Interview with Latinka Perovic
By Christian A. Nielsen
A leading Serb intellectual speaks out about
reconciliation and seeking a common ground.
TOL: The media in Yugoslavia recently reported that you had attended
a meeting intended to organize a truth commission on the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
Given that the meeting was called by [Yugoslav] President [Vojislav] Kostunica and that it
included many of the nationalist Serb intellectuals whom you in your writings identify as
bearing responsibility for the outbreak that caused the collapse of the former Yugoslavia,
your attendance was quite controversial and even incomprehensible to some. Why did you
decide to participate?
Latinka Perovic: First of all, I want to say that I received an
invitation from President Kostunica for a constitutive meeting of a group that would study
the consequences of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. I respect that type of
invitation, and I decided to accept it. Kostunica enjoys the support of the vast majority
of Serbia’s population, and he won the elections as an alternative to [former
Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic, who was responsible for starting the war in
Yugoslavia. I see this as the first attempt to come to terms with the recent past outside
of the nongovernmental, alternative scene in Serbia.
I did not know in advance who would attend the meeting, and I did not
think that it was important. We need to be prepared to discuss issues with people who see
things differently than we do. That touches on one of the fundamental problems in the
country. If you look at the political life of the country since the creation of political
parties - that is to say, for the last 160 years - it has always been a kind of civil war.
Political opponents here have always been treated as enemies who need to be eliminated.
That can be seen throughout Serbian political history. The Radical Party in the 19th
century had a manifold populist mission. It wanted to preserve and foster the Serbian
national soul by creating a national state with a national party. That means that the
“party state” had begun for us already in the 1880s, and not after 1945. The
Radicals deviated from a social program of modernization, making it instead into a
national program which they carried through the Balkan Wars, World War I, and to the
creation of the Yugoslav state. They continued to conduct themselves accordingly in the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia also had an ideological mission.
They, too, treated their political opponents as enemies.
I have always been fascinated by the fact that, in our history, one
party rules hegemonically for a long time but then disappears almost completely after the
death of its leader. This happened with Nikola Pasic, who helped to found the Radical
Party. His death in 1926 led to the disintegration of the Radical Party. Similarly, the
death of Tito in 1980 was experienced as the death of the Communist Party. But, in this
case, it underwent a quasi-reincarnation through Slobodan Milosevic. The move to a
multiparty system was forced by external factors, and it did not create a genuine
democracy. Instead, a new mission, of “Greater Serbia” or
“Serbianization” appeared. We need to acknowledge that the fall of Milosevic has
resulted from the economic and social exhaustion of society, and not from disavowal of
this idea.
The new president is a man of letters. He leads a small party in a
large coalition. And I know that he criticized the politics of Milosevic’s program
not because of its nationalism, but because it failed to succeed. That national program,
let us be clear, resulted in genocide, mountains of victims, and mass displacements of
people. Yet the new president thinks that the problem was that the main executors of the
program were communists. Thus, he thinks that the same nationalist program would meet with
more success if it were cleansed of communists.
Nevertheless, a man changes when he goes from being in the opposition
to being in government. He takes on responsibility, and he has to learn to compromise. I
would not refuse the president’s invitation. At that consultative meeting, there were
people of all stripes and persuasions. I think that it would be good if such a
heterogeneous group were eventually able to come to some approximate evaluation of the
war. We will try to do that.
At any rate, a confrontation with the past is necessary. We need to
examine the chauvinistic contamination of society, the role of media, and the role of
intellectuals. Serbia right now finds itself at the very beginning of such a
confrontation, and we should have no illusions. It will be very frustrating, but we must
do it to overcome the losses of the past and the complete lack of confidence that our
neighbors have in us. We need to avail ourselves of every opportunity to come to terms
with the past, even if it would of course be easier to do so only with like-minded
individuals. I think that it is good politics, if you will, for us to participate in a
heterogeneous commission.
We were all contemporaries of this conflict, and because of that, I
personally feel a sense of responsibility. I would like to tell you that in my meeting
with President Kostunica, I told him three things. First, the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) exists. It is a reality of international law,
and we have to cooperate with it. It is a question of credibility for our state. Earlier,
we flaunted agreements that we had signed, and that was a sign of our immaturity. Today,
if we do not respect the agreements that we have signed, we will be ostracized. And our
internal reality also dictates a need for cooperation with the ICTY. Our courts have done
nothing to prosecute these crimes.
