DESTRUCTION OF SOCIALISM AT THE BALKANS, THE CASE OF THE ERASED
Interview with Dimitri Anakiev for the Veteran Voice, Kikinda
Conducted by Vladimir Radojčić
VR: How has the Slovenian public, in all these years, reacted to the case of the erased, namely, its intellectuals, media, politicians?
DA: Let me, first of all, before answering to your question, describe the circumstances which are of relevance for our topic. The erased are, just like the wars in the nineties, part of the disintegration of our common homeland, the SFR of Yugoslavia. Therefore, our true subject matter is the state disintegration and its meaning. Why did Yugoslavia have to fall apart? Why did we have to war? These are important questions that I would like to offer some answers to and then fit your questions into them. Since the erased, like the wars of the nineties, are not an isolated theme. The most important thing in the disintegration of Yugoslavia is its autochthonous socialist character. Yugoslavia fell apart because it was assailed by a victorious wave of capitalism and its irrepressible imperialism that ran over us and proceeded to further ravage Africa, Asia and Ukraine. In that context, the present refugees from Africa and Asia are part of the same problem. Of course, the imperialists have found, just like in the Second World War, their collaborationists in all the republics of former Yugoslavia. These were the members of the former communist nomenclature that was in power. They, in order to meet the needs of their new masters, firstly promoted nationalism and then staged a bloody war that they drew us into. Surely the whole thing was long and well prepared since the state does not collapse so easily as a house of cards. Its vanguard was the culture in which, in the eighties, works spreading nationalist ideas began to appear. The domestic collaborationists were promised spoils of war and priorities in privatization, that is, in plundering of the social property and its transformation into the private ownership of the chosen individuals. And so it happened. The erasure of Yugoslavs from the official records, just like the wars of the nineties, had two basic goals; firstly, to destroy socialism and its values (such as, for instance, „brotherhood and unity“, social justice, etc.) and, secondly, to help create a much needed smoke screen behind which the plundering of the social property could take place. While we were warring, killing or being killed, they were stealing-privatizing companies and social property... That is why the answer to your above question is the same for Slovenia exactly as for all the other ex-Yu regions in the nineties or even later. Most of the nomenclatures and the intelligences related to them served the interests of foreign capital and heartily kept on creating the conditions for what was going to happen to happen. Whoever offered resistance to it was either liquidated or banished. In that sense, the erased Yugoslavs in Slovenia are kind of banished citizens.
VR: Slovenia has, under the pressure of the European Court, issued The Act Regulating Compensation for Damage to Persons Erased from the Permanent Population Register that entered into force in June, 2014. How does the state of Slovenia, in practice, give compensation to the erased?
DA: Justice is never abstract or universal; the courts exist in order to protect the system in power rather than to satisfy individuals or people. Since we, the erased ones, have organized an exceptionally adamant resistance and since we have found firm strongholds in Slovenian people, and because, first of all, we have managed to efficiently document what the government in Slovenia did with us as well as to show the documentation to the world – in this we were helped very much by the reformed Communist Party of Italy through its lawyers and its members of the European Parliament – the European Court had no other option but, as urgently as possible, to smother and smooth over the whole thing and thus maintain peace at home, that is, save its system. They decided that the Slovenian government had been guilty for violating the human rights while we were granted symbolic compensations. That is how the whole thing ended. The compensations are not only so symbolic that they are even unworthy of the time spent on talking about them; they are, as some pittance, of order of one month salary distributed in a five year period...
VR: Many of the erased are not longer among the living; how do you interpret that so much time was needed to acknowledge, in the first place, the injustice done to all of you?
DA: We could have never reached the European Court on our own, despite our fervent struggle if it had not been for a sudden appearance, as of an uninvited foreign factor, of the PRC (Partido de la Refundación Comunista) participating in the whole thing which was a sheer coincidence. Namely, one of the PRC members fell in love with a woman from Kopar; on his frequent visits to Koper and Ljuljana he happened to have seen a video documentary about the erased which were, in those days, emitted all over Slovenia for propaganda purposes, that is, for the sake of making youth and people familiar with the things happening to the erased. On seeing it, he was shocked; he collected all the available materials and took them to Rome, to the party headquarters of the PRC. The comrades from the PRC headquarters decided to act immediately; they allotted to us two of their lawyers of world class and repute (Lana and Sacuchi) while calling upon the Members of the European Parliament to organize parliamentary sessions about the erased. That is how the whole thing gained in momentum; otherwise, neither any of us nor others would have ever seen any formal victory at the European Court – if it would have ever got there at all without Italians. The Italian comrade who has obliged us so much deserves his name to be mentioned here: this is Roberto Pignoni, otherwise Professor of geometry at the University of Roma.
VR: The European Union obviously did not mind that Slovenia with over 25,000 erased citizens became its member. Did Europe close its eyes before these terrifying stories of the people?
