Milosevic (22 page)

In fact by 1389 the Ottoman empire already controlled large swathes of
the Balkans, including areas inhabited by Serbs. Several local Serb chiefs had allied themselves with the Sultan, as a means of defeating their local rivals. When the nineteenth-century ruler Milos Obrenovic had sent the stuffed and skinned head of his rival Karadjordjevic to Istanbul on a plate he was merely following in this tradition of expedient vassalage. Serb soldiers, too, fought in the armies of Sultan Murat. In military terms the battle was more of a draw than outright defeat for either side. The fortress of Belgrade did not fall for another sixty years.

Yet why did the details of a conflict that took place six centuries ago matter? For many, the resonance of Balkan history is a mystery, its power enough to gather hundreds of thousands of people to wait for hours in a muddy field to hear Milosevic speak. But elsewhere in Europe, the memories of ancient battles also retain the power to mobilise communities, as the summer marching season in Northern Ireland shows.

By 1989 Serbia and all the Yugoslav republics were feeling increasingly insecure. Milosevic's strategy of weakening federal power through the anti-bureaucratic revolutions and the February demonstration in Belgrade had worked. Yugoslavia was increasingly reduced to an idea – and an ideal for many – but that was not enough. Communism was beginning to collapse all over eastern Europe, and the idea of Yugoslavia with it. While one belief system was crumbling, another needed to be constructed. So it was not surprising that in such turbulent times nationalism, with its comforting, familiar pageantry of medieval legends and symbols provided a welcoming embrace. At Gazimestan, myth and modernity were deftly fused. The design of the podium from which Milosevic spoke was firmly in the socialist-realist tradition: grandiose and overbearing, but simple. Giant numbers behind Milosevic spelled out ‘1389' and ‘1989'.

Milosevic knew when he stood behind the banks of microphones, that this was one of the most important days of his life. Although he generally disliked public speaking and addressing rallies, he realised that if all went well this would crown him the new king of Serbia, inheritor of the spirit of both Prince Lazar and Tito. He was relaxed and confident as he spoke. At Gazimestan there was no danger of votes going the wrong way or unscripted events disrupting the day's plan. Old-fashioned socialist planning and the Serbian secret service had taken care of that. His speech blended the wooden language of Marxist exhortation with older strands of myth and legend, and the possibility of future war. What was Mira's role in this pivotal event in Milosevic's evolution as a Serbian leader?
Many believed that while this section of the speech was written by Milosevic himself:

The battle of Kosovo contains within itself one great symbol. That is the symbol of heroism. It is commemorated in our songs, dances, literature and history . . . Six centuries later we are again involved in battles, and facing battles. They are not battles with arms, but these battles cannot be excluded. But regardless of what form they take these battles cannot be won without decisiveness, courage and sacrifice, without those good characteristics which long ago were present on the field of Kosovo.
¹⁶

The distinct voice of Mira Markovic can be heard in the next sentences:

Our main battle today is for the realisation of economic, political, cultural and general social prosperity, and the successful advance towards the civilisation in which people will live in the twenty-first century.

Milosevic's Gazimestan speech has entered history. Extracts were even used by the prosecution at the Hague tribunal as a means of trying to prove that as early as the summer of 1989, Milosevic was planning war. Mira denied that there was any belligerent intent.

There is a mystification about this speech. So many people gathered there because ten years before Serbs were oppressed by the local Albanian community. Serbs were moving out of Kosovo. They were ill-treated and Serbs tolerated it because that older generation of politicians had the following policy: ‘Serbs are the biggest nation in Yugoslavia and they have to endure and tolerate everything.' It was not a celebratory speech, it was just a ceremonial speech for the occasion. There is nothing that could hurt anyone in that speech.
¹⁷

