UNFULFILLED DREAMS OF MILOS S.
Milos S., an eighteen-year-old from the capital of Serbia, dreamed for years about going to the USA. Like many young men of his age, he wished to try his fortune in the "promised land", acquire new knowledge, meet new friends. His parents, eminent Belgrade journalists, could afford to pay for his trip out of their small savings. The rest was to be provided through a traditional student exchange. Unfortunately, a month before Milos's departure, in the end of May 1992, UN Security Council adopted Resolution 757 which included interruption of all cultural cooperation between "rump Yugoslavia" and the rest of the world, for well-known reasons - involvement of Milosevic' regime in the war in Bosnia.
Milos remained in Belgrade. His hopes melted, and so did the savings of his parents who were in the meantime discharged from the state television because they refused to participate in the propaganda war which this deadly Serbian medium fought against that same rest of the world. A year later, Milos S. was washing Belgrade windows and hiding from the military summoner. He was aware that he was still far better off than a young man of his age in Bosnia. It seemed to him though, that those who managed to flee from Serbia fared the best.
Since the war in former Yugoslavia began, together with the tide of almost 3 million refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, the young from Serbia and Montenegro also started to leave. Assessments speak of over 200,000 young men from "rump Yugoslavia" who have found their livelihood in one of the Western countries since the introduction of the sanctions. Most of them are educated, what's more university educated young men and women. They tried to cope with the situation the best they could according to their possibilities and capabilities. Ognjen Bogdanovic, an assistant lecturer at Belgrade University, is selling sandwiches in London. His colleague Maja Korac is employed as a research-worker at the University in Toronto. Leonard Vucinic, a TV journalist from Prishtina, offers souvenirs to tourists, also in London. And so on and so forth. For the time being, hardly anyone is even considering the possibility of returning. "It is out of the question, everything has gone so far backwards over there that years will pass before things return to where they used to be before the sanctions, and just as many until they start moving forward again", Leonard who is attending computer and reflexology courses says. "What's even worse", he also says, "is that inapt people have come to key posts, it has become a country of labourers and peasants, and even if there were no restrictions from without, there will still be from within". "I am not going back there", Ognjen answers laconically.
The fact that the Security Council has reached the decision on tentative lifting of the sanctions in culture, sports and air-transportation, obviously does not mean much to those who have gone abroad. Those who have stayed will still have to find out how hard it is to reestablish the flows which were once cut. "Unfortunately, the embargo on export of educated personnel was almost never introduced", Misa Kopecni, Director General of a nuclear institute near Belgrade, claims. On the average, 24 young scientists annually left the Institute in the past few years. "1993 was record high in that sense, and nothing to say about the interruption of cooperation with international institutions we cooperated with for decades. We were especially affected by suspension of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency from Vienna, and we were one of its founders and had a large number of projects with it." This Institute stopped receiving all scientific references, except through private channels, and some foreign publishers, such as Elsevier, for example, have decided not to publish the papers of scientists from Yugoslavia, regardless of the quality of results presented in them.
It seems that books fared the worst. Matica srpska, the oldest publishing company in Serbia, has not received a single book from France, Britain or the USA in the past year. A library from London, for instance, informed the people from this company that the British post did not accept parcels for Yugoslavia. After the introduction of the sanctions, only ordinary letters could travel from the listed three countries, which supplied Yugoslavia with the majority of foreign books and journals. Almost 50 countries revoked cooperation with Matica srpska.
"Once it happened that we had foreign books left over from the time before he sanctions in the window of our bookstore. A journalist of the Reuters saw this, reported to the British Embassy, and unpleasant reactions followed", Zoran Nikodijevic is telling us, the Director of "Jugoslovenska knjiga", a publishing company which neither imported nor exported a single book since the introduction of the sanctions. Its annual exportation used to amount to 1.5 to 2 million US dollars.
The University Library in Belgrade, the largest in Serbia, used to increase the number of its editions by 25,000 new volumes annually, with about two thirds of it from abroad. Last year they got only one tenth of the needs. But, according to Dr. Stela Filipi Matutinovic, this reduction was the result of the sanctions, but of reduced state donations, too.
According to the UNESCO nomenclature, publishing in former Yugoslavia ranked sixth in the world by the number of published books per capita. It has all almost come to a halt. The Belgrade Book Fair was also badly affected by the sanctions. And it used to be one of the best (the second best after the Frankfurt). In 1989, for example, 1128 publishers from 67 different countries exhibitted here, and last year there were just a few publishers from abroad. Vlastimir Stamenkovic, Assisstant Federal Minister of Cilture explains the reason why it has not died out altogether: "Exchange through state channels does not function, but personal, friendly connections have survived, depending on the readiness of foreign partners, of course, and their discipline in relation to the implementation of measures introduced by the international community".
