A Suffeit Of Insomnia

Thanks to insomnia which has plagued him for years, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, emerged recently as a writer. As he told ``Newsweek,'' sleeping pills don't help him; he usually gets up between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., walks around the house, and then sits down to write his memoirs.

Insomnia occasionally torments former Yugoslav President and writer Dobrica Cosic. But, after an exciting and dramatic year as President, he still hasn't embarked on writing his memoirs, even though there have lately been rumors to this effect. The women's magazine ``Nova Nada'' claims that Cosic is writing again, and that it is a continuation of his trilogy Vreme vlasti (Times of Power); and that he is also thinking of accepting Knopff's (wellknown publishing house) offer to write a book on ``the Serbian question in Europe.''

Two books about Cosic's days as President have come out. The first, Autoritet bez vlasti (Authority Without Power) written by Cosic's special advisor Svetozar Stojanovic was published last year. The second, Dobrica Cosicili predsednik bez vlasti (Dobrica CosicA President Without Power) by Cosic's spokesman and public relations advisor Dragoslav Rancic came out recently. Another book with similar ambitionsof explaining what took place behind the scenes during a brief but stormy period on the Yugoslav political scene, during which Dobrica Cosic and Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic played important roles, is expected to come out soon. The author is journalist Manojlo Vukotic and the title is Srpski san Milana Panica (Milan Panic's Serbian Dream).

Memoirs of this kind, contributions or supplements for someone's biography are a special branch of journalism. Eyewitness accounts, notes and comments by those who have worked or been close to wellknown statesmen (or by the statesmen themselves) are a very popular branch of literature in the world. In the last few years several books of this type have also appeared here. Most of them were written with the idea of explaining how Yugoslavia disintegrated, or what was happening when the war started.

The first book in this field was Srpska vojska (The Serbian Army) by Dobrila Glisic, written ``from the cabinet of the Defence Minister'' General Simovic. Two years ago this book raised a lot of dust because it allegedly disclosed secrets concerning the setting up of a ``Serbian army,'' i.e. the ethnic purge of the Yugoslav People's Army. As a result, Dobrila Glisic lost her job.

Former Defence Minister Veljko Kadijevic wrote Moje vidjenje raspadavojska bez drzave (My View of the DisintegrationAn Army Without a State), which was published by the Politika Publishing House. The greatest part of this book is devoted to GermanAmericanVatican plans for the breaking up of Yugoslavia and the results of their domestic fifth columnists in doing so. Kadijevic claims that he had always urged Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's vision of Yugoslavia, even though there are many witnesses who claim that his devotion and closeness to Milosevic came about after the war in Slovenia. A group of Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) generals and ranking officers recently announced that they would write a reply to General Kadijevic. According to some information, this book can be expected in Autumn 1994.

Similar editions published in other former Yugoslav republics make interesting comparative reading.

The rare persons who have had the opportunity of reading and comparing what has been written by former VicePresident of the Socialist Yugoslavia Presidency and top SPS official Borisav Jovic, Kadijevic and top Croatian politician and opposition leader Stipe Mesic (Mesic was the last Presidency President of Socialist Yugoslavia), including some Slovenian views on the disintegration of Socialist Yugoslavia, have reached the same conclusionnamely, we have fared pretty well, considering who was at the helm of the country.

Belgrade sociologist Nebojsa Popov's first impression after reading these books was that the men who decided on Yugoslavia's fate and left their memoirs on the subject, obviously had no vision on how to avoid war and bloodshed. ``They lacked an awareness that the fate of a joint state can be decided in two ways: in parliament or on the battlefield,'' said Popov. ``No one tried to resolve the problem in parliament, or tried to reach a consensus as was the case in all the former Socialist countries. From these books we see that no one even thought of a peaceful separation, which was possible. Apart from Macedonia, to some degree, consensus and round table discussions were not conducted in any of the new national states, because the main participants in the events, as can be seen today from their writing, did not have this in mind.''

The mid Eighties saw a new wave of writers and memoirs on how ``it really happened,'' written by more or less wellknown participants of World War Two. The generals started the ball rolling, but the whole thing later became rather shopworn, with various unit commanders and others remembering their unrecognized feats of military genius. Not much of importance has remained from this plethora of memoirs and eyewitness accounts, and all that can be said, is that they helped bring about a certain democratization. Books were no longer thick tomes which had been passed by the politburo or the central committee. Semiliterate officers and amateur historians started writing, and this was the start of a new ``literary culture.''

