Divided We Stand: Discourses on Identity in ‘First’ and ‘Other’ Serbia

The object of study

As Obradović notes, much public dialogue in Serbia is dominated by actors representing directly opposing sides of an issue (e.g. pro- and anti-International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), pro- and anti-EU, rural/urban dichotomies) with the effect that the debate appears both polarized and polarizing.[10] Scholarly works on Serbia have described it as a society divided between liberal and illiberal, or civic and uncivic values.[11] The polarization between “First” and “Other” Serbia, as Ramet noted back in 2011, has frequently been cited as an illustration of the lack of agreement in Serbia on issues such as EU integration, attitudes toward the ICTY, apportioning responsibility for war crimes, and other issues arising from Serbia’s wartime past.[12] However, as this manuscript is going to print, the situation is quite the reverse: the Progressives, who are former Radicals, openly support Serbia’s path to EU accession and the left-leaning intellectuals, influenced by the Greek financial crisis, oppose EU accession on anti-imperialist grounds. This post-2012 polarization will be further addressed in the conclusion. Still, although often couched in social and cultural terms, the driving force behind these “cognitive divisions”, as they have been described by Edward Said,[13] was and is remarkably political. Suggestions have often been made, after 2000, that as much as the civil society activists and other liberals are working hard to expose Serbia’s complicity in the war crimes of the 1990s on the one hand, the revisionists are working equally hard to deny Serbian responsibility for war crimes and genocide on the other.[14] I propose to transcend this, at first glance, seemingly complex choice by deconstructing the dualist logic employed by First and Other Serbia and exposing the manner in which these positions toward Europe have forged, and are even now forging, Serbian national, political and cultural identities.

Public debates among Serbia’s elites after 2000 persistently refer, either implicitly or explicitly, to rearticulating the notion of the Serbian nation and its place in Europe and history in order to legitimize the government’s political decisions and foreign policy choices. The issue of Serbia belonging to Europe or not remains highly contentious in elite discourses, regardless of the actual state of Serbia’s relations with particular EU member states at any given moment. First and Other Serbia elites and political leaders have constructed a conception of the European Union, and a much broader concept of Europe, in a plethora of ways. What can be characterized as the anti-European position, in its many forms, has formulated Europe as a definitive threat to Serbian national interests, as an attack on national sovereignty in respect of Kosovo, and lastly, in cultural sense, as an attempt to supplant the traditional values associated with the Serbian Orthodox Church with a European foreign-imposed secular identity. Such reluctance to embrace the European project, it has been argued, stems from a variety of sources including the legacy of Serbian’s proud history as a dominant force in the region, the distinctive character of the Serbian collective experience, and the relationship between the Serbian and the Yugoslav identities.[15] The ever-present theme is that Serbia has a difficult geopolitical position in the mental map of Europe: that it is neither here nor there, that it is East for the West, and West for the East. This resulted in a specific in-between historical narrative and strong national myths. The constant state of transition in recent decades contributed to a strong sense of what Malksoo calls liminality, which she describes as “the twentieth-century political predicament of Eastern Europe.” The problems associated with displacement, and resulting uncertainty, resentment and general longing are all features of this “liminal character.”[16] Additionally, during the course of the last two decades, First Serbia’s intelligentsia has continuously questioned whether Serbia belongs to Europe, and consequently has questioned Serbia’s EU candidacy on essentialist grounds. Even so, throughout the period since October 5, 2000 and the change of regime, the question of whether Serbia is European and “who Serbs ought to be” has been at the heart of debates among public figures, intellectuals, journalists, writers and distinguished scholars. If Serbia is to gain closer ties with Europe there is a fear, that comes both from the radical left and right, that this would bring economic slavery, political repression and hardship. In contrast, certain figures over the years have stressed the economic importance of the EU, and of Serbia being part of the European trading bloc, and have advocated the vision of Serbia in Europe far beyond the narrow interests of the inward-looking elite. For instance, former head of the Office for EU integration, Milica Delević, has repeatedly stressed that Serbia needs to make an assessment of Serbian national interests which recognizes that the EU is its biggest economic partner and its largest source of foreign investment[17]. Delević has said that, “we are in Europe, we are surrounded with those countries that wish to be there, and Europe is our destiny.”[18] Also, current Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić recently emphasized that Serbia will not abandon the European path, because, in his view, EU membership represents the best type of society: “I think that is the best possible kind of society that we could aspire to. We already feel as a part of the European family.”[19] This ongoing identity debate about the character of Serbian society takes center stage domestically, but is also aimed at foreign audiences and Serbian diaspora.

