The rage that routed tyranny in Serbia on Thursday exhilarated that maimed nation. But revolution, however cathartic, is a volatile basis for the next job–building a democratic civil society.
It’s impossible for most Americans to understand the degree to which a long, brutal, almost-purposeless dictatorship can literally shatter a society.
The next president of the United States will take over a solid, functioning governmental machine ready to follow his lead. Vojislav Kostunica, the new president of Yugoslavia, inherits little but ruins.
Unlike most post-revolutionary leaders, Kostunica (Kosh-TOON-itsa) at least has the mandate of the election that led to last week’s revolution. But that election was more a cry for Slobodan Milosevic to go than a vote of confidence in Kostunica’s ability to govern.
Yugoslavia has been ruled for more than 50 years by the Communists and for the last 13 by Milosevic, whose appeal lay in a twisted nationalism and a sense of isolation and victimization that is poor preparation for the kind of international cooperation that must lie ahead.
Under Milosevic’s rule, most of Yugoslavia broke away, leaving only Serbia and Montenegro. More important, many of the best, most talented Serbs fled. Kostunica desperately needs them now, but many have made new lives in the West. Few want to return to the wasteland that Milosevic has left.
Milosevic himself may be out of office, but power in Serbia is still held by his cronies. These are the men who control the military and the economy. They backed Milosevic because he made them rich and powerful. If they abandon him now, it’s not out of revolutionary
tionary fervor or democratic principles, but because he can no longer protect them.
These men are not going to go away. Kostunica probably lacks the power to oust or arrest them, so he must deal with them.
Milosevic turned Serbia into a criminalized society. His pals made their money through smuggling. Many of his supporters were little more than thugs.
Even honest citizens had to play the black market to survive.
Under him, the market became a giant racket in which only the strongest and ruthless survived.
He and his wife rewarded their cronies by letting them buy major state-owned industries for a song. None of these sales would stand up to legal scrutiny in a country with a functioning court system.
Kostunica has the task of instituting some semblance of an economy in a country that sees market capitalism as a license to pillage.
The police, who deserted Milosevic on Thursday, still are the same police who enforced his rule for the last 13 years.
Kostunica cannot fire them all and train a new police force. So Serbs must learn to deal with the same police who oppressed them, knowing that none will be punished.
Any democracy needs politicians and a vigorous press.
But democratic politics and responsible journalism both must be learned, and Serbia under Milosevic has been a poor university.
A few opposition politicians, like Kostunica, emerged with honor, but little knowledge of how to run a country, democratically or otherwise.
Most of the most prominent opposition politicians, like the flamboyant Vuk Draskovic, have proved to be charlatans, sometimes just as corrupt as Milosevic.
Kostunica has an added burden: He was a compromise candidate, drafted out of academia to head the opposition coalition.
“This is not a Kennedy who is coming in with a team of the best and the brightest,” said Cherif Bassiouni, a DePaul University law professor who led the United Nations investigation of war crimes in Yugoslavia.
“He has no team or structure. If he decides that some of Milosevic’s cronies cannot be productively recycled into more acceptable people, then who does he replace them with?”
The Milosevic era has been distinguished by the courage of some journalists who dared to print or broadcast the truth, often one step ahead of the police. But again, they are a minority.
Most Serb journalists, out of conviction or necessity, spent the last 13 years writing and speaking Milosevic’s propaganda.
These journalists cheered Milsoevic’s fall, and it’s nice to think that they will devote themselves to honest, balanced journalism. But the experience in other ex-communist countries is that journalists who have spent much of their careers lying for the bad guys will spend the rest lying for the good guys, whitewashing their heroes and blackening their foes.
In the middle of this civic charnel house sit Milosevic and his wife, two poison pellets who may pollute Serb politics and life for years to come.
Kostunica has promised that Milosevic will be neither arrested nor sent to The Hague, where he is under indictment by the International War Crimes Tribunal on charges connected to a massacre in a Kosovo village.
Kostunica is a Serb nationalist himself and seems to despise Milosevic’s Western enemies, including the prosecutors in The Hague, as much as the fallen dictator does.
More to the point, an overwhelming majority of Serbs, including those who hate Milosevic personally, oppose handing him over to the West, and Kostunica would commit political suicide if he did so.
So Milosevic probably will remain in Belgrade under a sort of house arrest, free to speak out, acting as a rallying point for die-hard supporters and, by very his presence, taunting both Kostunica and the revolution’s ideals.
None of this is theoretical; all these problems are faced by a country emerging from dictatorship. The most immediate precedent lies near Yugoslavia, in the former communist nations of Eastern Europe, especially Romania.
All of the ex-satellites faced the task of turning communist dictatorships into market democracies–of “making a fish out of fish soup,” as one Hungarian official put it. Some succeeded. Others haven’t.
Those that have–Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic–always felt themselves to be West European and moved swiftly to make reforms that the West demanded as the price of entry into NATO and the European Union. All are West European nations now.
Romania was ruled as a personal fiefdom by Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, certainly the only couple in recent European history to compare with the Milosevics. Petty, power-hungry and vain, Ceausescu demanded constant praise while impoverishing his country, stripping its culture, raping its environment and using his secret police to split families and friendships. In the end, there was virtually no trust or civil society left in Romania.
Of all the anti-communist revolutions of 1989, Romania had the only violent one. The Ceausescus were captured and executed by a kangaroo court, and an entire nation spent the Christmas season parked in front of television sets, cheering the sight of their bodies crumpled in a provincial courtyard. Soon, the glee wore off and reality set in.
Norman Manea, the exiled Romanian writer, wrote at the time of “the virtual impossibility of re-establishing the very foundations of genuine social dialogue. Even with the recovery of a more democratic way of life, Romania will probably suffer profoundly in the future from this dark and too-long period of terror.”
He was right. The Romanian revolution was more anti-Ceausescu than anti-communist. Leadership was seized immediately not by dissidents but by experienced communist politicians who called themselves the National Salvation Front and elected one of their own, Ion Iliescu, as president.
Under Iliescu, Romania had free elections and a free if irresponsible press. There have been few economic reforms, and many industries were stolen by Iliescu’s cronies in phony privatizations. Iliescu himself was voted out in 1996 but the winners–genuine reformers but political amateurs–achieved so little that he is likely to win the next election next month.
Romania never came to terms with its history. The true nature of the revolution–who led it, who profited from it–has never been seriously studied. No attempt has been made to call Ceausescu’s cronies to account. The nation, with no understanding of its history, has been unable to build a future.
The same potential problems face Yugoslavia, next door to Romania. The old guard will not yield power and Kostunica lacks the power to get rid of them or replace them.
Kostunica must rebuild politics with no tradition of democracy or civic trust. He must restore prosperity with a broken and corrupt economy.
Failure, as in Romania, is all too likely.
Mostly, Kostunica says he wants to unite Serbia with Western Europe and the European Union. But the EU, built from the ruins of World War II, pointedly rejects the nationalism that still fuels Serbia. Kostunica doesn’t look like the man to cure this: His own nationalism is unlikely to help his countrymen face their past, or deal with the wound of Kosovo.
The West can help in this process. Perhaps Slavic ex-communist countries, such as Poland or the Czech Republic, can help most.
But mostly it will be up to Serbs themselves to face up to their past before they can find a future.
