Nina Jankovic
Social Science
April 25, 2006
The Collapse of Yugoslavia
I was too young to remember much, but it is surprising how experiences of those close to you can impact your memory and feelings, which in turn greatly affect your mental map (or classification of reality). The collapse that those close to me and I experienced was a collapse in political ideology and national identity. The disintegration of Yugoslavia meant the political, economic and militaristic collapse of a nation through civil war. I haven’t wholly grown in the civil war with the newly nationalistic and hate filled thoughts of Serbia’s war generations or as they are usually referred to generation X. However frequent visits, a constant connection with home and the knowledge of what has happened to my country constantly consume me.
Serbophobia is what has mostly affected me here in the US especially during the spring of 1999. If Serbs were an evil and genocidal people, than I was evil and genocidal. This is where the anti- bombing protest’s slogan message is, with pins that read Target. By putting a sort of X mark on your self you are you are putting a face on the civilians being bombed in Serbia. During the bombing I remember being constantly degraded by other’s stares and mostly by a Muslim classmate from Bosnia with verbal insults. My aunt lived in Italy during some of the worst times to be Serbian (because of Srebrenica and such events); she encountered a very pretentious, fragile and snobby co- worker. When this woman found out that my aunt was Serbian she almost held her breath and with a maliciously surprised look said “Oh”. To clear up the confusion my aunt simply said “Yes, the aggressor.”
My parents grew up in Titoist Yugoslavia and loved their country and their lives; they were Yugoslavians then. When the first bullet was fired they didn’t know a civil war was on the brink, when NATO threatened to bomb Belgrade no one thought they would bomb the capital and civilians but when almost everyone you know starts getting the call, they didn’t need officials to tell them that Yugoslavia no longer existed, not physically, and not metaphorically. The toughest part, aside from the violence, about a political disintegration and civil war is that no one can tell you why? Everyone is a victim and no one can tell you why Yugoslavia, why Serbia, why people you know?
People were displaced, sanctions came and went and then came again and Yugoslavia got smaller and smaller until it was no longer Yugoslavia. It became Serbia and Montenegro, with ONE autonomous province of Vojvodina.
The older generations used to look up to their government. When such a strong government looses an intelligent and charismatic leader and becomes an indistinctly/dimly different government under a similar name, until not even the name is reminiscent of what people once knew. Those same people can’t possibly replace what once was with the criminals that come to power when a system collapses, until they replace who they once were with someone new [create a new identity].
The first response to Serbophobia and hatred was nationalism, next came a generation of Serbs that are self-loathing and ashamed of who they are because of where they come from. The dismantlement of Yugoslavia started over sixteen years ago and was accomplished but is still not over and millions of lives have been changed and lost… for what? There must be an answer to this question, only I don’t know it. In a societal collapse that you survive, a collapse of everything you believed in and thought existed there is only soreness, anger and confusion left.
A systematic collapse occurs when the collapse is beneficial to some party, therefore I would consider this collapse a methodical one; it was clearly anything but accidental. The fact that the war went on for years and the terror for over a decade, the government claimed there was no war yet people were being drafted, there was regular food rationing and an inconceivable inflation is proof enough that the collapse was organized. By who? By what group of people? By what intelligence? By which Empire?
Finally, in an accidental environmental collapse or a systematic societal collapse the people, citizens or civilians are essentially perplexed and disillusioned.
Social Science
April 25, 2006
The Collapse of Yugoslavia
I was too young to remember much, but it is surprising how experiences of those close to you can impact your memory and feelings, which in turn greatly affect your mental map (or classification of reality). The collapse that those close to me and I experienced was a collapse in political ideology and national identity. The disintegration of Yugoslavia meant the political, economic and militaristic collapse of a nation through civil war. I haven’t wholly grown in the civil war with the newly nationalistic and hate filled thoughts of Serbia’s war generations or as they are usually referred to generation X. However frequent visits, a constant connection with home and the knowledge of what has happened to my country constantly consume me.
Serbophobia is what has mostly affected me here in the US especially during the spring of 1999. If Serbs were an evil and genocidal people, than I was evil and genocidal. This is where the anti- bombing protest’s slogan message is, with pins that read Target. By putting a sort of X mark on your self you are you are putting a face on the civilians being bombed in Serbia. During the bombing I remember being constantly degraded by other’s stares and mostly by a Muslim classmate from Bosnia with verbal insults. My aunt lived in Italy during some of the worst times to be Serbian (because of Srebrenica and such events); she encountered a very pretentious, fragile and snobby co- worker. When this woman found out that my aunt was Serbian she almost held her breath and with a maliciously surprised look said “Oh”. To clear up the confusion my aunt simply said “Yes, the aggressor.”
My parents grew up in Titoist Yugoslavia and loved their country and their lives; they were Yugoslavians then. When the first bullet was fired they didn’t know a civil war was on the brink, when NATO threatened to bomb Belgrade no one thought they would bomb the capital and civilians but when almost everyone you know starts getting the call, they didn’t need officials to tell them that Yugoslavia no longer existed, not physically, and not metaphorically. The toughest part, aside from the violence, about a political disintegration and civil war is that no one can tell you why? Everyone is a victim and no one can tell you why Yugoslavia, why Serbia, why people you know?
People were displaced, sanctions came and went and then came again and Yugoslavia got smaller and smaller until it was no longer Yugoslavia. It became Serbia and Montenegro, with ONE autonomous province of Vojvodina.
The older generations used to look up to their government. When such a strong government looses an intelligent and charismatic leader and becomes an indistinctly/dimly different government under a similar name, until not even the name is reminiscent of what people once knew. Those same people can’t possibly replace what once was with the criminals that come to power when a system collapses, until they replace who they once were with someone new [create a new identity].
The first response to Serbophobia and hatred was nationalism, next came a generation of Serbs that are self-loathing and ashamed of who they are because of where they come from. The dismantlement of Yugoslavia started over sixteen years ago and was accomplished but is still not over and millions of lives have been changed and lost… for what? There must be an answer to this question, only I don’t know it. In a societal collapse that you survive, a collapse of everything you believed in and thought existed there is only soreness, anger and confusion left.
A systematic collapse occurs when the collapse is beneficial to some party, therefore I would consider this collapse a methodical one; it was clearly anything but accidental. The fact that the war went on for years and the terror for over a decade, the government claimed there was no war yet people were being drafted, there was regular food rationing and an inconceivable inflation is proof enough that the collapse was organized. By who? By what group of people? By what intelligence? By which Empire?
Finally, in an accidental environmental collapse or a systematic societal collapse the people, citizens or civilians are essentially perplexed and disillusioned.
posted by Nina Jankovic at 22:35
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