DESTROYING SERBIA

The Nineties

According to a representative sample of the population, an assessment was made in all the 16 Belgrade municipalities and 12 central municipalities of central Serbia and Vojvodina and it was established that in the period between 1990 and 1994, 320 thousand people of all education levels emigrated from the country. Most of them were between the age of 15 and 34. Almost half of them were employed at the time of departure.

AIM Belgrade, March 17, 1996

In this country deeply sunk into its past, foretelling the future is quite fashionable. Watching it on the gigantic screen in Centre "Sava", only delegates at the last congress of the Socialist Party of Serbia seemed to have understood it. Or perhaps pretended that they understood it, intoxicated by promises, flowers, aplauses and self-satisfaction.

On that, first Saturday in March, those watching this on tv screens were still wrestling with unbearable everyday existential problem: how to survive.

In an investigation called "Social Changes and Everyday Life during the Nineties", a group of sociologists, professors of the Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy, contrary to the Socialists, does not forecast a brilliant future, at least not for some time. What is in sight for us after the five-year destruction of the society is a semi-peripheral community with authoritarian government, along with drastic economic retrogression, even greater economic stratification, disunited population which exceptionally favours authority and which aims only to support or change the leader, but not to control the authorities.

According to some indicators, at this moment almost 70 per cent of the population in Serbia is on the verge of poverty, while just a year ago, for example in Belgrade, every tenth household was with no means for life, 11 per cent seriously considered emigration, every fifth household was borrowing money, and almost a third was receiving aid in kind from firms.

Great social changes (indeed, shocks) which destroyed Serbia in the beginning of the nineties, starting with the war, nationalism, plunder of social property, inflation, emigration, all the way to total impoverishment of the population, were compared by the experts with the "organized chaos" registered in Germany at the time of nazi rule.

In the comprehensive investigation of a group of sociologists, the drastic changes in everyday life of the population are first observed from the aspect of "social structure collapse" of the former society, the sphere of labour, situation of the spirit, and mentality in urban environments. The second part of the investigation is devoted to the family, children and women.

The fragmented and distressed Serbia is ruled and dominated by the old political and the new economic elite. The first is very well known, but the investigation about the new economic ruling circles is very interesting. Who are, in fact, the richest people in Serbia? An empiric investigation shows that there are six per cent of them of the total number of inhabitants (which amounts to a little above 10 million). They call themselves entrepreneurs and managers, but their wealth did not precede foundation of their firms, but on the contrary, amassing of money is the result of their ownership of firms. Among the new economic elite, 10 per cent are peasants. The middle class, workers, a significant portion of peasants, and pensioners, of course, all joined the stratum of the poor.

Brain drain from the socially-owned to the private sector does not imply creation of a professional labour power, because many of those who are seeking employment in privately-owned firms, lawyers, engineers, economists, education workers, physicians, cease to practise their profession. As in socially-owned firms, they take any job which may bring them money, and the acquired knowledge and original profession become unimportant.

If results of the war are excluded in the country which was not in the war, although every fourth household according to the investigation in Belgrade directly felt its effects, and every twentieth had wounded or victims of war violence among its members, the "shock" which struck a terrible blow to Serbia is certainly mass emigration from the country. According to an assessment made on the basis of a representative sample of the subjects in all 16 Belgrade municipalities and 12 municipality of Central Serbia and Vojvodina, 320 thousand people of all levels of education left the country between 1990 and 1994. Most of them were between the age of 15 and 34. Almost half of them were employed before departure.

In the analysis of the potential emigrants, it is observed that apart from those with the highest level of education, even entrepreneurs manifest the wish to leave the country, which would be disastrous for the already slowed down process of privatization in the country. Among those who are leaving, citizens of Belgrade and other big cities, that is, the urban population, are the most numerous, who state that this country for a long time will not offer opportunity to make a living by working as the main reason for emigration (34 per cent of them).

It is also interesting that self-supporting mothers with children (33 per cent of them) make their minds to leave very easily, while couples without children are the fewest among emigrants. According to the investigation, there are 11 per cent of the subjects who believe that it is not patriotic to leave the country at a time like this.

In 1993 there were 450 thousand unemployed in Serbia, and according to an enquiry made in May 1995, there were another 170 thousand unemployed. In sombre nineties, unregistered work has reached dimensions of an epidemic. Majority of the participants in grey economy, according to the assessments, belong to the "lower" social strata: 76 per cent of them are from the category of the unemployed, pensioners, agriculture workers and labourers, while 24 per cent belong to the category of clerks, experts and managers. It is also interesting that among the pollees, 48 per cent of the executives were engaged in "supplementary work" which, in fact, means that they are working illegally.

Sociological investigations show that "destructive" years in Serbia have deeply shaken the institution of the family as well. The family shows its weakness and internal vulnerability in the balance of reproduction losses and gains, which is in the red. For example, death, illness, leaving the family in order to emigrate are more common in Serb families (above 48 per cent) than favourable events (marriages and childbirth - 29 per cent). The already mentioned death rate in Belgrade expressed in figures appears as follows: constant absolute growth of the deceased from 13 thousand in 1989 reached 17 thousand in 1993 which is actually a rise of 13 per cent in the five-year period.

The most convincing evidence of the endangered existence of the family is the folowing: 22 per cent of the citizens of Belgrade were on forced leave (34 per cent of the population in the interior of the country); 2.4 per cent of them were left without a pension in Belgrade, and 2.9 in the rest of the country; more than 20 per cent of the families in Belgrade borrowed money for everyday survival, and 30 per cent were forced to pay expenses of medical treatment of members of their families. Sociologists claim that survival of the family at all costs, in other words only for the sake of bare sustenance, which is proved also by the reduced number of divorces, will have pernicious effects on the generations to come. These families will raise generations of frustrated and embittered children who will find it difficult to get accustomed to new relations yet to come.

Children in this space are losers from the very start. UNICEF reports warn not only about the increase of infant death rate, but also about the high rate of still-born children which reached 5.5 per thousand in 1994. The number of cases of infectious diseases is also increasing, and at the same time, the number of vaccinated children is reducing. According to world standards, our children are under-nourished even. Children are abused for political purposes here, they are exploited in grey economy. Psychologists point out that not even a single "aspect of children's development is spared. In war conditions, they are exposed to social, emotional, moral and intellectual deprivation".

Annually, on the average, 5 to 10 per cent of children do not enlist in compulsory elementary school when they should, and 15 per cent of them do not finish it in time.

The key characteristic of the families and the society of the nineties in which children are brought up is neglect. Preoccupied with the struggle for survival, parents devote little attention to the children and very rarely notice psychological disorders in their increasingly aggressive and disturbed children.

All things considered, happiness seems to have abandoned this space. With this, even for the local circumstances, out of the ordinary and comprehensive investigation, the sociologists attempted to warn both the citizens and the state: the first not to forget the terrible nineties because of their short memories, and the latter that both the economy and the population are ailing. However, it appears that the people are still just trying to survive, and the authorities have shoved everything under the carpet and started on their way towards the new century.

(AIM) Branka Kaljevic