"Sometimes we manage to get by", Dragan Pantic, Director of the Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade, says. "We get the money from the state, then we find our people abroad who buy the bare necessities for us there with the money. Many institutes have founded private firms, for instance in Hungary, and through them they purchase the essentials." This Institute does not participate in international comparative projects any more, its employees do not attend world congresses any more, except by personal invitations, the flow of all information was cut, access to data bases denied and library exchange interrupted. Cooperation with the Washington Library of Congress has completely died out.
It seems that the film fared somewhat better. Although import of film material is prevented, there are no coproductions with the foreigners, and the once highly estimated international film festival, the Belgrade Fest, is not held any more, the people in the Film Institute are not dissatisfied. According to what the program editor, Miroljub Vuckovic, has to say, the films from Serbia rolled at a comparatively large number of festivals in the past year and a half: in Munich, Venice, Rotterdam, Lyon, Vienna, Oberhausen, Chicago..."We are playing a phantom game with great energy and we are not losing enthusiasm, we keep sending offers and material to all addresses known, not to lose contact, at least", Mr. Vuckovic says.
World-recognized theatre director, Jovan Cirilov, who is at the moment the head of the Bitef, the famous international theatre festival, says that he can now bring only independent foreign troups which are not financed by their states. Those financed by state donations do not come any more. The situation is the the same in the opposite direction: only independent troups from Yugoslavia can be guests abroad, like Julija, which visited Edinburgh.
Not forgetting and with good reason not forgiving Slobodan Milosevic for his very recent belligerent past, Borka Pavicevic, theatre director and a prominent activist of the Belgrade Circle, says: "The cultural chaos we found ourselves in is not the result of external, but oprimarily of internal sanctions. It was not the UN sanctions that brought the so-called 'patriots' to the head of cultural institutions. Belligerent politics and national populism turned our lives into kitsch which conceived an entire class of bearers of this horrible 'culture'. Now that the UN sanctions are easing, someone must pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them. In the meantime, great changes have occurred. Religion was turned to horror and anti-culture. The Orthodox religion has found its way among the people through self-styled astrologists and fortune-tellers. Now we have a sick cultural tissue, a new way of thinking, quasi-folk dances", Ms Pavicevic says. Due to her anti-war activities, she was fired from the post of a director of one of the leading Belgrade theatres. "Regardless of what the newly-fledged peace-lovers of the regime say, the social layer which served as the basis for formation of a such a 'culture' cannot disappear overnight. They are still building houses in city parks, and listening to oriental music while destroying Bosnia at the same time. The central issue here is 'de-nationification' and pacification. Once the sanctions disappear, everything will become clear: that the sanctions were often just a pretext and a cover", Mr Pavicevic says.
Like connected vessels, at first by the war in Yugoslavia and then by the UN sanctions, related institutions in countries far from the war-stricken areas were also affected. The only British University with a Department for Yugoslav Slavic Languages in Brendford has almost completely interrupted cooperation with the corresponding institutions in former Yugoslavia. John Allcock, the Head of the Department, says that he maintains only personal contacts with his colleagues from Serbia and Montenegro, and that this is the only way they are able to obtain some of the books and periodicals. "We manage to do it only if someone travels there or if someone comes here. Personally, however, I think that it was not the sanctions as much as the war itself that disturbed normal scientific cooperation with the former Yugoslav space."
A lecturer of Croatian/Serbian literature at the University in Nothinghem, David Norris, is faced with similar problems. His students do not travel to former Yugoslav states for training any more out of fear for personal safety. Mr. Norris believes that the sanctions are counter-productive, primarily because they affect people who are opposed to the Serbian regime. "They feel even more isolated".
Cilia Hoxword of the School of Slavonic Studies, who still receives some of the Belgrade newspapers and exchanges books through direct personal contacts, also speaks of the counter-productive effects of the sanctions. "Nevertheless, when we know that some of our colleagues in Bosnia, for instance, are suffering from hunger, the books tend to be pushed aside".
Doubtlessly, the sanctions against "rump Yugoslavia" are only a link in the war chain, and not the most essential one either. They offer poor satisfaction to the people from Croatia and Bosnia who were directly affected by the war. Milos S. from the beginning of this story is still washing windows, hiding from the military summoner, and he knows that his friend from neighbouring Bosnia has a much more difficult time. But he also knows that all borders are wide open to a young Englisman of his age. And he also knows that neither of them are responsible for what the world he lives in looks like.
Milica Pesic, AIM London Gordana Igric, AIM Belgrade