As for America’s belated involvement in both of those wars, they joined those wars as our allies, supporting our struggle and not the other way around. The “Allies” was our club — they were the “Johnny-come-lately.” When the Allies paraded in Paris, we marched in the place of honor. Internal Central Power documents show that World War I was decided when Serbian forces broke through the Salonika front and threatened to drive straight to Vienna. German General Ludendorf passed the Kaiser the news that all was lost and Germany surrendered. So, although the allies helped divert the Germans, we beat them. In World War II, the delay that Hitler needed to defeat Yugoslavia before attacking Russia is considered the main reason for his defeat — he was subsequently beaten in Russia by “General Winter” in a campaign that was supposed to have finished before it became so cold that his tanks’ tracks would freeze solid.

Leaving the World Wars aside, the anti-Serbianism goes much further back. Bismark considered Serbia to be the main threat to Germany as well. It was he who orchestrated the German policy of interference in the Balkans. It was Germans who supported and continue to support the most extreme Albanians against the Serbs, just as they support the Turks against the Russians. We are known as the stone that can’t be swallowed in the Balkans and indeed, in Europe as a whole. When Hitler conquered Europe, the resistance started in Yugoslavia, among Serb monarchist guerrillas. (The Partizans joined the resistance only later, when Stalin reversed his orders for them to assist the German invaders of Yugoslavia — after Hitler surprised him by invading Russia).

Freeing from the Ottoman rule, Battle on the Pavement by Nebojsa Djuranovic
Proud and Free Nation
So you might be wondering, what did we do to deserve all this hatred?

It certainly originates in response to our national character. We once had a great empire and thanks to our Church and national epic poems/songs we have remembered that fact. A nation is like a baby — once it has stood on its feet, it seldom wants to get back on its knees. And our empire was one known for its principles and for the rights it gave its people. We were lucky to be guided by our national patron and religious leader, Saint Sava, who instilled the principles of Christianity in the bosom of the state. This kind of a background is hard to wipe away. We certainly started out no more noble than any other nation, but our leaders in those old days led us to the high road and the Church maintained our identity through an amazing effort of national survival during 500 years of occupation under the Ottoman Turks.

Suffering makes good, strong people. The trait of perseverance, once learned through hardship is hard to lose. The Turks hardened us, they made us more stubborn than we were and more determined than almost any other nation in Europe. So, when we emerged by force of our own arms from enslavement after Black George’s [Karadjordje] uprising in 1804, we rose as a nation, proud and free. Families like mine, who were well-to-do, automatically donated as much as they could to the uprising. My family donated carriage-loads full of sugar to Karadjordje’s troops and asked for not a cent back after the uprising succeeded. The nation came first. Money wasn’t even a close second — for any of us.

Unforgivable: Following a Pig Farmer Instead of a German Prince
So Serbs re-emerged on the European scene, but surprisingly there was little welcome for us. Think about it. There were a mere handful of countries in Europe, most of them grand empires. At the start of the 1800s there were Great Britain, Spain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Russia in Europe with few small states at all. Then, suddenly, Serbia arrives and insists on recognized, equal statehood. And it does so under a leader who was not a so-called “blue-blood” (Black George Petrovic, called “black” because of his uncontrollable temper, was a pig farmer before taking up the sword for his nation). The old noble families from the Nemanjic imperial era, mine included, without any second thought ceded any hereditary claims and instead supported the creation of a new modern popular monarchy, leaving Serbia’s extinguished medieval empire to history. And so a pig farmer became our leader. It was unheard of in the whole of Europe. And more important still, when we finally did get international recognition, we refused to accept a German-blooded prince as the head of our statelet.

Being in high school, especially in America, you might be wondering what I am talking about when I speak of German-blooded princes. Here’s the story they don’t teach in most schools:

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Western Europe descended into a period of barbarism seldom even imagined. Law meant nothing and bandits harassed travelers and raided towns and villages across the lands. Vikings attacked the shores, raping, raiding and murdering. The papacy was traded among families like a trinket. In response to all this, warlords eventually sprang up in centers of population, building castles into which villagers could flee when the masses of bandits raided their lands. These warlords slowly extended some minimal protections to areas around their castles in return for lifelong servitude of the people who lived as serfs on the land — unable to travel or leave their feudal master’s domain on pain of death.

