Bookreview / Article Analysis

Branka Mihaljović. The Bosnian War. “Ćosićeva Rehabilitacija Ratne Politike Devedesetih”. Radio Slobodna Evropa (Radio Free Europe), March 3, 2012.

http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/content/cosiceva_rehabilitacija_ratne_politike_devedesetih/24507663.html

Dobrica Ćosić published a controversial book called Bosanski Rat (The Bosnian War).

The author was a close associate of the Tito regime, though he opposed Tito’s ethnic policies and the decentralization of the Republic.  He particularly resisted Kosovo and Vojvodina’s autonomy. As Yugoslavia’s government became more decentralized in the late 1980s, so grew Ćosić’s opposition toward the Yugoslav system.  He was convinced that Serbs (and Montenegrins) would be demoted in the ethnical hierarchy of Yugoslavia should the system collapse.  

Following Tito’s death, Ćosić led the opposition that sought to reach equality for Serbia within the Republic. Then, in 1986, the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU) published the SANU Memorandum. Ćosić served as the SANU’s president at the time of the Memorandum’s publication. Among the cornerstones of the Memorandum was Serbia’s underprivileged role in the Republic, Yugoslavia’s growing fragmentation and lack of democracy. The Memorandum was partially responsible for the re-nationalization of Serbia’s politics. Ćosić supported Slobodan Milośević’s presidency and Radovan Karadžić’s rise to power. He served as the Secretary General for the Non Alignment Movement (NAM) in 1992 and later held Serbia’s presidency between 1992 and 1993.

In all, Ćosić has published over thirty novels and novellas, bringing to light the history of the Serbian people whose demise he decries. “Winners during war and losers throughout peace” is his better-known idiom describing Serbia. Ćosić retreated from his political engagement until Kosovo’s independence in 2008 when he criticized Europe’s ‘betrayal’ of Serbia by recognizing Priština. Since then, Ćosić has propagated a partition of Kosovo whereby its Serbian-populated north would fall to Serbia, while most likely, southern Kosovo would join Albania. His opinions are unlike the popular Serbian political view that staunchly holds to the United Nation’s Resolution 1244 and a unified Serbia.               

Ćosić’s digressive viewpoint with regard to Kosovo is interesting and perhaps telling of Serbia’s political consciousness. On the matter of Kosovo, Ćosić’s assessments may not be the most popular, especially among the Serbs that live in Kosovo’s north.  The fact that Kosovo is and will remain an independent country is also clear to Serbia’s citizenry. Yet, Serbia’s political elite cannot move forward, nor can it move backward. Should Serbia recognize Kosovo’s independence, calamities in Southern Serbia and Northern Kosovo are inevitable. At the same time, Serbia will continue to face political difficulties internationally should it continue to hold on to UN Resolution 1244 – especially regarding questions of EU accession. Serbia is stuck.

Picture taken in Serbia's capital Belgrade; On the left is Serbia's new president Tomislav Nikolić with his slogan "President of the People, not of a Political Party" 

The same may be true for Serbia’s recognition of genocide in Srebrenica. Serbia’s citizens are caught in a political limbo, where politicians jockey to appear apologetic on the international stage (as was Boris Tadić who ‘apologized’ for the genocide) while others, such as Nikolić – Serbia’s new president – doubt that the genocide occurred.

In a recent article published by Radio Slobodna Evropa, former politician and Sociologist Vesna Pešić lamented that Serbia’s youth is not sufficiently informed about what exactly happened during the 1990’s. This may be in part due to Serbia’s partial control of the media and subsequent limited information. Therefore, ideologues such as Ćosić may fill the void and jockey to win the ear of the allegedly poorly informed population. The conservative, anti-lustration oriented faction may have won the latest electoral round (as demonstrated with Tomislav Nikolić’s victory during the last presidential elections). Perhaps Ćosić’s Bosanski Rat was a foreboding that Serbia’s political pendulum has once again swung to the right.

Picture taken in Serbia's capital Belgrade; The sign advertises a new newspaper called the Independent Newspaper. The slogan in the upper left promises a paper that will not lie to the people and reads "I do not want for them to lie to me anymore" - them meaning the popular newsmedia  

Branka Mihaljović. The Bosnian War. “Ćosićeva Rehabilitacija Ratne Politike Devedesetih”. Radio Slobodna Evropa (Radio Free Europe). March 3, 2012.

