Milosevic (15 page)

Impaling had entered Serbian folk memory through both historical reality and one memorable scene in a novel by the Nobel laureate Ivo Andric. In Andric's most famous work,
The Bridge on the Drina
, a Serb who attempts to sabotage the construction of the bridge at the Bosnian city of Visegrad is impaled. His ghastly punishment is described in slow and gruesome detail, down to the pools of blood that collect underneath the victim. ‘Turks, Turks, Turks on the bridge . . . may you die like dogs . . . like dogs,' the Serb peasant hisses in his last moments. Djordje Martinovic was not impaled, but he was certainly badly hurt somehow and taken to hospital. There his story changed. Local authorities and the Kosovo police blamed Martinovic himself for his injuries, saying the farmer had confessed in hospital.

A police statement said ‘it appears that the wounded performed an act of “self-satisfaction” in a field, that he put a beer bottle on a wooden stick and stuck it in the ground . . . then sat on the bottle'. A commission of enquiry was formed to examine the whole case. It was impossible for a Serb to inflict such injuries upon himself, the doctors claimed. The Serb warrior tradition could never countenance such aberrations. Martinovic
said he had been made to sign a false confession. He then switched back to his original account, that he had hurt himself.

Eventually the investigating judge announced that both versions were possible. Martinovic's humiliation was finally over, but by then he had entered modern Serbian folklore as an example of Albanian terror against Serbs. Years later even sophisticated Belgrade liberals would recount Martinovic's ordeal with a frisson of delighted horror. Certainly this episode had a particular resonance in the national psyche. It went hand in hand with claims that Albanian men were systematically raping Serb women, although in fact incidents of rape were lower in Kosovo than elsewhere in Yugoslavia.
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Perhaps Martinovic's ordeal by bottle was a metaphor for the deep-seated fear of Serbs, that somehow the Albanians were violating Kosovo, the spiritual heart of Serbia.

Meanwhile, Slobodan Milosevic, head of the Serbian Communist Party, watched and waited. He followed the Titoist line, but avoided making any significant public attacks against the Memorandum. He began to realise that increasingly, Serbian leaders were stuck in a double bind over the Memorandum. They could not support it openly, even though they may have sympathised with some of its demands. But the more they condemned SANU, the more they delegitimised themselves among the wider Serbian population, for favouring the wider interests of Yugoslavia over the immediate ones of Serbia. Serbs began to feel that not only had Yugoslavia failed them, but even their own political leadership was neglecting them. Here then, saw Milosevic, was an opportunity.

On 20 April 1987, he took it. Ivan Stambolic despatched Milosevic on a mission to Kosovo Polje, the hamlet known as the ‘Field of Blackbirds', built on the spot where in 1389 Prince Lazar had been defeated in a historic battle with the Ottoman army of Sultan Murad I. Stambolic wanted Milosevic to defuse the nationalist tensions between Serbs and Albanians that were threatening social peace in the impoverished province, and indeed the stability of all federal Yugoslavia. Milosevic gave the assembled Serbs the standard party line of ‘Brotherhood and Unity': ‘Exclusive nationalism based on national hatreds can never be progressive.' In response a Serb demonstrator shouted that, ‘We have waited here since Tito's days. The Communist Party has done nothing for us. Nothing!' To that Milosevic gave an intriguing reply: ‘We are aware of this in the Central Committee of Serbia. We could do more.'
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Accosted by a local Serb leader, a paunchy nationalist called Miroslav Solevic, Milosevic agreed to return four days later to discuss what that ‘more' could be. Milosevic had been taken aback by the depth of feeling in Kosovo and the sheer passion and fury of the local Serbs. Until then he had not been particularly interested in Kosovo, said Dusan Mitevic. ‘I am from Kosovo and I was trying to persuade him to go there and see the problems. Milosevic thought that Stambolic should be involved, not him, that it was a government affair, not one for the party president.'
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But Milosevic was a Serb, as were his wife and his key advisers. He understood the power of the Kosovo myth for most Serbs. Serbs regard Kosovo as their Jerusalem. Kosovo is seen as the cradle of Serb civilisation, its loss condemning Serbs to centuries of darkness – as they saw it – under Ottoman rule. The question was how to harness it for his own career, without openly slipping into nationalism that could provoke a backlash from other political leaders. Thus began his mastery of what may be called post-Tito ambiguity: the ability to exploit rising nationalism within the framework of Titoist orthodoxy. More simply, to ensure that when he was accused of being a nationalist, Milosevic had what is known in Washington, D.C. as ‘plausible deniability.'

