Monday, May 24th, 1999

Kosovo and socialism

    Q: I think it's tremendous that you are still operating in Serbia. First of all, I am a teacher in britain, in Manchester, and an active part of the anti-war movement in my union (NUT) and community. Many people in Britain are against the murderous NATO bombardment. We offer you our solidarity. My question is why is it not possible to make solidarity with the oppressed workers of kosovo, ethnic Albanians as well as Serbs. In Britain an important question for socialists here is to support the struggle for self-determination in north ireland. As socialists we are for the maximum freedom of all people as against the freedom of the profiteers and murderers at the top, Blair, Clinton, Milosevic. So why not support self determination for Kosovo for Serb and Albanian unity? For an eventual aim of a socialist federation of the balkans?

    First, the question is unclear on who should be making solidarity with 'oppressed workers'. If it's the workers in rest of Yugoslavia - they are solidarily in the more or less equal trouble for a decade. The trouble with the workers' unions here is that there's two kinds of them - the state-supported "Standalone unions" ("Samostalni sindikati") and the "Independent unions" ("Nezavisni sindikati"). The first are called to negotiate with the government, or the boards of state-owned companies; the later are largely ignored, or harrassed in many ways, regardless of the nationality of their members. They are the first to lose jobs, and as the economy is in a decay for ten years already, it's not uncommon.

    Self-determination of Northern Ireland is a question quite different from the question self-determination of Kosovo. The only parallel case which could be found within Britain proper is the question of autonomy/independence/secession of Brixton. Kosovo was never a part of any other state but Serbia (well, since the times of the Roman empire, somewhere in VI-VIII century). North Ireland once was a part of Ireland, and can be treated as a colony, where the colonizer deliberately enforced his own rule and populated it with its own people, in order to change the demographic structure of the region.

    Kosovo was in the heart of the first Serbian state, in IX century, and it was always part of Serbia (even during the five centuries of Ottoman rule - administratively it was kept with Serbia proper). All the names of the places there have Serbian origins. The very name of Kosovo and Metohija stems from Kosovo polje - "kos" is a blackbird, "polje" is field - and "metoh" is monastery land. Albanians on Kosovo are mostly Muslim, and have no monasteries. So we don't have a case of independence lost here. We have a piece of a sovereign state's proper soil which tends to be amputated.

    Your top list of people to blame for all this coincides with ours.

    "Self determination for Kosovo for Serb and Albanian unity" is contradictory. Would you support self determination of South New Mexico and South California's Latin population (with prospects of joining Mexico next time around) for USA-Mexican unity? What could work is the model of Vojvodina (the other autonomous province, northern part of Serbia), where five major nations (and at least a dozen of others) live in peace for a at least 150 years since the last clash - and that clash was the 1848, when half of Europe burned, anyway. Even after the world wars, when some of the local minorities were in charge (because their mainstream countries were the invaders), there was no much of revenge when the peace came (with the exception of what happened to local Germans after WW II).

    A socialist federation in the Balkans is a not a favourable idea, which wouldn't catch roots in the next decade or two, for several reasons. First, it's because the local parties who declare themselves as socialist are exactly those who are to blame for most of this mess. They use the name of socialism, but they are not accepted as such in Europe (one good move European socialists have done that we know), so any mention of socialism here brings these parties to mind, and people won't like it. Second, the whole idea of socialism is passé after the fall of USSR and its Eastern Block chain. Even most of the left-wing West European parties were not immune to Stalinism - and it will take a long time for today's parties to wash away the heritage of Stalin.

    Actually, socialism has not lived to its project anywhere - it didn't supply democracy, and didn't suppress oligarchy and/or autocracy within itself. Even here, where we had the best of socialism, it bred countless oligarchies, bureaucracy, untouchable layers of society, disrespect for legal system, political complacency instead of competence and expertise.

    Any form of federation, or even loose union in the Balkans would be short-lived, because if its existence wasn't a thorn in NATO's eye, SFRY would still exist. Divide et impera, right? We know that sooner or later some local cooperation in Balkans will have to take place - and it's actually happening, silently (no numbers are published, but we see goods imported from Croatia or Slovenia, and we know it goes other way as well), but the states themselves will have to stay as they are at least until the global shape of the world is unipolar (or would "monopolar" be a better word). We'd love to live in a state where we could reunite with our old friends who suddenly woke up in different states, but not in a state which would be doomed into another split.

Travis, cwcom.net