DA: The state propaganda, that is, the media of collaboration with imperialism, give a wrong representation of the EU. That is why, in our minds, a much more favorable image is created which does not correspond to truth. The European Union represents itself as a union of peoples which is not true. The European Union and its institutions are only executive organs of the world imperialism. This is a union of corrupted governors ruling over enslaved peoples. The case of Greece has shown it most clearly and so have all other cases; numberless proofs exist. For instance, the Slovenian government, after having destroyed its economy by privatization, is incessantly making loans in order to be able to pay wages and function. Though formally, at elections, people choose who is going to rule, whoever is chosen will be on the payroll of foreign capital which means that the people-elected one is irrelevant since the one who is paid by foreign capital will work for its interests and against those of the people. Someone has proposed to abolish elections; instead of electing members of the government, they should be chosen by lot. This proposal absolutely fits the present state of affairs.
VR: What about those guilty for bureaucratic genocide? Who has patented it?
DA: In my answer to the first question I called the erased Yugoslavs „banished citizens“. I think this is more proper than „ethnic cleansing“ or „genocide“ since among the erased ones there are many different ethnic affiliations including even Slovenians. The principle of cleansing was not ethnic but political. According to the last Population Census from SFRY in Slovenia as many as about 25,000 people declared their nationality as „Yugoslav“; this seems to have been the „group targeted“ for erasure: the aim was to destroy Yugoslavs, those who loved Slovenia and who felt at home in it. On the other hand, nationalists of other nations in Slovenia were not a trouble at all since they served their purpose. For instance, the cultural center of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Ljubljana was built up by Janša's government. But the Yugoslavs were the ones to banish and erase and their property plundered. The political prosecution originated in ancient Greece where it was called ostracism (ostrakon being a pottery shard that the name of the person to-be-expelled was scratched on). Already in ancient Greece ostracism was a non-parliamentary measure, designed for dangerous individuals whose very presence was jeopardy to the government. However, this measure was restricted, exactly because of its non-parliamentary character; it could not be massive and the banishment was just for a given period of time while no one could lay hands on the property of the banished. We were, however, robbed. The erased could not buy off their flats; neither is it known how many flats were sold (somewhat between 1000 and 5000 flats is just a rough estimate), nor who got hold of them. All this happened despite the succession agreement of ex-Yugoslav countries which forbids the citizenship principle in solving ownership issues and so does the international law... Ostracism was later on taken up by Stalin who made it a totalitarian measure. He erased people and history in broad sweeps. So that ostracism in Slovenia was applied by people skillful at this job... The guilty ones were never punished since the issue was allegedly belated in legal terms; this is in itself debatable since it was never classified in that sense so that no such claims could be made. Slovenia refuses cooperation on the documentation of the post-Yugoslav crimes. Pahor, a converted communist, does not want to cooperate with Nataša Kandić's REKOM. Slovenia is the only former Yu state which has refused to cooperate with the REKOM. However, it is less strange when someone does not want his crimes and robbery to be talk of the day; far stranger is that the other ex-Yu countries do not put any pressure on Slovenia in that sense. Obviously, those people there do not want any Yugoslavs while they themselves have done similar things at some other place. It is a case of the joined vessels; all of them are the same pigeons, the same servants of the world imperialism.
VR. You have said that through your art is Marxism speaking. Why is your film „Slovenia, My Homeland“ removed from some festivals or unwillingly shown?
DA: I think that the present world is not possible to understand without Marxism. In my high school I had the subject „Basics of Marxism“ and I could hardly manage an average mark, I did not like it; I considered it boring and estranged from reality. Surely, what young man in socialism could be interested in calculations of profit, and the like?! Later on, in Slovenia, after living for seventeen years without documents, I had enough time to devote to Marxism in order to be able to understand the developments in the world surrounding me. I looked for answers to the very same questions we are discussing today. And I found them exclusively in Marxism. All other methodologies and systems of thought served to justify the reality and mask problems. That it is so can be clearly seen in systematic exclusion of Marxism from the society. Excluded is even sociology as the science about society; it is being replaced by cultural anthropology. Now there is only culture as society; society itself is not necessary to explore any longer. And what is Marxism, after all? Marxism is a method for studying society which is based on the analysis of facts observed through their dynamic change (dialectics). And that is all. An arid scientific method which helps us to easily penetrate and recognize social phenomena and understand the direction taken by the path we are trodding along. And this is exactly what is not desired today, namely, facts are rejected and replaced by arbitrary claims and beliefs. This is a way of enabling the government to endure. I have made three films about the erased; the first two were quite action ones; I simply followed what was going on; these films were well received everywhere since they did not give an insight into the reason why this was happening; everyone could interpret it in his own way. In the third film, „Slovenia, My Homeland“, I decided to change the method; I started to analyze the facts, of course, in film language, and to give, for the first time, true knowledge about the events I was filming. Suddenly the film became a bother and began to be prohibited; nobody wanted to have the truth put in front of his nose. This is Marxist method. The first two films I made by the method of spontaneity, I'd say, anarchistically, while in the third film I gave up spontaneity and devoted myself to the study of facts. In this third film about the erased I was actually born both as an authentic film maker and as a Marxist.
