are poor people's imitations of the more visible aspects of American
mass culture. Overflowing with lowbrow talk shows, freaks on display,
malicious gossip which passes for "news" and glitzy promos and quizzes
- these TV stations and print magazines derive the bulk of their income
from advertising. While ostensibly politically innocuous, they exert a
subtle and cumulative influence on the numbed and dwindling minds of
their spectators and readers. By conditioning their consumers to ever
lower fare of pulp common denominators, they set a standard of no holds
barred and no standards observed. They are the opium for the masses
that religion once was, diverting potentially dangerous attention from
real events and personalities to the staged alarms of public enemies
and the artificial crises of bingo lotteries. No less persecutory than
any totalitarian regime, these mass media are ominous symptoms of the
social malaise of disillusionment with the realities of life and with
more institutionalized modes of expression. They are escapism embodied,
a dreamland, a scape of fantasy, the vale of telenovellas. Whole
nations are in thrall. In Macedonia, the protagonist of a servant's
saga, "Kassandra", was given a hero's welcome upon her visit to this
impoverished and bitter land. Whole families consume hours of this
visual Ritalin, hypnotized by cheap scenery built to resemble
unattainable riches.
Then there is the mercenary media. These are groups of hired pens and
keyboards - so called journalists who offer their services to the
highest bidder. Their price is often pathetic: a lunch a month, one
hundred deutschmarks, a trip abroad and a dingy hotel room. They
collaborate with their editors and share the spoils with them. They are
the whores of the profession, ever the hungry look, ever the hat in
hand, ever the submissive and furtive glances of the serfs of capital.
They often publish other people's self-serving communiqués without
altering a word. I, myself, provided them with "interviews" which I,
solely, have authored, questions and all. Too lazy to or embittered to
invest in their profession, consumed by self-loathing and by general
disdain - they let themselves be passively abused in the dirty
intercourse of money and of influence.
The mercenaries often work in brothels known as "business-backed
media". These are TV stations, daily papers and periodicals owned by
the oligarchs of malignant capitalism and used by them to rubbish their
opponents and flagrantly and unabashedly further their business
interests. This phenomenon is most pronounced in this land of
depredation and depravity, in Russia, where virtually all the media is
now identified with and digested by business, mafia-like interests.
Despite their infamous one-sidedness, they still claim neutrality and
objectivity but these spurious claims are met with revolt by a hostile
population, long trained to distrust the printed word and even the
broadcast image. Thus the art of "reading between the lines" is
flourishing again and the very language is distorted by its media
rapists (see: "The Magla Vocables"). This - the abyss opening between
the people and their language, the demise of true communication and the
ensuing rupture in the social fabric - are the veritable damages of
enlisted journalism.
Political vehicles are less pernicious in that their masters are well
known and their itinerary clear. Always one sided, always half truthed,
forever the righteous - these rags produce no riches and they preach to
the converted, serving as bulletins and message boards rather than as
media in any known sense. A rallying point, a flag, an emblem, a
collective memory, the group's unconscious and conscience - these
papers and TV channels are often widely read, even by rivals and
adversaries. They are so self-absorbed, so narcissistic, so sickeningly
partial that they make for fine amusement in dreary times. There are
the coalition papers and the opposition papers, the left wing and the
right wing and the centre ones. It is a colourful admixture of
indignation and triumphalism, veiled threats and promises, trial
balloons and drama, the daily equivalent of the romance.
Thus, Central, Eastern and Southern Europe do have daily papers and
magazines and periodicals and television. What they do not have is
media even remotely resembling the Western ideal. In some countries,
this ideal is disparaged as a Western manipulative ploy or, worse,
naive idealism. In others, it is a kind of holy grail to be pursued
only in myths and narratives. Yet others view it with envy and aspire
to it, but without much hope. To them, it is an ever-receding mirage.
Perhaps that other phantasmagoria, the Internet, is the solution. In
it, budding, fresh beginnings of irreverence and courage seem to
coalesce into recognizable - though virtual - media. The small number
of web surfers currently limits both their outreach and their
survivability. But if Western trends are anything to go by, this is a
temporary state of affairs. The Internet, this immaterial and ethereal
medium might yet spawn the first real media and a return to reality. It
might yet liberate the prisoners of all the telenovellas, foreign and
domestic. It might yet win.
