangers national identity and thereby the survival of the nation state. On the contrary, acceptance of and emphasis on the relational aspect of cultural identity as its constructive dimension, makes it possible to pacify culture, to stop observing borders between cultures as lines of fatal conflict between nations, and creators of culture as fighters in trenches located along those lines. The realization that the true danger threatening a culture is actually its isolation, rather than its opening to other cultures, can be a good starting point for a new cultural policy in Serbia. That policy does not have to necessarily leave the framework represented by the nation state but definitely has to accept some demands of modern nationhood. That opinion, referring to German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, is advocated by political scientist Dusan Pavlovic. He says that "a modern nation cannot seek its identity exclusively in ethnic-cultural links, because they represent a pre-political concept. A modern nation must find its identity in a democratic, territorial and state-legal organization" [xliv].
Critics of the nationalist model of culture in Serbia also attempt to demonstrate the drawbacks of the interpretation of culture as a homogenous, self-sufficient set of values opposed to other cultures. Such national-monistic approach to culture implies intolerant attitude towards cultural diversity within national territory and avoidance of contacts with neighboring cultures, and frequently fear of them as well. According to anthropologist Zagorka Golubovic, nationalist monism in the interpretation of culture has solidified in Serbia during the nineteen eighties. "Instead of opting for development of pluralist culture," she says, "open to both internal and external communication, we had closure within the national framework and isolation of national cultures. Thus we created quasi-pluralism, which is only demonstrated with respect to other cultures, while within a single nation we have homogenization based on nationalism as the only correct official ideology". Zagorka Golubovic warned that in this manner culture maintains "above all a repressive function" which it also had during Communist rule, with the distinction that now culture has become means for "nationalist indoctrination, which stigmatizes every autonomous opinion and activity if it is not in service of blind subjugation to national ideology" [xlv].
Nationalist monism in the approach to culture strikingly diverges from the actual situation in modern cities. In Serbia the most prolific authors on this topic were architect Bogdan Bogdanovic and sociologist Sreten Vujovic. According to Vujovic, modern cities as a location where one can "experience differences" prompt suspicion of "advocates of the rigid model of the state as ethnic nation". "The specific character of pluralism, differences," writes Vujovic, "is precisely what makes the modern city different from other forms of institutionalized political communities, which are always marked by the dominant factor (state, nation) and as such a generator of exclusion" xlvi]. This critical analysis is important for our contemplation of the relationship between culture, nation and territory because it draws attention to the difficulties facing the concept of culture as a nationally homogenous space - the difficulties faced by those who symbolically mark and fence off national territory when borders of that territory are to be found inside a city. Unfortunately, builders of national cultural territories at times manage to deal with those difficulties. The example of cities such as Foca, Srebrenica, Vukovar, Knin, Pec and many others, in the past multi-national and multi-cultural cities in the former Yugoslavia, from which portions of their populations have been expelled, as well as the example of destruction inflicted on today divided cities such as Mostar and Sarajevo, demonstrate the true price that must be paid by urban environment in order for the national cultural territory to coincide with the state territory. As Ernst Gellner noted, nationalism at times uses "exchange and expulsion of population, more or less forced assimilation, and at times even elimination, in order to achieve the close relationship between the state and the culture that is the essence of nationalism."[xlvii]
The national-monistic approach is opposed by different concepts of cultural pluralism. Initially very little difference was made between those concepts. However, in the mid-nineties, under the influence of theoretical and political debates about cultural differences, cultural rights and cultural policies in democratic countries, in critical approaches to nationalism in Serbia and projection of possible alternatives multiculturalism became customarily identified as the concept of culture that above all demands recognition of different cultures sharing the same territory and their rights and obligations, respectively, to peaceful coexistence, while interculturalism was defined as a concept of culture that places emphasis on cooperation and intertwining of different cultures. Definitely the biggest contribution to affirmation of interculturalism in Serbia was given by series of international gatherings on that topic, held in Belgrade between 1994 and 1998, and five books containing papers presented at those gatherings, edited and published by sociologist Bozidar Jaksic[xlviii], who organized the gatherings. Besides contributing to the theoretical consideration of the problem of cultural differences in the national and international framework, these gatherings - given the ethnic, national, religious and gender composition of their participants - at the same time represented interculturalism in practice.
