I commented on all of these things, and a few other things too, at our conference on totalitarianism and art. The professor, as if he’d been personally wronged, responded that it was absurd to draw comparisons between Stalinism and “Croatian patriotism brought on by Serbian aggression.” Or words to that effect. A female colleague suggested that the things I was saying in front of the foreign fellows were deeply inappropriate, because at that moment our boys are dying at the front. . That phrase, our boys dying at the front was the moral chewing gum of the time. “While our boys are dying at the front, you were reading your paper on Bulgakov, and now you’re about to head off for dinner with our foreign colleagues,” I replied. Or words to that effect.
I didn’t go to the dinner. In giving my “inappropriate,” “wrong place, wrong time, wrong means” presentation, I also gave myself the sack. It’d been kicking around inside me for months. Actually, when I think about it, I didn’t give myself the sack, but sacked them, my “guild”—intellectuals, humanists, professors of literature. They deserved sacking for any number of reasons, but one was enough. At the time, in accordance with instructions from the Croatian Minister of Culture, libraries were cleansed of ideologically “unsuitable” authors and their books. Here and there bonfires burned, often initiated by local librarians, teachers, and pupils.[8] According to the rare journalistic investigation, the books of Ivo Andrić, the only Yugoslav to win the Nobel Prize, were found in the rubbish, as were the books of Thomas Mann. Cult books from my childhood such as Branko Ćopić’s The Hedgehog’s House joined them, and my books kept them company. My colleagues, professors of literature, didn’t say a word. Not one of them even batted an eyelid.
When I left the university, a long-time co-worker had the following to say:
“The whole time we actually protected you.”
“What do you mean?”
“We could have attacked you, but we didn’t, right?”
My co-worker was telling the truth. Really, at the time they were in a position to do all kinds of things, but there you have it, they didn’t. Nobody put a bullet in my forehead. In other words — they protected me.
Before leaving, I published an article in the local papers that was ironically entitled “The Right to Collective Censorship.”[9] Like my “out-of-control” appearance at the Slavic conference, the article was a final attempt to establish public dialogue. The article was greeted with silence. Playing “broken telephone,” retelling and mangling my essays published in newspapers abroad was sweeter and deadlier than open confrontation. The very act of engaging in dialogue presupposes a modicum of respect for both one’s interlocutor and for dialogue as a form of communication. The refusal of dialogue means ridicule of the other, their irrevocable human and professional disqualification.
When I told the professor, my long-time collaborator, that I was leaving the university, he said:
“That’s the best thing you can do.”
Not a word more, not a word less. And never another word after.
9. A Special Assignment
The Globus magazine’s fabrication about the Croatian witches was not “Croatian journalism’s most shameful moment,” as several journalists (much, much later) labelled it — as it had nothing to do with journalism. It was, rather, a special assignment, and Globus was but an obedient solder in the battle. All Yugoslav media, Serbian, then Croatian, worked tirelessly on fueling hatred, on quickening the ethnic pulse of the slumbering masses, and when the war erupted, they performed “special assignments” with distinction. Openly admitting that they were lying, the media adopted a Croatian journalist’s declaration that where the homeland’s concerned, I’m prepared to lie as their general moral slogan. When Franjo Tuđman came to power in 1990, his party, the Croatian Democratic Union, took control of the majority of media organizations. A number of journalists were fired in the process, while others, the loyal, were rewarded with directorships, editorships, and correspondent postings. Young storm troopers who didn’t have any moral dilemmas about their profession were recruited in place of those who had been let go — for these storm troopers had neither morals nor a profession.
Very soon, the media itself circulated lists of people who were intended for media execution. My name was among them. Often telephone numbers would appear alongside the names, a weapon offered to small, anonymous citizens. My personal statistics suggest that my patriotic countrywomen were the biggest fans of the telephone as weapon, their anonymous messages littered with vulgarities about sex with “Chetniks.” The calls had an “emancipatory” character for my countrywomen, and many distinguished themselves with their verbal creativity, as if their own erotic phantasies on the given political-military theme were in question.
In this special war the media got a dirty job done, and people suffered and died. .
Because they had the wrong ethnicity;
Because of their Serbian ethnicity;
Because of the absence of an ethnicity;
Because of a mixed ethnicity;
Because of their Yugoslav ethnicity;
Because of a grandmother who was a Serb;
Because of a grandfather who was a Serb;
Because of a father who was a Partisan;
Because of a mother who was a Communist;
Because of an aunt who was an Anti-Fascist;
Because of their ideological beliefs;
Because of their lack of ideological beliefs;
Because of the absence of religious beliefs;
Because of the wrong religious beliefs;
Because they’d stepped on somebody’s toes;
Because they owned a villa at the seaside;
Because the villa caught someone’s eye;
Because of a job that caught someone’s eye;
Because they were Albanians;
Or Roma;
Or Yugoslavs;
Or “unadjusted” Croats;
Because they were successful;
Because they lacked the will to take sides. .
These were the sweet strategies of fascism. And from behind the media smokescreen, behind the smoke from the bonfires on which witches burned, the anonymous and unfortunate lost their jobs and homes. Some were beaten black and blue, others killed. Many passed through everyday life as if through a hail of invisible bullets.
The question of media guilt has never been seriously asked. The majority of the journalists from the time — employees of the Croatian media’s hate industry — are still in their jobs today. It’s true, the language has changed a little, and the strategies are less visible. In any case, today one doesn’t need to lie to “defend the bleeding homeland.” These days one defends what was acquired over the previous twenty years: property, jobs, a secure retirement, or more simply — a decent biography.[10]
Sitting pretty with their sinecures, and fêted with local literary prizes, the lions and lionesses of Croatian literature have today expropriated the “witches’ discourse,” retrospectively touching up their images in the process. They know people have short memories, and the truth is, they’re right — they live in an amnesiac society and they know it. These people (the majority of whom are men) held their tongues for twenty years, yet today boldly recycle the “witches’ letter,” nullifying its original authorship, and in doing so, effectively complete the work of the “witch-hunters” of yesterday.