Jasmina Tešanović: What About the Russians?

Text: Jasmina Tešanović, June 19, 2006

Photos: Peace performance in Belgrade. Images courtesy Women in Black.

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Another one off to the Hague. One more
of the last five indicted was arrested two days
ago and delivered.

His name is Vlastimir Djordjevic and he is
particularly famous for
his efficiency in burying thousands of Albanian bodies
in
a secret mass grave just a dozen kilometers from the
center
of Belgrade.

The sinister designed efficiency has always puzzled
me
in the history of local warfare. We Serbs are a
sloppy, easy going
people, not to say boozy and work-shy. Besides, we
lived for years on
end under a communist regime with guaranteed salaries
and
social security, which much promoted our dolce far
niente
attitude. The Yugoslav army was big, like a second
nation in a multiethnic nation.

Then all of a sudden the same placid army turns into
a death squad
which is second only to Nazis. The bodies were
transported in big
refrigerator trucks and buried all over Serbia.

The press here is discussing why the indicted
was somehow arrested in Montenegro.
Did he really work as a construction worker there?
Supposedly, he hid safely for years in Russia — did
he have a Russian ID? Maybe he was posing as a
stripper, as one commentator put it angrily…

As if those details mattered. What matters is that
people in Serbia
still
don’t know, or want to know, why he was arrested or
what
he actually did.

People prefer to follow the glamorous doings of
Arkan's widow, Ceca, who had a glorious evening in
the
local Russian embassy, surrounded by Radicals. Our
President Kostunica put in an appearance, much cheered
by
Putin's support against Kosovo independence.

Putin' s growing economic power in the western world
is costing
Serbia its chance for integration into united Europe.
Serbia
geographically belongs there, and, with the exception
of Russia, all
the great powers would like to lock Serbia into Europe
for good so it
does not create yet more trouble.

The Russian myth dates to Tolstoy' s hero from Ana
Karenina, who left
his beloved to fight a gallant war for Serbia. Of
course he
was committing suicide by proxy as he did this, and
eventually,
she committed suicide too. These adventures rarely
end well.

Back in 1999, Russians didn’t veto the bombing of
Serbia.
The Russians are using the Kosovo issue in order to
reclaim ex-
Soviet territories with Russian populations. Serbs
know that the
Russians have their own great-power motives in
exploiting Serbian
troubles, but the myth does not allow them to say
that.

Ratko Mladic, the number one indicted in Hague, was
supposedly in
Russia only two days ago. With two out the last five
major criminals
gone, Mladic may yet be caught, maybe even in
Belgrade, where his
books and T-shirts are bestsellers.

The Serb authorities from Bosnia hailed the arrests
and promised that soon their own land will be
war-criminal free.
The President of Serbia, Tadic, did the same.

Carla del Ponte praised the Serbian government in the
UN assembly for the newly cooperative attitude.

What about the Russians?

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Jasmina Tešanović is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here.

Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanović on BoingBoing:

– Milan Martic sentenced in Hague

– Mothers of Mass Graves
– Hope for Serbia
– Stelarc in Ritopek
– Sarajevo Mon Amour

– MBOs
– Killing Journalists

– Jasmina Tešanović: Where Did Our History Go?
– Serbia Not Guilty of Genocide

– Carnival of Ruritania
– "Good Morning, Fascist Serbia!"
– Faking Bombings
– Dispatch from Amsterdam
– Where are your Americans now?

– Anna Politkovskaya Silenced
– Slaughter in the Monastery

– Mermaid's Trail

– A Burial in Srebenica
– Report from a concert by a Serbian war criminal
– To Hague, to Hague