Written by: Tomislav Marković
In The Philosophy of the Small Town, Radomir Konstantinović writes that the defining sentiment of the small-town psyche is a constant sense of threat and deprivation – a fundamental belief in its victimhood. This worldview, rooted in perpetual self-pity, is instinctively defensive and thrives on the notion of being wronged by others. From this fertile soil of grievance springs an array of ideologies, thinly veiled beneath masks of justice, but saturated with spite, envy, hatred, resentment, and an unquenchable thirst for revenge.
At home, a chorus of mourners tirelessly laments the tragic fate of the Serbian people, proclaiming our celestial nation a victim of endless injustice. This narrative becomes a convenient pretext for inflicting harm on others, as if vengeance were a virtue. Behind the solemn talk of honor and justice lies something far more mundane: a stubborn refusal to accept responsibility. It is, at its core, a self-inflicted adolescence.
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Reciprocity
The self-proclaimed victim never acts – only suffers. It is not a subject, but an object, never accountable, always aggrieved. For such a worldview, responsibility is an alien language. As Konstantinović observed, those who dwell in ressentiment genuinely believe that deceit is the governing principle of all human relationships – and indeed, of existence itself. Convinced of this, the person consumed by ressentiment has no choice but to produce lies, forgeries, and illusions, shaping the world into a hall of mirrors haunted by ghosts.
Just the other day, political scientist, journalist, and head of the Pragma agency, Cvijetin Milivojević – darling of anti-Vučić TV panels – proclaimed that Serbia has endured countless injustices, yet, the poor thing, does nothing about them. This time, Montenegro was cast as the latest villain in our ever-growing gallery of eternal enemies, without whom our siege mentality could not survive.
Milivojević claimed: “Montenegro doesn’t recognize us. If I remember correctly, since 2009. They recognized Kosovo as an independent state. So, they only recognize 85 percent of our territory.” Then came the grand solution: “What we lack is a policy of reciprocity with everyone.” Who exactly “everyone” includes, he didn’t say – perhaps the entire world? After all, hasn’t every country wronged Serbia in some way? (Well, except for Mother Russia.)
What Is to Be Done?
Maybe he meant every person on Earth. Maybe every object. Perhaps this brand of nationalist ressentiment has expanded to include the cosmos itself. Maybe they feel offended by the very existence of the universe. Still, it’s more likely that Milivojević was referring only to neighboring states carved from the bloody remains of Yugoslavia. Let’s not ascribe cosmic ambitions to our local grudge-bearers – they tend to measure themselves only against their “brother,” as Danilo Kiš once put it so precisely in his essay on nationalism.
Milivojević had more proposals. In response to the unbearable fact that Montenegro recognizes Kosovo (instead of honoring the constitutional fiction in Serbia’s preamble), he suggested: “If there’s no reciprocity, we could, for example, say we now recognize Montenegro, but without Old Herzegovina. That’s everything up to Nikšić. That was never part of Montenegro until 1945. So – we don’t recognize that. We don’t recognize Sutorina, the coastline of Republika Srpska and Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
And once the imagination ignites, it burns fast. Milivojević didn’t stop there: “Let’s talk to our Albanian brothers in Malesia. They might want some kind of autonomy – maybe rightfully so… Maybe we support that. Maybe that would warm our relations with our Albanians in Kosovo. Or maybe with the Albanian state. We could say: Malesia deserves autonomy within Montenegro. As a start. That’s reciprocity. Montenegro wouldn’t like that, right? But does Serbia like that Montenegro recognized Kosovo?”
Paranormal Political Science
Our nationalists are, at times, unwitting comedians. The Serbian state pushed Kosovo away through a campaign of repression – stripping autonomy, mass firings, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes (including the transport of Albanian corpses in refrigerated trucks to mass graves) – and now mourns the loss as though it had done everything right. If you don’t want part of your territory to secede, don’t brutalize its population. Had Milošević’s regime treated central Serbia the way it treated Albanians, we’d now be welcoming the independent Republic of Šumadija.
The idea that granting Albanians in Montenegro autonomy would somehow endear “our Albanians in Kosovo” is laughable – if it were sincere. But it isn’t. It’s a sleight of hand. After decades of oppression, massacres, and expulsion, there is no thaw to be had – certainly not while the state responsible for those crimes clings to the ideologies that fueled them, denies basic facts, and clings to a phantom narrative in which Kosovo remains part of Serbia. No truth, no reckoning, no change – and no help, not even from global warming.
What Serbia “likes” or “dislikes” – its emotional state, so to speak – is a metaphysical mystery. Until recently, I believed only living beings could feel. But Milivojević has enlightened me. The state, it turns out, not only has feelings but specific ones – readable, presumably, by clairvoyance, or perhaps by divining beans, animal livers, or crystal balls. Call it paranormal political science.
Do Good, Expect Good
To demand reciprocity from Serbia’s current position is, at best, reckless. Let’s imagine what true reciprocity would entail. Set Montenegro aside for a moment and consider other former Yugoslav republics. Croatia, following this logic, would need to shell and besiege Novi Sad, flattening it just as the Yugoslav People’s Army leveled Vukovar.
Bosnia and Herzegovina would dispatch its army and paramilitaries across the Drina, torching towns, murdering civilians, raping, looting, and ethnically cleansing entire regions – right down to mass executions, death camps, and bodies thrown off cliffs or into rivers. Hydroelectric plants would jam with corpses. Civilians would be burned alive. Snipers would pick off passersby on Belgrade bridges.
Then, the Bosnian Army would surround Belgrade for four years, reducing it to rubble with indiscriminate shelling, denying food, water, electricity, and heat – targeting hospitals, schools, and libraries in a war on memory itself.
Finally, the Kosovo Liberation Army would march in, loot and destroy everything in its path, and drive 900,000 Serbs into Romania. The dead would be refrigerated and buried near military compounds.
He Who Digs a Pit…
This is what Milivojević’s “reciprocity” looks like in practice. Only once Serbia has suffered the full measure of what it inflicted on its neighbors can it start demanding retaliation for a diplomatic recognition it doesn’t like. Until then, the outrage is unearned.
As the people – so often invoked by nationalists – like to say: He who digs a pit for others falls into it himself. Or, if we put it in a more current, ironic phrasing: You hit me with a Cvijetin, I’ll hit you with a Milivojević. Until, inevitably, we annihilate one another in this morbid game of “reciprocity,” which is just vengeance by another name – played under the slogan penned three decades ago by the poet laureate of Greater Serbian nationalism, Matija Bećković: We’ll settle this later.
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