Amid all this servitude, the [Roman] Catholic church attempted to reassert some kind of order, although it continued to conduct its religious masses only in Latin so that no normal man had any idea what was being said (serfs were illiterate, there was no schooling, and Latin — well that was something only the feudal lord and his family might have learned from an imported tutor). Even reading the Bible was impossible, for it too was only available in Latin. So there was a mass of uneducated people, enslaved as serfs, led by brutal warlords who maintained such nice customs as the “right of the first night” in which every groom could be ordered to send his beautiful new wife up to the “lord’s” bedroom before he, as her husband, could spend his first night with her. Even if such institutionalized and generally brutal rape sounds a “bit” un-Christian, there was nothing to worry about — the “lord” could summon the [Roman] Catholic priest to the castle the very next morning, pay him some money and give him some wine, and have the priest absolve him of his sins… routinely. The Protestants hadn’t surfaced yet.

German Warlord Inherits Roman Empire
This horrid society all took some form of permanent order after several hundred years of brutal animalism. Then the Pope in Rome realized that he could make a deal with one of the rising great warlords named Karol. Karol was a warlord of the largest nation in Europe, the Germanic tribes. Karol had gone far beyond conquering and subjecting only the lands around his castle. He was such a powerful warrior that he conquered neighboring warlords as well. Eventually he had what looked like a real kingdom. But he wanted his creation to last. What is taken by the sword can be lost by the sword just as quickly. He needed legitimacy. He wanted to create something like the Roman Empire, which still existed far to the East in Constantinople, but was only a distant dim memory in Western Europe.

Remember, at the end of its existence, the Western Roman empire was not the empire of Julius Caesar or Nero. It had learned of the usefulness of wrapping itself in the cloak of divine legitimacy — it had adopted Christianity to become simultaneously a military empire and a religious system. When the empire fell, the church tried to retain its power. The Pope wore an imperial crown just like an emperor (something they no longer do for public relations reasons, although they still keep the crown) and ran a control system modeled on dioceses that mimicked the former Roman imperial administration. They also ran the world’s most advanced spying network — everyone who wished to avoid eternal damnation had to report once a week to the church to make a confession of all their sins to the priest. The priest usually worked hand-in-hand with the feudal master, so the two of them knew of every crime, every lie, every case of incest or rape, right from the perpetrator’s own mouth… and effectively had a complete grip on the community through blackmail. That system is something the CIA or former KGB could only envy.

Well, the bloodied warlord and the spying Pope made a deal. Warlord Karol would travel down to Rome with his barbarian lieutenants (they all stayed for just a few days) and the Pope would crown him, not as a king, but as the emperor! Yes, the emperor of Rome, simultaneously extending Karol’s kingdom across Europe and extending the [Roman] Catholic church to the north out of its physical enclave around Rome. And so a deal “made in heaven” was reached. And from then on, [Roman] Catholic priests rode out into battle beside German Christianized barbarians bringing death and destruction to any who would not convert to the new world order. How do you think that the Polish Slavs ended up being 99% Catholic and not Orthodox like the rest of the Slavs? Simple, the Teutonic (Germanic) Knights drove east into the Slav lands carrying a cross in one hand and a sword in the other. These German “Christians” killed with no hesitation anyone who did not convert — after all, killing an infidel was not a sin. So the Poles became Catholics, and from this “noble” origin they eventually got Pope John Paul II.

German Barbarian Turned Roman Emperor Conquers Europe
In any event, from the glorious start of Karol, the German barbarian turned “Holy Roman Emperor,” there was a new order in Europe. As the emperor, he become the blood source of almost all European monarchies. The system was both genetically based (to gain legitimacy, all monarchs were expected have some kind of blood link to the emperor or to marry a woman related to him) and religiously based (the crown of each king had to be blessed by the Pope). Even we Serbs came close to joining this system at one stage — the first crown ever delivered to a Serbian king in the Nemanjic era came from the Pope in Rome, before our nation turned its eyes irrevocably east to Orthodoxy and sent back the poisoned crown.

