Nationalities Papers, Vol. 34, No. 3, July 2006

Nationalism, Masculinity and Multicultural Citizenship in Serbia Jessica Greenberg

Since the 5 October revolution that formally ushered Serbia into a democratic era, political commentators, scholars, civic activists and others have watched the country for signs of resurgent nationalism.1 Many perceived the primary threat to the new democratic order as the persistence of nationalism, particularly in the years after the 2003 assassination of Zoran Djindjic´. Such nationalism, forged in the 1980s and 1990s, was subject to eruptions among unsavory politicians, pensioners, Mafiosi and denizens of Belgrade’s suburbs and Serbia’s “backward” countryside. The problem underlying this model of resurgent nationalism is that it assumes, and simultaneously constructs, nationalism as a static and unchanging arrangement of ideological and social factors that flare up and die down in response to political stimuli—the arrest of indicted war criminals, the outrageous rhetoric of populist politicians, negotiations over the status of Kosovo, or high-stakes sporting events. While there is no question that such events create discursive space for nationalist, sexist and racist agendas, the flare-up model presents a dangerous simplification of how nationalisms work. In this article, I argue that nationalist forms draw on a multitude of contemporary social categories and relations, making nationalism less a regressive backlash, and more a malleable social response to changing conditions. I consider nationalism, like nation, a “category of practice” that “can come to structure perception, to inform thought and experience, to organize discourse and political action.”2 Furthermore, we should not mistake the similarity that forms of nationalist expression take for a continuity in people’s experience of what nationalism means. As Katherine Verdery and Michael Burawoy have argued in examining post-socialist forms, “what looks familiar has causes that are fairly novel” and “people’s responses to a situation may often appear as holdovers precisely because they employ a language and symbols adapted from a previous order.”3 It is no less true that we need to be attentive to novel causes underlying the circulation of nationalist forms in contemporary Serbia by looking to the social, political and economic contexts in and through which people are articulating nationalist projects. More specifically, I use the analytic lens of masculinity to argue that recent anti-gay nationalist practice and rhetoric must be understood in terms of the specific transformation of categories of political and social belonging in Serbia. As others have argued, nationalist masculinity is a resource that people in Serbia, and other post-socialist ISSN 0090-5992 print; ISSN 1465-3923 online/06/030321-21 # 2006 Association for the Study of Nationalities DOI: 10.1080/00905990600766628

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contexts, have drawn on in times of social and political crisis in order to architect a sense of continuity, agency and belonging.4 I use the analytic lens of masculinity to argue that the alignment of homophobia and nationalism is a response to the intersection of particular socialist and liberal multicultural democratic forms, and the kinds of political hierarchies they produce and reinforce. To this extent, I use gender as “an analytical category identifying an aspect of social relations that [can] explain other phenomena.”5 This article foregrounds nationalist and homophobic reactions to gay rights discourse through two examples: the violent protest of the 2001 Belgrade Gay Pride Parade and the way in which democratically oriented student organizations deal with questions of gay rights.

Nationalist Masculinity as a Social Resource In her analysis of Serbian discourses about rape in Kosovo in the late 1980s, Wendy Bracewell examines how a crisis of masculinity formed the basis for new nationalist publics and politics in Serbia.6 Drawing on links between nationalist and patriarchal forms of masculine identification, politicians crafted a resonant narrative through which men could reassert their authority and power in response to perceived threats from women’s emancipation, Albanian men and the socialist state. Bracewell argues that discourses of masculinity and rape mediated a public break with the Yugoslav socialist state. Nationalist intellectuals and politicians questioned state legitimacy and authority by pointing to “unnatural” gender relations. In particular, they focused on the state’s inability to protect either Serbian men or women from rape, or the Serbian nation from Kosovar Albanian demands for autonomy. These discourses made violent nationalist politics conceivable and desirable by offering “militarism as a way of winning back both individual manliness and national dignity.”7 Bracewell argues that the narrative of crisis found particular resonance among working class men impacted by rising unemployment and poverty. Yugoslavia’s growing economic crisis shook the foundations of such men’s financial security and expected life trajectories. By the 1980s, the social and political institutions that had enshrined entitlements and privileges for male citizens were crumbling, and the viability of the normative masculinity linked to these institutions was called into question. In response, the nationalist program and its reliance on reasserting masculine honor as the route for national dignity both required and reinforced a particular masculine ideal (tough, dominant, heterosexual) and a complementary feminine one. The fusion of national assertion and manliness had a broad emotional appeal, especially to men (and women) set adrift in a rapidly deteriorating social and economic environment.8

The rise of masculinist nationalism provided a powerful linkage between an emerging post-socialist citizenship and male identification and privilege. While gendered forms

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of citizen belonging were also a feature of socialism, this new nationalism was grounded in a normative, masculine basis for citizenship. This and other cases demonstrate that normative gender categories can be resources that people mobilize to produce a sense of continuity and agency in times of drastic social, political and economic change.9 I argue that the period after 5 October was a similar moment in which rapid social and economic transformation made the categories of everyday life and identification uncertain. In addition, this period saw the official rise of a new political ideology—liberal democracy—that directly threatened the link between male pride and Serbian national identification. This link was characterized as retrogressive and politically embarrassing to Serbia within democratically oriented, but still popular, media discourse.10 As ideologies of democratic citizenship, and the institutions meant to produce such citizenship, became increasingly widespread, the dominance of masculinist nationalist citizenship was called into question. While sexist, homophobic and racist discourses still circulated widely in the newly democratic Serbian public and political spheres, it became increasingly possible to counter these models with calls for inclusive forms of citizenship.

