Serbia's Slow Transition

...Serbia takes pride in its reputation as the renegade of Europe, as if wantonness could be equated with dynamism...

...Dane nodded in disheartened agreement...

...In the past decade and a half, Serbia—which retains a national tradition distinct from Yugoslavia but is also the federation’s legal successor—has lost two-thirds of its territory and the entire length of its coastline...

...I’ll bet that right now, on this street, Serbia’s future is not on a single person’s mind...

...Although the Hague has now ruled that Serbia was not guilty of genocide in the Bosnian War, only of “failing to prevent an act of genocide” at Srebrenica, lingering questions about its conduct have saddled the country with a burdensome inheritance...

...While attending school, many work as clerks or administrators— the same positions they can expect to attain upon graduation...

...At a certain point,” Milica said, “young people in Serbia started thinking about themselves— their futures, their prosperity—and realized that nationalism simply doesn’t pay off...

...That’s when he starts to become an adult, and not before he enters his 50s does he reach an acceptable age...

...For three months, the major parties were unable to agree on a coalition government...

...But we knew...

...On the contrary, obtaining a university diploma requires mastery of a prodigious amount of material...

...People who wanted to know the truth knew...

...In March, in the city of Kragujevac, a third of the professors at the School of Law were arrested and charged with soliciting sums upward of 700 euros from students who wished to pass their exams...

...Thus for the generation that has grown up within its shrinking borders, claustrophobia is the defining existential condition...

...A dark reminder looms on Kneza Milos?a Street, where two federal ministry buildings still display inverted bellies of reinforced concrete that were blown open by the 1999 attacks...

...The truth about recent conflicts has been more difficult to come by...

...The media was silent,” she said...

...even the peacocks at the zoo roam unfettered...

...It pays the bills,” he shrugged...

...To me, the recognition that Serbian society is still in transition indicates it is moving forward...

...The younger generation has little patience for the impotent swagger of various heads of state or for the stagnant status quo...

...Among the general public, the bombing is still touted as the quintessence of hubristic policing, if not arbitrary cruelty...

...On an average afternoon outside the University of Belgrade, you are bound to find a ragtag assembly slouched against the exterior walls of the Philosophical Faculty, chatting animatedly over a couple of cigarettes before adjourning for coffee in the nearby city center...

...Stefan, the film producer, disagrees...

...some linger in the system until they are nearly 30...

...About what steps we need to take to become part of Europe...

...My friends expressed concern and embarrassment that the Radicals had made such a strong showing, yet also maintained that, despite its painful inadequacies, the political situation in Serbia is slowly improving...

...This is not to suggest that students lack industry...

...The average age at graduation is 25...

...Pro-European integration sentiment does seem to be on the upswing...

...Today the government’s response to Kosovo’s independence is seen as a litmus test for Serbia...

...Eight years later it has become easier to romanticize those days, but everybody knows they were as grim as they were wild...

...The city’s ambivalence about the whole event is mirrored in the outlook of Serbia’s younger generation: Looking out the window waiting for the next “bomb” to drop, they wonder whether they should leave or simply light another cigarette...

...Some fall back on less desirable options...

...Soon thereafter, the European Union agreed to resume the partnership talks with Serbia that were suspended last year...

...Given the bias of the Serbian media and continuing distrust here of information from the West, the majority of Serbians view the Hague Tribunal as a vehicle of politics rather than justice...

...Anyone over age 16 remembers when Belgrade was the capital of the federation of southern Slavic states known as Yugoslavia...

...Increasingly, though, with the question of European integration unresolved, the nation suffers under its own selfimage...

...In the eight years since Nato launched a precision-bombing campaign to force the withdrawal of Serbian troops from the province of Kosovo, whose status remains to be determined, Belgrade has seemed a classic study in plus ça change: While life after dark spins like a clock too tightly wound, political time advances at a creeping pace...

...brass bands suddenly appear on the street...

...The generation now emerging has registered the upheavals of the past two decades with ironic resignation...

...How many people in Serbia are thinking, right at this moment, about the problems the country is facing...