Although the content of the debates has changed following moments of crisis and to take account of unfolding historical events including the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjić[20] in 2003, Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, and Serbia’s full EU membership candidate status in early 2012, the issue of how the domestic intelligentsia first perceives and second represents Serbia’s Europeanness remains extremely complex. The subject of my close consideration in this book is this contestation of Europe that results in the extreme contestation of national identity. In general, national identity can be found in policies, laws, culture, film, national myths, and collective historic remembrance. Yet, more importantly, national identity is this psychological “we” feeling, of connectedness and belonging, that binds the nation together. This study highlights the ways in which both past and current politics in Serbia reflect the uneasy relationship between history, nation, Europe and identity. All four concepts remain politically contested because Serbian elites have yet to reach agreement on an accepted model of political community. Since the fall of Milošević and the democratic elections in 2001, the normative goal of the governmental apparatus has been to promote EU accession. At the beginning of the decade there was almost universal agreement as to the necessity of joining the EU, but by the end of 2005 there was no longer such a consensus among democratic circles and political parties. Yet the current Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić, previously a vehement anti-European, has since had a change of political course and since 2008 has fully supported Serbia’s European path. Vučić said, “EU accession is the only possible path for our country—this is what I said to President Vladimir Putin and what I have said in Brussels, Belgrade, Paris, everywhere.”[21] I will reveal this process of fluidity and change as I analyze the perceptions of Europe which have, at various times, been held by actors of First and Other Serbia. These public debates create a nation’s conception of itself that largely determines what that nation can achieve in wider international politics.

A focus on Serbia is relevant to the broader debate on EU expansion and ever closer union precisely because Serbia is not a major political power or primary shaper of the EU integration process but, quite the contrary, it is a country on the margins, an outsider whose own post-conflict affairs are intrinsically linked to Europe’s perception of it. In the aftermath of the Milošević regime, the democratic ethos was not entirely fostered and encouraged by the newly-elected democratic government. Consequently, Serbia has struggled to reconcile its relations with Europe in light of its war-torn past. In this respect, Serbia shares certain similarities with parts of Eastern Europe that are seen as lacking a broadly shared narrative of post-authoritarian identity, as there is “a lack of symbolic closure of the state socialist period and the negotiation-based transition.”[22] Furthermore, the issue of Kosovo, which has been described as “the most expensive Serbian word,”[23] has been at the forefront of political debate since 2007 and also features centrally in the debate on Europe. Whether Serbia would choose Kosovo over Europe was one of the burning issues in the aftermath of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in 2008, and ever since. As a result, the lack of a widely shared narrative of post-authoritarian democratic identity, coupled with the loss of Kosovo, have buttressed the foundation of the illiberal public sphere such that it is stronger than even before. Yet, not only has Other Serbia failed to provide a set of instrumental post-conflict narratives and national symbols to effectively supplant authoritarian ones, but also the rhetorical device of politically correct speech has been misappropriated by the associates of the nationalists of First Serbia. In this light, following Dragović-Soso, this book will argue that the 2002 and 2003 Vreme debates confirmed the existence of two alternative narratives of the Serb experience of the wars of the 1990s, and two deeply opposed visions of the roles played by the West and by Europe in Serbia’s democratic transition.[24] Yet, I add that the legitimacy of liberal or nationalist discourse is dependent on the extent to which elites succeed in shaping their strategies and goals to correspond with the prior construction of collective identity. Rather than simply identifying First and Other Serbia as two monolithic constructions of identity, this book investigates the extent to which the two constructions can be seen to be changing over time and how this difference is located in spatial and temporal constructions of identity. Hansen notes, in the light of Europeanization in Central and Eastern Europe, the frequent construction of the Other as temporally progressing, toward the (Western) Self.[25] This is a central theme of these Central and Eastern European development discourses as well as in discourses of democratization and human rights.[26] Is the Serbian Self being constructed as progressing toward the European Other or away from it, as Europe and the West are increasingly portrayed as villains? This issue raises a series of new questions which this book will attempt to answer.

Europe and national identity

In the vast scholarship on European identity, it is a fundamental precept that Europe as a whole has been fused from many different identities, brought together as a consequence of a diverse range of countries trying to shape their common history throughout many centuries. Yet, it is clear that each of these countries mirrors and personifies its own national anxieties within the resulting image of Europe. As Gibbins points out, “Europe functions as a symbolical space where one’s own ideas are reflected, where no single interpretation of Europe is correct,”[27] and where the Serbian view of that image just mirrors its own national anxieties and self-image. It is clear that the “First” and “Other” Serbia construction of Serbian national identity is projected onto European identity, and this projection has an ideological underpinning since, as Strath argues, no projection is ever non-interested/non-ideological.[28] With this in mind, how should one tackle the question of why Serbia aspires to be part of the EU in the first place?