In the modern era, by the time Serbia regained its freedom from the Ottomans, the European monarchies were all German. Of course the Germans ruled the many German principalities, the German Hapsburgs ruled Austria, the German Hanovers ruled England (they changed their name to Windsor in WWI for better public relations), the French Bourbons were the descendants of Karol, who was called Carolus Magnus by the Pope (in Latin) and thus Charlemagne or Charles the Great in French and English, the Spanish Bourbons were and still are of the same family, the Italians would be ruled by Lombardi Germans, and then Piedmont-based Germans, the Greeks would soon get a German king, as did the Bulgarians and Romanians and so on. Even the Romanovs of Russia were so intermarried with German princesses that starting from the founder of the dynasty, Mikhail, every single reigning descendant (except Aleksander III) married a German princess… including the final Tsar Nikolas II, whose wife Alexandra of Hesse was denounced as the “German” by rebelling Russians, just as the French people turned on the wife of Louis XVI likewise decrying the “German” (she was an Austrian Hapsburg) for exactly the same reason: People don’t like being ruled by foreigners.

Black George - Karadjordje, Serbian pig farmer who led the rebellion against the Ottomans freeing Serbia from the Turkish yoke.
Serbia Endures Without a Degenerate German Princeling at its Helm
You might have heard of Serbia being described in recent years as a “pariah state” (an outcast, coming from the term for the “dirty” untouchable caste in south India). If you have, take no heed. We have been a pariah nation since long before the demonization that we have suffered in the past two decades. We were considered pariah from the very moment at which we chose a native king to rule our land instead of inviting some degenerate unemployed German princeling to become our titular head. It might not seem like much of an issue today, but it was about as unimaginable an idea in Europe to have a native, non-German king as it would have been to have a Black president in the USA in the 1950s.

Yet we endured. We had our native Church, our native monarchy, our native language (Croats were speaking Hungarian under Austro-Hungarian rule for centuries; Slovenes spoke German, Bosnians were still occupied by Turkey…), and our own unique phonetic alphabet. All of this helped make us the strongest nation at the center of the Balkans, blocking German expansion to the southeast and to their anti-Russian ally Turkey. The mix of hatred and secret envy of Serbian freedoms (remember we were never serfs, but the Croats and all other Europeans were) generated anti-Serb cartoons in European papers over the past two centuries that make the lies they have been telling about these days seem tame by comparison. Only the Jews and maybe the Gypsies (Roma) ever suffered anything like the discrimination we have faced.

For example, now you can see the roots of Yugoslvia’s involvement in the non-aligned movement even during Tito’s era. We have a tendency toward independence and freedom that comes to us naturally.

European Union Grown Out of the Rivalry of German Tribes
Which brings me to my advice as to what you should write in your report to your teacher….

[...] The question was:

What has Serbia contributed to the world that would give reason for them to be permitted to become a member of the European Union?

So let’s dissect this nonsense question. Since when was a “contribution to the world” a condition for EU membership? (Was Germany’s world contribution the Holocaust? And was Spain’s the Inquisition — or was it its wanton rape and pillage of the New World?) Since when should we Serbs, at the heart of Europe, need permission from anyone to be European? (Remember all that opportunistic Western propaganda about Sarajevo being the very heart of Europe — well, let’s flip it back at them.) And then let’s ask what authority the EU had in international law to appropriate for its currency the name “euro” without automatically allowing all Europeans right up the Ural mountains the right to call it their own. They certainly have no trade mark on the word Europe — it belongs to all of us. So, the EU is obviously not synonymous with Europe. Which means that we need to define what, in fact, it is…

If you search a little bit, it won’t take you long to find that the EU grew out of an economic alliance between the ruling capitalists of Germany and France to end their hundreds of years of civil war. Why do I use the term “civil war” to describe World War I and World War II and the many France-Germany wars before that? Because all of them were based on the rivalry between two groups of Germans; those who stayed in Germany and the Franks (a German tribe) who left Germany to drive West and subjugate the Gauls (who lived in the old Roman province of Gaul that has since been renamed “France” in honor of its German conquerors). The Germans on both sides of Alsace-Lorraine then fought over that territory for centuries after King Lothair, one of three German descendants of Karol, died without a successor and his cousins to the east in Germany and to the west in France could not agree on who should get his kingdom… (Lothair’s kingdom = Lothair’s regnum (Latin) = Lorraine).

