To President, with Love

The Third Congress of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), held in the "Sava" Centre on 2 March, officially cut all the ties with the past, announced general political amnesia and told the Serbs that they had nothing to be ashamed of and that others owed them gratitude.

The inconvenience called war was not mentioned, except marginally, and the same thing was with the sanctions. The carefully formulated speeches did not contain a single inflammable word, no history, not a trace of nationalism. More serious political contents were not even allowed to enter the Congress: there is no poverty, and there will be none in future; the economy has not been destroyed; workers will not lose their jobs. No one lives the way he lives because -"it was us Socialists who decided that Serbia should be a modern European country." The video presentation of the party programme showed everything - from sports for young people to the Army of Yugoslavia. SPS showed its vision of everything, accompanied with romantic music - highways, railroads, river traffic, development of the Yugoslav Airlines, Post Office, gas lines, agriculture; all the factories you could name were mentioned and so were computers and Europolis. Representatives of all districts boasted with their recent accomplishments: the citizens of the Bor district are to get the waterworks because "no one should be thirsty at the beginning of the 21st century" and Leskovac will get a new railway station.

Somewhat incomprehensible but very poetic slogans appeared on the famous video-wall, such as this one: "Where wisdom is old, new are the ideas, he who changes the world is entitled to dreams."

When Zoran Lilic reading the agenda came to the "election of the president", the hall broke into a thunderous applause. "Our options are a happy country, happy people, Serbia; this is why we nominate Slobodan Milosevic to remain the president of our party," hailed a delegate and speeches often began with "Dear President" and "Highly-esteemed President." The only ones who got the applauses equal to those for Milosevic were head of the SPS of the Bosnian Serb Republic Dragutin Ilic and representatives of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Finally, if there are people in this country who dream about roast meat or cakes, those are not the delegates of the Third Congress of the Socialist Party of Serbia. The quantities of meat, cakes and liquors, such as those which were constantly being consumed in the lounge outside the congress hall of the "Sava" Centre are not likely to be seen even at the wedding reception of a well-to-do farmer. However, the hard-working cleaners managed to remove all the trod-on cevapcici, sausages, cigarette ends and crumpled paper cups from the blue carpet in the lounge late in the afternoon -- so that the delegates coming out of the hall after Slobodan Milosevic's speech could help themselves to another drink from the neatly arranged trays, in the setting which finally resembled the "Sava" Centre, before they went home satisfied.

 

Economy: Slovenia and Serbia

We drew up a list of some 60 Slovenian companies that remained on the Serbian and Montenegrin markets since the break-up of former Yugoslavia. We were primarily interested in whether they plan to come back to FR Yugoslavia following the lifting of the sanctions and Slovenia's recognition of the FRY on November 30, and whether they had contacted their former partners in the FRY.

The fact is that nothing will be like it was before. The consequences of the Serbian Socialist Alliance decision of November 30, 1989 calling for an economic boycott of Slovenian goods and the ignoring of Slovenian goods already on sale are still noticeable on both sides. The two states are not at war like the other parts of the former federation but the scars of verbal offenses by politicians on both sides are very visible. Despite all the efforts, including a visit by Slovenian businessmen of Serbian origin to the Yugoslav economic chamber, nothing is going right yet.

So it isn't strange that most managers politely accepted meetings but asked that no mention be made of them or their company.

All the troubles still stem from bad policies. The two states have recognized each other in a way but there are virtually no contacts between them, let alone inter-state agreements, quotas, social security arrangements. Some companies bridged that situation with the help of their former associates like Ilirija which now markets its products in Serbia through Ilirija-Nis. There is some Rasica clothing on sale as well but company spokesmen said they do only occasional deals; nothing is regular yet.

During the past five years most companies which had intense cooperation and even depended on the FRY for raw materials and consumers were forced to redirect their efforts. The boycott of seven years ago seems to have sobered them up for the hard times that were to come. "We would have died if we hadn't turned to other markets," said one businessman, whose company was one of the biggest sugar and fruit buyers in former Yugoslavia.

The situation is also complicated by property disputes. After Slovenia declared independence, Slovenian companies lost many of their plants in Serbia.

Most businessmen complain of the lack of regulations and stability. What's the use of verbal guarantees when a ban could come after investments into a plant in Serbia.

The markets in the rest of former Yugoslavia are interesting to Slovenian businessmen but they have all opted for caution. The Rog bicycle factory and Revoz Renault dealership will attend this year's Belgrade car fair late in March. Revoz is especially interesting. It was made the sole dealership in the former Yugoslavia by Renault, but the Renault dealership in Belgrade wanted to be answerable directly to the parent company not Revoz. Politics could cause a paradox in prices which would be higher in Belgrade than if the cars were imported from Slovenia.