Each year in March, the commemoration of the 1999 NATO intervention repeatedly triggers an intense and frequently contradictory debate regarding the understanding of who were victims and who were perpetrators in recent conflicts and the relevance this has for understanding the Serbian identity. Former Prime Minister Ivica Dačić[29] said, emphasizing the importance of innocent victims who have been forgotten, “we cannot forget nor accept the notion that their victims are more important than ours[30]…. Today, after surviving genocide in two world wars because we were on the right side of the international community, Serbia and Serbian national interests do not deserve such unjust treatment as Serbia has always supported the side that fought against fascism.”[31] Dačić and many others frequently put forward the view that, because Serbia took part in the fight against fascism in the First and Second World Wars and suffered the ensuing sacrifices, it deserves a place in the European Union today.[32] A study of how Serbian national identity is being constructed vis-à-vis Europe and the analysis of the dominant discourses reveals both the fluidity and stability of the Serbian subject positions. One thing is certain: the ongoing public construction of pro- or anti-Europe positions by politicians, intellectuals, and academics—in other words, the main constructors of First and Other Serbia—not only interact with projections of the national-self, but, as Milutinović notes, these projections were created in order to re-define and reinvent the Serbian nation via the discursive image of Europe.[33] As an example of an anti-Europe position I cite Koštunica[34] who, in the DSS party interview, advances the idea that “Serbia is an old European state, and she has never been outside of Europe in her entire history.”[35] Following this reasoning, Serbia’s symbolic positioning is already inside Europe, and the narrative of the “path to Europe” and ensuing acceptance of change are undesirable and obsolete. In the First Serbia discourse, the main argument against the choice of Europe is based on Serbia’s military neutrality, or saying a “historical no” to NATO military affiliation. Second, what makes Russia much closer than Europe to Serbia is explained primarily on the grounds of security, religion and culture. In these comparisons, the closeness of Russia to Serbia is usually supported by making overt references to the religious heritage that Serbia and Russia share. This observation supports my findings that Orthodox Christianity appears to be a major constitutive element of Serbian identity as seen in the First Serbia discourse. In this respect, it is evident that the perceived religious differences between Eastern and Western Christianity, contribute greatly to the Otherness of “Europe.”

One can see how national identity, and indeed any kind of collective identity, is built through interaction. Triandafyllidou finds that national identity is formed through contrast with, and differentiation from, Others hence helping to clarify the boundaries of the in-group.[36] A vast amount of research has been done in the field of representations of Europe and the nation in current and prospective EU member states. For instance, in the case of the membership of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel noted that the aspiration to membership was a goal belonging to the democratic consolidation of the entire Central European region, based on the belief that shared principles of mutual cooperation, civil society and equal rights would be the best guarantee “against nationalist hatred.”[37] On the other hand, research on representations of Europe indicates that Britain’s relationship with the EU can best be described as “half-detachment,” i.e. not characterized by clear hostility but rather by widespread indifference.[38] Ichijo points out that Europe is a significant other for the contemporary British, yet without being the source of fear or inspiration.[39] Regarding Greece, there is an apparent tension between tradition and modernity as a result of the process of belated modernization. In this respect, Kokosalakis and Psimmenos note that Greek culture understands itself as a bridge between East and West.[40] In contrast, Italy has been and still is tormented by the “Southern question,” the social and economic divide between North and South, and Triandafyllidou points out that Italy’s significant other par excellence since national unification has been its fragmented national Self, and more specifically “the South.”[41] Indeed, in Italy, (Western) Europe is framed in inspirational terms, because Europe has been perceived as a model of civic community which is sadly absent from national politics. Triandafyllidou rightly points out that in Italy, identifying with Europe was seen as providing the common civic basis necessary to consolidate national unity.[42] These examples highlight cases where “Europe” and the “European project” are reinforced either by the public or by the state, and operate with the structural tenets of democracy, as illiberal values are generally dismissed. While the literature deals with the exploration of the Self and the Other, much analysis has been undertaken in countries where belonging to Europe is not frequently questioned on essentialist grounds but is almost universally accepted. The unique contribution of this book lies in its investigation of the identity debate on Europe in a country outside the EU and in the marginal geopolitical space of Europe. This study is relevant and new exactly because Serbia is not a major political power but at the European periphery,[43] and because its post-conflict identity is in direct connection with its efforts toward European integration.