In his latest book The Bosnian War, Academic and ideologue of Greater Serbia Dobrica Ćosić represents the Bosnian Serbs as the victims of the Muslim-Croat coalition and the Republika Srpska as the only Serb victory of the twentieth century. The book has been published in the form of a diary and records the events between the years 1992 – 1995.

In a diary entry dated to May 16^th, Ćosić recorded that “Muslims declared war on Serbs so as to complete the conquest of Bosnia i Herzegovina and the extermination of Serbs form the first Islamic Republic of Europe”. 

Ćosić writes these lines at the time when tanks roll toward Pale and snipers begin their three year siege of Sarajevo, paramilitary troops began to clear Eastern Bosnia, and survivors of Prejodor and surroundings are being deported to concentration camps…

Dobrica Ćosić published his book in defense of Republica Srpska – a place he considers a hard earned war trophy.

In the Center for the Young, Ćosić addressed a crowed of predominantly elderly supporters: “the book The Bosnian War is my defense of freedom and truth and national rights that are contained in Republika Srpska – that much too costly – but single political and war victory of the Serbian people reached in the second half of the 20^th century”. 

 

Among the promoters of the book is Dragoslav Bokan, a former follower of the right wing Nazi guru Dragoš Kalaić.

The vultures from Belgrade, Europe, and the world were hovering over us – this strange parasitic class that mocked Dobrica Ćosić and others like him, arrested and tortured me and people like myself. Between the choice of two concepts – that of Prince Lazar and the Despot Stefan; The concept of leaving the knightly field, dying with ones sword in hand or that of leaving on a shame-wagon into the reality of a new age to come. Unfortunately, the Serbian leadership in BiH chose the latter one under the horrific pressure from the world and Belgrade – left to stand without a concept, to say one thing while thinking about another whilst proclaiming a third.       

“To have abandoned all our war aims, and to have forsaken – not even tried one of two possible concepts, the war and samurai like knights’ or else wise concepts of the mature years and all else Dobrica Ćosićs brings with him”, said Bokan.   

Although the writer Vladimir Kecmanović was young at the time of the propaganda during the 1980’s war preparation, he learned how to use the dead in his favor.

The very people that that marked the Serbian pits and executions of WWII and proclaimed the wars of the 1990’s as warmongering and necrophilia nowadays force us to confront ourselves with the tragedy of Srebrenica. Mentioning Skelani, Kazan Sijekovac and other crimes against Serbs that immediately preceded Srebrenica, leads to a state of ‘truth-seeking’ hysteria.     

Is this event, and this book – in which entries from the 11^th to the 15^th of July are missing, the dates of the genocide in Srebrenica, the only planned killing in the history of European history since WWII that lead to a redrawing of borders though out by the Serbian state – only a story on the fringe, told by marginalized, though at one time powerful people? Or is this part of the process by which the goals of the 1990’s war are being rehabilitated Serbia never gave up in the first place?

Sociology professor Zagorka Golubović believes neither one nor the other.

“I would say this is a backdoor rehabilitation of the values that promoted the idea of a Greater Serbia, and led to war… No one will tell you this openly, but we have found in our research in which we asked people when they felt the most comfortable, most responded they felt best during Tito’s times and the 1990. It is improbable that Boris Tadić or any other representative will tell you that their plan is to rehabilitate that past. Yet, unfortunately, the issue is a complete chaos of ideas and contradictions, and nobody who solves them”, says Zagorka Golubović.

Historian Branka Prpa was terrified by the words spoken at Ćosić’s book promotion.

It is frightening that ideas that have lead to war are once again affirmed and set in the political milieu as a crucial question of Serbia’s political future. If you rehabilitate the war of the 1990’s, you rehabilitate all those that have been tried at the Hague since. This type of rehabilitation that is if nationalistic nature has been absolutely present for the past 20 years at the political top of this country, concluded Prpa.    

At the promotion alongside Ćosić also spoke the aforementioned Bokan, Kecmatović and professor for communication Darko Tanasković and another, younger representative of ideologies close to the generation of Marko Krstić.