VR: Where is Slovenia today, two and a half decades after the disintegration of SFRY?
DA: In ruins, where else; in slavery. At first politicians were talking about independent Slovenia as a success story because the masters from Brussels were not exactly eager to take everything from them. They let up on Slovenia because they used it to coax other Balkan countries in the EU trap. Now this reason is defunct; the system works as it should be working; it robs and plunders legally, completely and systematically, and everyone clearly sees where we are. We are historically pushed back to where we were 100 years ago. We are a colony again; it has shown again that nationalism always serves other interests and that nationalists are, paradoxically, always servants to a foreigner. Where we have found ourselves, disunited as we are, is best shown by bare facts; they, for example, tell us that in none of the ex-Yu countries industrial production does not reach 50% of the former one. In Slovenia the giants are destroyed such as Litostroj; Gorenje and Lek are bought by foreigners; construction industry is destroyed; health care is facing destruction; thousands of nurses and doctors are lacking while the state has no money to pay for overtime... The number of unemployed is enormous while trade unions are decimated and driven into a corner. Every year 4 to 5,000 young educated cadre flees abroad (within the general population of 2 million people). You see what it comes to, this success story of independent Slovenia. This is, in fact, a picture of genocide. Surely, there will be those not so inclined to trust the facts and who will emotionally interpret Slovenian independence but this is another theme.
VR: You say that the working class was nationally divided by the united capital in order to rule over us. What is, then, our perspective?
DA: Disunited as we are, our only perspective is enslavement. By that I imply people; corrupted government and its circles will not be badly-off, of course. On the whole Balkans there is no single party to defend people's interests; all the parties defend the interests of capital, both left and right. The left and the right differ mainly with respect to their attitudes to history and in their political styles. In their relationship with capital, they both declare themselves as servants. For those having no place to run away to, for those who either do not want or cannot rob others and for those who are too easily disgusted to enter some of the government circles of influence which provide for their survival, the only perspective is to found a party which would protect working people and those exploited by insatiable capital. The party which will bring about changes and economic freedom. In order to find a way out of slavery, it is necessary to re-unite the Balkans. This is, however, possible in specific historical circumstances.
VR: After the Syriza has disturbed western oligarchy while people in Greece voted „no“ at the referendum, what has actually taken place – capitulation or pragmatism?
DA: The working class and people of Greece have been fighting, since 2010, by the methods of direct class struggle, by the street and non-parliamentary means. This is possible at the places where unions are free unlike with us – that's the catch. In the whole Eastern Europe the unions are government controlled („yellow unions“) but in Greece the unions are free, are red. That is why political organizing in Greece is dangerous for its government. In the streets of Athens even as many as half a million people took part in particular actions. This is, for the government, an exceptionally dangerous situation since such a mass of people can overthrow the government at any moment and then everything will be lost, not only in Greece but in the EU. That is why the centers of power have found a way out, „a new party“ (Syriza) which promised what the people in the streets asked for (exit from the EU, primarily). The objective was to bring back the Greeks from the streets to the Parliament since the Parliament is a place of manipulations ad infinitum and the government is always safe. This objective is reached; they have managed to cheat people. You have seen that people have clearly said „no“ but the government has shown that democracy in the hands of capital does not exist; democracy cannot exist unless people take it in their own hands... The situation is now as it is. People are demoralized but this state is temporary. The economic conditions have not changed and it is only a matter of time when people will again take up dung pitchforks and oust the corrupted gang of the EU mercenaries headed by Tsipras.
VR: The migrant crisis is shaking the whole Europe, the Schengen is suspended, the fences are set up; some people are appealing for solidarity while others are talking about Islamization... How do you reckon this great migration of people will continue?
DA: I think that all the people will have to be received by the former American President George Bush at his ranch since they are displaced for the greed for oil while Bush and other oil businessmen are war profiteers. These people can be accepted only by the state with a powerful industry and this is, in Europe, only Germany. Therefore, Bush has expelled them and sent to Merkel to be enslaved and exploited as new industrial workers. Serbs, Croats, Hungarians, Slovenians, Austrians cannot do anything with them since they have no industry. You cannot, for instance, employ in Portorož or Bled 10,000 new waiters. Slovenia can employ new waiters since this is its real range. American oil tycoons would have to, on their ranches larger than many states, return their spoils of war to the people they stole it from and thus enable them to lead a new comfortable life in America. They would turn Texas into another kind of state and the desert there would turn into a garden of paradise.
VR: What are you working on now, what theme will your new film deal with?
DA: Well, what I have so far told you is actually a synopsis of my new feature and documentary film. It starts with an American oil tycoon's decision to return his spoils of war to the refugees of the war which was, in the first place, initiated by him and his likes. He starts a wide ranging campaign for this purpose... etc. I'd rather not reveal all finesse...