(Article written on February 5, 2000 and published February 21, 2000
in "Central Europe Review" volume 2, issue 7)
Return
The PCM Trail
It is a typical bar in a typical Balkan or East European country in a
typical yellow haze, air-polluted, very late evening. The din of
raucous and numbingly repetitive music reverberates through the
smoke-enshrouded joint. It is an external pandemonium intended to
silence internal ones and to obviate the silences of solitude. Sofas
with shabby, mutilated upholstery in bordello scarlet. A dim, bawdy
luminescence. Huntresses and prey study each other wearily over oily
drinks. The former scantily clad in cheap imitations of haute couture,
lips enclosed in heart shaped, provocative, lipstick, their make up
invitingly gross. The latter - foreigners, owners of coveted passports,
cars and money (PCM), a ticket out of hell, a path to paradise, a
promise.
In the near and paranoiac past of most countries in transition,
terror-filled xenophobia was both a wise survival tactic and an
indoctrinated instinct. Self-insulated and psychotically suspicious
regimes quarantined their populations and portrayed all foreigners as
carriers of the malaise of social disintegration and the perpetrators
of espionage and sabotage. In a classic cognitive dissonance,
foreigners were denounced by the people and women who befriended them
were pronounced whores. Only a select few could interact with the
capitalistic plague and these were especially trained to prevent
contagion.
These prejudices and perceptions changed fast with the dawn of the post
transition purgatory. Economic collapse, massive unemployment, social
dislocation, growing disparities between rich and poor, the educated
and the unskilled - led to societies increasingly permeated by crime,
drugs and prostitution. A grey cloud of hopelessness and neglect
descended upon vast territories populated by zombie-like herds of
people, eyes with extinguished light, adrift in the uncharted waters of
a new, ominous reality. The physical deterioration of infrastructure
and public services reflected the inner state of its ever more
desparate consumers. Venality erupted like a giant suppuration.
Everything was on sale, especially one's self.
In this increasingly whorish atmosphere, the perception of foreigners
was dramatically re-cast. With more of them around and with most of
them on generous income - they constituted a tempting target, a prize,
salvation embodied. Women everywhere made it a point to meet them, to
work with them, to associate with them, to know them biblically and -
above all other goals - to marry them and leave their country. All
means justified these ends. Women studied foreign languages, applied to
work for non-government organizations, hung out in the appropriate
watering holes, learned to dress and talk assertively and to make their
availability - their complete obtainability and accessibility - beyond
doubt.
Some set about securing the desired trophy methodically and
scientifically, calculating each step in a tortuous and highly
competitive environment. They invested years in graduating from the
right faculties and in mastering the right languages. They watched
films intently, read books, clipped magazine articles, surfed the
internet, questioned well-travelled relatives and acquaintances,
emulated more senior and more seasoned stalkers. Others relied on their
good looks, their make up, their ruthlessness, their promiscuousness,
their connections, or the exotic allure of their very differentness.
But all of them pursued their prey doggedly and commitedly, with the
quite perseverance and patience of the dejected, with the unflagging
determination of the terminally ill in tracking a wonder drug. Often,
they got pregnant, which in many local cultures would have brought on a
marriage. Sometimes, they got raped, or dumped, or worse. But none of
these dissuaded them - such was the ejecting power of the wretchedness
of their lives. They knew that the foreigner they aspire to acquire
will finally go away and carry them with him, a (sometimes white)
knight on a shining vehicle. Vehemently committed to securing the
future of their children and the present of their extended family -
they ploughed on, ignoring diversions, never digressing, never wavering
in the face of setbacks and defeats.
Some of them grew old and bitter in their refusal to countenance a
local, inferior, brand of husband. It time they so identified with
their purported quarry - that they held their own kind in contempt.
