By Rade Veljanovski, Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Political Sciences
Recently, in the underground passage near Ušće (in Belgrade), on a large wall, a graffiti inscription in big letters read: “Eternal glory to the liberators of Belgrade.”
Two young men, more like boys, were trying with spray paint to make the word “liberators” invisible. A man of about seventy years old stopped and asked: “Why do the liberators of Belgrade bother you?” The boys replied in unison: “What liberators? The communists and the Red Army were occupiers.” “So who liberated Belgrade then, if they were occupiers?” the man asked. They fell silent, and the passerby reproached them for not knowing much about these matters. “And you do?” one of them said. “I do,” the passer-by replied, “I am a university professor.” One of the teenagers sneered: “Well, I feel sorry for the university where you’re a professor.” The passer-by walked away without a word. As he reached the steps, he heard a shout behind him: “Go on, vote for Vučić!”
How many conflicting orientations are contained in this small snapshot of reality? Some still respect the fighters against fascism and wish them eternal remembrance, while the youngest Belgraders consider them occupiers and sarcastically address someone they assume to be a voter for Vučić because he rebuked them for what they were doing. What is going on in the minds of these two minors? They are probably still pupils, but what have they learned at school, and does what they are saying have anything to do with school, or with some other influence?
A few days later, swastikas were drawn on the busts of national heroes at Kalemegdan, perhaps again the creation of brave, half-educated and misled teenagers, or of nocturnal patriotic toughs. It is not enough to say that the children are not to blame. That is clear, but who is responsible for the value-based, ideological and overall social confusion in which we have lived for decades?
Debates that are anything but debates
According to social media and various obscure sources, for days there has been a debate about whether the series “Tito – Between East and West” should be broadcast on RTS or not. Some would like to see the documentary treatment; others do not believe it will be objective; and quite a few do not wish to hear about Tito in any way whatsoever.
A people so steeped in history, wars and heroism are apparently supposed to erase the Second World War and its heroes entirely from memory, because they fought for Yugoslavia, and afterwards Tito ruled and we had “brotherhood and unity”, which allegedly suppressed Serbian identity.
King Petar was a great military leader when, during the First World War, he led thousands of Serbian fighters on the Golgotha across Albania, although on that journey a vast number lost their lives without firing a single shot, from disease, hunger and cold. Tito and the Partisans are traitors because, due to their struggle, one hundred Serbs were killed for every German. By what standards is liberating sacrifice heroism in one case and betrayal in another? Teenagers listen to this and reproduce it.
Yugoslavism has been proscribed for years, practically since the mid-1980s, and with the arrival of the current government this has become the basic ideological orientation promoted daily in regime-controlled media, to the point that an aversion is created towards anyone who expresses even the slightest sympathy for the former shared life of a region that is now fragmented.
The memory that Yugoslavia enjoyed international prestige that none of the states created from its dissolution has today must be annulled; that life there was modest, without luxury, but decent and secure. There were no cars set alight in the streets, no beatings of students and journalists, and every construction of social standards was publicly debated. No one demolished what was under state protection, and many streets, squares and schools bore the names of distinguished figures from Serbian history, those from before the Second World War. Yes, there was no multi-party system; today there is one – and? The suppression of Yugoslavia serves as a screen to conceal the mistakes Serbia has made.
What troubles today’s rulers is that, in the common state, nationalism, identity zealotry and myths of the past could not flourish. They require constant antagonism towards other nations in the region, because by strengthening the perception of danger from others, they homogenise the people around their own power. That is why Jasenovac, the Ustaše and Thompson are mentioned every day, while students and citizens who have been demonstrating for more than a year against authoritarian, undemocratic rule are declared enemies, foreign agents, and are even labelled Ustaše and fascists. Thompson is indeed a nationalist wretch, but are Šešelj, Bokan and the chorus of sycophantic nationalists who daily pollute the information space through Informer daily, Pink TV, Happy TV and other “patriotic” media any better?
A grand indoctrination
A scandal in values was created when the Chetniks, Nedić and the like were absolved, so that the fragments of social consciousness reshaped former communists into anti-communists and Partisans into people who began to feel guilt.
Aleksandar Vučić, in Rgotina in eastern Serbia, addressed the gathered crowd in front of a banner reading: “There is no more beautiful or more important task and goal than to preserve and love your state.” Why is there none? Is it impossible to have as a goal humanity, justice, honesty, decency? Or the intention to be part of a united Europe with genuine democracy and freedom? Is that not a better way to preserve both the people and the state, instead of the propagandistic imposition of patriotism? The populist tone is obvious and, to anyone who reflects, so too is the echo of “one people, one state, one leader” or “the state, that is me”. In Klokočevac he thanked those present for safeguarding their country from those who wanted to overthrow the state, thus antagonising his own people. He could not refrain from mentioning superiority over Montenegro, Slovenia and Croatia, announcing that the river port of Prahovo has three and a half times the capacity of the port of Bar, and also greater capacity than Slovenian and Croatian ports.
Hope has appeared in the form of year-long protests by students and other citizens eager for change. They have rightly attracted sympathy. Yet journalist Borjanka Milatović is correct when she mentions the cross at the head of the student column and asks: “Where is the rebellion that tears down the stage set, where is the generation that will say: thank you for the inheritance, but we do not want to wear it as a uniform?”
At the same time, regime journalists criticise students for carrying fake church flags and images of saints. There is yet another contradiction of values and a further possibility for ideological divergence. Young people have not absorbed unclear orientations and retrograde consciousness from nowhere. Adults have guided them in that direction, and even among opponents of the government there are quite a few who flirt with populism, clericalism and even extreme nationalism.
Pushed-aside antifascism, suppressed leftism, religious indoctrination, the strengthening of the right, ever more rigid nationalism – all fill the space of dominant social consciousness in Serbia today and seriously endanger pro-European and democratic aspirations.
How, in this tangle of genuine and false patriots, sincere and self-appointed believers, consistent and converted leftists, Europeans and anti-Europeans, Russophiles and Russophobes, supporters and opponents of America and NATO, are we to orient ourselves in the further search for some improvement? Will we succeed in creating, strengthening and promoting an option that will strike the right note amid intertwined and opposing interests and ideologies, and rise above divisions? All these questions stand before us; there is no time to delay the answers, and there is a serious threat that we will no longer have the tools for public communication. Things are worse than they appear; new mistakes could prove very costly.
(Radar, 02.03.2026)
https://radar.nova.rs/drustvo/revizija-istorije-revizija-vrednosti/