"When the Past Really Becomes the Past"
Second, I told Kostunica that the ICTY would contribute to a
much-needed individualization of guilt by removing the label of collective guilt from the
entire Serb nation. That is what the Nuremberg trials helped to do for Germany by
identifying guilty persons and institutions. Thus, it is not only an international
obligation that we are fulfilling. It is above all an internal necessity to recover a
sense of moral and ethical responsibility. It is the only way that we can separate Serbia
collectively from these crimes.
Finally, in my meeting with Kostunica I argued that resistance had
always existed in Serbia against the chauvinist terror of the war. 400,000 young people
emigrated at least partly because of their objections to the regime’s politics. The
regime choose war instead of reform at the beginning of the 1990s, and the population
confirmed this choice several times in elections. The nongovernmental sector was
anathematized and suffered repression. They [members of the nongovernmental organizations]
were called traitors and enemies. Yet those organizations kept resistance alive within
Serbia, and often documented the worst abuses and crimes of the Milosevic regime.
Therefore, they represent key actors in recovering the moral health of the country. In my
opinion, the government must start treating these organizations as partners and not as
enemies.
I am able to look at things from the other side. In my life, and
especially during the late 1960s and early 1970s when I was a Communist Party official, I
was often criticized for engaging opposition figures and dissidents in dialogue. That was
one of the main charges against me when I was purged. Yet I have learned that the
rejection of invitations for dialogue will bring about the radicalization of one’s
opponent.
As far as a truth commission is concerned, I think that there is an
awful lot of work for everyone to do. There is room for everyone who harbors good will.
Only chauvinists and the perpetrators of crimes are unwelcome at that table.
Already during the war, international organizations started to do
some work aimed at reconciliation and the establishment of truthful accounts of the
conflict. I view this as a kind of therapy, but ultimately it must come from within in
order to be really effective. What I am telling you here I will tell anyone wh*o will
listen. This is neither a state commission nor a presidential commission. The president is
only the initiator. No one is selling his soul to the devil by working for this kind of
commission. We can have more than one commission, and a person can work on more than one
such body. I will not decline an invitation.
TOL: When President Kostunica’s support for a truth commission
was first reported by international media last year, many prominent figures from other
former Yugoslav republics greeted it skeptically. President Stipe Mesic of Croatia, for
example, stated that Croatia could only cooperate with such a Serbian or Yugoslav
commission if it first acknowledged that Serbia bore primary guilt for the violent
collapse of Yugoslavia, and that Serbs had committed the majority of war crimes. What is
your opinion?
Perovic: Our responsibility is indeed the greatest. We are the most
numerous of the former Yugoslav nations, and Serbs were spread throughout the former
Yugoslavia. It is a fact that Serbs began the war, and that, in the form of the Yugoslav
People’s Army, they enjoyed a preponderance of force. That has to be acknowledged by
the commission. Moreover, countless books already exist on the subject, and the public
also has its opinion. The commission must know that it will lose all credibility if it
tries to deny such basic truths.
TOL: You have mentioned that you have been inspired by truth
commissions in other countries. Do you view any of them specifically as examples for
Serbia and Yugoslavia?
Perovic: Something can be learned from the examples of other
countries in this respect. The South African example is interesting. It shows that we are
looking at a long and very complicated process. However, I think that the South African
case shows that such a commission can have a bad ending. In particular, you cannot have
true forgiveness without legal prosecution and punishment of crimes. That is a lesson that
we need to learn. Here it is said that we do not want “revanchism.” Yet we are
dealing here with the departure of a criminal regime that caused death, destruction, and
displacement. This means that we, to some extent, excluded ourselves from humanity. I
think that the international community underestimated those elements.
Many in Serbia today are prepared to defend nationalism, but I find
that it you confront them with detailed accounts of individual crimes, they are willing to
acknowledge what happened. The weight of the crimes committed here is such that we have to
confront it methodically and consistently. Finally, let me say that, to be successful,
truth commissions, in our context, have to emulate the multiethnic and multifaith nature
of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in order to eliminate ethnic and religious
intolerance.