They disdained their kin, derided their customs, haughtily dismissed
their own culture as backward and oppressive, worthy only of
discarding. In their unmitigated effort to be worthy of their future
saviours, they disowned their very selves, their society, their
upbringing, their mores and their relations. Thus uprooted, they lost
both worlds - rejected by those they rejected so condescendingly as
well as by foreign men who found them to be embarrassing, clunky
imitations of B-movie characters.
But others went on to marry foreigners, to give birth to their children
and, in time, to travel to far, affluent lands. They keep in touch,
sending home photographs of sumptuous houses and shiny cars and of
suburban lawns. From time to time, they wire some money or deliver
gifts. They visit once or twice a year, clad in new, faddish clothes,
their accents strangely inflected, their speech suffused by foreign
words. They made it, the envy of their sisters, the objects of much
adulation and emulation, lean and lustrous proofs that dreams come
true. A sigh and then the chase goes on. Meticulous dressing, hours of
make up, the right shine but not too vulgar, the flesh exposed but not
repulsively, both offered and withdrawn, a little exercise of English
and to the bar. The hunting grounds where smoke and alcohol and the
occasional lascivious look or comment should do the trick. And often do.
(Article written on February 8, 2000 and published February 28, 2000
in "Central Europe Review" volume 2, issue 8)
Return
The Mind of Darkness
"The Balkans" - I say - "is the unconscious of the world". People stop
to digest this metaphor and then they nod enthusiastically. It is here
that the repressed memories of history, its traumas and fears and
images reside. It is here that the psychodynamics of humanity - the
tectonic clash between Rome and Byzantium, West and East,
Judeo-Christianity and Islam - is still easily discernible. We are
seated at a New Year's dining table, loaded with a roasted pig and
exotic salads. I, the Jew, only half foreign to this cradle of
Slavonics, four Serbs and five Macedonians. It is in the Balkans that
all ethnic distinctions fail and it is here that they prevail
anachronistically and atavistically. Contradiction and change the only
two fixtures of this tormented region.
The women of the Balkan - buried under provocative mask-like make up,
retro hairstyles and too narrow dresses. The men clad in sepia colours,
old-fashioned suits and turn of the century moustaches. In the
background there is the crying game that is Balkanian music: liturgy
and folk and elegy combined. The smells are heavy with musk-ular
perfumes. It is like time travel. It is like revisiting one's childhood.
The Serbs - a family - are tall and ruggedly handsome. He was a soldier
in the para-military Serb militias that sprang from the ashes of the
JNA (Yugoslav National Army) in 1991. As the disintegration of the
uneasy co-existence that once was Yugoslavia became more painfully
evident, he and others seized the weapons in the depots of the JNA. In
the administrative twilight zone that ensued they fought in JNA
uniforms against a growing army of Croats (wearing initially the same
uniforms) and Moslem Bosniaks. It was surrealistic, a Bosch nightmare.
"We were near victory in Bihac" - he says, his voice a wistful
admixture of melancholy and anger. "Politics" - an old spark in his
eyes and, for a moment, I can see the erstwhile fighter - "All
politics. We lost the war because of politics, because our leaders sold
themselves to the West." This myth has a familiar ring to it, the ring
of knife-stabbed backs and war. It is the ground being prepared for the
next round - the war was nearly won had it not been for the traitors
and their Western masters. The sound of clicking heels and marches and
creaking gates of concentration camps.
And so? "Milosevic should go" - he is adamant - "we paid enough." He
leans back and lets fatigue take over. His wife interjects: "He drives
a milk truck. He collects milk from the villages and delivers it to
Nis. The company he works for makes 1000 DM daily - and his salary is
80 DM monthly. How can you survive on 80 DM? I don't work. So, one has
to steal." "There is nowhere to steal from" - I say. A moment of comic
relief, bringing identical sad smiles to their faces. "During the war
(he means the Kosovo conflict), I drove the truck - it is a big truck,
you see - and was bombed from behind by NATO planes. It was like that
every day, for more than three months but I had to deliver the milk to
town." Matter of factly, he lights a cigarette, his hand unshaken.