Public Space, Inclusive Citizenship It is in this context that members of the Belgrade NGO community called for a Gay Pride Parade.11 Activists had scheduled the Gay Pride Parade for 30 June 2001 on Trg Republike (Republic Square) in the very heart of Belgrade. Only two days before, on 28 June, Slobodan Milosˇevic´ had been extradited to The Hague to stand trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia. Rumors of his extradition had been accompanied by a last ditch protest on this same central square. It was followed by a march of still loyal supporters who wound their way in long, snaking columns from the center of town to the prison in which he was being held. This took place less than a year after the 5 October democratic revolution, and questions about Serbia’s future as a democratic state were on many people’s minds. Milosˇevic´’s extradition had been ordered by Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic´ and deemed constitutionally illegitimate by President Vojislav Kosˇtunica. The fact that the extradition came in the eleventh hour, just before Western countries were going to pull much-needed funds from Serbia for non-cooperation with The Hague, left many with the feeling that Serbian politics was now beholden to the West. The lead-up to the extradition—and the continued pressure from the U.S. and Western Europe—also sparked a sense that the world was watching Serbia and judging its capacity to move on from its nationalist past. The parade happened, then, not only in the central square of Belgrade. It took place in a city already on the world stage. At the time, many people I spoke with linked the success of the parade to Serbia’s ability to be a tolerant, modern and democratic country.12

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This sense of being watched and judged for signs of democracy has resonance in Serbia, but is not particular to it. For states whose social, political and economic marginality in relation to global powers situates them on the edge of Western modernity, the question of difference can be particularly charged.13 From the perspective of international institutions and foreign governments, how “they” treat difference—ethnic, religious, gender, sexual—is a marker of “their” readiness to enter the world’s democratic, liberal community.14 Since 5 October, Serbia, politicians, intellectuals, NGO workers, and others were struggling to prove that Serbia had shed the legacy of its violent past and was ready to be democratic. Serbia was especially susceptible to judgments about the status of difference and tolerance, given the role of its military, and state-supported paramilitary, in violent ethnic cleansing in the post-Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. By 2001, many people in Serbia identified multiculturalism with democracy, modernity and Europeanness. Anxiety about tolerance was manifested in a sense that others were watching Serbia to see how it behaved vis-a`-vis difference. On the flip side, attitudes, policies and discourses about difference were resources that a country like Serbia could mobilize to “get in” when knocking on Europe’s door. This meant that the stakes for the parade were far higher than homophobia or tolerance at home. This was also a performance of a new kind of citizenship in Serbia aimed at a larger European audience. I joined the growing crowds that had started to gather on the square by midafternoon on the day of the parade.15 The event had been fairly well publicized, as much through attention to the plans for counter-protest as through attention to the parade itself. Starting a few days before the event, nationalist and religiousthemed posters denouncing homosexuality and promoting Serbian Orthodox values appeared on the square.16 On the afternoon of the 30 June, onlookers milled about, sensing something was about to happen. The few dozen or so activists who had come for the parade gathered together for strength in their small numbers, guarding piles of brightly colored signs. Reporters, cameras dangling from their necks, paced back and forth along the edge of the square, marking an invisible line that seemed to divide them from potential danger. All of a sudden, a few young men attacked a prominent parade supporter in the middle of the square. A cafe´ a few yards away that had been bustling with people enjoying afternoon coffee cleared in an instant. The bloodied victim of the attack was led away by a young woman. In his wake came hundreds of young men, seemingly out of nowhere. The square filled with hundreds of youngmen, seemingly out of nowhere. They chanted “Serbia, Serbia” and hoisted flags into the air, straining arms and shoulders to lift their banners as high possible. As the square filled, violence began to break out along its edges, and the protestors physically attacked parade participants. In the ensuing chaos, I heard gun shots. Reported numbers vary, but conservative estimates say 14 people were seriously injured. Many more suffered minor injuries, and over 30 people were arrested. Subsequent media coverage put the number of anti-gay protestors at over a thousand and some sources linked them to the

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right-wing, Serbian nationalist and Orthodox youth group Obraz, as well as nationalist soccer fan clubs.17 In the hours following the parade, people retreated to the relative safety of the Student Cultural Center, where a follow-up press conference had been planned (but was later canceled). The reactions of people I spoke with tended towards shock. Many criticized the police not only for too small a presence, but for selectively enforcing the law and failing to protect the protestors.18 One woman who had attended the event and was working at the time at the Women’s Studies Center, told me that it simply hadn’t occurred to her that there would be such a violent reaction. This was a surprise to me, given how prevalent the anti-parade and anti-gay rhetoric was leading up to the event. However, this disconnect is telling. The participants and organizers may have misjudged how open Trg Republike was as a public space when they went ahead with the event. Despite advanced warning that there might be violence, it is possible many underestimated the extremity of the reaction because the use of the square for public protest was par for the course by 2001. Rallies on the square had been a prominent feature of public political life in Serbia in the 1990s, including anti-war and anti-government protests throughout the decade. It had also been the scene for pro-government rallies staged in support of Slobodan Milosˇevic´. The use of this public space had largely followed a kind of genre convention. Public space was mobilized either for or against the regime. The issues that brought people out onto the streets were complex, but they were organized around the basic premise that citizens were reacting or responding to the state. During such protests, people gathered as citizens, often advocating for procedural democratic rights, such as respect for election results and free media.19 Protests that did not fit within this dichotomy, but which tried to open discursive and public space by raising more subtle issues such as collective responsibility for war crimes, were marginalized or largely ignored.20 The Gay Pride Parade fell outside the conventions for most earlier uses of public space. It was not bound by the dichotomy “for or against” the government. Nor was it an event initiated by abstract citizens advocating for procedural democratic rights. It was a display of something more ambiguous, shifting and socially dangerous: not only gay rights and tolerance, but a shifting basis for citizen belonging and the rise of democratic forms of political legitimacy that those concepts indexed. The Gay Pride Parade was a new kind of public performance in accordance with changing criteria for legitimate use of the public sphere. Once demands had been based on either the universality of democratic citizenship—in the case of the anti-regime movement—or the masculinist privilege of the Serbian nationalist citizen. These demands had now given way to new entitlements of the particular. Gay rights activists presented themselves as citizens who not only defined themselves in terms of difference, but demanded recognition within public space on precisely the terms of difference itself.