...The stories told about those peculiar 72 days resonate with Serbia’s national myth, consisting of equal parts valiance and victimhood...

...Serbia’s lack of cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at the Hague—most particularly, its failure to apprehend and extradite the alleged war criminals Ratko Mladic´ and Radovan Karadzic´—are signs of its unwillingness to examine publicly the full extent of its involvement in the Bosnian War...

...To the dismay of the West, the ultraconservative Radical Party placed first with nearly a third of the vote...

...But with the May arrest of Zdravko Tolimir, third on the Hague’s most-wanted list, Serbia has shown new interest in responding to the ICTY’s demands...

...Choosing to remain at home reflects not only these constraints but also an evolving view of the passage to adulthood...

...No one seems to pay attention,” Zona sighed...

...Such rhetoric fueled the tactics of Milos?evic´, and omnipresent nationalist graff iti marks “1389” as the year of the “Battle of Kosovo...

...He returned to Serbia a few years ago to found a film production company...

...After the Kosovo war Milica studied at an American college (Bard) on a limited student visa...

...The nation’s name has changed three times in the past four years: first from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to Serbia and Montenegro and then, upon Montenegro’s 2006 secession, to Serbia alone...

...There she learned of the specific charges the international community had lodged against the policies of ousted President Slobodan Milos?evic...

...Here we drink vodka, whiskey and beer...

...Nonetheless, I think there is reason for optimism...

...Any postponement of graduation that results from a missed exam is considered a minor complication, since students are in no rush to leave the university...

...As a result, Radical Party leader Tomislav Nikolic´ became Parliament Speaker and the country was without decisive leadership at a moment of profound international import...

...The atmosphere during the NATO campaign is a favorite subject of café reminiscence...

...Yes, many of Serbia’s best and brightest hope to leave the country in quest of more promising opportunities elsewhere...

...But of course I knew they were wrong: Serbia’s future was on their minds...

...IN A FAMOUS 19th-century epic poem about the battle of Misar, where the Serbian hero Karadjordje won his f irst victor y against the Ottomans, two ravens fly to the widow of a Turkish commander to report her husband’s death: “We would answer, if we could, with good news,” they say, “but we cannot, for we must tell the truth...

...the statement was merely a matter of fact...

...He showed me his hands, rubbed dry from scrubbing...

...You know,” my friend Nada declared, “life here may be more difficult than in the rest of Europe, but it is also somehow better...

...I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s just that the day was so extraordinary for us...

...Sometime after the haze burns off in midafternoon—leaving streaks of gold smoldering in the sky, the remnants of noonday fumes—the cafés turn on their lights and the avenues teem with women in high boots and their male companions...

...Where flats are too cramped for such socializing everyone adjourns to a café— the city boasts one for every eight of its residents...

...If I were in charge,” she added, “I would make sure this was what everyone was thinking about...

...In most cases it is punitively difficult for a Serbian citizen to venture to America, Canada or Western Europe...

...As the country’s borders have constricted, travel outside them has become an ever more thorny endeavor...

...She paused for another sip of coffee...

...But most younger Serbians already concede that Kosovo was effectively lost in 1999, even if they are not happy about it...

...If and when Kosovo obtains independence, Serbia will be dwarfed by another eighth...

...In May, days short of a constitutionally imposed deadline, the other two principal parties announced that they would retain their tenuous coalition and Nikolic´ filed his resignation...

...The January 2007 Parliamentary election hardly helped matters...

...Today, he has taken a job washing cars...

...Work and school were suspended, the streets filled with impromptu parties, performances were staged in basements and on bridges, curfews were flouted, and people sitting in cafés watched the mechanized bombs turn right angles to hit their targets...

...In contrast to the anxious fetishizing of youthful health and appearance found in America, however, to be young in Serbia is to be carefree...

...Their protracted studies and tenuous job prospects incline young Serbians to live with their parents until they move in with a fiancé or spouse...

...Under the pressure of these changes, Serbia’s sense of its own geopolitical significance has evaporated...

...Ye t those who choose to stay have a genuine investment in creating a new society...