Even so, the Yugoslav federal officials on the podium next to Milosevic looked increasingly uneasy as Milosevic laid out his vision of Serbia's future. In the distance Pristina shimmered in the summer heat, under a haze of pollution. The city's dusty unpaved roads and
cracked concrete tower blocks were silent. This was a day for Albanians to stay at home. The crowd roared and cheered. The presence of the Serb Patriarch German symbolised the Orthodox Church's blessing. The day was celebrating a battle against the Ottomans, but ironically it was the Ottomans themselves that intentionally strengthened the power of the national church as a bastion of national identity. Under the ‘millet' system religious authorities were granted substantial autonomy, charged with raising their own taxes and running their own communal affairs. Orthodox churches, like the Serbian Church, are ‘autocephalous'. An autocephalous church can appoint its own synod and leaders. Such national religious autonomy is seen as an expression of nationhood itself. Where the Church's writ runs, so does the nation's. This means that unlike in western Europe or the United States, there is no concept of the ‘separation of church and state'. On the contrary, Orthodox churches have been one of the main engines of integrating church and state. The very idea of ‘
srpstvo
', which roughly translates as ‘serbness', is inextricably linked with the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Many demonstrators bedecked themselves in Orthodox and Chetnik regalia, to show their support both for the Church and for the Serbian nationalist movement that had fought Tito's partisans as much as the Nazis. The sight of Chetnik paraphernalia, redolent with the symbolism of war and Serbian ultra-patriotism, sent a nervous shudder through the other Yugoslav republics. The Serbian foreign ministry had laid on a special train for western envoys, but they proved unwilling to give to stamp of legitimacy to Milosevic's rally: the only envoy to attend was Turkish, and he noted wryly that as the Ottoman empire had won the battle of Kosovo Polje, it was remembered rather differently in Istanbul. Milosevic was furious at what he perceived as a snub from the diplomatic community, and blamed the US ambassador Warren Zimmerman, whom he refused to meet for months.

Zimmerman's recollections of his meetings with Milosevic offer an intriguing insight into the Serbian leader's outlook. Milosevic told him:

‘Kosovo has always been Serbian, except for a brief period under World War II. Yet we have given the Albanians their own government, their own parliament, their own national library, and their own schools. We have even given them their own Academy of Sciences. Have you Americans given your blacks their own Academy of Sciences?
¹⁸

As Zimmerman points out, in fact Kosovo was under Ottoman rule for 523 years, and by the time the conversation took place – after Milosevic's six month sulk through the latter half of 1989 – Albanians in Kosovo no longer had their own government or parliament.

The Gazimestan pageant was not an isolated event. From the Baltic to the Black Sea, marches and protests increasingly heralded the end of the old order in 1989. In many countries, there was a growing desire for some kind of catharsis, a need come to terms with Communism and its effects on those who had to live under a one-party state. While statues of Marx and Engels were being torn down, to be replaced with older national heroes, more thoughtful politicians and writers, such as Czechoslovakia's Vaclav Havel, attempted to recognise the ethical cost of personal compromises many people had been forced to make under a Marxist regime, and of the moral corruption that had tainted the whole Communist system. But self-knowledge demands a certain courage. It exacts a price that proved to be too high for some. Milosevic also understood that the end of the cold war presaged the dawn of a new era but he took another path: denial. Serbs and Serbia had done nothing wrong, he proclaimed. In fact they were victims of others' misdeeds.

Milosevic presented himself – or arranged that he be presented – as Serbia's national saviour. This fitted neatly into the south Slav cultural tradition of epics and heroes. In Orthodox lands the Communist cult of personality draws on Slavic traditions of royal-worship. As the
babushkas
used to say in Stalin's Soviet Union, ‘We have a new Tsar now'. And the Tsar should maintain a certain distance. Zivorad Kovacevic recalled: ‘For Milosevic it was always important that every appearance should be an event. Everything was prepared and he would not permit any improvisation. There was nothing casual, or showing any human features. This impresses people. His speeches were full of generalities and platitudes.'
¹⁹

In June 1989 the Kosovo pilgrims held a picture of Milosevic in one hand, and one of Prince Lazar in the other. This too was no coincidence. Long preparations had preceded Milosevic's arrival by helicopter on the medieval battlefield. In the winter of 1988 the remains of Prince Lazar, hero and victim of the battle of Kosovo, were exhumed and sent around Serbia on a tour. Wherever his bones came to rest, however briefly, thousands of jubilant Serbs turned out
to greet the remains of the country's most revered historical figure. Only Milosevic, Serbs believed, could guard the prince's heritage. After Gazimestan Milosevic was unassailable in Serbia. His opponents were vilified by a hysterical media. The June 28 rally at Kosovo Polje had anointed Milosevic as a modern king-saint for the post-Communist era. Draza Markovic recalled: ‘At that time at those meetings there were pictures of Karadjordjev, St Sava and Slobodan Milosevic. There were no taxis or buses without a picture of Slobodan Milosevic. Myself and Ivan Stambolic were accused of being traitors. At that time I felt good when this word was used.'
²⁰

