Event Horizon

It took about a week, but I have more or less gained my bearings

Most of the baristas/bartenders I talk to are students, and when that comes up I have been talking to them about the situation in the country.

Friends here who are my age had explained the feeling currently of waiting for the other shoe that must eventually fall to drop, but theirs are the impressions of people of my generation, already once or twice removed from the lives of the students whose study and lives have been directly suspended by the blockades.

I have had a few conversations with people who are students studying for advanced degrees in specialized fields who are working low-paying jobs while order is upended, and in some cases taking the bus back and forth to the suburbs of Belgrade. (In instances when I have mentioned that I live in a misnamed agglomeration that the US calls a “city” despite the fact that it is essentially without public transport, there was agreement that, despite other problems, at least the transport network in Belgrade functioned exceptionally well.)

One person I have talked to has been looking for remote work in their field, but the fact that their MA studies have been arrested means that all such jobs are quickly taken up by those fortunate enough to have gotten that extra accreditation before the protests began.

And what are the protests about? A million things, piling up until the collective weight of their mortal indignity becomes unbearable. But the spark that lit the tinder was the tragic collapse of an awning at the Novi Sad train station that resulted in the injuries of many, and the deaths of 16 people, including children.

In conversations this is acknowledged as the starting point, but it is not the only thing contributing to the eruption of protest. There is also the planned Rio Tinto lithium mine that the government, despite real and popular environmental concern and opposition, seems intent on opening. The effects of the pollution generated by this mine will be enormous. The characterization of the current government that I have heard while here is that the people in it are simply selling the country and its resources, along with its very ability to sustain life, for the personal financial gain of those in power.

Government countermeasures against the students’ popular uprising include the misappropriation of money (money that could be used to rebuild crumbling infrastructure instead include halting the payment of the salaries of both university and elementary school teachers) to pay counter-protesters. These “Students who want to study,” as their slogan proclaims, appear on appointed days to forcefully counter authentic peaceful protest. There is doubt that, if these are indeed students, these are the kind who actually want to study, owing largely, but not solely, to a error in their spelling of Serbian word for student. “Students” is written “đaci” according to standard spelling rules. The đ is sometimes spelled dj, a d sound followed by a soft j, as in “Juliet.“ The banners erected by the newly encamped counter-protesters, however, spelled it with a ć- “Ćaci,” which is a somewhat softer sound than the English “ch.” The sudden appearance of the “Ćacilend” protester encampment in Pioneer Park in front of the parliament, fully equipped with poorly-anchored, semi-permanent 400-Euro event tents and police protection further belies their professed identity as mere students with grass-roots motivations.

The authentic student protestors’ system of democratic voting is remarkably well-organized, and votes are distributed in an egalitarian fashion across the movement. It remains restrained and non-violent. There have been many instances thus far wherein the organization has been able move protestors out of harm’s way.

On the other hand, this system for decision-making has also produced some disappointing outcomes. It does not appear, as far as I understand, that the desire of some students to draw opposition candidates from the heads of labor and the academy in the upcoming elections was adopted. There is a corresponding decrease in the faith that anything of note will therefore come from the upcoming elections.

There were record-breaking protests in Belgrade just months ago, and students have marched in solidarity from Belgrade to other cities in the region. A feeling of political hope and efficacy arose among some young people for the first time amid general popular support from people across the country. Students have organized marches from the capital to other cities further afield to protest in solidarity with the people there. They have been met with expressions of revolutionary ecstasy everywhere their marches took them outside the major metropoles. As a sign of the dilapidation of life and infrastructure outside of the major cities, people awaited the inter-city student marchers with tears in their eyes.

But the revolutionary moment remains yet suspended. The young people I talk to are not as hopeful any longer. Going to the heart of the demands of the student movement was a demand for transparency in contracts surrounding the construction at fault for the disaster in Novi Sad and the immediate dissolution of the government leading to new elections. There is less hope now, after an explosive eruption of optimism, that the movement will deliver positive change. The busywork and struggle of city life continues under its own inertia. Everyone seems to understand that something must happen, but they do not know what it will be or when.

In conversations I have compared the current wave of global protest with those that impotently shook the world from ‘68-’73, noting that the same accusations leveled at the current protest generation in Serbia- that they are apolitical, self-centered, etc.- was the same as leveled at the protest generation of the late sixties and early seventies in Yugoslavia. One person I spoke to remarked on their surprise that, when the time came, it was in reality only their generation that seemed to be politically engaged, despite all the rhetoric criticizing them. And now what?

Those who have to have talked have talked about wanting to leave the country, a brain drain problem, but they don’t want to move to America. The jig is up, and it is clear that the standard of living in the US has fallen too far. At the same time, wages are low in Serbia, but the prices are outpacing those even in “rich” European countries like Germany.

Everything will have to come to some kind of crisis/resolution in the upcoming elections. This is the reality. This is the sword hanging over everyone’s heads. It’s real. It doesn’t seem to be happening in the way that anyone hoped, but it’s not an abstraction. Time seems to stop here on the event horizon, and everyone is drawn inexorably toward something that may already have happened, but whose contours are as yet too dim to distinguish.

In the current shock of political will spreading across the globe, is it the hegemon that is, unbeknownst to itself, dying of a secret cancer, or is it the dreamers who have swallowed the slow and fatal dose?