Serbs Circle Wagons Amid Western Pressures : Balkans: Outsiders’ demands that the civil war end only seem to push the stoic citizenry toward their strongman leader.

By all Western logic, Tomislav Drinjakovic should be furious with the Serbian leadership.

There is no demand for his custom-made wedding clothes because the Belgrade regime has sent so many young men away to war.

Foreign economic sanctions bar the import of silks and satins that are integral to the Belgrade tailor’s trade.

His income is one-tenth what it was a year ago, and inflation has hit a 100,000% annual rate, putting even basics beyond his family’s reach.

Worst of all, Drinjakovic’s life savings of $30,000 have been confiscated by the bankrupt and desperate Belgrade war machine.

Drinjakovic might be expected to be angry. But like most Serbs caught in the new Yugoslavia’s economic tailspin, he sees little connection between the bellicose policies of President Slobodan Milosevic and the systematic erosion of his own prosperity.

“If the war situation is over soon, this business will pick up again,” the sixtyish businessman says, adding a quintessential Balkan shrug. “Times are hard, but we will survive.”

Food remains plentiful in Serbia, where few families are more than one generation removed from a farm. The republic, along with allied Montenegro, is self-sufficient in hydroelectric energy supplies. Hard-currency income floods in from hundreds of thousands working abroad, ensuring a measure of stability for those who don’t have to depend on the worthless dinar. Even the growing legions of unemployed are well-hidden by army mobilizations that give reservists a meager income and a valiant cause.

Those cushions against social unrest have been bolstered by a clever propaganda campaign in which state-run media have laid all responsibility for Serbia’s hardships on the doorstep of the West.

Serbia has been unfairly transformed into an international pariah, the citizens are told, by an evil conspiracy of old enemies including the Vatican, Germany, Austria, Turkey, the CIA, Freemasonry and the Western press.

“Serbs can’t be bought! We will not fall to our knees because you no longer let (the Yugoslav airline) JAT land in your country,” barked a Serbian policeman in the town of Urosevac who had three Western journalists arrested this week, apparently for the purpose of getting an audience for his views.

In punishment for Serbian aggression against Bosnia-Herzegovina, the United States and Canada have suspended JAT’s landing rights, and the 12-nation European Community has halted trade with the new two-republic Yugoslav state. The U.N. Security Council is considering invoking mandatory sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro, all that remain of the splintered Yugoslav federation.

Serbian patriots like Ljubisa Djordjevic, owner of a prosperous antiques shop in Belgrade, laugh derisively at Western notions that Serbia can be pressured to change.

“In 10 years, by the year 2002, Serbia will be the most powerful country on the planet,” the seemingly astute businessman boasted.

“I’ve never had better times, financially, than now. There is no crisis in Yugoslavia. That is because Yugoslavs have never trusted the Western system or computers or banks.

“If you could search every house in Serbia today, you would find at least $20 billion in cash. We are not dependent on anything from the West.”

Diplomats predict an eventual bursting of the propaganda bubble protecting Milosevic. But they, too, see no sign that a political turnaround is imminent.

“When are the workers going to go to the streets? When are the average Serbs going to wake up?” one envoy asked, answering his own question by throwing up his hands.

“These people have an amazing capacity to put up with economic pain and also an amazing capacity to get by. Everyone has veze-- connections to the countryside.”

Some see the Serbian stoicism as defiance against international efforts to isolate and undermine Milosevic. A Communist-turned-nationalist strongman, the Serbian president is widely blamed for instigating last year’s war in Croatia and the ethnic slaughter now dismembering Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“If what (the West) is trying to do is put pressure on Milosevic, what it is going to do is push the people closer to him,” warned U.S. Rep. Helen Delich Bentley, a Maryland Republican of Serbian descent who has sided with Serbia against the onslaught of criticism. “They are going to get the opposite of what they are trying to do. Serbs are hardheaded people.”

Belgrade economics professor Jurij Bajec, a Slovene, agrees that if the West is trying to engineer Milosevic’s downfall, “it is going about it the long way.”

“There will be no immediate explosion of the population as a result of economic sanctions,” Bajec said, noting that Serbs have vast experience weathering hyperinflation and economic hardship. “Maybe toward the end of the year. Maybe not until next year.”