Three events these days, at the first glance unrelated, but let’s have another look.
20th Octobar marks the Belgrade Liberation day, when in 1944 Yugoslav partisans together with the Red Army liberated Belgrade from the Germans. The anniversary is marked every year, and every year at the same time a lot of people makes bitter remarks aimed at the communist past. Problem is that Partisans and the reds liberated Belgrade not only of Germans and their collaborators but also of, in accordance with the spirit of any true revolution I would say, a number of people who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong life style. These incidents, combined with the strict communist rule that followed created the sentiment of, to put it mildly, mixed feelings towards the communist times – even if those times were much lighter than communist times in Albania, for example.
At the same time, sentiments among Albanians are also mixed, at least among the Kosovo Albanians – Krenar Gashi reports from Prishtina about a celebration – hundred years since Enver Hoxhas birth. And Enver Hoxha, to my best knowledge, was to Albanians what Tito was to Yugoslavs, only on steroids. So how come there were so many people there to celebrate this guy? Mixed feelings again, which brings us to the third instance – that on the Balkans we are all the same.
Which is bollocks, of course, but the Nish Faculty of Philosophy seems really eager to answer following questions – “What are the Balkan people like, how much are they inclined towards conflicts, and how much are they willing to tollerate others and how prepared they are for cooperation and European integration”, coming today with the numbers that show, well, that we Balkanians are all similar when it comes to being xenophobic and in relation to our neighbours.
Pity that Ig Nobel prize contest is over for this year, maybe next one. And while we’re at it, I believe that Ahtisaari might be a good candidate for it too.
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Maybe you shouldn’t use quite such a contrasted colour for the “D”.