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Multiculturalism and Nationalist Masculinity Multiculturalism, and an accompanying politics of difference, arose in the U.S. and Western Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a response to critiques of the supposedly universal and abstract category of citizen. Many have argued that this abstract subject has always been implicitly male, and therefore, liberal claims to universality have been the basis for real-life exclusions.21 Multiculturalism and the recognition and inclusion it implies are premised on the idea that democratic liberal citizenship—and the legal and political regimes that codify liberal rights and obligations—is malleable enough to contain an almost endless string of difference, if all citizens actively embrace tolerance and inclusion.22 Yet there is a contradiction in this politics of inclusion that is relevant for understanding why particularity is so threatening to those who have been previously dominant. Inclusion contains one fundamental and impossible-to-reconcile form of exclusion because of, and not despite, the incorporation of an almost endless string of particularities. It is an exclusion of those who had once occupied the space of the abstract-universal, the site of absolute privilege in liberal democratic regimes. As some begin to argue for recognition based on difference, those who have benefited from supposedly universalizing forms of citizenship may find other ways to reassert that privilege, and the masculinity on which it is premised.23 It is this tension between forms of citizenship that was revealed in Serbia on that hot day in June. As in the case of abstract, liberal citizenship, a discourse of rights based on sexual particularity undermined the authority of heterosexual male power and privilege around which nationalist citizenship was organized. While there are of course other reasons for the violent protest— including homophobia and quite possibly the prompting of nationalist politicians and church leaders trying to generate support—the threatened, dominant young male citizens were reasserting a masculine, heteronormative claim to public space that had formed the basis of their national belonging and citizenship in the 1990s. When democratic multicultural logics met ethno-nationalist forms of identification, young men engaged in a public performance that used violence to preserve the link between citizen, Serb and heterosexual man. In addition to the tension between masculine national citizenship and democratic multicultural citizenship, there was another drama at work. This conflict had its roots in the alignment of elite politics with the feminine and collective working class politics with the masculine. Homosexuality had come to stand in for new democratic forms, elite political agendas, an active NGO and human rights sector, Europe and the West. I argue below that the conflict between nationalist and multicultural forms of inclusion/exclusion was an expression of a larger struggle over who is entitled to define democratic practice and behavior in post-Milosˇevic´ Serbia: the gendered citizen marked by particularity and associated with elite politics, or the ordinary Serbian, masculine citizen, the voice of “the masses.”

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Gay Rights and Elite Students As mentioned above, the linkage between gay rights, multiculturalism, civic organizations and pro-democracy movements are not new in Serbia. Nor is their imbrication with the category of the “elite.”24 Between 2002 and 2004, I conducted 18 months of field research with student organizations in Serbia. A controversy emerged in one of these organizations in late spring of 2004. The group, which I will refer to as Student Organization 1 (SO-1) is a large independent student group in Serbia. It presents itself as a pro-European organization embracing principles of tolerance and respect for human rights. There had not been a Gay Pride Parade since the failed attempt in 2001, and rumors had begun to circulate that there might be one in 2004. This organization was approached and asked for its support, which it had given for the 2001 parade. The request for support sparked a fierce debate within the group. Some members who were actively committed to human rights, including gay rights and tolerance, felt that to not support the parade would be a violation of the fundamental principles of the organization. Some members of the organization simply felt uncomfortable taking up the issue, and in some cases expressed active homophobia. Yet other members felt that supporting the parade would hurt the organization and alienate its student constituency. For this last group of students, the main concern was the reputation of the organization. Their reasoning was that gay rights was an unpopular issue with little support among the student body. Supporting the parade, then, could mean sound defeat in student elections. Those who objected on such grounds pointed out that the organization had already been accused of being a “gay” organization after its support for the first parade. Still others made the argument that gay pride was not a student issue and as such was beyond the mandate of a student organization. Ultimately, those who did not want to support the parade won out. The justification was that they could not support the parade and represent the interests of the general student population. Most students, they argued, were not ready or willing to support gay rights. Members of the group weren’t necessarily wrong that they had a reputation for supporting gay rights or that this was an unpopular issue among ordinary students. This became clear to me in conversations with members of a competing student organization, designated here as Student Organization 2 (SO-2). This group, which considered itself a more populist organization, told me that they, and other students, did associate SO-1 with gay and lesbian issues. Some members of SO-2 with whom I spoke argued that SO-1’s support for gay rights was evidence that it was too elite a group to be representative of students’ interests more generally. They argued that SO-1 pushed concerns more relevant to NGO circles than the student body. A member of the leadership of SO-2 in Belgrade explicitly described SO-1 as an NGO because of its support for minority (and particularly gay and lesbian) rights. He told me that one of the problems with democracy in Serbia is that “there are only projects to protect the rights of minorities” and non-Serbian people. While he

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was clear to say that he supported minority rights—and was careful to distinguish his views from a nationalist position—he felt that many groups were being supported and funded at the expense of Serbs in general. He argued that democracy needed to be, in his words, “digested” more slowly. He drew a parallel between these questions of minority rights and those NGO leaders who discussed issues of responsibility for war crimes. He thought that these groups needed to go more slowly on controversial issues and to have a more “balanced story.” Student Organization 1, he argued, suffered from this same lack of balance, particularly on issues of minority rights. Other members of SO-2 told me that SO-1 was simply an elite organization. By this, people meant the group wasn’t responsive to the needs and concerns of students because it was too oriented towards power centers in Belgrade.

What’s the Matter with Elites? In the end, the question of student group support for gay rights came down to an argument about what “the people”—in this case the voting student body—really wanted or needed. An anti-gay position was aligned with an anti-elitist one, as students cast the debate in terms of their responsibilities to representing constituents who couldn’t be pushed too hard or move to fast. The association of gay rights with elites reveals a deeper tension in Serbia over who gets to define democratic behavior and citizenship. Key for understanding this tension is a brief history of the term “elite.” “Elite” has been variously defined in the socialist and post-socialist context, but it has been a critical category of investigation among social scientists concerned with political life in Eastern Europe.25 The category of the elite has formed the basis for analyses of political power, class formation, and social continuity and change. Regardless of how elites are defined, they are understood to be key nodes in and through which socialist, nationalist and now democratic ideology is produced, distributed and mobilized. Elites’ access to material and political resources, and their control over distributive networks, ensures them a great deal of power. Many critical academic accounts, both in the Yugoslav and other state socialist contexts share a basic assumption: elites betrayed “the people.” This sense of betrayal takes a variety of forms. Already in the 1950s, the Yugoslav communist revolutionary turned dissident Milovan Djilas argued that party elites had betrayed the working class in an attempt to consolidate their own power and privilege.26 Gyo¨rgy Konra´d and Iva´n Szele´nyi’s seminal study of intellectuals in socialist societies also implies a betrayal, particularly the failure of intellectual elites to recognize their constitution as a class.27 For Konra´d and Szele´nyi, Eastern European intellectuals “offered their loyalty and their services to the new social system because they were profoundly excited by the opportunities which it seemed to offer them.”28 As such, they had their own social reproduction and maintenance of class privilege first and foremost in mind. The betrayal of the masses by the socialist and post-socialist elite in the recent Yugoslav