German Saddle Doesn’t Fit on Serbian Back
Many millions of deaths later, these two groups of Germanic peoples decided to stop massacring each other and build a common market based on cooperation first in steel development and production, later in other areas and finally in the form of the EU. The French ruling elites revealed their true roots by submitting largely to German leadership and we now have a new Europe ruled primarily by Germans who have enticed other nations to join through economic incentives — bribery if you like. For many, the financial offer is more important than anything else — after all, these are nations that have all been ruled by foreign, German kings for most of their history, so the saddle still fits nicely on their backs.

But Serbia is different. We have never submitted to the German-dominated systems — neither Hitler’s, nor the Kaiser’s, nor Bismark’s, nor the Austrian German variants before that. We have grown to love freedom more than money, or at least that has been our character until now.

Joining the German-Led Europe Involves Surrender of Sovereignty
And so we face a historic challenge. Shall we finally join the German-led Europe after all these battles for our freedom?

If it were merely a free-trade deal like NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) the loss of sovereignty would be limited and Serbia would remain an independent state. But that is not what the EU represents. Instead the EU represents an effort of the ruling classes of each member state to form a common union in which the economic reward is merely a bribe in search of the surrender of sovereignty — which is their trophy. With national independence snuffed out, the EU ruling elites will eventually operate the place as a single country, ruled mainly from Berlin and the European central bank in Frankfurt. It will have its own army and all the member states will have to send troops to participate in its “adventures.” In Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Sudan, and maybe even in Russia, young Serb men would be in arms, extending Western-style “freedom,” the essence of [Roman] Catholicism and “human rights” to our brother Slavs at the end of a rifle barrel.

The costs sound bad, so what about the benefits? Well, being at the far end of the new German empire, instead of seeing things flow our way, we would certainly see all of our best and brightest youth heading to the center of European power in flows so great that they would dwarf the past flows of Yugoslav gastarbeiters (guest workers) into Germany, the brain drain that we have seen during or since these latest Balkan wars, and certainly the period of forced indoctrination of Serb youths in Ottoman Turkey as kidnapped janissaries.

Most of the main economic activity in the EU is based in the center of the EU — in Germany and France. They make the AirBus planes and Mercedes cars — we might be “permitted” to make some tires for each of them. Our free-for-all agricultural industry will be totally mechanized and the early-morning markets in the piazzas (public squares) will be replaced by sterile supermarkets full of frozen foods — have you ever tasted a tomato anywhere in the EU (or even America) that tastes as good as a fresh tomato from an open market in Serbia? No, I did not think so.

As a sign of things to come, as soon as the pro-EU opposition seized power in their October 2000 coup in Serbia there were hundreds of truckloads (hundreds of thousands of tons) of genetically modified soy beans (unwanted anywhere else) being dumped into northern Vojvodina as the first doors opened to “superior” Western and EU goods. Since then, German investors have bought up most of the privatized Serbian industries, and even the media. Today, Germans own the main newspapers that Serbs read in Belgrade. Entry to the EU will make the surrender of Serbia’s independence and the collapse of national self-sufficiency even more complete.

And all trade, not just agriculture, will be regulated by the most massive and inhuman bureaucracy ever seen… a bureaucracy based not in Serbia but in faraway Brussels. For more reasons to stay out of the EU, check the web site of the United Kingdom Independence Party (it is very interesting to hear people talking this way from INSIDE the European Union).

Serbia Should Stay Out of the EU
So in fact, your teacher’s question should not have been the misleading one that you received. Countries entering the EU are not judged on their world contributions, but instead on their level of servitude and willingness to be ruled from abroad in return for some small change. One day, the EU might become a better thing, after this model collapses, and it might be replaced by a real free-trade zone without the loss of national freedoms. That might be something to consider. But for now, Serbia’s best bet is to stay out, raise financing independently (perhaps from the booming economies over here in Asia, where I have lived for years) and build a vibrant economy that serves the interests of the Serbian people before all else. With that goal achieved, we could wait for the inevitable gold-embossed invitation from the EU or its likely successor organization and negotiate whatever we like from a position of strength rather than from our knees as beggars.