Milosevic though added a new twist to the cult of personality around him. He publicly discouraged it. The Serb leader presented himself as thoughtful and unassuming, a man of the people, who understood their concerns. This was perhaps partly genuine, as Milosevic was more comfortable operating in the corridors of power than in front of the crowds, but it also earnt him extra points with his adoring populace.

The Serbs are a naturally ebullient people, vivacious, proud and stubborn. They share an easy informality and Mediterranean joie de vivre with a passionate loyalty to both friends and relatives. Such qualities are engaging, especially to visitors from colder, northern climes. A Serb home is warm and extremely hospitable, as any visitor will testify. An endless supply of coffee, cigarettes,
rakija
(brandy) and food appears as if by magic, even in the midst of war. As the British foreign correspondent Reginald Wyon noted at the beginning of the twentieth century ‘the peasant of the Balkans, be he Albanian or Serb or Montenegrin or Bulgar is hospitality personified, and his full-blooded energy is a pure delight to those who are weary of the Western detrimental.'
²¹

But there is a dark side too to the Serbian character, a tendency to morbid self-pity, and a certainty that through the centuries no nation has suffered like the Serbs, except perhaps the Jews. Milosevic exploited this. While neighbouring countries looked forward to a future of freedom and democracy, he deployed the mechanisms of the one-party state – a pliant media, social control, secret police and fear – to steer the Serbs down a nationalist cul-de-sac. Once walled in by centuries of mordant history, he ensured that the Serbian response to the changing world situation was not a call for a change in leadership, but a demand for its strengthening – under his guidance.

There were alternatives to all of this. Neighbouring Hungary shared
with Serbia a taste for choreographed national pageantry, a relic of both nations' Communist heritage. In June 1989 Hungary also organised a giant spectacle: the reburial of Imre Nagy, leader of the failed 1956 revolution. Imre Nagy and Tito were both country boys, born at the turn of the century, who had discovered Communism, somehow survived the perils of 1930s Moscow and returned home to build the one-party state. Both had broken with the Soviet Union.

So Hungary too had its psychic scars, although it was perhaps easier to find closure for a national trauma rooted in 1956 than 1389. The same month that Serbs gathered at Kosovo Polje, Nagy's coffin, and five others, had been displayed in Budapest's Heroes' Square, just a few yards from the Yugoslav embassy where Nagy had found brief refuge before his execution. The national heroes were then reburied with due pomp and circumstance. An attempt at least to lay Communism's ghosts to rest.

Meanwhile Milosevic's reformers watched the Serbian leader with increasing dismay. He no longer spoke in two voices. The recommendations of Milosevic's reform commission had fallen into the federal political limbo that was home to so many proposals from six republics. Mihailo Crnobrnja began to distance himself. ‘I sensed more and more of this was coming, that my utility as an economist was decreasing.'
²²
He left Belgrade for Brussels, for a post as Yugoslav ambassador to the European Union.

The Slovenes opened the door to the Yugoslav crisis. Although I can't say they were the only ones to blame.

Slobodan Milosevic.
¹

Milosevic's nationalist drive, and the subsequent weakening of federal authority, was having a rapid knock-on effect. Slovenia was thinking about leaving for the European Union. Its most popular slogan was ‘Europe Now'. Slovenia was a country of tidy farms and Germanic work ethic. Unlike Belgrade or Sarajevo, the capital Ljubljana had never been occupied by the Turks. Ljubljana boasted pretty piazzas, arched bridges over the river Ljubljanica and fine secessionist architecture. The alpine republic was Yugoslavia's richest. Its sensible, reliable and industrious citizens enjoyed something approaching western levels of prosperity.