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context is even more starkly drawn by some theorists. Vladimir Goati argues that the bloody and violent process that characterized Yugoslavia’s dissolution was the result of the attitudes and decisions of the ruling political elite.29 The sense of betrayal of those intellectuals who undermined Yugoslavia’s modern and European orientation, and thus its citizens, also appears in critical academic analysis within Serbia.30 Mladen Lazic´ has argued that elites were able to maintain power and obtain tremendous wealth by slowing the process of post-socialist transition, much to the detriment of those who relied on a functioning state.31 In this sense, the betrayal was deeply ironic. Those who were most politically supportive of such elites were also most dependent on a state that those same elites were slowly sucking dry. Although these various accounts of elites occur over different historical periods and political contexts, and as such index a variety of political stances, the theme of betrayal seems to be consistent. There is one aspect of ideas of elite power and betrayal during and after socialism that is particularly relevant to the case at hand. It is revealed most clearly by the comments of students that elites “go too fast” for the people and push ideas for which they are not ready. While this itself smacks of a strange elitism, this critique has a long history.32 An interview I conducted with a highly respected political analyst and intellectual in Serbia—who I will refer to here with the pseudonym “Professor D”—reveals a great deal about the social construction of the relationship between “the elite” and “the people.”33 Throughout the interview, in response to my specific questions about the history of the elite in Yugoslavia, Professor D recounted the forms of betrayal the elite committed against the Serbian people. He centered on the dual ideas of “hating the people” for their ignorance and stupidity and exploiting or ignoring “the people” on the path to personal gain, wealth and power. He traced a long genealogy, arguing that tensions first arose when the children of the nineteenth-century elites forged in the first and second Serbian uprisings went to major European centers, such as Vienna, Paris and Moscow, to be educated and trained. This process of “Europeanization,” he argued, meant that when elites “Came back they brought some new ideas, new concepts, and they wanted to Europeanize Serbia. And there for the first time they met with misunderstanding and a lot of problems.”34 Already in this account the elites use certain ideas—and their association with European centers of power—to discipline the ordinary Serbian masses. Professor D goes on to say, But at the same time it was the first and maybe the last time in new Serbian history that elite and people were somehow in harmony because people coming back from Vienna, from Paris, did not despise their own nation, they did not discard them as . . . vile, not cultured, uneducated, ignorant people.35

At this point, however, Professor D made clear that the elite still loved its nation, its people and their people respected elite. But that was the last time. So we can say the plight of [the] Serbian nation was mostly based on this

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misunderstanding, distrust between the elite and after the First World War, it was even more clear, and elite took the path to get rich at the expense of the people. And [were] not very friendly to the people. So there Europeanization took the form of betrayal of the people.36

In response to my question about these categories under socialism, Professor D made clear links between the nineteenth-century history of elites and ordinary people, and the transformation and intensification of betrayal and distrust during the socialist period. He argued that it was basically The elite, communist elite [that] consider[ed] people only as, they would say sometimes, as cattle. You have to control, you have to punish, you have to rule, you have to run. So it’s not up to them to think, to make any kind of decision. It’s not democracy for them; they are not democrats. And they actually believe that if people were left alone, [they] would get wild, make chaos, so you need police, you need state apparatus to control them.37

The legacy of this tension, he noted, lives on in the contemporary Serbian context, but in a dual form of nationalist and democratically oriented elites: Even now we have, we can say, what we have now is two parts of elite. One dislike[s] its own nation and discard[s] it as vile, nationalist, primitive, stupid, etc. And you have part of the elite which is nationalistic, which is chauvinistic . . . insisting only on good, Serbian character . . . So, both of these groups are really extremists, and none of them are really right, and none of them are really doing good [for] their own nation. But for some obvious reason, people tend to like the second group, because they believe this is ours . . . These two groups represent themselves as reformists, pro-European and reformist and the other is so-called national interest workers, so they work for the national interest. But both of them . . . use this as ideological coverage for their very obvious economic and other interests. So they are not honest to their people. And so the problem with the Serbian nation and its elite is still there. The elite, actually basically does not like their own nation.38

In Professor D’s account, the heart of betrayal lies in the disdain the educated and “Europeanized” elite, later the socialist party elite and finally the democratic, and again Europe-oriented, elite have had for the masses. The people are continually accused of ignorance, stupidity and cattle-like behavior. They are a rabble who must be controlled through indoctrination and force. The elite – masses relationship is characterized by a one-sided control over knowledge. Elites used education and European knowledge, or the universal knowledge of the party apparatus, to determine the best interests of “the people.” This knowledge was translated into resources that the elite justified depending on the political discourse of the time. Sadly, according to Professor D, it is only the nationalist chauvinists who understand just why the people might be fed up with elites telling them what to do and think, and they have used this dissatisfaction for their own personal and political gain.

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Elite Betrayal from Socialism to Democracy What emerges from this narrative is a struggle over who gets to determine what kind of knowledge is or is not a legitimate basis for political power and authority. Such questions of power and knowledge production were particularly fraught within socialist state ideology and practice. Konra´d and Szele´nyi argue that knowledge, like production and distribution, was coordinated through a bureaucratically regimented set of institutions. It was produced in the service of the rational-redistributive ethos and legitimated in terms of the interests of the working class. Because the site and audience for knowledge production remained at the level of party and state bureaucracy, it was a self-reinforcing, circular and ultimately top-down process. The utter lack of concern for public opinion meant that “the exclusion of public opinion from any kind of control function protect[ed] the power structure from shifts in the political temper of the public.”39 By definition, then, party knowledge was transcendent because the party understood and represented the needs of all of society. In this was a kind of betrayal founded on distrust of ordinary people: The intellectuals may argue over how far they should be subordinated to one another, but the very nature of intellectual class-consciousness does not permit them to envisage circumstances in which intellectuals are subordinated to non-intellectuals . . . One may argue, while still remaining within the logic of the system, about who should tell people where they can build houses—the ministry, the planning office, or the municipality— but no one can question that somebody has to tell them where they can build without betraying the whole class ethos.40

The tensions between worker control and the requirements of a bureaucratic state apparatus were a persistent theme for theorists and practitioners of communism. This debate became even more central in Yugoslavia after the 1948 break with Stalin and the creation of self-management socialism in response to the perceived failures of the Soviet model. Edvard Kardelj, the primary architect of self-management, was particularly concerned with the negative impact bureaucratic elites would have on establishing worker control and socialist democracy. As a result, early anti-bureaucratic tendencies were built into the structure and ideology of the self-management system.41 Although the role of the party in self-management was one of “guidance” rather than “direction,” the tension over who should control legitimate knowledge production and decision-making remained persistent through the state-socialist period.42 Although the role of the party leadership and the intellectual elite was posited as one of guidance, this did not necessarily translate into practices that validated the knowledge of all socialist citizens. In large part, knowledge of the interests and needs of “the people” was used to mediate and produce political legitimacy for the party. The task of party elites to direct, interpret and determine the best possible configuration of social, political and economic life remained key to their authority. Knowledge of the big picture, and of the long-term needs of the collectivity, formed the basis for control over the redistribution of resources. However, in performing this vanguard