Back in Belgrade, Milosevic consulted his closest advisers about how to handle the situation in Kosovo Polje when he returned there. ‘He consulted me,' said Mira. ‘Should he speak? How far should he go? I said the time had come to back the Kosovo Serbs.' Milosevic himself said: ‘The situation in Kosovo was intolerable. Serbs had been deprived of their rights. Who would think our country capable of such discrimination?'
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Meanwhile, in Kosovo, Miroslav Solevic was preparing a riot. ‘We had no time – three days to organise everything. We each took an area to organise. We told our lads to prepare for a real fight. We parked two lorries full of stones. We didn't say they were there for the police. They were there “just in case”.'
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The aim of the coming violence was to pit the Serb demonstrators against the mostly Albanian police, in order to further polarise the growing ethnic division in the province and deligitimise Belgrade's rule, for failing to protect the local Serbs. Even if they were instigating the violence themselves.

Fifteen thousand angry Serbs awaited Milosevic on his return. He arrived with the local Albanian Communist leader, Azem Vllasi, and the two men had to be escorted into the local
Dom Kulture
(House of Culture) by squads of police, holding back the angry Serbs. Vllasi was one of Tito's protégés, a Yugoslav politician who stood for dialogue
between the Albanians and Belgrade. He later claimed that Milosevic had earlier sent an agent to Kosovo to prepare the confrontation. Whatever Milosevic's precise relationship with Solevic, and the planning of the demonstration, he was certainly taken aback by the ferocity of the Serb crowd. More used to inner-party intrigue than screaming demonstrators, Milosevic was nervous and almost shaking.

The Serbs outside the hall hurled a barrage of insults and stones, and surged forward in an attempt to get inside. The police repeatedly beat them back. Inside speaker after speaker took the podium to berate the authorities and the Albanians as the rocks rained down on the walls. Some of the speakers inside the House of Culture declared that Serbs did not have a problem with illiterate Albanian peasants, but educated ones could not be tolerated. According to Vllasi, ‘[they said] the ones that went to school were to blame, that they could no longer put up with Albanian women wearing hats, Albanian women driving cars, etc. I swear they did mention hats.'
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Miroslav Solevic harangued the audience: ‘We must stop this Serb exodus. We have to stem this flood, or there will be no Serbs left. Our dearest wish is to live here . . . but not like this! No and no!'
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Outside the hall scuffles were breaking out between crowds and the police. The mob was howling.

Vllasi and other educated Albanians were particularly hated. In their twin obsessions with supposed Albanian rapists and Albanian education, the Serbs unconsciously echoed the fears and insecurities of whites in the deep south of the United States, of black sexual prowess and ‘uppity niggers' getting ideas above their station. Language played a similar role in Kosovo to the deep south. The reasonably respectful term ‘negro' was, by a minuscule phonetic alteration, turned into the insulting ‘nigger'. Albanians called themselves
Shqiptars
in their own language. Serbs, by a slip of the tongue, used the term
Shiptar
, the Balkan equivalent of ‘nigger'.

In his work
Crowds and Power
, the Bulgarian Nobel laureate Elias Canetti classified crowds according to their prevailing emotion. Every crowd is composed of individuals who have subsumed their individuality to a collective desire, whether to lose themselves in the music at a pop concert or feel the power of Hitler's rhetoric at a Nazi rally. In a one-party state and authoritarian political regime such as Communist Yugoslavia, which had no democratic outlet for political dissent, any unauthorised crowd was a collective decision to defy the authorities. It meant trouble. The angry mob of Serbs and Montenegrins outside
Kosovo Polje's
Dom Kulture
roughly conformed to Canetti's concept of the ‘Reversal Crowd'. A Reversal Crowd is a revolutionary phenomenon, dedicated to overturning the established order. The French mob who stormed the Bastille on 14 July 1789, triggering the French Revolution, was an example of a Reversal Crowd.