The criticism of the nationalist model of culture in Serbia at the same time includes the criticism of multiculturalism. It has been recognized that multiculturalism shares the idea that cultures are essentially a priory, self-generated and closed systems of values, which only need assistance to mutually recognize and tolerate each other for the sake of global peace and stability. In thereby understood "coexistence" of different cultures relations between them boil down to the so-called "cultural cooperation" in which we politely and benignly exchange cultural goods, whose creation not only goes on independently from that cooperation but is also protected from its essentially harmful effect. Simply, critics of the concept of multiculturalism point out that it does not question the nationalist model of culture. Moreover, the concept of multiculturalism can assist nationalism to include in its strategy declarative recognition of differences and the other, or other cultures. Given that nationalism strives to establish national identity as a clearly defined entity and to tie it to a particular territory in which that entity is dominant - with option of tolerating minority cultures provided they do not endanger it - it is less bothered by clearly distinct cultures, but much more by those very similar, unbearably similar that introduce confusion in the nationalist order of things and prevent drawing of clear demarcation lines.
Consequently, nationalists strive to split the continuous spectrum of various hues and varieties of a single cultural model into two or more radically different cultures. For example their goal is to split shared cultural heritage of Serbs, Croats and Muslims into separate systems of national cultures, with different languages, different cultural traditions and separate social and cultural histories. As Branimir Stojkovic notes, unlike the theory about the Balkans as the battlefield of different civilization, which is rather unconvincing, the theory with much better grounding is the one that "conflicts are provoked by ‘narcissism of small differences', i.e. the attempts to establish distinct ethnic origin. In those attempts particular groups literally ‘invent their tradition' and design it in such a way as to achieve the biggest possible difference with respect to neighboring groups"[xlix]. Naturally, such nationalist creation of differences with the goal of setting up clear borders between national cultures is in contrast with the strategy applied by the nationalism within claimed borders of its own national culture. Within claimed borders nationalism resorts to homogenization attempting to reduce and ultimately erase differences in culture between different social, ethnic or religious groups that constitute parts of a single nation.
Nationalist manipulations with traditional folk culture, national myths, literature and language are frequently criticized from the point of view of interculturalism. The role of invocation of folk culture in the shaping of new populism in the late eighties has been analyzed [l]. Some papers explain the role of certain cultural institutions, such as SANU [Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts] and UKS [Association of Writers of Serbia] - in the reduction of culture, and especially literature and art, to the means for national homogenization and propaganda of the resolution of the political crisis in the former Yugoslavia by force [li]. The contemporary popular culture and its political use were objects of several critical analyses. Much attention has been drawn by the manipulation of language[lii]. Besides description of modes and strategy of that manipulation (Ranko Bugarski[liii] is the most prolific local author on this topic), there were attempts to propose the "language of peace"[liv]. That type of criticism of nationalist culture shares the attempt to liberate culture of its alleged link with the nation and thereby with the state and its territory. It emphasizes on the one hand the value of culture as means of expression of individual freedom, and on the other hand its value as witness of universal humanity. That means that the space occupied by a particular culture is not viewed as a network of monuments, music pieces, libraries, and paintings that testify about the rule of a single, self-created national spirit in certain territory, but as a space for communication, dialog, for meeting, and the space in which finished, previously created cultural goods are not exchanged, but the space in which they are jointly created. Just like nationalism needs the image of culture as an isolated, self-generated space so that it can for the sake of purported protection of the nation and on its behalf fight to convert space occupied by particular culture into the territory of a nation state, thus the democratic society needs the image of culture as a space of individual freedom and human community. Consequently, the criticism of the nationalist model of culture in Serbia emphasizes the need to name culture individualistic, non-national, demilitarized, and all of that boils down to the need to make culture humane.
However, despite attempts, of which only a few were mentioned here as examples, to create and affirm a critical vision of culture that in the forefront pushes intercultural communication, it cannot be said that today in Serbia the nationalist model of culture, in which culture boils down to a weapon in the struggle for national interests and those national interests to the expansion of national territory, has been seriously shaken up. That model of culture is even today dominant on the local public scene. There are definitely several reasons for that. Let me here mention only one. That is the interest of the Serb nationalist elite to even after the fall of Milosevic's regime preserve positions won and fortified during the last fifteen or so years. In order to achieve that, its imperative is to maintain the idea or, more correctly, discourse in which culture has the meaning and importance in the defense of the nation and state from internal and external enemies, and cultural workers, especially the so-called writers-intellectuals, are given the role of commanders of cultural forces in charge of that defense. The nationalist elite does not know what to do with the world if it cannot fight it or defend itself from it. It interprets every opening, every communication with other cultures as dangerous lowering of guard or as naïve belief that others understand and respect us, and with visible relief accept all ideas about incompatibility and incommensurability of national cultures, and consequently futility or even harmful effect of every intercultural communication.