"All the politicians benefited from these wars, except Arkan (the
infamous militia military commander - SV). His son joined us and fought
with us as our commander..." - the sentence tapers off among blue
clouds of cheap smoke. "And what did NATO achieve?" - his brother in
law (who is married to a Macedonian and lives in Skopje) asks. "NATO
went in for a year and is stuck for a decade in Bosnia." "And that is
the way it is going to be in Kosovo." "They (the West - SV) don't know
what they want and they don't know how to achieve it, they have no
plans, they stumble, only making matters worse among us. They are
ignorant and ill-prepared."
I sound incredulous: "Do you seriously think that there would have been
no wars without NATO? After all, when Yugoslavia started falling apart,
the West (with the exception of Germany) tried to preserve its unity.
America was very unhappy and discouraged the independence of the
constituent states." "Don't you believe it" - he is livid but not
aggressive, there is more pain in his voice than threat - "Croatia
would have never embarked on its war against us had it not been for the
West. I was there, I know. And we were winning the war there when
suddenly Belgrade ordered us to stop. The commander in chief of the
whole front came to us, tears in his eyes, and said: I didn't give this
order, I want you to know. It comes from above, from Belgrade, not from
me."
"But couldn't all this have been settled differently, without
bloodshed?" - I wonder. "Of course it could, without the meddling of
the West and its two puppets in the region (Milosevic and Tudjman -
SV)." And then, somewhat incoherently - "They (the world - SV) should
have let us fight it out. Winner takes all the territory, that's the
only way to settle it. But Serbia has no friends anywhere in the world
and we trust no one." "And Kosovo?" "Maybe that could not have been
prevented" - he concedes - "because Milosevic regarded Kosovo as the
cornerstone of his regime."
We talk about nothing else. The wounds are too fresh and too prominent
to politely ignore. We enter the New Millennium with the blood dripping
baggage of the old one. He fought three years in Bosnia, in Sarajevo,
near Banja Luka. He is a war criminal, wanted by the international
tribunal in The Hague. "Milosevic determined our ultimate borders in
Dayton" - he spits the words bitterly, a look of bewilderment in his
eyes - "Who gave him the mandate to represent us? Someone else should
have gone there, like Karadzic, maybe..." "But Milosevic gave you
weapons and food and supplies. Without him surely you could not have
survived as long as you did?" "No weapons" - he protests - "Weapons we
appropriated, we took them ourselves, from the JNA depots, he deserves
no credit for that. Food, maybe... But this does not give him the right
to determine our borders and our future without as much as consulting
us. He sold us to the West. Now look at the situation. I can't go back
to my home in a town that was 100% Serb and now is 100% Moslem and the
Moslems can't go back to their towns who are now 100% Serb. And all
towns - Serb and Moslem alike - are deserted ghost towns, where no one
lives and nothing grows. Now I have to live in Serbia."
I don't ask him what he did to become wanted and hunted by the Hague
tribunal. I can't imagine him murdering cold bloodedly or raping. He
has a good face, the wrinkles of many smiles and kindly eyes. When he
laughs softly, they light up in black fire and his handshake is warm
and firm. Instead I say: "And now it's Montenegro's turn should they
declare independence?"
There is uneasy silence. The Serbs among us move in their chairs,
glance warily at each other, as though co-ordinating an as yet unspoken
answer. Finally: "There will be no war in Montenegro. The Serbs will
not attack the Montenegrins - but there will be a civil war among the
Montenegrins themselves, if they declare independence."
"Today" - says the ex militiaman - "they are all better off than the
Serbs in Serbia. The Slovenes, the Croats. Look what we achieved in a
decade of 'Great Serbia' - shortly, only Belgrade will remain in the
Federation, even Sandjak and Vojvodina will leave." "The problem is
that we have no leadership. There is no one to replace Milosevic.
Avramovic is way too old. Dzindzic and Draskovic we cannot trust..."
"Political whores" - says someone - "Once with Milosevic, once
without..." "...and who else is there? All the young, capable people
are out and away, far far away as they can get..."
Like in all the other countries of transition, they are adherents of
the cult of youth. The belief that the old - old people, old culture,
old institutions - have been so heavily corrupted that they must be
discarded thoroughly and mercilessly. That all has to start over again.
That only the young can cope with the timeless riddles that Balkanian
sphinxes are in the habit of posing. That the young are the only bridge
to the promised land of the zeitgeist of capitalism.