This resulted in a widespread practice of peeping through Tito's keyhole, while at the same time, only a small number of books approached his role in world history from a serious and analytical stand. This type of new, mass literature fulfilled a certain social functionit was perfectly suited to the new city dwellers who felt the need from time to time, for other forms of ``cultural enlightenment,'' some ``serious reading'' for example, not just folk music concerts. This type of literature, along with the socalled ``polemical books,'' was a constant topic of debate by top Communist Party forums who at one time tried to ``bring some order'' to the deluge of ``historiographical'' publications.

Compared to those who yielded power at the time of Yugoslavia's disintegration, testimonies of this period written by those politicians who stood at the helm of the third Yugoslavia attract a great deal more attention. Slavko Poledica, of ``Plato,'' the biggest bookshop in Belgrade, said that both books by Cosic's advisors Stojanovic and Rancic found a public, and that the same can be expected with the book ``Milan Panic's Serbian Dream.'' At the time, this bookshop financed the publishing of a book on Panic, entitled ``So!'' (an expression Panic uses often, even when speaking in SerboCroatian). The whole edition of 1,000 copies sold very quickly.

In the preface to their books, Rancic and Vukotic say they are describing and registering events without ``a distance'' and without ambitions of making assessments. Both authors are aware that everything has not been said, even though their stories abound with interesting and little known details. A comparative reading of the two books discloses something their authors were probably unaware of at the time of writing. With the passage of time, these books could become less documents and accounts about Cosic and Panic, but rather, new supplements for Slobodan Milosevic's biography.

After the book Kako se dogodio vodja (How A Leader Happened) by journalist Slavoljub Djukic, certain pages by Rancic and Vukotic are very vivid supplements on the technology of power yielded by Milosevic, who, after Tito, is Machiavelli's best pupil in these parts. Certain passages describing Cosic's moodiness and fears for the fate of the country and the people, or of Panic's optimism, border on the grotesque when compared with Milosevic's ruthlessness.

Regardless of History's judgement of Cosic's and Panic's achievements, their advisors and the journalists who followed the Federal leadership's attempts at wriggling out of sanctions and ridding itself of the burden of the war in BosniaHerzegovina and in Croatia, will have the consolation that there will still be something to write about. All that the advisors of the current Yugoslav President, Zoran Lilic, will be able to publish one day, will be a collection of telegrams (greetings and condolences) which Lilic sent to foreign statesmen, and his ``impressions'' after visiting numerous garrisons in the country. Lilic's eventual insomnia could only result in a brochure ``I Saw Mandela.''

Bestsellers

There are many who believe that the memoirs of Stane Dolanc, former Socialist Yugoslavia's Police Minister, would certainly have the greatest number of readers. It is believed that Dolanc had a finger in many pies and that he was the man who knew most. Dolanc, however, has devoted himself to picking mushrooms and keeping silent, at least for the time being. In this new Yugoslavia, the most popular authors would be Arkan (Zeljko Raznatovic, paramilitary leader turned politician) and Radmilo Bogdanovic (Serbian police eminence grise), should they wish, and dare, put it all down.

A computer check of bestsellers at ``Plato'' bookshop shows that memoirs aren't selling as well as they did a few years ago. ``That type of book has its public, but is obviously not as large as before,'' said Slavko Poledica, of ``Plato.'' ``Some of the books did well. I believe that the time of personal testimonies is passing, and that a time for more analytical books in all fields is coming. It is the turn of historians and possibly psychologists and psychiatrists, because politicians are not believed much any more. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's book Godine raspleta (Years of Denouement) sold much better than Odgovor (Answer) by his wife Mirjana Markovic. Many foreign institutes ordered as many as ten copies of Milosevic's book. We used to have books by Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and BosniaHerzegovina President Alija Izetbegovic, and they sold well too. In the last few years there is great demand for dictionaries and books with religious, astrological, psychological and pseudopsychological subjects. Of books linked in some way to politics, the ones selling best are those dealing with the New World Order, such as ``A Europe Full of Fools'' and ``The Secret World of The Masons,'' '' said Slavko Poledica.