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other institutions would take care of these issues, but they didn't, and so
we are at a loss. I also want to say, when you suggest that the problem
starts at the top, I am really puzzled. To me, there was no problem while
there was a top: there was an authoritarian system which kept a lid on
this, and when that collapsed, the underlying problem of human hatred of
people toward one another emerged. The elements of human animosity
and human sinfulness and aggression can be manipulated, but I don't
think they can be discounted.
Slavenka Drakulic:
Yes. I want to answer the last part first, on why it
was that when the lid was capped, we had an authoritarian society, and
everything was quiet and in order. In Yugoslavia that was not the case,
because the pressure wasn't strong enough to keep it under the lid; if
there was anything boiling it would have been very obvious. The only
thing we had was the Croatian Spring in 1971, and it was really a mild
decentralization, not really a proper movement in the sense that Croatia
wanted to secede. So I think that if we are speaking about lids and au–
thoritarian pressure in a society, Yugoslavia is not a good example, be–
cause people really had started to live together, and there were a lot of
mixed marriages, especially in Bosnia, about twenty to thirty percent of
the children now are of mixed marriages. They have to take sides today;
this is one of the saddest things about this war.
And I wouldn't really speak about hatred, except that I would say we
have to be clear; it's not that nationalism didn't exist at all. I think that it
was there all the time, but when I say that the war came from the top I
mean that there were methods used to stir up emotions. It's not that
everyone wasn't aware of what happened in the Second World War, that
Serbs were killing Croats, Croats were killing Serbs, and so on, but it is
like a disease. Under certain circumstances it develops and becomes an
acute disease. Other than that it stays dormant, not necessarily developing
into something malignant. This is the best metaphor that I can use for
what is happening with nationalism in my country.
What I gather is that you are giving some kind of excuse for intellec–
tuals because they are confused with this situation. Yes, I think they are
confused, of course, I am confused myself, but this is not an excuse, be–
cause their task is to think about this, and to ask, and to argue, and to try
to find some kind of solutions. However, you mentioned one very inter–
esting point which I didn't: you said that communism contained the
problems, and that we had hoped that democracy would solve them.
Now, what is happening with democracy in Eastern Europe? Each repre–
sentative of these new governments, and their new presidents, came and
said, "Now, this is democracy. We are bringing you democracy."
Democracy is like a gold medal. This is it. And what do you have? You