...Describing her experiences on October 5, 2000—when hundreds of thousands flooded the streets, set the Parliament building on fire, and overturned the Milos?evic´ regime—her eyes began to tear...

...Rebecca Kastleman, a new contributor to the New Leader, is currently spending a year in Serbia as a Harvard George Peabody Gardner Fellow...

...Meanwhile, within the university’s cavernous interior, the halls bustle with students clad in low-slung jeans and clutching trendy knockoff handbags, preparing for exams they may or may not choose to take...

...But once students complete their courses, they are unlikely to find employment that reflects the rigor of their degrees...

...Although visa restrictions are gradually loosening, especially for students, traveling abroad continues to be an unusual privilege and the prospect of residency in the West little more than a chimera...

...Milica, a student of English literature with an air of cultivated poise, told me that the past 15 years of isolation and upheaval have, for many Serbians, clarified that their country is subject to the whims of international decree...

...ONANY GIVEN NIGHT in a Belgrade home, friends and neighbors stick their heads through the door and are generously invited in for coffee, brandy, and an evening of exuberant conversation...

...Over coffee with my friends Zona and Dane, I watched the late-night crowd slink by on Knez Mihajlova street as they brooded about the creeping pace of change...

...Have you noticed,” he asked pointedly, “that in Serbia a man is considered young until he is 40...

...But that identity is now the subject of a fervent dispute that will be left to those coming of age in an independent Serbia...

...With the final resolution of the province’s status on the horizon, few politicians are prepared to explain to the people that they must stomach another major loss of territory...

...But students’ concerns about the practicalities of their own lives tend to trump the abstractions of national identity...

...We could only conclude that Serbia is a small nation, that no one is on our side, and that we must go along with the world...

...About why so much corruption remains...

...Serbia is a bridge between East and West,” said Dragan, a self-styled punk enamored of Charles Bukowski and American rock music...

...The upshot of this state of affairs is a crisis of motivation and a general sense of pessimism about the Serbian economy...

...Dus?an, a wiry intellectual who graduated from the University of Belgrade with near-perfect grades in political science and regularly recites his verse at literary gatherings, was unable to find employment in his field after months of searching...

...My friend Stefan moved with his family to Prague during the tumult of the 1990s...

...Recalling Serbia’s fall to 500 years of Ottoman occupation, the graffiti is evidence that many Serbians continue to define themselves by their past, boasting of the endurance of their nation’s spirit against formidable odds...

...No one has been thinking about what’s good for us...

...People tell you that there wasn’t any genocide, that we didn’t know what was going on under Milos?evic´,” he sighed...

...Time and again I have been told that the only way to land a job in Serbia is through the endorsement of friends in high places...

...We really believed that anything could happen...

...I don’t think it’s right,” stressed Nebojs?a, a lanky college athlete with a freckled face and an earnest demeanor...

...My friends are upset,” Milica explained, “because our government has been screwing us from the time we were born...

...As the Next Generation Watches and Wonders Serbia’s Slow Transition By Rebecca Kastleman Belgrade The Capital of Serbia taunts the fledgling visitor with its uncanny sense of freedom: Cars park on the sidewalk...

...They are eager for the process of European integration to accelerate and recognize that Serbia will not be considered a bona fide member of the European community until it relinquishes Kosovo...

...The conflicts of the 1990s fractured the country into six independent nations and precipitated the forced relocation of millions of former Yugoslav citizens to ethnically homogeneous zones...

...Indeed, the widespread corruption in the educational system and the professional world that stands in the way of meritocratic advancement has become a public concern...

...It is true that Serbian culture venerates youth, or at least clings to it for as long as possible...

...Imagine that Canada decided to lay claim to New York, and the French bombed the United States because it wouldn’t surrender the city— would this be reasonable...

...No one explained why Nato bombed us in 1999...

...Among those who own a passport—70 per cent of the population never has—most are registered in a country that no longer exists...

...The Belgrade real estate market is a messy affair: Private residences are slowly being returned to their rightful owners in the wake of the Communist period, leaving many people searching for new quarters and at the mercy of profiteers...

...My friends in Belgrade were surprised only that officials had cracked down on a racket long in existence throughout the country...