"And Macedonia?" - I ask.
"Macedonia" - a Serb chorus around the dinner table - "Every village
wants to become a country. Macedonia cannot survive on its own, it is
too dependent on Serbia, it is too tiny."
"But only 17% of its trade is with Serbia" - I correct them, as gently
as I can. "Including Kosovo?" - says one in great astonishment - "I see
only Macedonian trucks in Serbia, it cannot be..."
"It cannot be" - they all conclude - "Macedonia is nothing without
Serbia."
As the clock strikes midnight, we kiss each other on wine flushed
cheeks and shake hands solemnly. In the rest of the world, a new
millennium may have dawned. But in the Balkans it is perhaps the end of
the beginning - but hardly the beginning of the end.
(Article written on January 8, 2000 and published January 17, 2000
in "Central Europe Review" volume 2, issue 2)
Return
After the Rain
How the West
Lost the East
The ECONOMY
Central Europe
The New Colonies
Mercantilism was the intellectual correlate of colonialism. The idea,
roughly, was to physically conquer territories (colonies), subjugate
their people, transform them into cheap labour, get hold of all the raw
materials and ship them to the colonizer's territory, there to be
processed to yield finished products. The beauty in the concept was the
"closed circuit" logic. The inhabitants of the colonies (also known as
"natives") had to consume finished goods and products. The colonial
power forced upon them (through tariff and quota regimes or violence
when needed) the finished products produced from their very own raw
materials! Thus, the colonies were prevailed upon to sell cheap raw
materials and to buy expensive finished goods.
If it sounds like colonialism and has the same economic effects - it is
colonialism. The relationship between the European Union and Central
Europe is colonialism. Central Europe provides the European Union with
raw materials and cheap labour. It buys from the European Union
finished goods, products and services. In the process, it incurs
enormous trade and balance of payments deficits. Incidentally, it also
serves as the EU's dumping grounds for anything from toxic waste to
shoddy or outmoded products.
Let us examine the case of the Czech Republic. It is the assembly plant
of Volkswagen and the export launching pad of other multinationals. And
the workers are supposed to consume heavily subsidized agricultural
produce (such as pork).
For this the Czech Republic is to blame. The previous government did
everything it could to alienate its natural allies in the Vysehrad
Triangle. It did a good job of it. Instead of negotiating with the EU
as a bloc of c. 70 million consumers - it ended up representing an
ever-diminishing number of Czecho-Slovaks. Its haughty and
corruption-laden behaviour did not acquire too many friends in the
West, either.
The approach should have been different. In the West, the client is
always right. The Czechs are CONSUMERS. They are the clients of the
huge corporation called EU. As a consumer club or group, they could
have dictated terms, rather than be subjected to them. The current
Hungarian government understands this. Consumers have a single,
irresistible power: they can stop consuming. Imagine if 30-40 billion
USD were to be deleted from the EU's books by angry consumers - it
would have come begging and negotiating, instead of dictating and
condescending. The EU does not hesitate to pull every lever - however
illegitimate, ridiculous, or downright dangerous - in its negotiations
with the new applicants. The new applicants did not assimilate yet
their dual role as applicants (an inferior position) and as markets (a
very superior position).
This inferiority complex has to do with history. The Hussite Wars were
perhaps glorious - but they were also irrevocably destructive. Not only
were the Czech Lands physically demolished - they were also cut from
the rest of Europe for centuries to come. The only times they were
reincorporated into it were traumatic (the Nazi occupation, for
instance). Having glimpsed the first real opportunity to become a part
of the big west dream (and to be redeemed from the clutches of the
wounded Russian bear to the East) - the Czechs lost all judgement,
self-esteem, self-confidence and negotiating skills. So did all the
other Central and Eastern (and Southern) European nations. It was
security and safety they were after - not prosperity.
This basic misunderstanding underlies the great European project. The
EU's thinking was mainly economic and marginally geopolitical (though
it was presented differently). The Czech's motivation was mainly
geopolitical and marginally economic (though it was presented
differently). The resulting malentendues are worthy of Moliere's pen.