A Hundred Years of Shame

Dr. Mirjana Miocinovic wrote a public letter addressed to the Dean, claiming that she will not be lecturing until peace is achieved in this country. Trying to avoid all misinterpretation, prof. Miocinovic did not want to elaborate on her statements through the press. However, she gave an exclusive interview to the VREME magazine.

What do you consider to be the most precise definition of the attitude of the Serbian intellectuals towards this undeclared war? What trends can be discerned in the view of this?

I see no trends at all. Just imagine the mess we would have if there were any! Unfortunately, we are faced with a compact whole, backed by powerful institutions: apart from the University, there is SANU (Serbian Academy of Science and Art), Serbian Writers' Association and the Church. There are exceptions, of course. Some of them were singled out a long time ago by publicly announcing their views. The public knows who they are. The war is globally looked upon as "the defence of endangered Serbian people and its culture". In fact, that people and its culture are defended by violent and martyr-like rhetoric, and there is no difference, not even in terms of style, between the announcements issued by SANU, Writers' Association, the "holy fathers" or by some illiterate common soldier. When the priests start talking about "the morbid pacifism" - we are doomed. What could be said about a segment of intellectuals who are behaving as if we were not in war?

It is human to be afraid, to wish to spare oneself from suffering and escape the feeling of guilt. But everyone who "minds his own business" must, at least sometimes, feel like a guest on a feast in time of plague. During the creation of Nazi Germany, and during its "best years", there was an army of intellectuals involved in finding apologies for the nazism. Why is it a regular phenomenon within professions which are supposed to be based on critical thinking?

Not only is it a characteristic of Nazi Germany but of all communist regimes as well. I fear there were so many wise answers given to this question, so many books written, that my effort to explain this phenomenon would be superfluous and pretentious. I might just emphasize something that was often not taken into account: modern societies, and, mind you, not only the totalitarian ones, lost their ability for differentiating between "the depth" and "the illusion of the depth"; never has there been given so much space to stupidity, and it has always been known that wisdom is a rare virtue and that advice is not sought from every Dick, Tom and Harry. I think that the totalitarian regimes will come to an end simply because it was believed that countries can be ruled by idiots. And they cannot, not for long, anyway. What do you think will be necessary for the intellectuals in Serbia to clear their names after having supported the war and the ones who caused it? How long will that take?

We are talking genuine "ecological catastrophe" here. I do not know how long it will take to eliminate its consequences. I can list the disastrous result: reducing people to wild beasts, their moral degradation to the point where "human material" becomes irreparably spoiled; mass stultifying; systematic avoidance of doubt and thus extinction of every ability to tell a truth from a lie; physical crippling; impoverishment to a degree which annihilates human dignity... Not to mention the scorn the others are beginning to feel towards us. It will take a hundred years to change that, providing, of course, that this job is not done by the people similar to our present "national saviours". If that happens, there will be no salvation.