There are still some people around who remind everyone that cooperation is mutually beneficial: "We worked together for so many years. We know each other and we understand each other. It would be easier to deal with Serbia than Hungary. I have to admit that we have no special wish to make the whole thing public because that would damage both sides. Look at what the press did to Mura for attending the Belgrade fashion fair," said one businessman who insisted on anonymity.

Mura's spokeswoman said they did go to Belgrade but aren't doing any business in Serbia yet. She said they do have plans but will wait for everything to be resolved. "In the long term I don't think business with Serbia will happen that quickly. Not by the end of this year," she said.

I remember a friend in Belgrade who was happy to hear that Slovenia had recognized the FRY. "I'll finally be able to fix all of my Slovenian household appliances." I'm only afraid she'll have to wait a long time for spare parts from Slovenia.

 

Interview: Dusan Kovacevic, dramatist

Once Upon a Time...

It has been five years since Dusan Kovacevic wrote a drama and now he is finishing a new one. The well-known writer admits that he is longing for the theatre because he spent five years working on the screenplay of the film "Underground." Enriched by his new experience which was also published as the novel entitled "Once Upon a Time There Was a Country," Kovacevic says:

"Every prose writer, whether his book is good or not, may cherish the feeling that somewhere there is a reader who is greatly enjoying himself while reading his lines. He is entitled to that illusion."

Vreme: A short time ago, the second edition of your novel "Once Upon a Time There Was a Country" was published. Before this novel the audience knew you only as a dramatist.

I once said that our prose literature, which is among the leading European literatures, does not need another prose writer. I wrote the novel in order to preserve the material which I had been writing for four years while working on the film - nearly two thousand pages and most of it could not be recorded for the film. It is the story about the fifty years of life in the former Yugoslavia, a testimony of the generation who lived in that period, but it expresses the feelings of one man in the memory of one time. I shall try to write dramas in the future, that's where I feel best. The space of a drama is so shortened and narrowed that its shortcomings are turned into virtues. Your task is to tell a story and you are limited first of all by time: you have two hours at your disposal. It's real art to tell the story in one space, or perhaps two. In a novel, you may have ten pages describing the state or mood of one man; on the scene you may have ten minutes for the man to come out and indirectly tell the same thing. Another reason why I may have opted for the drama is that I love dialogue and the theatre is the art of dialogue.

There is a great disproportion in the Serbian literature between dramatic and prose works. How can this be explained when, at least in the twentieth century, there are urban centres with theatres?

The twentieth century prose at one point developed partly thanks to the diplomatic education of the writers. The first wave - Ducic, Andric, Crnjanski, Rastko Petrovic - later enabled others to make contacts with the world. Most writers from the first wave saw different countries, learned foreign languages, met the world which cannot be learned about from books alone. Later on, after World War Two, another wave followed. Its representatives were Kis and Pekic, who also travelled the world linking our country to what might be called the universal word. We are very fortunate to have had them and they left an important trace. Unlike them, dramatists depend on the theatre and the theatre depends on actors. Our theatre, and thus the drama, has remained in some kind of claustrophobia. But this is not the only reason. The theatre greatly depends on financing. The drama costs money.

Authors seem to avoid writing about the latest events. It seems that the distance from the facts is still too short.

This war is not over yet. The signing of peace and less killing don't mean the end of the war. People are still being killed. Compared with the catastrophe when one or two thousand people were being killed every day, one or two deaths now don't mean much. Remember how terrible it was when the first victims of this war were killed. The most terrible was the first death, all the papers wrote about it on the front pages and all the stations spoke about it in the first minutes of the news. Later on they failed to publish about several score people being killed. Death seems to be a nuisance. This war is not over because the fire is still smouldering under the ashes. It had remained from World War Two. The ashes of brotherhood and unity only covered it up, deceiving us that it had been put out for good. If this wound is not cleaned very well and bandaged absolutely properly and fairly once and for all, it will break out again and get gangrenous proportions in five, ten or twenty years. That is the old story about the wars in the Balkans, which recur cyclically and catch each generation. Each generation wants to avenge the former one. These are tribal peoples and tribal customs.

You yourself choose a somewhat paradoxical option to speak about the most difficult things in a humorous way.

Irony, for me, is the normal way of seeing not only our world but the civilization in general.