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function, socialist, and particularly intellectual, elites were isolated from the experiences, knowledge and practices of the majority of people (signified as “the people”). Early notions of betrayal are based on the idea that elites dictated to the masses the rules for being good political subjects, regardless of the needs or commitment of these masses. In Professor D’s words, this took the form of elites who controlled the “cattle-like” people. Elites were seen to despise the masses, even as they claimed to represent them. Thus in both critical academic and personal narratives of the state socialist elite, elite power is based on a distrust—even loathing—of “the people.” Elites issue topdown directives about what to think and how to act. They claim to speak for the common people and then to benefit at their expense. In the formal shift from state socialism to a liberal market state, the category of the elite seems to have retained this taint of betrayal through the enforcement of right-thinking ideology and disregard for the masses’ needs and interests. However, it is important here to distinguish between two different categories of elites that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s: those who, despite their economic, political and social capital, realigned themselves with the “people,” and those who did not. This latter group retained the association with earlier vanguard elites who were seen to have directed “the people” how to think—and in turn to have benefited from the resources and connections of their social and political position. However, in popular discourse this position was redefined in service of “the West” rather than the party. As Professor D makes clear in his analysis, many nationalist-oriented elites distanced themselves from the negative associations of elite betrayal by claiming to represent the masses. The split between kinds of elites was staged through a series of mass-gatherings in the late 1980s. The mass-happenings and the “anti-bureaucratic revolution” pitted “the people” and the nationalist intellectuals and elites who stood with them against the bureaucratic elites that were threatening Serbia and Yugoslavia.43 These masses were slowly redefined from a working class to a national collectivity.44 In turn, betrayal was shifted to other kinds of elites, particularly the figure of the communist bureaucrat who undermined both Yugoslavia and Serbia in particular. Representing himself as the embodiment of the will of the masses, Milosˇevic´ explicitly moved from the populist language of the working class to that of the nation. In a reading of Milosˇevic´’s speeches from the 1980s, Olivera Milosavljevic´ demonstrates how, “combining social and national terminology, Milosˇevic´ easily switched from the struggle against ‘bureaucratized leaderships’ to the struggle against ‘enemies of the people.’”45 These appeals collapsed the struggle of the working class masses against communist bureaucratic elites with that of the Serbian masses against enemies of the nation. More importantly, this bureaucrat/masses distinction was highly gendered. The Milosˇevic´-led assault on the party bureaucracy (the “anti-bureaucratic revolution”) used the image of working-class masculinity to contrast “real Serbs,” workers in blue

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overalls, with hard bodies and dirty hands, the true representatives of the nation, to the soft, effeminate, de-nationalized middle-class “armchair bureaucrats” ( foteljasˇi), who had betrayed both their nation and their gender.46

Thus, while nationalists decried the unnatural order of socialist Yugoslavia, they nonetheless mobilized the same symbolic imagery of the “real” and authentic voice of the nation—the (masculine) workers. In turn, those who were anti-war and advocated against nationalism were feminized. The anti-nationalist position was in turn defined around “negotiation rather than force, cosmopolitan and tolerant rather than parochial and xenophobic, committed to gender equality rather than patriarchy.”47 In the process, anti-war forces were singled out as effeminate intellectuals, betrayers of the nation and in the pocket of the West. They were seen as poisoning Serbia with foreign ideas, making them parallel to communist bureaucratic elites who also engaged in trickery and hated the masses. Only the manly nationalists in this scenario truly loved the nation and expressed its will. First the communists and later the forces of the West could not express the will of the people. In this way different forms of mass politics were stitched together through the common denominator of populist masculinity. The needs of the working class masses became those of the Serbian nation, and the anti-bureaucratic revolution could be spun against communist elites and, later, democratic ones. Nationalist elites were able to present themselves as expressing the will of the masses by juxtaposing themselves to these other feminized elites that had betrayed Serbia. This made it impossible for those pro-democracy and pro-Europe public figures aligned with anti-nationalist causes to be able to mobilize a discourse of “speaking for the people.” Rather, the legitimacy of these elites was rooted in a moral authority through which they set themselves apart from ordinary people. In discussing what he terms post-socialist “transition elites” in the Balkans, Steven Sampson notes that their legitimacy was moral and cultural. They were . . . people of moral or intellectual standing: literary critics, sociologists, university rectors, human rights activists, musicologists and historians who became ministers or even presidents, and whose primary slogan was “return to Europe.”48

The social and financial capital of these transition elites was rooted in their ties to the West. In diagnosing a second wave of what he terms “post-post-socialist elites,” Sampson also points to the comprador elites, cosmopolitans often employed by foreign(-funded) organizations, including the international NGO sector. While this is an analytic schema Sampson uses to categorize new kinds of elite practices and formation, the notion of an NGO elite circulates fairly commonly in the Serbian context. Many people I spoke with, even among young, urban and educated students, felt that those who were in the NGO world, or at the forefront of articulating politically sensitive and progressive programs for Serbia, were self-interested. They assumed these NGO elites were benefiting from the contacts and resources of Western donors and

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political networks. They resented being told how to become democratic by those who mobilized moral authority in the post-war Serbian context.49 Even, some who acknowledged the difficult work NGO activists and intellectuals were doing nonetheless felt that they were moving too fast and introducing ideas that the majority of Serbs were not ready to face. These two accusations of NGO elites’ betrayal of “the people” through self-interest and vanguardism came from all political spectrums. The link between NGO elites, Western ideas and Western money meant that the political forms these elites were advocating were seen as foreign to Serbia. These included some aspects of democracy. Difficult issues like The Hague cooperation and responsibility for war crimes were linked to other NGO areas of advocacy like gender sensitivity, respect for multi-ethnicity and even gay and lesbian rights. Many saw NGOs linked to particular interests that pitted them against the interests of “the masses.” Some saw elites as using their (Western-oriented) moral authority to condemn ordinary people.

