Old Young Men

I know people who have not surrendered without a fight, and who defended themselves by mispronouncing these names on purpose. It hasn't helped much. Television won. In future, will have to pay for it together with our electricity bills. Electrification + television = Socialism.

These young socialists were born on television, and the new law on the enforced payment of TV subscriptions is supposed to ensure their future. I don't believe that Serbian Radio Television lacks funds, but viewers and trust. With regard to this, the logic followed by the new law says that people will watch what they have paid for, rather than independent TV station Studio B which comes free. They will become more aware of the difference between obligatory and free programs, regardless of what they might prefer, if they realize that this regime is inevitable and as necessary as an electric bulb or hot water, while the opposition is just something to satisfy one's soul.

Somebody on TV realized that Percevic and Dacic were more efficient propaganda-wise than Slobodan Milosevic himself. Not only in what they said, but with their very appearance. Many people here, while waiting for changes, have out of desperation come to count on the laws of biology. The young socialists have appeared with the intention of destroying all such hope. They are renewing and multiplying!

In spite of everything, I refuse to believe that it is possible to be a young socialist here today. The word young contradicts the word socialist here, a classic example of a logical absurdity. These people do not share the defeat suffered by their generation, they do not have anything in common with it. Even twenty years ago a young Party careerist was someone who was betraying his peers and spying for the elders. Such persons have always existed and are recognized in primary school; they are unreliable company and nobody really envies them. All life's excitements have always been outside the Party. But then again, many young cadres at the time didn't leave the impression of being as alienated as they are today.

The Percevics and Dacics of this world are not just precocious, but look like people inexplicably and frighteningly deprived of any personal characteristics. As if someone here had discovered a Chinese brainwashing formula which achieves total loyalty, mechanical speech and the expunging of all human reactions. It is as if no doubts ever entered their heads and they can never be surprised by anybody or anything. Most people are sometimes witty, aggressive, insecure, confused or hurt, but not them: they are always the same. And what is even more frightening, we don't know how many more of these can be produced.

But, things aren't all that bad. This is a limited contingent of young careerists who have spread their wings under the guiding hand of Professor Mira Markovic (Milosevic's wife). They had the necessary psychological predisposition and what is most important, a good teacher. I don't know what Ms. Markovic's famous political classes were like. But, she was certainly in a position to help the advancement of her protégés.

All that was necessary was to endure for a sufficiently long time her blissful smile, one which stems from the recognition of historical necessity. Namely, this lady belongs to that rare species of doctrinaire Marxists who know, without a shadow of a doubt what will happen in the end, and who will tell you that he/she has just returned from the near or far future, so that the present doesn't interest them at all.

Such people, are convinced of the class nature of everything in this world and are obsessed with the study of social mechanisms and progress. They view life from above, as a series of small mistakes in the system, and departures from principles. Naturally, those who serve the inevitable realization of the most humane of goals - the liberation of man from all forms of exploitation, are forgiven all their transgressions in advance. That is why they once practiced revolutionary terror so easily and without qualms.

Today, all that is left to people who belong to this school, is faith in their abstract humanism and a magnificent indifference to daily misfortunes. That is why Ms. Markovic can calmly express horror over the war in Bosnia and the misery in Serbia, while sipping her morning coffee with the man around whom it all revolves. This colossal moral discrepancy, this impossible contradiction of stands and personal experience, have turned this woman into a first rate media attraction in Serbia. People like to express their indignation, even though the cause is always the same.

Ms. Markovic's best pupils are not so interesting. They lack their teacher's enthusiasm, which, however, prevents her from seeing how the public reacts to her. The Percevics and Dacics are a reflex part of authority, and all one can hear from them is that which has already been said at the top. When they repeat that they are a party of the Left, there are no traces of ideological ballast, no belief in higher goals, not even the smallest interest in social injustice, something which has always characterized the Left.

Milosevic resembles leaders of the extreme Right. In Serbia there is practically no Left and no Right, nor anything akin to a normal political dynamism. However, the war, the international isolation and an epidemic of misery have made senseless all ideological confrontation, intellectual debates and all other thoughts except the question of how to stay alive. As far as Belgrade is concerned, people involved in politics and public life can be divided into those who can, and dare, walk through town and others.

The main direction followed by the Serbian regime is one of total confrontation. The Socialists are a dying, gerontocratic party, "a skull which cannot laugh anymore." Their life cannot be prolonged by sham youths. In a situation such as this, the regime survives only by squandering the future of its people and citizens, and that is what it is doing. About a year ago Milosevic decided to pass up the last chance of withdrawing quietly and of opening up a space for a gradual stabilization of the situation, and thus avoiding the Flood. Instead, he decided to build his Ark, one in which there will only be room for the Percevics and Dacics.

It is impossible to see any roads other than those leading to terror and violence. The Socialists persist in underscoring their merit for the fact that only Serbia has avoided war, not noticing that they are the main warlords of this war. So far they have been successful in exporting it, but the blockade is tightening slowly and Serbia remains alone with them. The choice boils down to clashes and violence of unknown proportions, or acquiescence to life in a primeval society, one where Ms. Markovic would perhaps recognize the fulfillment of all her ideals.

The external blockade has become an explanation of the internal one, which preceded and brought about the external one. Generations growing under these conditions will not come to resemble the young Socialists. They will have to prove themselves as hardy as those weeds which spring up between concrete slabs, force them apart and break them up. A lot of time will pass before more delicate plants will be able to grow here.