Serbs Embrace Heady Feel of Public Politics

Not so long ago, talk of politics was as welcome as a skunk at a picnic in the music-filled Drum Club and similar hangouts where Belgrade’s youth congregate at night.

Known for their too-cool indifference and air of resignation, many of the capital’s hip young Serbs preferred to chat about money or how to get a visa to leave the country. Apathy ran through the generations, incubated by years of communism and isolation.

But now, after nearly a month of daily demonstrations against the authoritarian regime of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, all that has changed. At the Drum and elsewhere, you couldn’t stop the political chatter if you tried. Darlings of the cafe society have suddenly become news junkies. Yugoslavs have gotten a rare taste of political activism.

“I’ve always hated politics, but I can’t be blind anymore,” said Daniela Jurjevic, a 25-year-old pharmacology student standing in the crowded, smoky entryway of the Drum with two girlfriends after another day of protest.

“I want to hear everything. I want to know everything. I want to see a change.”

No one realistically expects Milosevic to fall as a result of the current protests. But it is realistic to expect enduring change--and not the least aspect of that change could well be the attitude of many once-fatalistic people.

On Saturday, for the 27th consecutive day, the demonstrations showed no sign of letting up, with tens of thousands of people massing in one of the largest rallies yet.

Demonstrations of this size and duration have not been seen in Serbia in more than 50 years. The solidarity from sheer numbers has encouraged those who were reticent to speak out.

“Everything I’m seeing happening gives me energy to stand up for what I want,” Jurjevic said. “We never talked about this stuff before. We thought things had to be the way they were. Now I see a lot of people think the way I do. Before I thought I was wrong, alone, but now I see a lot of people like me--young people, old people.”

The Serbian youths and others who have joined the protest movement are experiencing something that in American pop lingo would be called empowerment.

It comes after years of stifling communism in a virtual police state--especially during the last five years, when those now in their 20s were coming of age as Serbia was in effect at war through its proxies in Bosnia-Herzegovina and when little room was allowed for dissent.

A closed society where propaganda had such influence nurtured conformity and frustration. Many young people simply left the country.

As communism has receded throughout Europe, only in Serbia--one of two republics forming what is today the rump Yugoslavia--has the same leader continued to rule for nine turbulent years.

Communism was swept from most of Eastern Europe in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and, later, the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in the Balkans, many of the old regimes hung on, with new names or new rallying cries but many of the same old policies.

In more recent months, however, even that has changed: Romania voted in its first non-Communist president last month, and Bulgaria ended the Socialists’ hold on the presidency.

Only Milosevic remains. Even as he switched from communism to socialism to nationalism and back again, each time adapting to consolidate power, Milosevic was consistent in his airtight grasp on government institutions and the media while he built up a loyal police force and assumed control of important segments of the economy.

But with the war in Bosnia over--Serbia having suffered an influx of refugees and Yugoslavia having lost territory--and with a devastated economy still showing no recovery after the lifting of international sanctions, a groundswell of anti-Milosevic sentiment broke through the layers of social control. Election fraud last month that took away opposition victories in municipal races then sparked the current protests.

“Even if nothing else happens, we have achieved something very important for the future,” said Jovana Krstanovic, 32, a film editor who was hanging out at another nightclub, which she co-owns.

“We now know that [people in] Serbia want democracy. And finally we have a civilized civic movement, without nationalist symbols or insignia. We really needed this to express and release all that was piling up in us for all these years.”

Krstanovic’s nightclub, so cool it has no name or sign, is hidden in the basement of her great-grandfather’s 1918 villa and has long been a gathering spot for a small clique of politically aware patrons.

“It was like a small ghetto in Belgrade,” she said. “We had similar beliefs, but we stopped talking about it. We stopped talking directly about politics. We were depressed for years. We thought there was no way out.”

Now the dark, loud club is crowded with new faces. At last, Krstanovic said, she feels the years of sticking it out under Milosevic’s regime may be paying off.

Many who arrive at the bar come straight from the day’s boisterous march and gather to watch the night’s broadcast of state-run television to see how their activities are being portrayed.

With heightened political activism, the hunger for accurate--or at least less biased--news and information is also more acute. Because of the xenophobia whipped up by Milosevic for so many years, foreign media such as CNN used to be considered the enemy, but at a recent rally, opposition leaders set up a huge screen to broadcast CNN and other foreign TV reports as the only accurate footage available.

“Some of my friends who never even listened to news are walking around with Walkmans to get the latest,” said Vladimir Djeric, 28, a lawyer who is working with a human rights organization that is charting police abuse of protesters.

“Before, I sensed a generalized apathy because people thought nothing ever changed,” Djeric added. “But now they saw they could win.”

Turmoil and lack of opportunity in Serbia have driven thousands of Serbs--and not only young ones--into exile through most of this decade. Smaller attempts at social protest, in the early 1990s, were quickly crushed and resulted in new exoduses.

If rising expectations now result again only in disappointment, some of the protesters say, the consequences could be an apathy deeper than ever before.

“The great danger now is that without concrete results, people will be more disillusioned than ever,” said Branko Plese, a 28-year-old lawyer. “This is a crucial time, because if nothing comes of this, I can’t envision another situation where you’d have 100,000 people coming into the streets.

“People will see that neither elections nor demonstrations work.”