The Gendering of New Elites This elite/masses distinction was profoundly gendered, and it is this connection that brings together gay rights, homophobia, masculinity and nationalism. If first the working class and then nationalist masses were gendered masculine and heterosexual, then elite knowledge, first socialist and then democratic, was rendered feminine and homosexual. As many have noted, NGOs in Serbia in the 1990s were portrayed by the state-controlled media as treasonous, feminist organizations in the employ of foreign governments aiming to bring down the great Serbian nation.50 Such rightwing criticism of NGOs found some reception among an impoverished population that was angered that some people seemed to be benefiting from foreign resources at a time of general destitution. Despite the fact that these early NGOs activists made great personal sacrifices and often put their lives on the line in speaking out against the regime and the wars, they were nonetheless often perceived as betraying the nation. This was further exacerbated by a widespread sense of Serbian victimhood at the hands of the international community and international sanctions. In this context, anything associated with “the West” could also be put in the category of anti-Serbian.51 From several sides, then, the NGO scene in Serbia in the 1990s was perceived as “feminized” and marked both as anti-Serbian and in the service of particular interests.52 Implicitly this perception set up a dichotomy between Western, feminized NGO elites and the masculine, Serbian people. At the heart of this dichotomy of the elite and the nation was the problem of citizenship defined through (feminized) particularity versus (masculinist) collective and national belonging. The NGOs stood not only for non-Serbian values, but for the interests of the few: women, gays and lesbians, non-Serbs. As the Milosˇevic´ government struggled to constitute a new collective—no longer a socialist universal, but a homogeneous ethno-national

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collectivity—the particularity of the figure of the feminist activist was especially threatening. She represented resistance, but also an alternative form of identification, a particularity that did not fit the narrative of a collective ethno-national (male) subject. It is easy to see how associations with elite betrayal of the masses were worked into this scenario. It was with Western, non-Serbian ideas that these new “elites” (those with access to Western money and resources and the capacity for action) were betraying the backward masses yet again. The scene of betrayal now appeared as a democratic drama. Others have convincingly argued that the political form of the socialist working class collectivity has given way to that of the nationalist collectivity. 53 Correspondingly, I would argue that democratic elites occupy a similar structural and ideological position to socialist elites. They are both seen to wield knowledge as power against an unenlightened, uneducated “people.” The reworking of an old elite/masses distinction, along new gendered and political axes, means that nationalist violence and protest look like a resurgence of the same old nationalism, rather than a new kind of response to changing political hierarchies and values in democratic Serbia. It is a familiar form, to be sure, and it mobilizes familiar social roles and distinctions. But it is a response to new kinds of exclusions and new definitions of what constitutes “correct” political behavior and knowledge. In this scenario, elites pushed political agendas for which the masses were not ready. They dictated the terms of being democratic to serve particular kinds of citizens. And they were willing to betray “Serbian values” in the name of foreign/Western ideologies and interests. Such perceptions fit into a framework in which elites “know best” about how to be good citizens on one hand, and to betray the masses in the service of this ideology or personal gain on the other. In this case it is not socialist but liberal vanguardism: elites betray the masses not with a universalizing knowledge of socialism, but through the knowledge of the particular, the knowledge form of liberal democracy. Elites promote multicultural identities, forged in Europe, to which the Serbian masses, by definition, cannot have access. A history of distrust of any elite ideological vanguards is reinforced by perceptions that this is the only way to be democratic because it is what the West wants. These roles, as I have argued, are nested within another set of juxtapositions of feminine/masculine and homosexual/ heterosexual. This layering of social and ideological meanings reinforces some people’s alienation from new forms of democratic politics. In particular, the “ordinary” Serb who was once a citizen of a national collective is juxtaposed to the particular subject with specific interests, organized around private desires and experiences.

Conclusion If masculinist nationalist citizenship was collective, the subject of liberal multiculturalism is an individual marked by particularity who mobilizes difference as the basis for

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political rights and inclusion. When those most threatened by liberal democratic institutions and ideologies—in other words, those who were dominant within nationalist frameworks—struggled to retain political relevance, representation and a sense of agency, this struggle took the form of violence, homophobia, misogyny and racism. This is not the result of a timeless nationalism that bubbled under the surface, only to emerge periodically in an aggressive display. It is a nationalism that emerges at the intersection of different modes of belonging, entitlement, action and politics. It is as much a byproduct of democracy as the Gay Pride Parade and its commitment to tolerance and inclusion. The battle may be waged in terms of men and women, gay and straight, masculine and feminine, Serb and other, elite and “the people.” But these are shifting categories and distinctions shot through with another set of tensions: who is in and who is out, who belongs and who does not, who can speak and who cannot, and on what grounds. These questions are as fundamental to democracy as they were to nationalism or socialism. At stake is the ability to define the direction of a country, the conditions for politics, citizenship and action. To this extent, nationalism is a response to the contradictions of democratic forms of citizenship, and the inclusions and exclusions they imply. It is clear, then, how an alignment of multicultural citizenship, gay rights and supposedly elite forms of knowledge and power would be resonant for those who consider themselves part of “the people.” Inclusion and tolerance are not neutral categories, but sets of ideologies and practices through which other exclusions are produced. They may be exclusions of those “kinds of people” we as scholars or civic activists are not comfortable including in the democratic public sphere. But they are exclusions that are nonetheless productive of forms of social life and experience. The task at hand is to understand the violent reaction to the Gay Pride Parade, the use of nationalist symbols and identities, and the alignment of gay rights with elite politics. We cannot do that without understanding how present-day nationalism is a response to both the practices and categories of liberal multicultural democracy, and to older hierarchies of social value and knowledge. NOTES * The research on which this article is based took place between 2001 and 2004 and was made possible by a Fellowship for East European Studies from the American Council of Learned Societies, a Fulbright–Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, an International Research and Exchanges Board Individual Advanced Research Opportunities Fellowship and a Council for European Studies/Society for the Anthropology of Europe short-term dissertation research fellowship. My thanks goes to Aleksandra Milic´evic´, Elissa Helms Marco Zˇivkovic´, Andrea Muehlebach, Andrew Gilbert and Kelly Gillespie for their feedback and engagement with this text. 1. 5 October 2000 has become iconic of democracy in Serbia. It is the day on which citizen protests and non-violent revolution brought an official end to Slobodan Milosˇevic´’s decade-long rule of the country. Just weeks before this protest, Milosˇevic´ had been decisively beaten at the polls, and the opposition candidate Vojislav Kosˇtunica was elected

