Notes from the diary
Opponents in a dispute about Milosevic's place in history will hardly be reconciled by political arguments and historical research: each "pro" can always be countered by some "con". Following are some notes from my diary. They are based on my personal experiences of meeting with the Yugoslav leader and on his pronouncements, as well as long conversations with people from his entourage. Sometimes those were his close associates, sometimes people from his background. But never dispassionate people. And there will always be questions. But often we get confusion instead of answers. You cannot choose when to live...
Was he aware of his historic responsibility or was he an unscrupulous power-seeker?
"These days I'm going round with a temperature of 38º Celsius all the time", confided Milosevic feverish with the Dayton impressions of 1995. A document had just been signed on a definitive dismemberment of his home-country - Yugoslavia, a country of the Great Victory (as it was called in Yugoslavia, like it was in Russia), a Socialist Yugoslavia (as it was willed by Tito, the most renowned and indisputable Yugoslav leader). Milosevich had become one of the guarantors of the independence of Bosnia – a republic copying the national composition of the whole of Yugoslavia: Orthodox believers – Catholics - Muslims. The authorities attempted to reconcile the three communities within the borders of the break-away province after such an attempt had failed in the whole of the state. In the process the guarantor was branded a chief criminal. "In the Third Reich Tito was proclaimed the most wanted - and expensive - criminal. The bounty for his capture was 10 million Deutsche Marks. Incidentally, Tito was best of all portrayed in the Russian film "Liberation", said Milosevic. A photo had been standing on his working table for a long time – Tito presenting a Party membership card to a young Milosevic. Later he replaced the photo with a picture of King Alexander who founded Yugoslavia in 1929. Vigorous, restless, a classic choleric type, he tried to be everybody and for everybody: "It was Tito who could plan his work for a year in advance, but I have 'a wedding' every day. At four-thirty I was at the steering wheel and driving right to the Vlada (government). There I had Vladimir (Vladimir Grunich was one of his speech-writers) called up, and we started to write an address to the people of Kraina (Serbs residing in Croatia): 'I appeal to you as'…" A list will have been drawn up later as a testimony of his hypocrisy: a Yugoslav, Serb, father, backlander from a provincial town of Pozarovac, Communist, atheist, lawyer, Army Reserve Major…
Could he have saved Yugoslavia?
"If a Serb comes to power in Yugoslavia, the state will collapse. Serbs are too obstinate to rule the country", warned Tito, himself a Croat. That is exactly what happened. A native of Montenegro and a Serb in mentality, Milosevic tried to save the country relying on the army. But he failed. Yugoslavia, like Carthage, had to be destroyed. Croats' chief military advisor Gen. Carl Vuono – in fact commander-in-chief of their troops and until then US Army Chief of Staff – knew how to wage war. During the five years of the each-for-himself war there was only one instance on record when both Serbs and Croats decided at a joint reunion not to obey anyone and not to fight for anyone. It happened at Kostainiza in Kraina in August of 1991. Wasn't it the place where Russian journalists Nogin and Kurennoi were heading for to tell the world of the local phenomenon? They had no time. They were killed near Kostainiza. No one needed such a phenomenon.
Was he a criminal?
Of course, it was he who gave orders from the first shot fired in Kraina in 1991 to the Kosovo ignominy of 1999. It is most unlikely that the orders explicitly said - these people have to be hanged and those shot by firing squad. Not everyone who took up arms became criminals. But war is always a barbarity, a civil war doubly so. On the very first day of my coming to the Bosnian town of Tuzla an old Muslim man, who was watering a lawn from a hose, held his stare at my chevron with the Russian tricolor. Then he spat contemptuously and cursed at me. After a week's time we struck a conversation. Till 1992 he lived in Bielin in the Serbian part of Bosnia, and taught the Russian language. He told me how once several "militiamen" headed by a local top thug had burst into his classroom. They had armbands with the colors of the Serbian flag – it's the same as on the Russian flag, only upside down. They ordered everyone to say the "Our Father" prayer. Whoever refused was taken to be a Muslim. Half of the class were shot dead, with an inscription made on the blackboard for everybody's edification: "Here we are masters". Then I met another old man, a Serb, in Bielin. He also knew of that school story. Moreover, after a stiff rakia drink he let out a secret: the militias had walked to the school house straight from his home. In his yard, like "militiamen", only with green Muslim head bands, had boiled dead his three-year-old daughter in a big cauldron. They had dropped several onions in the cauldron. As seasoning, they had joked. The girl and half the class were among the 270,000 martyrs who spoke the same language. "The old man" turned out to be 30. And he had learned Russian from my Tuzla interlocutor. Did Milosevic need to give criminal orders?
