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Story About Serbedzija

Serbedzija was a part of Milosevic's warmongering machinery, and now after the "cleansing" in Hollywood the same invisible hand that soils everything Croatian is now bringing him back as an example of civic virtue and political correctness

by Josko CELAN

Slobodna Dalmacija, Split, Croatia, September 27, 2000

The return of Mesic-Racan's Party, also known as the League of (recycled) Communists of the "Western Balkans", to power is a project based on a big lie, made up of an infinite series of middle-sized and small lies. All those who created Croatia and feel that she is their state are these days fighting against that fundamental lie about the nature of the present Croatian state and the war that created her. Those others are tirelessly polishing the big and producing middle-sized and small lies.

Communist Propaganda

One of these supportive lies of smaller format is the one about Rade Serbedzija, the Serb actor from Lika, and today, some say, a very successful Hollywood actor, which its creators - communist propagandists as talented as Goebbels, capable and educated - have been licking and spinning on a carefully drawn path for years. It started with the broadcast of "Countess Dora" on the HTV, now it continues with the announcement of the founding of Serbedzija's Theater Ulysses in Pula, and the whole project will probably end with, for example, his triumphant return to the stage of the National Theater in Zagreb, perhaps on the occasion of the proclamation of the third unification.

The most indicative example in all that is the article written by Zdravko Zima, supposedly a writer, published in Novi List on September 24 under headline "The Return of Condemned". The authors new-orjunian [Croatian pro-Yugoslav organization active in Dalmatia in the early 20th century] general outlook is visible from the headline in the spirit of Serb pop-culture partisans, then from the fact that the Croat participation in the breakup of the former tyranny is described as "secession" and "secession from Yugoslavia", in spite of the historical truth and "official" verdict of Badinter's commission that the former Yugoslavia simply fell apart, as any other rotten creation.

In such an outlook even actor Serbedzija is, the writer says, a symbol of "the civic and artistic Croatia" facing "the nationalist and extremist Croatia". He was "forced into exile" and "persecuted for years", but now he will in Croatia present "different plays" whose "power will spread outside the borders of theater". In the spirit of the old statement that Serbedzija is actually "Croatian unclean conscience".

The true story, however, is significantly different. For starters, Serbedzija was not expelled. He was even feted and courted at the very top, by Zlatko Vitez, president's close associate and melancholy patriot perpetually defensive in front of the Zagreb Europeanizing proletarian-intellectuals. Secondly, he is not a man of virtue. He is simply a Serb who in the war between his Croatian homeland and Serb origin chose the latter ("I would go to the front to fight for Croatia; if I were a Croat I would definitely do that," he said rather sincerely. "But, as a Serb from Croatia, how can I defend my Croatian homeland on the front by shooting at my Serb relatives on the other side?!")

As far as his political biography is concerned, people in general recall his role in the traveling circus known as KPGT ("Kazaliste, pozoriste, gledalisce, teatar" [theater in all ex-YU languages, an experimental former Yugoslav theater company]). Its creator and Serbedzija's brother in theater Ljubisa Ristic is these days, as we could see on TV, exactly as an untamed Yugoslav faking the Fuhrer's electoral defeat. He has to the very end remained loyal to the Communist leather coat, and boots and the Russian fur hat in the manner of an Eastern Orthodox Communist Chapayev (it has been said that Communism was merely a subspecies, or a sect of Eastern Orthodox Christianity), while Serbedzija after some wondering and contemplation chose the wide world and cozy and elegant cosmopolitanism.

However, before that a lot that only those with especially short memory can ignore took place: when the hell in Croatia started, on the burnt remains of destroyed Vukovar Serbedzija shot scenes for "Deserter". Because of that cinemas in Rijeka did not want to screen even the American movie in which he played. In Zagreb a stuntman attacked Serbedzija with a knife.

But many do not know about this telling detail: on the last day of the long gone year 1988 on the pages of this newspaper I wrote the article under headline "Actor Against Theater", after Serbedzija was declared for the "Yugoslav Person of the Year". Carried away by Milosevic's "anti-bureaucratic revolution" which raged at the time, he contributed to it with these words: "We, the people raised in these times... therefore without true passions, we are actually a horrible generation of weaklings, and cowards. I think that if today something bad were to happen, because there hasn't been a war for a long time, everyone would run away... I personally find it horrible, and it is horrible to have to say something like that, but I regret that I will very likely end my life without experiencing a war."

In my article I was horrified by Serbedzija's words. I denounced them as "remnants of certain ideologies, almost fanatical in their anachronistic nature," and I instructed him that "war is not only the worst misfortune, but also the worst humiliation of the human being... From the mouth of the Yugoslav 'person of the year' echoes that kind of irrational thought which recently could have been heard in the well known 'song' about three wars and another one 'if we are lucky'" ("Who says, who lies, that Serbia is a small country...")

Translated on March 8, 2001