By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
Tito’s Yugoslavia did not survive the death of the party that created it. The end of the party did not only mean the change of government, but also the end of the social and economic paradigm and value system that that party imposed on the citizens through a serious ideological drill. The degree of ideological work that Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) invested in the education and emancipation of citizens many times – dozens, if not hundreds of times – surpasses the pale, sloppy, anemic, listless and rare attempts of ideological work that DPS invested in maintaining its rule. It, after all, did not rule on ideology, nor did it shape ideology: the dominant ideology shaped it, DPS adapted to it.
And yet, in just a few years, everything that KPJ had been building for decades was demolished. Brotherhood and unity, the end: it turned into ethnic and religious hatred. Anti-nationalism, the end: nationalisms have flared up, as mushrooms grow from well-soaked shit. Secularism, the end: instead, an unstoppable process of desecularization. Industrialization, the end: instead, unstoppable deindustrialization. Education, the end: instead, the adaptation of the university to new ideological coordinates, its enslavement by new political elites, the privatization of education and finally – knowledge as a commodity, completely removed from its role and importance in the humanistic paradigm. Socialist self-management, the end: instead, frantic privatization, the most brutal and in all social relations the most destructive capitalism, taking the means of production from the hands of the workers, turning the workers into the nation, the end of all class solidarity, ethnic as a force of homogenization. Continue the list: I keep the point clear.
The end of the party also meant the end of what Badiou calls “state truth” in “Dark Disintegration” (and later writings). Ideology shapes reality, until in the end reality, with which ideology no longer has points of contact, tramples it the way a cigarette is trampled. Such an outcome is a question of the strength/weakness of the ideology: but above all, a question of time.
The Montenegrin “civil, multi-confessional and multi-religious state” is today in the position in which the Yugoslav brotherhood and unity was in 1989. It is still in rhetorical use, but its practical usability is getting thinner.
Those old enough will remember that Milosevic, while trying to create Greater Serbia, allegedly defended Yugoslavia. While riding the wave of nationalism whose goals he was chosen to achieve, until the end of his reign, he retained fragments of the socialist rhetorical apparatus, the use of which was, clearly, strictly performative.
The Montenegrin “anti-bureaucratic revolution” was a classic counter-revolution. As was the religious processions movement that triumphed on 30 August. In the counter-revolution of 1989, Montenegro, the impressive majority of its citizens and its ruling party actively and enthusiastically participated. Emancipation, which resulted on 21 May 2006, was not the result of the internal strength and virtue of the Montenegrin society, but the result of the breakdown of the Great Serbian project. This left Montenegro vulnerable to a second counter-revolution, whose job it is to complete what the first one did not. It – the first counter-revolution, fulfilled its economic goals to the end. But it is not national: Montenegro has remained a civil society in which there are too many Montenegrins, thus it remains an existential threat to the idea of a Serbian empire in the Balkans. The elimination of those two factors is the goal of the second counter-revolution.
The “civic” and “pro-European” rhetoric of the new authorities and all three counter-revolutionary governments is identical in its insincerity to Milosevic’s “Yugoslav” rhetoric. Just as he defended Yugoslavia, brotherhood and unity, and self-governing socialism, so they defend civil Montenegro and its “European path”. Their game can be accepted for two reasons: due to acute treachery or chronic stupidity. I prefer a sneaky man to a fool. At least rational communication is possible with the first.
The formation of the Mandic-Spajic government is a significant step in the consolidation of the counter-revolutionary project. Its full consolidation will be fulfilled by the announced reshuffle of that government.
The decision of the Albanian national parties to participate in that government, self-deception never helps, is a nasty stab in the body of the weakened citizens of Montenegro.
Two in one: that decision is also a nasty blow to Kurti. He is hanging in the air, it remains for someone – and soon they will, because the West in its destructive and unknown Balkan policy simply adores ignorant and crippled analogies – states that. What? This. If cooperation between the Albanian parties and Vucic’s local Serbian list is possible in Montenegro, why should it not be possible in Kosovo? If it is not possible, who is to blame, if not the “uncooperative” Kurti?
The process of assimilation of Montenegrins is designed to be made official by the results of the census. The next step has been announced several times and is anything but secret: introducing the category of “constituent nations” into the Montenegrin Constitution. Then ethnofederalization. Introducing the House of Peoples? Why not? In essence, it is about the Bosniaization (or Daytonization, if you like) of Montenegro. That is the process that is taking place: Bosniaization, not Brusselsization.
If Bosniaization of Montenegro is possible, why wouldn’t it be possible in Kosovo as well? Or in North Macedonia, where it was practically brought to an end?
Dayton Bosnia is such a prosperous and promising country that it would be a shame, an irreversible shame, not to apply the recipe according to which it was created to the rest of the Balkans.
The warning voices that repeat how in just a few years Montenegro went from being “the first next member of the EU” to become another patient of the Balkans, resemble a man who, standing in a line of people in front of a firing squad, repeats: stop it, you will kill us all.
Ah. What can I tell you: that’s exactly how it was planned.
(The opinions and views of the authors of the columns are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial staff)