Moreover, in light of the literature on Europeanization, recent scholarly debates have been concerned with the meaning, uses and power of the promise of Europe—a power increasingly seen as being able to change mentalities. Europe is considered as a structuring discourse in as much as Europe cannot be reduced to an idea, an identity or a reality since it is itself a structuring force.[44] As Delanty notes, what is real is the discourse in which ideas and identities are formed and historical realities constituted.[45] This notion of Europe is brought into focus as a political and cultural construction and I suggest, following Delanty, that “it cannot be regarded as a self-evident entity: it is an idea as much as reality.”[46] The First and Other Serbia construction of Serbian national identity is “projected” onto European identity. It is thus not a question of “deconstructing Europe,”[47] but instead one of analyzing those discourses about Europe which would claim or simply assume some relationship between the discourse itself and Europe, i.e. between speaking about Europe, and speaking about Serbia. From the Serbian perspective, Europe is not only Europe as the Other, but also Europe as an element of “Us.” This means that “Europe is a category of both inclusion and exclusion”,[48] which can provoke tension in communities constructed around the concept of the nation such as Serbia. Still, the Serbian self-image is also reflected in examples of the usage of the term Europe and its derivatives. The core strategy in the First and Other Serbia discourses on Europe is the creation of inclusion and exclusion through the construction of in- and out-groups. These demarcations are not static but in perpetual transformation. Through these constructions, Serbian discursive actors are involved in an ongoing process of identity formation: creating degrees of difference from Europe and Europeans. Europeanization in this sense[49] indicates a clear awareness of “Us” and “Them,” and of an Other that possesses certain European features which “We” want to acquire. In general, Malksoo notes, Eastern Europeans’ relation to this hierarchy has been a mixture of acceptance and resistance.[50] On the one hand, Western Europe is the idealized Other whose recognition Serbs crave and desire but, as all other Eastern Europeans, they see themselves as being truer to the idea of Europe than Western Europeans.[51] One can be sure that, in First and Other Serbia contested dialogues where two different historical and political visions of Serbian society meet, Europe is understood, as Milutinović notes, as a set of values, a concept, a principle, an idea, and a place where structural ideas of Europeanization are taken seriously.[52]

Aims of this book

A number of important questions frame this project. How have “First” and “Other” Serbia elites constructed and reconstructed identity discourses in post-Milošević Serbia? Why does one discourse become more dominant on certain issues? What images were utilized and why were these images used and not others? The central enquiry of this study is the question of how Serbian national identity has been forged and constructed by divergent, competing visions of First and Other Serbia. My analysis is directly concerned with First Serbia’s attempts to construct the Other Serbia as an enemy within, especially in connection with their construction of Europe as a foreign, distant, and threateningly alien place. In this way, First Serbia creates a new Euroskeptic, anti-West political identity for itself through the rearticulation of certain elements of old discourses about the nation, identity and Europe which derive from the Milošević era. This book will examine this practice of othering of Europe, and of each other, in the First and Other Serbia discourses, and the role such othering plays as a strategy in the discursive construction of collective Serbian identity. Which traits, characteristics, qualities and features are attributed to “Europe,” and which to Serbia, in First and Other Serbia texts? From what perspective or point of view are these referential or nomination strategies, positive or negative predications of the Self and the Other, and arguments for or against Europe, expressed? I hold that First Serbia texts construct the Serbian nation, identity and Europe, as each having essential qualities, while representing Serbia as rigid, motionless and static, and resistant to the idea of change. This is in sharp contrast to Other Serbia’s representation of the Serbian nation and identity as substandard, lesser and inferior to Europe, also essentialized, still backward and undeveloped, and deprived of the opportunity for positive change. Neither version can be any more true than the other, of course, as both “Serbia” and “Europe” function on the level of perceptual constructs. Any study dealing with the re-constitution of political discourses is thus confronted with ambiguity, temporality and friction. It is my hope, however, that this will produce a more nuanced view of how best to approach the research questions.

Methodological approach

Discourse theory, as Howarth and Stavrakasis note, investigates the way in which social practices articulate and contest the discourses that constitute social reality.[53] By using critical discourse analysis (CDA),[54] this study investigates how themes, discursive strategies and linguistic devices are used to construct the idea of “Europe” within the “First” and “Other” Serbia discourses. This work reflects a constructivist perspective in which different actors, at different times, relying on and interpreting history and each other’s role in it, may come to view belonging in different ways. I argue that a combined model of constructivist and discourse theories can aid one’s understanding of how values, beliefs and ideas are conditioned by the dominant discourse, and thus allow one to reach more definite conclusions. Additionally, by identifying the framework of competing political narratives, discourse theory tools can explain how identity is constructed in the public sphere. By placing emphasis on the contested image of Europe, this study comes to a better understanding of how the First and Other Serbia discourses utilize and embrace the liberal or illiberal value system. In this way, the range of theoretical bases applied permits the identification of the alternative political culture beneath the political surface. It will be clear from my analysis that the First and Other Serbia discourses serve both to include and to exclude, they define the “in-groups” as well as the “out-groups”; the “Us” as well as the “Other,” which is most commonly Europe or other regional countries within South-Eastern Europe. More specifically, Chapters 3, 4 and 5 focus on how First and Other Serbia actors participate in dialogue. Meaning, noted Bakhtin,[55] does not belong to any of the speakers because it arises from the mutual correspondence between them. In the Bakhtinian sense, I will analyze how these actors construct in- and out-groups, and predicate certain values to the Serbian Self and the European Other.