Awarded poster by Petar Koren, Serbian Kosovo - Gracanica
Don’t let the wrong question confuse you… no matter how many Teslas or Pupins or raspberries, soccer championships, or guerrillas wars of resistance, or anything else we can claim, the only thing that counts is our willingness to submit, be ruled and smile at the thought of it. Serbia is the richest country in the Balkans. It sits on the crossroads of land and water transport to the east and the south. We can name our price for anything we are asked to do for Europe. But if Serbia is thrown open to the EU now, before we can compete properly, it would only be because our current rulers hope to skim a nice percentage for themselves, personally.

Let’s stay in step with people like the British UKIP (Independence Party), Switzerland, and Iceland… people who know the difference between a con and a good deal.

Correct Your Teacher’s (Misleading) Question
Back to the classroom scenario… Might I suggest that you rewrite the question and answer your own new question? Simply tell the teacher that the premise of his question was false — world contributions are not criteria for EU admission. Then, to prove that point, refer him to this page, which lists the Copenhagen Criteria which are the REAL conditions for EU membership.

It might be of some interest that even I, a staunch anti-communist, doubt that the EU membership condition of having a “market economy” can be reconciled with the EU’s stated commitment to “democracy.” The European Union cannot really be democratic when its own charter outlaws Communist “planned economies” even if the people of an EU state freely elect a Communist government. So there is certainly more here than meets the eye… and less freedom in the EU than you might imagine.

I suggest that you might write a much more interesting and informative paper, entitled “The pros and cons for Serbia seeking EU membership, now or in the future.”

I was also a top student in high school and my best teachers appreciated it when I “corrected” their questions. But even if we aren’t dealing with your “best” teacher, I would still correct his question…

Why? Because it would be the Serbian thing to do!

Sincerely,
John Bosnitch

People like Mr. Schwartz are not human in the full snese of the word. They belong to the gutter.

“Do not be concerned with any evidence your opponent presents that you cannot answer. Instead, KILL the messenger and not the message!”

This people,like Schwartz are WW2 revisionist pseudo-intellectual “historians”, who incorrigibly defend the indefensible: the genocidal al Qaeda and Iranian backed Islamofascist Alija Izetbegovic, the German-government backed neo-Ustasha Nazi, Franjo Tudjman and the Islamofascist Albanian KLA, are absolutely despicable contemptible cowards who will not hesitate to resort to the most depraved and disgusting profanities,name calling and character assassination in order to intimidate and bully their opponents into silence.

Well done, Mr. Limbic, for having the courage and moral principles to stand up to similar contemptible, cowardly supporters of Balkan Islamofascism

Keep up the brilliant work and never give up the fight for truth and justice against these despicable pro-Islamofascist/pro-Nazi liars and propagandists.

Serbs were the majority (80 percent) in Kosovo for a thousand years and built
more than 1,500 churches and monasteries. Serbia was internationally recognized
as a nation at The Congress of Berlin in 1878 and it was ONLY Serbia who gave
up her statehood to form Yugoslavia with her former Slovene and Croat enemies in WWI. A good reason why the new nation was called The Kingdom of Serbs,Croats and Slovenes in 1918. When that country was formed the Albanians
represented less than 5% of the population according to numerous historical documents. It was also a time when the nation of Albania was formed, do we really need two Albanian nations in the heart of Europe or all we all pretending, like Schwartz , that a “Greater Albania” is not the end game
here?

In my lifetime, Serbs have become a minority in Kosovo, starting with the
Holocaust under Benito Mussolini when the liquidation of Serbs reduced their
numbers to 45 percent. After the war, Broz Tito forbade the 155,000 ethnically
cleansed Serbs from returning to Kosovo, giving their land to Albanian Nazis thereby reducing Serbs to 39 percent.

When the dictator Tito granted Albanian “autonomy” in 1974, the
Serbian language was banned and 100,000 Serbs lost their jobs—in the process
over 2 million books on Serbian religion, history and music were burned—more than 120,000 Serbs were cleansed as Serbian farms were burned and Serbian girls and nuns were raped, reducing the Serbs to 29 percent. Just seven years ago the Serbs represented 21% of Kosovo, how shocking that Schwartzacknowledges that Serbs are now miniroty but looks the other way as to why they suddenly dropped to this appalling level. It is apparent that Schwartz does not believe Serbs are entitled to equal human rights or justice.

