The Formal Whistle

We saw something was wrong with the national anthem when the Yugoslav national team played Uruguay in Belgrade late in March last year when the sports sanctions were suspended. There was a crowd of 50,000 at the game along with several foreign correspondents who were confused when the band struck up "Hey Slavs" (the anthem of the former Yugoslavia). Many of them never had a chance to hear fans whistle at their own anthem and then go on to cheer their team.

That unpleasant image from the Red Star stadium in Belgrade was seen only by the people who were there just prior to kick-off. The Serbian state TV (RTS) probably knew what was coming and decided to start its coverage when the ball got rolling. The next day the RTS commented only that the Yugoslav team won cheered on by 30,000 sports fans, no one mentioned the chorus of whistles at the anthem.

What is happening at stadiums in Yugoslavia when the anthem is played is harder to explain than what happened to that anthem when the former Yugoslavia broke up. Srecko Mihajlovic, a researcher at the Belgrade Social Sciences Institute, told VREME that many things started happening through sports here. When tension was rising between the republics in former Yugoslavia, he said, whistling at the anthem was a clear way of showing anti-Yugoslav sentiments. The anthem was whistled at during the 1990 European athletic championships in Split when Dragutin Topic won a gold medal. That same year, soccer fans in Zagreb whistled before the start of the Yugoslavia-Netherlands game and most fans cheered on the surprised Dutch team. Later, just before the war, the national flag was burned before a game.

"Everything happening with the anthem has a political dimension," Mihajlovic said. "The anthem is a symbol of the state and people are sensitive to what is happening. People used to watch carefully and comment on behaviour when the anthem was played. Did a certain player hold his hand over his heart, did he sing or keep quiet, was he hopping nervously. Conclusions were drawn about patriotic or unpatriotic stands. Today's behaviour by some sports fans who whistle regularly during the anthem is harder to explain although the background is political. There's a little of everything there - disagreement with the anthem, the state and its concepts, the everyday situation. Sports organizations always have ways of forcing athletes to behave properly but the state obviously has no way of doing the same with fans who don't show respect for the anthem," he said.

The story of the Yugoslav anthem is also the story of decades of misunderstandings and disputes over what to sing at appropriate moments. The last referendum over the anthem was in 1992 when "The March on the Drina" (a World War I patriotic song) came closest to being chosen but didn't get enough votes. The opposition's proposal "Boze Pravde" (the Kingdom of Serbia's and Yugoslavia's anthem) also didn't win. The Socialists opted to reinstate "Hey Slavs" on the advice of many experts that "The March on the Drina" is inappropriate. A lot of research since then shows that many people now don't know what the anthem is or how the FRY flag looks after making so many choices.

Although the confusion over the state symbols helps explain why sports fans whistle, the answer to the issue certainly isn't one-sided. The more so since many of the people who didn't stand and whistled at the anthem at international soccer games are the same people who protested in front of the Greek Embassy in Belgrade last year when sports fans in Athens whistled at the FRY anthem and basketball team.

One of the tempting shortcuts to explaining this phenomenon is the claim that fans at stadiums are whistling at the regime and the misery caused by the regime. Whistling at the anthem is certainly a chance for some people to voice their protest to the state and the system they live in. Some of them see the anthem as a symbol of Communist rule. Others are showing the traditional Serb attitude towards the state and the outlaw character of the state.

For a long time, official propaganda told them that any Yugoslavia was an anti-Serb creation and that the constructions of the former Yugoslavia crashed down on their heads. People who were told that for years find anything that reminds them of that former, hated Yugoslavia unacceptable and loathsome although the regime is trying to convince them of the opposite.