The author is has a Ph.D. in ethnology. This paper is part of the project ‘Serbia's path toward peace and democracy" implemented by Republika in cooperation with Foundation "Heinrich Bell" [i] Politika (Belgrade), October 3, 2000
[ii] Srdja Trifkovic, "Kraj zapadne culture" ["The downfall of Western culture"], Politika, June 9, 2001
[iii] Politika, January 3, 2001
[iv] Politika, December 5, 2000
[v] Milorad Ekmecic, "O jedinstvu srpskog naroda danas" ["On the state of unity of the Serb nation"] in Srpsko pitanje danas [The Serb question today], The second congress of Serb intellectuals, April 22-23 1994, Belgrade 1995, p. 36.
[vi] Vasilije Krestic, "O integraciji i dezintegraciji srpskog naroda" ["On the integration and disintegration of the Serb nation"], in Srpsko pitanje danas, p. 49.
[vii] Radomir Smiljanic, "Ne moze nam se zabraniti ono sto drugi imaju" ["They cannot deny to us what others have"], in Srpsko pitanje danas, p. 206
[viii] Cited in Jovan Janjic, "Tanke niti [Slender threads]", NIN (Belgrade), August 27, 1998.
[ix] Geopoliticka stvarnost Srba, Institut za geopoliticke studije, Belgrade 1997.
[x] Geopoliticka stvarnost Srba, p. 467.
[xi] Geopoliticka stvarnost Srba, p. 465.
[xii] Geopoliticka stvarnost Srba, p. 467.
[xiii] Politika, February 25, 1998.
[xiv] Politika, August 5, 1999.
[xv] Politika, January 18, 1998. The reduction of literature to the role of a national organ which serves to express a national energy that properly belongs to other national organs, but that for historical reasons have atrophied, is based on the idea that culture does not exist beyond national horizons. This notion is not limited to Serbia. According to Igor Mirkovic, editor of Arkzin, in Croatia, the only legitimate culture is national culture... The self-declared intellectual elite has proclaimed itself for ‘guardians of the past' and only valid source of interpretation of the Croat national identity". Thereby they have turned themselves into "untouchable guardian of the essence of the national identity" (See Igor Markovic's comments in Bozidar Jaksic, ed., Interkulturalnost versus rasizam i ksenofobija, Belgrade 1998, p. 73).
[xvi] Politika, November 14, 1999.
[xvii] Slobodan Rakitic, "Pozdravna rec na otvaranju Corovicevih susreta pisaca u Bileci 21. septembra 2001", Knjizevne novine (Belgrade), November 1-15, 2001.
[xviii] Matija Beckovic, Sluzba, pp. 49, 76, 132.
[xix] Milovan Danojlic, "O Semolj gori Mira Vuksanovica", Knjizevne novine, November 15-30, 2001.
[xx]. Dr Ivanka Krasojevic-Kostic, Politika, March 16, 1998.
[xxi]. M. Kuburovic, "Zavestanje o jeziku monaha Simeona" ["Simeon the Monk's language testament"], Politika, February 27, 1998.
[xxii] Mile Medic, Zavjestanja Stefana Nemanje, 3rd edition, Belgrade 2001, pp. 119-21.
[xxiii]. See, for example, Z. Radosavljevic's "Najezda stranih reci" ["The invasion of foreign words"], Politika, July 20, 2000, and Dobrica Eric's "Zavestanje Stefana Nemanje" ["Stefan Nemanja's Testament"], Politika, January 27, 2000. It is interesting that Eric is the publisher of Medic's book in which this forgery appears (Mile Medic, Najezda stranih reci na srpski jezik [The invasion of the Serb language by foreign words], Nolit, Belgrade 2000). The most recent reference to this "last will" is found in the "Apel za zastitu jezika" ["Appeal for Protection of the Language"] published in Politika on February 1, 2002 by Miroslav Krstic, a member of the "Movement for the Defense and Purity of the Serb Language" which, the author informs us, was set up "in 1994 on St Vitus's day in the Belgrade city library". Speaking on behalf of the Movement, he asks for "understanding and support, in the spirit of Stefan Nemanja's call for protection of the language, addressed to his son Rastko but also to us all (‘Language, my son, is stronger than any battlement')."
[xxiv] Politika, June 16, 1998.
[xxv] Politika, May 20, 1999.
[xxvi] Quoted in Z. Radosavljevic, "Oci na dva sveta", Politika, October 19, 2000.
[xxvii] Matija Beckovic, "Ave Jovanu Ducicu", Politika, October 28, 2000.
[xxviii] Dragomir Brajkovic, "Ime za pamcenje", 5th installment of the series of articles "Povratak pesnika" [Return of the poet], Politika, November 17, 2000.
[xxix] Rajko Petrov Nogo, "Bog nasamo sa pesnikom", Politika, September 23, 2000.
[xxx] nedjo Sipovac, "Santicu u cast", Zbilja (Belgrade), 8-10, 2001, p.10.
