Serbian Intelligentsia is Easily Bought

“Due to Marojevic’s reorganization of the School, which is neither scientific nor logical, both our own and Europe’s entire descendants shall laugh at us and say that we were fools”, with these words professor Novica Petkovic has commented the organizational spring cleaning of the School of Philology. Perhaps our own and Europe’s posterity shall laugh at us because Albanian is now placed in the Romanic languages department, in a package with the librarian group.  Perhaps an ironic smile shall be induced by the decision that Russian has become obligatory for all post-graduate students, while Anglistics, one of the most renown departments of Belgrade’s School of Philology, has been placed into the Germanic department. The School’s employees don’t feel like laughing: some professors assess that Marojevic’s reorganization of the School, against which the qualified, competent majority of professors has spoken, is the beginning of the end of the School of Philology. To sign the famous contracts, in the context of the Statute which transforms the School into the dean’s personal field of vendetta, equals a moral and professional hara-kiri for many. Marojevic, a former hard-liner party secretary, now an Orthodox pan-Slav, has from the very first embarked upon “clearing the terrain” and “freeing cabinets”: trying to induce the older professors to an early retirement and to bring in fresh faculty members.

VREME asked Dean Marojevic for his comments on the avalanche of negative remarks and the flow of dissatisfaction in his school. Many professors have handed in their notices, some are opting for early retirement, others are talking about leaving...

MAROJEVIC: There were no waves of dissatisfaction at the School. It only seems like that to you. The departments have been reorganized in accordance with international norms: all that is needed is up to 6 doctors of sciences to open up a department. There was panic in certain media which are neither in the service of science nor in the service of their people, while Politika daily, for example, informs us of the developments at the School in a very objective manner.

VREME: You question the scientific standing of the most eminent names, you have said that half of the professors do not fulfill the conditions to be full-time professors, you have announced that all those who do not sign the contracts shall be replaced, with the additional note that “there are plenty of those around”... At the least, you have insulted and degraded the institution which you are heading...

MAROJEVIC:It’s not me, but the boulevard press which is degrading things, dealing with issues which it isn’t competent to deal with. The fact is that many who have been appointed full time professors do not deserve it. All those who have not worked in a scientific way, especially those who were out on the streets instead of in student auditoriums at the School - shall be easily replaced.

VREME: The majority of the people, or to be more precise, your university colleagues, have been doing their jobs in a noble manner for years, in extremely difficult circumstances. Even those whose scientific protégé who once were criticizing you: academic Pavle Ilic calls you “the most conflicted person in the history of Serbian science”.

MAROJEVIC: Pavle Ilic is in contradiction with himself: how come I wasn’t a conflicted person when both he and his wife Milka, editors of many magazines, published the numerous discourses and articles which I wrote? This latest statement is the result of the polemics on the ijekavski dialect of the Serbian literary language, on Serbian orthography, on phonology and the history of the Serbian literary language, for example at the Second Congress of the Serbian intelligentsia, when he promoted his program of uniting the Serbian literary language, i.e. abolishing the ijekavski dialect.

VREME: Academic Ilic describes your program as the “Program of Serbian loss in four items”. Many other experts as well accuse you for explicitly negating the existence of the Croatian nation, the Croatian language (apart from Cakavski) and Croatian literature...

MAROJEVIC: That’s not my idea: Serbistics as a science is being re-established on the basis of Serbistics of the 19th century: all Slavists from Safarik and Vuk to Kopitar knew what the Serbian language was, and that it encompasses the stokavski region. All those who claim otherwise base this assumption on Croatian, i.e. the Catholic ideology. Ivic realizes the Croatian philological program, along with Matica Srpska and numerous other institutions which are Serbian only in name. Pavle Ilic is not, contrary to what he claims, the number one linguist: he does not have first-class scientific results, apart from formal ones (membership in various academies).

VREME: Ivic even talks about your “bully approach”: he believes that the most balanced and composed people should be appointed deans. Even certain colleagues from the School believe that you are not suitable for the function which the government has appointed you...

MAROJEVIC: Those who support the new world order, the internationalists, use every opportunity to pronounce a person as being unbalanced, to pronounce them as being mad... The infamous psychiatry of various international structures was based on just that. That’s nothing new. The new world order buys all that can be bought, and Serbia’s intelligentsia and science are not, unfortunately, difficult to buy... All those who oppose it are pronounced as being unbalanced. Ivic is now satanizing me in the Dnevni Telegraf daily, which carries an article under the caption “Satan at the School of Philology?”. Satanization of a nation, in our case of the Serbian nation, and the same thing is happening to the Russian, Iranian and many other nations, is carried over to the satanization of certain people.

VREME: You have said: “When order and work are established once again, a wider autonomy shall be established for the University”. Does that mean that you too understand that the new University Law is bad?

MAROJEVIC: This new law would have negative consequences if deans and vice chancellors which are on the side of the new world order were to realize it, i.e. on the side of treason with regards to their nation and science. However, if people who realize it have full responsibility towards their science, their nation and their government - then it’s good. I have accepted to be dean only because of the obligations which our science has towards history. It didn’t personally agree with me at all, I had a one year leave which I had to shorten.
VREME: In the meantime, you have absolute political control and unlimited personal power.

MAROJEVIC: That’s not true: professors will be freer now, they shall be able to devote all their time to their scientific-educational work. We were enslaved from 1992 until today: the so-called democracy, in reality “demonocracy”, means “occupation” today.

VREME: The ruling coalition which appointed you has been the ruling party before and after 1992, while you speak of occupation and “demonocracy”?!

MAROJEVIC: Well, no outside personnel was brought it, such as the one Milan Panic had, but there was the press, the media, the political parties, various international organizations... All together, they constitute occupation. If it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t have a fifth column in science and in culture, and it would be easier for us to defend ourselves from the international world order... It is well known how devastating it is when the Romanic-Germanic civilizations are imposed upon all the other nations. Trubecki said all of that better than me, read it!