People who are habitually ordered about . . . can free themselves in two different ways. They can pass on to others the orders which they have received from above; but, for them to be able to do this, there must be others below them who are ready to accept their orders. Or they can try to pay back to their superiors themselves what they have suffered and stored up for them.
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Yugoslavia was not the totalitarian tyranny of Romania, but it was still a one-party state. To some extent every Yugoslav, not just Kosovo Serbs, was ‘habitually ordered about'. But the growth of an educated Albanian elite and the end of the old hierarchy – symbolised by Albanian women driving cars and wearing hats – meant that there was no longer an underclass ready to ‘accept their orders'. So, just as Canetti predicted, the Serbs demonstrators tried to pay their superiors back for what they had suffered.

Crowds and Power
was published more than twenty years before the events in Kosovo, but Canetti predicted Solevic's modus operandi with uncanny precision. Solevic was merely an archetypal foot soldier in a ‘Crowd Crystal': ‘small, rigid groups of men, strictly delineated and of great constancy, which serve to precipitate crowds . . . Its members are trained in both action and faith.' Solevic and his ‘lads' went to work and duly precipitated the crowd. Solevic recalled: ‘Our boys outside ran for the stones we had parked there. They turned and pelted the police. Each policeman got a “gift” from the masses. On the head, on the helmet, on the back.'

This was Milosevic's moment of truth. The physical guarantors of the Yugoslav state – in this case the police – were facing defeat by a riotous mob. Somebody had to take control. Solevic went to Milosevic. ‘I said the police outside are beating our people. He couldn't pass this hot potato to anyone else. So he walked outside. He was obviously afraid. He knew he was playing for high stakes.'

Film of the event shows Milosevic coming out of the
Dom Kulture
dressed in his usual grey suit, with his characteristic robotic gait, looking
around as he tries to process the situation. Milosevic was skilled in the politics of the committee, but was less at home with those of the street. Physical confrontation had never been his style and he was visibly nervous at the potential for further violence. The Serbs were demonstrating not just against the Albanians, but also the Communist state which they believed had betrayed them. And the head of the Serbian Communist Party was just a few feet in front of them. After hesitating a few seconds, Milosevic calls out ‘Comrades, comrades!' An old man shouts back, ‘The Albanians got in among us. We were beaten up. Please! They're beating us up.'
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It is one of the enduring mysteries of history that the decisions of certain individuals at a particular time have the power to turn the world upside down. Such events may be dramatic, or more prosaic. Decaying empires are perhaps the most vulnerable. On 28 June 1914 the Serb student Gavrilo Princip shot dead Archduke Franz Ferdinand as he was driven through Sarajevo. Soon after, the First World War was declared, and the Habsburg empire was among its casualties. Milosevic's delivery of the coup de grace to Tito's Yugoslavia was mundane in comparison, although it too ultimately led to years of war. Fearful of the crowd, but aware he should try and take command of the situation, he declared: ‘No one should dare to beat you again!'

These apparently anodyne words changed everything. A delegation was invited in for a meeting that lasted twelve hours. Like all Communist officials Milosevic was hardly used to the idea of being accountable. But he was astute enough to put protocol aside, listen and understand the political value of what he was hearing from the Kosovo Serbs. In itself, to proclaim that no one should be beaten was neither revolutionary nor nationalistic. But he understood the power of that moment. He told his audience:

This is your land, your fields, your gardens, your memories are here. Surely you will not leave your land because it is difficult here and you are oppressed . . . You should also stay here because of your ancestors and because of your descendants. Otherwise you would disgrace your ancestors, and disappoint your descendants. I do not propose, comrades, that in staying you should suffer and tolerate a situation in which you are not satisfied. On the contrary you should change it.
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Back in Belgrade, the brotherhood and unity between Milosevic and
Stambolic was also beginning to fray. Stambolic, the old-style Yugoslav, was aghast at how Milosevic had openly sided with one ethnic group in Kosovo, and had aligned the Serbian Communist Party with the Serbian national cause, and against the police, symbol of the state itself. But the very turn of events that had horrified Stambolic, the believer in Yugoslavia, was precisely what attracted a growing number of Serbs to Milosevic. Stambolic said: ‘I asked him, “if you go on like this, what will become of our country?” I saw we were totally opposed in our methods. We had two different policies on Kosovo. The distance between us began to grow.'
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Mira Markovic took a different view. According to her, the Kosovo Serbs ‘fell in love with Slobodan because he gave them support against the violence they were experiencing'. She explained: ‘It is very simple, if I protect you, you begin to love me. You look at me like a saviour and that is what they thought about him. There is nothing mystical in this. He said, nobody can beat you anymore, and they were beaten before. So that is why they were encouraged to have someone in whom they could hope.'
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