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2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

the new president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. However, Milosˇevic´ refused to honor the election results, and tried to force the country into a second-round election runoff. Finally, on 5 October, hundreds of thousands of citizens from all parts of Serbia marched in Belgrade. They stormed the parliament building and the headquarters of the state-controlled media, Radio and Television Serbia. Instead of firing into the crowds, Milosˇevic´’s massive police force stood quietly aside or joined the protest. Milosˇevic´ conceded defeat by the end of the day. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 7. Michael Burawoy and Katherine Verdery, Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), pp. 1– 2. See Elissa Helms, this volume; Aleksandra Milic´evic´, “Joining Serbia’s Wars: Volunteers and Draft-Dodgers, 1991 –1995,” dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Sociology, 2004; Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, The Politics of Gender after Socialism, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). Susan Gal, “Gender and Circulation in East European Politics and Societies: Introduction to the Special Issue,” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2006, p. 10. Wendy Bracewell, “Rape in Kosovo: Masculinity and Serbian Nationalism,” Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 6, No. 4, 2000, pp. 563–590. Ibid., p. 567. Ibid., pp. 569–570. See Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, The Politics of Gender after Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). See also John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, “Introduction,” in John L Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, eds, Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999) pp. 1–43, on how people draw on notions of “civil society” in times of social, political and economic upheaval, and Kay Warren, Elizabeth Mertz and Carol Greenhouse, eds, Ethnography in Unstable Places (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), for how people mobilize familiar social categories in negotiating state transformations. Jessica Greenberg, “‘Goodbye Serbian Kennedy’: Zoran Ðindic and the New Democratic Masculinity in Serbia,” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 20, 2006, pp. 126–151. It is also important to note that homosexual acts were only decriminalized in Serbia in 1994. Participants and media continued to emphasize this association in the wake of the antiparade violence, and the parade became iconic of a particular form of liberal democratic politics grounded in tolerance. For an analysis of Serbia as a “periphery” and the impact this status has on popular discourse and analysis of Serbia’s social and political context see Marko Zˇivkovic´, “Jelly, Slush, and Red Mists: Poetics of Amorphous Substances in Serbian Jeremiads of the 1990s,” Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 25, No. 2, 2001, pp. 168–182. Charles Hale, “Neoliberal Multiculturalism: The Remaking of Cultural Rights and Racial Dominance in Central America,” Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2005, pp. 10 –28; Elizabeth Povinelli, “The State of Shame: Australian Multiculturalism and the Crisis of Indigenous Citizenship,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 24, 1998, pp. 575– 610. Descriptions of the parade are based on the author’s fieldnotes. Posters on Trg Republike included the following language: “(Calling the Serbian) Orthodox to a gathering: Let’s prevent the anti-Christian, homosexual, immoral and perverse orgy scheduled in Belgrade, 30 June 2001, 3:00” (author’s fieldnotes; this and all other translations are the author’s). See also Tamara Skrozza, “Mrzˇnja na mrezˇi, batine na ulici,”

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17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

Vreme, No. 548, 2001, (accessed 14 January 2006). See “Silom Prekinuta Gej Parada u Beogradu,” B92, 30 June 2001, (accessed on 3 April 2006). The presence of these groups would indicate that this was a coordinated event, possibly with links to right-wing political parties and members of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The president of Obraz at the time denied involvement of the group in the event, but he strongly condemned the parade and homosexuality. See “Ko je Odgovoran za prebijanje ucˇesknika gej parade,” B92, 4 July 2001, (accessed 3 April 2006). For such critiques see for example “Neuspela gej parada: Cˇistota Otacˇestva,” Vreme, No. 548, 2001, (accessed 14 January 2006). The failure of the police to secure a public space and the violence that ensued belie the idea that the public sphere is in any way separate from the workings of state power. It is in fact structured by precisely such power. See Neera Chandhoke, “The ‘Civil’ and the ‘Political’ in Civil Society,” Democratization, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001, pp. 1–24; Craig Calhoun, Neither Gods nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997); Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: a Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), pp. 109–142. See Ivan Cˇolovic´, Politics of Identity in Serbia (New York: New York University Press, 2002), pp. 295–304; Eric Gordy, The Culture of Power in Serbia. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999); Mladen Lazic´, “The Emergence of a Democratic Order in Serbia,” in Mladen Lazic´, ed., Protest in Belgrade (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), pp. 1–30; Slobodan Cvejic´, “General Character of the Protest and Prospects for Democratization in Serbia,” in Mladen Lazic´, ed., Protest in Belgrade (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), pp. 60–77. On the construction of alternative voices and public protest in Serbia see Orli Fridman, “Alternative Voices: Serbia’s Anti-war Activists, 1991 –2004,” dissertation, George Mason University, Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 2006. For an analysis of representations of women, as well as women activists, in the media in Serbia in the 1990s see Jasmina Lukic´, “Media Representations of Men and Women in Times of War and Crisis: The Case of Serbia,” in Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, eds, Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics and Everyday Life after Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 393–423. For testimonial and analytic accounts of Women in Black’s attempts to redefine Serbia’s public sphere, as well as the marginalization of these protests, see Women in Black, ed., Women for Peace (Belgrade, 1998, 2005). Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere;” Peggy Watson, “The Rise of Masculinism in Eastern Europe,” New Left Review, Vol. 198, March/April 1993, pp. 71 –82; Anne Philips, Engendering Democracy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991); Carol Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988); Zillah Eisenstein, Feminism and Sexual Equality: Crisis in Liberal America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984). On tolerance, multiculturalism and the politics of recognition see Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Amy Gutmann, ed., Multiculturalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 25–73. For a critique of the contradictions in multicultural, liberal citizenship and the politics of recognition see

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23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