[xxxi] Rajko Petrov Nogo, "Oci na oba sveta", LMS, November 2000, p. 330
[xxxii]. The proceedings have been published as Susret ili sukob civilizacija na Balkanu, International scientific conference, December 10-12, 1997, SANU (Belgrade) and Pravoslavna rec(Novi Sad).
[xxxiii] Samuel Huntington, Clash of civilizations, quoted from translation by B. Gligoric, published by CID, Podgorica 1998, p. 322.
[xxxiv] See Mirko Djordjevic, Znaci vremena, Belgrade 1998, p. 133.
[xxxv] Djordje Kadijevic, "Samo se nacin menja", Politika, October 27, 2001.
[xxxvi] Milorad Ekmecic, "Sukob civilizacija ili stvaranje svetskog sistema velikih sila?", Susret ili sukob civilizacija na Balkanu, p. 49.
[xxxvii] Cedomir Popov, "Ujedinjavanje sveta - demokratsko ili nasilno", in Evropa na raskrscu. Novi zidovi ili ujedinjena Evropa?, International round table, Belgrade, April 28-29, 1999, SANU 1999, p.41.
[xxxviii] Mihajlo Markovic, "Smisao globalizacije", in Evropa na raskrscu, p. 74.
[xxxix] "Vreme otvorenog nihilizma", conversation with Mihajlo Djuric in Politika, February 24, 2001.
[xl] Mihajlo Djuric, concluding passage of a paper presented to SANU on the "Origin and Future of Europe" (Poreklo i buducnost Evrope"), Politika, March 24, 2001
[xli] According to the editorial board mission statement, the activities of this magazine are primarily targeting culture (and not public opinion). See editorial article "Moc i nemoc culture" ["Power and powerlessness of culture"] for Bibliografija (1989-2000), Republika, issue 260-261 (May 1-31, 2000)
[xlii] Dragoljub Micunovic, "Cultura i drustvo" ["Culture and society"], Dijalog, pilot issue, Fall-winter 1995.
[xliii] Branimir Stojkovic, "Identitet kao determinanta kulturnih prave" ["Identity as determinant of cultural rights"], in Vojin Dimitrijevic (et al.) Kulturna Prava, Belgrade center for human rights, 1999, p. 19
[xliv] Dusan Pavlovic, Akteri i modeli. Ogledi o politici u Srbiji pod Milosevicem, Samizdat B92, 2001, p. 133
[xlv] Zagorka Golubovic, "Kulture u tranziciji u Istocnoj Evropi I Jugoslaviji: rskorak izmedju kulturnog I nacionalnog obrasca" ["Cultures in transition in Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia: gap between cultural and national approach"], in Mirjana Prosic-Dvornic (editor), Kulture u tranziciji, Plato, Beograd, 1994, p. 41
[xlvi] Sreten Vujovic, "Nelagoda od grada" ["Uneasy relationship with the city"], in Nebojsa Popov (editor), Srpska strana rata, Part I, second edition, B92, Beograde 2002, pp. 188-189.
[xlvii] Ernst Gellner, Nations et nationalisme, Paris 1995, p. 177
[xlviii] Interkulturalnost u multietnickom drustvu (1995), Ka jeziku mira (1996), Granice - izazov interkulturalnosti (1997), Interkulturalnost - versus rasizam i ksenofobija (1998), Interkulturalnost i tolerancija (1999)
[xlix] Kulturna prava p. 59
[l] Nebojsa Popov, Srpski Populizam, special supplement of magazine Vreme, 1993
[li] Olga Zirojevic, "Kosovo u kolektivnom pamcenju" Olivera Milosavljevic, "Zloupotreba autoriteta nauke", Drinka Gojkovic, "Trauma bez katarze", Mirko Djordjevic, "Knjizevnost populistickog talasa", all in Nebojsa Popov (editor), Srpska strana rata, Part I, Second edition, B92, Beograd 2002
[lii] Milena Sseic Dragicevic, "Neofolk kultura, Novi Sad 1995; Ivan Colovic, Bordel ratnika. Folklor politika i rat, 3rd expanded edition, Biblioteka XX vek, Beograd 2000
[liii] See his books Jezik od mira do rata [Langauge from peace to war], 2nd expanded edition, Biblioteka XX vek, Beograd 1995, Jezik u drustvenoj krizi [Langauge in social crisis], Cigoja stampa, 1997, and Lica jezika. Sociolingvisticke teme [Faces of langauge. Sociolinguistic topics], Biblioteka XX vek, 2001
[liv] Compare with Bozidar Jaksic (editor), Ka jeziku mira [Towards language of peace], Beograd 1996.
Translated on May 25, 2006