TOL: In many former socialist countries, new regimes have made use of
legal lustration to prevent officials who have committed crimes or served in particular
state organs from holding public office. However, in many cases these lustration schemes
have been exploited for political purposes by the new governments. Do you support a
lustration scheme for Yugoslavia?
Perovic: In these kinds of situations, my opinion is that it is best
for things to evolve naturally and not politically. Some people here, for example, want to
ban the Yugoslav Left (JUL), the party of Milosevic’s wife, Mira Markovic. And yes,
JUL killed the meaning of the political left in Serbia and to a considerable extent
functioned as the motor of the regime. But I think that a ban of JUL would be misplaced.
It would open the door to further conflicts, and I think that that would be dangerous in a
small society like ours.
We need to change the matrix of thought. For me personally, the
destruction of your political enemies is an unacceptable strategy. We have to compete with
them. And thus far, we have only had the simulation of political competition. We need
normality. For too long, we have lived in abnormality, in a polity where lies were used as
a means to an end.
TOL: On 1 April, Slobodan Milosevic finally surrendered himself to
police and was taken to prison. How do you interpret that much-anticipated event?
Perovic: It marks the beginning of a real crystallization. We know
now that there were many dubious elements involved in the events of 5 October [when a
popular uprising toppled Milosevic]. The threat of a violent solution was real, and the
situation was resolved through an apparent compromise between the old and the new.
The new regime had avoided the arrest for a long time because it
feared the potential for public disorder. Now, with the arrest, many politicians and top
military officials will have to change their position. The “legalism” of the
past half year, which has been a phrase devoid of content, has now become meaningful after
all. [The arrest,] perhaps, represents the first steps toward the rule of law. We are now
entering an important period, but also a dramatic and dangerous period. Unlike other
former socialist countries, we did not experience a change in the centers of power after
1991. Instead, they were strengthened by the war. Only with the departure of Milosevic can
their dismantlement begin.
TOL: You are the chief editor of a forthcoming collection by the
Serbian Helsinki Committee of documents pertaining to the case of Ivan Stambolic, the
former president of Serbia who disappeared without a trace on 25 August 2000. What can you
tell us about the case?
Perovic: It is a political case in which both the old and the new
regime bear responsibility. Unfortunately, as regards a solution to the case, we are today
exactly were we were in October. We need to ask why nothing has been done to investigate
that case, and in particular why nothing has been cleared up since 5 October. In that
respect, I think that readers will find that the new book speaks volumes not only about
the tragic case of Ivan Stambolic, but about the entire time and society in which we live.
TOL: In People, Events, and Books, you entitled one of your articles
“Waiting for a Serbian Brandt.” Do you think that a figure of [former West
German Chancellor] Willy Brandt’s moral stature is to be found today somewhere in
Serbia?
Perovic: I did not actually mean that literally. Willy Brandt was a
unique figure who demonstrated tremendous moral courage in his opposition to Nazism. He
was also a wonderful statesman. Not to be cynical, but the Serbian lawyer Srdja Popovic
has remarked that it is easy to kill 300,000 people and then have someone say
“I’m sorry.” The act of apology only carries salience if it takes place
within the context of national catharsis, as Brandt’s apology at the memorial to the
Warsaw Ghetto at the beginning of the 1970s clearly did. Thus, when I wrote that, I had
more in mind future generations rather than any particular individual.
TOL: In the 24 March issue of the weekly Feral Tribune, the Croatian
historian Mirjana Gross was asked to comment on a Croatian government initiative to
investigate the war and, in particular, on the fact that politicians seemed to pronounce a
verdict on the war, and then to ask “experts” to confirm that judgment. Do you
see that as being a problem in Serbia as well?
Perovic: Politics always seeks the confirmation of its own knowledge,
and it tries to employ that knowledge instrumentally. However, I can tell you that those
kinds of problems did not appear at the constitutive meeting of the commission. And if
they had appeared, I would have refused to participate. The commission must not become a
replacement for some historical institute. We can only prepare a body of material that
will in itself be read as a document of our times, and which will hopefully contribute to
the knowledge of future researchers. It also would not be bad if we were to open access to
some government documents pertaining to the past decade. Historical research must be
autonomous. Any politicization would automatically and immediately compromise the
commission. As Philippe Gomper once said, the past can only become the past when we stop
repeating and stop trying to live it.