Serbia's culture shock

With the media liberated from Milosevic's control, the nation begins to face its demons -- but propagandists and journalists are in a tug of war.

By Laura Rozen

Oct 31, 2000 | The dinner was to be a celebration of five years of friendship, one that has survived good times and bad, including when my country bombed theirs for 11 weeks last year. Vladan Milenkovic, 32, my translator during the period of anti-government demonstrations in 1996-97, and his wife, Lidija, 31, had cushioned my stays in Belgrade, even sending me e-mails during the bombing last year when Vladan was called up to defend a Yugoslav military base and Lidija was left to care for their two children alone.

With all their troubles over the years, money worries and the seemingly endless looming threat of conflict, Lidija and Vladan always managed to make the best of things for themselves, their children and their friends. They long dreamed of the time Slobodan Milosevic would fall and Serbia would rejoin the world. Now it had finally happened.

So it was strange over dinner the other night to see them down. The pall in Belgrade has visibly lifted, people were smiling, Serbia was being welcomed into Europe and the world again. What could be wrong?

"You know, we have spent these past 13 years just trying to survive. And just realizing now all that we have lived through, it is so painful," Lidija said.

On Oct. 7 -- the day after Milosevic conceded his defeat to Vojislav Kostunica -- they had seen a documentary on Belgrade's Studio B. The documentary, "From Gazimestan to -," produced by Montenegrin television, chronicles in painful detail the 13 years of Milosevic's rule, from the 1987 nationalist rallies in Kosovo that bore him to power to archival footage of the war in Croatia, the destruction of Vukovar, the killing fields in Bosnia from 1992-95, the siege of Sarajevo, the massacre of Srebrenica, the constant exodus of refugees, the hyperinflation and growing poverty and isolation of Serbia itself to the war in Kosovo and NATO bombing of Serbia last year.

This footage would never have been aired on TV while Milosevic was in power. Now that he is gone, the full impact of his deeds is finally reaching the Serbian public.

"It was so painful to watch all that," Vladan said. "I was remembering the day I went to Lidija's law school and told her I have to leave for Malta," to avoid being drafted to fight in Croatia or Bosnia. "Realizing all that we have lost over the past years, I feel like a part of our lives was taken and we can never get them back. Ten years. I feel like we lost the best years of our lives."

Lidija and Vladan's response to the documentary is one mark of the difficult psychological process many here are finally undergoing. In the wake of Milosevic's removal from office, Serbia as a whole is facing the harsh realities of the crimes Milosevic committed in the country's name, crimes for which ordinary citizens paid with international economic sanctions and isolation.

Now that the years of hunkering down and steeling themselves to a grim present appear to be ending, how do Serbians reconcile with the awfulness of the past?

While there is a tendency now to blame Milosevic for all sins, people here are also aware of the strong support he rode to power on in the late 1980s and early '90s. They realize that Milosevic could not have survived in power for 13 years without the participation of hundreds of thousands of people.

Next Page: State TV in a rough transition

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