Hale, “Neoliberal Multiculturalism;” Patchen Markell, Bound by Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); Elizabeth Povinelli, The Cunning of Recognition (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002); Stanley Fish, “Boutique Multiculturalism,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 2, 1997, pp. 378–395; Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). Brown, States of Injury, 1995. Bracewell, “Rape in Kosovo.” For an overview of the stakes of these debates see Lenard J. Cohen, The Socialist Pyramid: Elites and Power in Yugoslavia (New York: Mosaic Press, 1989). Milovan Djilas, The New Class (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983 [1957]). Gyo¨rgy Konra´d and Iva´n Szele´nyi, Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979). Konra´d and Szele´nyi, Intellectuals, p. 203. Vladimir Goati, “The Disintegration of Yugoslavia: The Role of Political Elites,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 25, No. 3, 1997, pp. 455–467; see also V. P. Gagnon, Jr, The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004). See for example Latinka Perovic´, “The Flight from Modernization,” in Nebojsˇa Popov, ed. The Road to War in Serbia: Trauma and Catharsis (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), pp. 109–122. Mladen Lazic´, “The Adaptive Reconstruction of Elites,” in John Higley and Gyo¨rgy Lengyel, eds, Elites after State Socialism (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). The idea that some aspects of transition are happening too fast or that Serbia was not ready for some changes is a recognizable discourse among some politicians. Vojislav Kosˇtunica has promoted this view, particularly with regard to issues of economic restructuring. The trope of Serbia not being “ready” for tolerance was also mobilized by some prominent figures in response to the parade. Then chief of Belgrade police, Bosˇko Buha, who came under fire for the inadequate numbers and readiness of police at the parade, said, “it’s obvious that in this environment we still aren’t mature enough for this kind of expression of some people’s, let’s say, abnormality, or as others might call it, personal desire or sexual orientation.” “Silom Prekinuta,” B92. Zoran Djindjic, then prime minister, also mobilized such ideas about social readiness, noting, “I think that it is too early for a country which has for so long been in isolation and under a patriarchal, repressive cultural to endure this test of tolerance.” “Djindjic´ o Sprecˇavanju Gej Parade,” B92, 1 July 2001, (accessed on 3 April 2006). This interview was conducted in English. Author’s interview. Author’s interview. Author’s interview. Author’s interview. Author’s interview. Konra´d and Szele´nyi, Intellectuals, p. 170. Konra´d and Szele´nyi, Intellectuals, p. 202 (italics in original). Cohen, The Socialist Pyramid. On the anti-bureaucratic foundation of self-management see also Susan Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia 1945 –1990 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 117–118. Ralph Pervan, Tito and the Students: The University and the University Student in Self-Managing Yugoslavia (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1978), p. 10.

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43. For a thorough account of this process see Jasna Dragovic´-Soso, “Saviours of the Nation”: Serbia’s Intellectual Opposition and the Revival of Nationalism (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002). Dragovic´-Soso documents the way in which Serbia’s intellectual opposition in the 1980s redefined itself around the question of Kosovo. In particular, it focused on the perceived failure of the Yugoslav leadership to address Kosovar Albanian demands for greater independence and the proliferation of accounts of human rights violations and forced emigration of Kosovo’s Serbs. The early opposition combined nationalist elements with calls for greater democratic freedom under the banner of human rights and free speech. These nationalist intellectuals initially occupied the position of dissidents, defining themselves in opposition to communist apparatchiks who refused, as they saw it, to deal with the Kosovo question. As he came to power, Milosˇevic´ was able to capitalize on and effectively coopt this movement. The initial critique of the Yugoslav leadership for failing to deal with Kosovo and the early calls for increased democratic rights gave way to a nationalist agenda that was in collusion with, rather than opposition to, the Milosˇevic´controlled Serbian state apparatus. Despite being in power, Milosˇevic´ retained the earlier language of political opposition. Once the nationalist opposition and Serbian state power were collapsed, the opposition position was no longer against the socialist state, but against the “enemies” of Serbia, nationally defined. It is in this context that he made the move from the working class masses, betrayed by the communist bureaucrats, to the Serbian people, betrayed by the anti-Serbian (and pro-Albanian) agents of Yugoslavia. See also Olivera Milosavljevic´, “Yugoslavia as a Mistake,” in Nebojsˇa Popov, ed., The Road to War in Serbia: Trauma and Catharsis (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), pp. 50 –80, esp. pp. 67 –72; Dubravka Stojanovic´, “The Traumatic Circle of the Serbian Opposition,” in Nebojsˇa Popov, ed., The Road to War in Serbia: Trauma and Catharsis (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), pp. 449–478; Mirjana Prosˇic´-Dvornic´, “Serbia: The Inside Story,” in Joel M. Halpern and David A. Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture and History (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), pp. 316–335. 44. Milosavljevic´, “Yugoslavia as a Mistake.” 45. Ibid., p. 69. 46. Bracewell, “Rape in Kosovo,” pp. 578–579. 47. Ibid., pp. 579–580. 48. Steven Sampson, “Beyond Transition: Rethinking Elite Configurations in the Balkans,” in C. M. Hann, ed., Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 298. 49. There was certainly a generational dynamic to the resentment of civic leaders and intellectuals who saw themselves as presenting hard truths about Serbia’s responsibility in the wars. Younger men and women felt that the moral high ground these elites took cast blame even on those too young to have had any role in decision-making during and before the wars. 50. See Bracewell, “Rape in Kosovo;” Lukic´, “Media Representations of Men and Women;” Jill Benderly, “Rape, Feminism, and Nationalism in the War in Yugoslav Successor States,” in Lois West, ed., Feminist Nationalism (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 59 –72; Renata Salecl, The Spoils of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994). 51. Zala Volcˇicˇ, “The Notion of ‘the West’ in the Serbian National Imaginary,” European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2005, pp. 155– 175. This sense of persecution by the West was seemingly confirmed for many by the 1999 NATO bombing, exacerbating a widespread sense of Western betrayal. For more on tropes of “Westernness” in the construction of Serbian and Balkan identity and politics see Robert Hayden and Milica

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Bakic´-Hayden, “Orientalist Variations on the Theme ‘Balkans’: Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics,” Slavic Review, Vol. 51, 1992, pp. 1–15; Marko Zˇivkovic´, “Serbian Stories of Identity and Destiny in the 1980s and 1990s,” dissertation, University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology, 2001. 52. There was some basis to this perceived feminization of the NGO sector, since many of the leading anti-war and pro-democracy NGOs were led by women. A large number of local NGOs in the former Yugoslavia began as efforts to support refugees, particularly women and children, and to assist women who had experienced violent sexual assault during the wars of the 1990s. Thus the earliest and strongeor NGOs were often founded by women activists who were explicitly concerned with gender issues. In addition, when international donors began to pour into the region in the 1990s and as international humanitarian efforts gave way to civil society, reconstruction and democratization efforts, organizations like USAID and the World Bank began to prioritize gender sensitivity as one of their criteria for project funding. Gender projects began to pop up to meet this growing donor demand. In the case of Serbia, the NGO sector received far less international money because of sanctions throughout the 1990s. However, women activists from Serbia formed linkages with their counterparts and friends in other parts of the former Yugoslavia, providing a more organic basis for support and networking. As a result, many of the oldest and still most active Serbian NGOs have their roots in the anti-war and women’s movements. 53. See Veljko Vujacˇic´, “From Class to Nation: Left, Right, and the Ideological and Institutional Roots of Post-Communist ‘National Socialism,’” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2003, pp. 359– 392; Robert Hayden, Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), see pp. 75 –76; Vojin Dimitrijevic´, “The 1974 Constitution and Constitutional Process as a Factor in the Collapse of Yugoslavia,” in Payam Akhavan and Robert Howse, eds, (Washington: Brookings Institute/Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1995), pp. 45 –74.

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