Did Milosevic haggle with the West or did he, like a true Serb, stubbornly stick to his guns?
Of course, he did haggle and compromise. Especially when only his presidency and the status of an international guarantor helped to protect him, for a time, from the tribunal. But if the tribunal finally succeeded in laying hands on him, it means that Milosevic had made few concessions. If he had heartily thanked the West for having put his home country in democratic order, like the Croat Tudjman and the Bosnian Muslim Izetbegovich did, or, better still, if he had presented some kind of a bill for "occupation" to Moscow, he would have remained till today President and Guarantor and been touted as an exemplary fighter against totalitarianism. Instead, he was made a pariah. He vacillated between his own political wings as well – from Djindjich, a pro-American, to nationalist Sheshel, calling them his left and right hands. He proposed his military commanders to "be friends" with Moscow, while his diplomats to "be friends" with the West. Flirting with democrats, he wanted to close down the burial-vault of "dictator" Tito, but his Socialist Party comrades dissuaded him. The Army Reserve Major lacked the charisma of the Marshal. Political titans seldom break in their successors.
What did Serbs themselves think of him?
First they pinned their hopes on him, like people in the USSR did on Gorbachev. After coming to power in 1987 he used to compare himself to the Russian leader. "Our Gorbachev" – that's what newspapers called him at the time. Some time later he came to be thought of as an unyielding bungler whose lucky number is to turn up any moment. People began to say: "Slobo is our perennial problem". "Problem" is "pregnancy" in Serbian. After the Kosovo tragedy and up to his arrest, they added a dash of disdain to their attitude: he is making so much fuss, but always loses. They made cracks about a camp bed that should be put up next to the tombstone of Marshal Tito. After his arrest the people's attitude changed again to sympathy. But it was not extended to his overactive wife, Mira, the leader of a left-wing party identical to Socialists. Rumors about their financial irregularities had always been going round, but it was mostly Mira they centered on. Be that as it may, he did not give any external indication of luxury. He used to wear one and the same suit all the year round, which he had bought at a Belgrade general store in full view of the crowd. As distinct from Tito, he did not like the pompous motorcades blocking off traffic.
Was he a friend of Moscow?
He was not an intimate friend of Moscow. But his attitude was that of understanding, to say the least. He used to compare himself to our leaders. Among the present-day political elite, he distinguished Primakov, and once requested the Kremlin to appoint him specifically as an intermediary in the Kosovo crisis. He had a feeling of near-repulsion for Kozyrev and especially for the latter's deputy in charge of the Balkans, Churkin. He had a fair command of the Russian language. His mother, Stanislava, had worked for some time as a teacher of Russian. He was fond of citing examples from Soviet history, which he knew quite well. Having met once with a Russian military attache by the name of Shepilov, he asked jokingly: "Are you one of those guys who have sided with them?" (at the end of the 1950s the then USSR foreign minister Shepilov was commonly known as the man who sided with the anti-Party faction of Malenkov-Molotov). He was fond of Soviet feature films, and even wrote, under a pen-name, critical essays on some of them, for instance on "The White Desert Sun". He kept track of Russia's cultural life. On closing a meeting with a Russian Charge d'Affaires he suddenly asked once: "Is it true that they have managed to ruin even the Bolshoi Theater?" His attitude towards Russia became much worse in 1995. That year the Russian ambassador to Croatia succeeded in having Zagred leader Tudjman awarded with the Russian Order of the Great Patriotic War for having spent during WW2 a month and a half as a POW in custody of Tito's guerrillas. And also for, being a navy admiral, having been one of the first Yugoslav generals to break their military oath of allegiance.
PS. Between Gorbachev and… Khrushchev
Having shed Gorbachev's image, he tried to be a kind of an iconoclast like Yeltsyn – that's the time when he wanted to close down Tito's mausoleum. Copying Yeltsyn, he tried to be "a servant of the people", "above the parties". Then he again reverted to ruling the country from a party rostrum. Now he compared himself to Khrushchev. Showing off a little, he used to say that, being a successor of the world leader, he had come to better understand Stalin, Tito and Khrushchev. Incidentally, when he was on a visit to Moscow, he was possibly the only one of the state leaders of that time to come to Khrushchev's tomb at the Novodevichye Cemetery…
He was no dictator, though toughness was in great demand during his epoch. He was no criminal, though he failed to stop the barbarities perpetrated in his name. He was no more obstinate than most Serbs. And he was ambitious, as a party secretary elevated by his times to rule Yugoslavia, a country of 16 million people, a country that collapsed without Marshal's iron grip. He is Marshal's antipode in many senses. And that is the real root of the Yugoslav tragedy, which has been augmented by yet another victim.
