The Final Farewell

The very concept of incomplete Yugoslavia, from which Slovenia and Croatia will be missing and possibly Macedonia with some parts of Bosnia as well, is the total opposite to the former idea of Yugoslavia. Even in its centralized unitarian hey-day, which is how most of its seventy-three year old history can be described, that state represented a heterogenous, multinational community where no ideology could dominate. Apart from this, Yugoslavia was created twice, if not with the actual will of the people, then at least with great enthusiasm and hopes of an active elite. It was created and destroyed in two wars. It has come out of the World War II finally defeated and the project of incomplete Yugoslavia is its product. That idea has no real support, not because Slovenia and Croatia determine the formation of any real state, but because nobody believes in the success of the multinational community which is based on exalted nationalism.

The first ruler of Yugoslavia king Alexander Karadjordjevic I can hardly be seen as its creator. Even the Versailles Agreement was not enough to ensure that, just as Yugoslavia could not be saved by the Hague Agreement and all the efforts of the international community. Not even a Serbian victory with catastrophic casualties would have been enough, regardless of the way they were and still are being portrayed as a conscious and voluntary contribution of the Serbian people to the state of Yugoslavia. There must have been a desire of these small nations to get out of their own skin and become something bigger and better.

The fate of small nations from the outskirts of Europe is to oscillate between attempting to approach Europe by jumping a step or two (and reach Europe which is still eluding them), and giving up on that idea, which leads to isolation. It is equally difficult to jump as it is to trail along at your own pace and be condemned to trotting behind. Both Yugoslavias, irrespective of their differences, presented the attempts aimed at overcoming their own marginal status.

The regime of Alexander I presented the first clash between idealism and reality. Alexander was more a soldier than a politician. He did not lack the energetic ruthlessness in keeping the power and eliminating his political opponents, but he needed all the wisdom in the world to lead one of the strangest states created in this century. For, a state which is made up of several nations and religions and of numerous minorities and, added to this, situated in the part of the world where different civilizations came and went, most of which were mostly talking with arms rather than compromising - called for a very sophisticated mechanism of power. The question of the identity of such a state presented an additional burden.

It turned out that the idea of Yugoslavia was better than the ones who implemented it, better even than the nation it was offered to. It preceded a similar idea of European integration by several decades. It would be easy enough to show that it never was democratic, but it would not be easy to impute to Yugoslavia the thwarting and the blocking of some of its considerable democratic potentials and traditions inherent in its peoples. In any case, that idea was very much alive in the World War II, since the communists could not have won without it. The entire ideology of the international proletariat would never have conquered the forces of the civil war. Tito's Yugoslavia has now become rejected and despised, mostly for the wrong reasons, which can be seen from the fact that this model of power is slowly and reluctantly being abandoned. Despite the one-party system, the communist Yugoslavia was in many ways closer to Europe than any of its republics are today, no matter how much they are speaking of democracy and their European orientation.

Although it has been clear for some time now that Yugoslavia is no more, there is no doubt that many of its former citizens feel very strange these days after having been formally put inside the new borders. The Slovenes and the Croats are not hiding their exaltation, although the latter have the reason to fear for their borders. Everybody else feels uncertain as to what country they are living in. The majority possibly hopes that, by some strange miracle, all this will be settled and that they will wake up within the old borders.

Thousands of families and friends will remain on the other side. The distance is still the same, except we will now need a passport. Is it really such a big problem? Are we going to be made to feel as foreigners in the states and cities which we until very recently considered our own? Or, could all this be a joke?

When the last European state - the Austro-Hungarian Empire - fell apart, many of its citizens must have felt the way we feel today. That was also a multinational state and it lasted several centuries, but the split was definite, although many in Vienna must have hoped that it was only temporary. This time the split is definite too, and in all likelihood it has not been completed. Whatever anyone thought of it, Yugoslavia should be written off for good without any regrets, without bitterness and mutual accusations. The past seventy years are a part of our history which was full of various experiences which can not be erased. Our common state is worn out, it served its term and the worst we can say is that we lived for decades in the unfortunate illusion and that it was no life to speak of.

Finally, these people will meet again as soon as they stop examining their navels and start looking around them. The meeting will be more pleasant if they find a way to forget Yugoslavia quickly. If the European integration goes according to plan, there will be a place for all of us. If it fails, Europe will share our fate and we will not be sorry in this case either. We will be avant-garde.

The disintegration of Yugoslavia is, undoubtedly, an important world event. This is the most serious symptom of all of the resistance to the mainstream of the European civilization which aims for global integration. We will probably be carefully examined, taken down for laboratory research to establish the causes, which will result in a vaccine for all the cases of this kind. Unless they find out that it is all much simpler than it looks and that the old anti-rabies vaccine is needed here. In that case, they could see something good in the disintegration of Yugoslavia after all.

When the unification if premature, the state should disintegrate into simpler units first and then unite on a more natural basis, corresponding to the world standards, which neither king Alexander nor Marshal Tito satisfied.