Developments to Zero Point

Someone somewhere in Serbia received good, homely advice: choose a good moment and get all your dirty business done with quickly and at once. Judging by what the current government has done in the past few days, during this interim period when many sensitive purges have been carried out, Radoman Bozovic will certainly not be Prime Minister much longer. He had plenty of opportunities and excuses before to wage war against Belgrade journalists, professors, actors, doctors, but he waited for the right moment. After the elections, while the opposition was still confused, while everybody was following the "peace efforts," and the world began losing interest in the forces of internal dissent, the outgoing government started cleaning up before the new government takes over.

It is expected that the new government will have a much easier job, since it will find, without having been involved, that all the cracks through which a new life might spring up, have been safely filled up. But, this plan will not work, because life cannot be stopped, because the resistance is too great, and because the regime does not have enough strength and self-confidence for something big and important. If this were not the case, the purge at Serbian Television and the cleaning up of the University would have been left to the new government, and not smuggled through with hypocritical excuses and an illusion of democratic procedures. The new government will face the same obstacles and the same opponents, but now more experienced and braver.

For the moment nothing has changed in Serbia. A national policy which had promulgated as a holy principle the idea that life with other nations is not possible, will now naturally be applied to non-conforming Serbs. However, Milosevic will keep Vojislav Seselj at arms' length from authority. The Socialists who have lost an absolute parliamentary majority cannot, because they have no cause, introduce extra order and discipline. A weak authoritarian power must fake democracy because it doesn't know how to become truly democratic, nor can it stop pretending.

I do not believe that the latest purges are a dangerous symptom of fascistization, even though the matter is serious, especially for those who have been affected. Belgrade television cannot be worse, even if this were possible, those who were thrown out had long lost the chance of improving the situation. There is more money and less harm in selling drugs in the streets than in working for this firm and churning out illusions. The faces of those who had been kicked out showed a mixture of concern and bitterness, intermingled with a sense of relief.

If this were a matter of fascistization, the sacking of politically unfit, bad Serbs, or simply good professionals, it would not be necessary to wrap the affair into a story about rationalization, nor would they be given "paid leave." They would simply be fired, without considerations, a bad conscience, explanations. Small deceits are used to mask revenge, while a wish to retain an important monopoly on shaping public opinion is obviously not rooted in any firm belief. The issue concerns ordinary power lust, and not missionary zeal, or working towards some great goal. This difference in motives is reflected in the consequences: power lust is capable only of small, banal evils. The evil becomes great because the matter pertains to television, the national nervous system, but that is another story, and much older than this one about mass layoffs. This is why it makes sense to demand that the whole institution be started right from the beginning, and that those who have remained leave, and that the state stops doing the job. This is where things become complicated, because no one knows what is older, the state or television, and what is the state if it is not television. But, in such circumstances professionalism is not the cure, and is not possible. This means that television and all state institutions should be abandoned and left to the law of natural selection among hoodlums and cheats, until they rub each other out.The same holds true for the National Theater which has been given a new and tested SPS director, the actor Aleksandar Bercek; the University where the state dismissed the old chancellor because of his stand during the student protests; the Clinic Center and who knows how many similar institutions in the interior of the country. A mode of behavior in such situations has emerged after the television dismissals, where the quality of those dismissed was such, that it became a matter of prestige to forfeit one's permit for Takovska 10.

Fear has suddenly devalued, a very dangerous thing for this kind of state. Punishments do not hit the mark any more since we are all being punished, and the state is not capable of giving rewards which would make action worthwhile. The basic instruments of authority are being lost. Who is going to make the actors accept the authority of a new director and work? Why should professors cooperate with an illegally enforced chancellor, and what can happen to those who decide to boycott relations with the state?

If the state can do without you, then you must learn to live without it. Those who cannot, deserve to become victims of the next "rationalization." Perhaps this state, isolated and boycotted from outside, can bear out an internal boycott, even if entire professions participate, the whole intellectual elite and all the most important national institutions. Who knows how much time will be necessary before people learn to overcome their wish for total authority. But this is not our concern for the time being. The purges, misery and painful ejection from a Socialist and nationalist paradise, are an opportunity for all of us to learn the art of self-reliance and taking care of one's self. When we learn that, when the state realizes that we can live without it, it will come to us, and then we will be able to talk on different terms.

For the time being, this state endeavors to preserve its property rights over the whole of society, even though it admits to being incapable of supporting it. Those who did not wish to take this any more, emigrated. Those who stay on will have to behave as if they have come to a new and unknown country, where it is necessary to forget everything and start all over. To threaten the state, protest or demand that it show pity, can only temporarily put off new dismissals. It might prove again, as it did after the previous elections, that the regime had taken on too much, which resulted in March 9, 1991.

I do not know what could happen now, but this game of increasing and decreasing pressures does not lead anywhere, since there is no one to pay the bills. In the end, this state will not have any better idea than to give equal pay to all those working for it, and open hands to the police. This will not mean that we are scraping the bottom of the barrel, as can often be heard, because their is no bottom line in decay. It would just be zero point. The stability of such a regime and longevity at zero point do not depend so much on the will and intelligence of those in authority, but of the citizens' capacity to survive, discover and show what they know, and to set up initial human relations and rules of behavior, to learn to organize and associate along lines of joint interest.

Some countries which found themselves in a similar situation managed to find a mainstay and did not reach rock bottom. For some reason Serbia must start from scratch. All the moves made by this regime both inside and outside, including war, a conflict with the whole world and isolation, and the destruction of existing social institutions, have led to such an end. It is as if someone knew for sure, that of all which had existed here, not one single stone must remain unturned. Those who first understood this trend, and were in privileged positions, already have an advantage. They have assembled the attributes of power: money and arms. This is the way it has always started, and the relationship of these two elements will determine our future. Those with weapons will extort money, until those with money start buying weapons.