If the 350,000 recently cleansed Serbs and the 90,000 non-Albanian minorities
were allowed to return to Kosovo and the 40 percent undocumented Albanians were forced to go back to where they came from, there would not be this fictitious “90 percent Albanian” population to seek independence.

It is more than clear that there is a “Greater Albania” at work here as the
Albanians have already exposed their hand in wanting other parts of Serbia,
Montenegro, Macedonia and northern Greece where large minorities of Albanians live.

But Kosovo is not just about population count, it is about the
Schwartz fails to mention the
dozens of new Islamic mosques that have been built in Kosovo including the
Osama bin Laden Mosque. I wonder what the attitude will be once Serbia is totally destroyed and the Muslims start coveting Bulgarian territory?

>>yet since 2000 a democratic Serbia

You want a medal for net starting a fifth war?? Maybe because NATO will not let you? Stop it with the propaganda, then people will stop reminding of your history.

____________________________________

No doubt he’d never seen his current behavior as fitting his own description.
I think Mr. Limbic’s ( as well as majority’s commenting on his blog) recognition of manipulation breeds tension in Albanians such as yourself. I think his disparaging the type of manipulation that your kind is using makes you hate that we see it so clearly.

As for the rest of Albanians and pro-albanian kinds/supporters If you are happy being horses, ridden by European Senators or American Emperors in Serb province Kosovo, we should indulge you, but we need to get you another stable.

You want a medal for net starting a fifth war?? Maybe because NATO will not let you? Stop it with the propaganda, then people will stop reminding of your history.

First of all, our rich history has taught us INAT ( Serbian word) in the face of the world – and even of our own best interests.

The meaning of the Serbian word inat in a bilingual dictionary (like Morton Benson’s is often defined in terms of “malice”, “spite”, or “grudge”. None of these is a direct equivalent and each contains only a partial component of the emotional complexities the word suggests to the Serbian ear.

A closer correspondence for inat would be, in the words of Dragan Milovic, “an attitude of proud defiance, stubborness and self-preservation - sometimes to the detriment of everyone else or even oneself.”

The word inat most recently acquired notoriety as a description of the Serbian mentality in 1999, during Nato’s bombing of the country; many Serb citizens proudly displayed a “target” symbol on their coat, or even defiantly held annual public events despite the air raids. But in its way, this was only the latest manifestation of a long historical trend.

Indeed, the fact that Serbian history from the inside can seem like a catalogue of resistance to overbearing power is one key to inat. The word itself derives from the Turkish (and before then, Arabic) language of the Ottoman empire whose forces subdued and were resisted by Serbian people for half a millennium. In the course of this history, both the language and the wider culture of the Ottomans influenced the way Serbs defined themselves – in bitter opposition as well as compromise and negotiation – as a European nation on the “frontier” between cultures.

For Serbs, the defence of their Orthodox religious and cultural inheritance became a formative element in this 500-year experience. Out of their predicament – and the combination of persecution, frustration, powerlessness, and regret that it entailed – they acquired a particular, everyday mentality characterised by doing things according to the inat principle. This could mean acting in a negative mode for the sake of it; in Milovic’s words, “doing things because someone has told you you can’t, not necessarily because you actually want to”.

An ironic reflection comments on this aspect of the Serbian character: “Who says we cannot swim? Sink this boat!”

Some of the important dates in Serbian history – from the first big anti-Turkish uprising (1804), the start of the first (1914) and second (1941) world wars, the break with the Soviet Union (1948), to the Nato bombardment (1999) – suggest reasons for this way of thinking, one described by the respected writer and filmographer Branko Copic as “anti-against”.

Even current political party controversies in Serbia, or those over the very future of the state union of Serbia & Montenegro, are sometimes analysed in terms of a politics of mutual inat. For example, in the June 2004 presidential elections, the unexpectedly surprisingly high support for the candidate of the nationalistic Radical party (SRS), Tomislav Nikolic, rather than his democratic rival, Boris Tadic, was explained by reference to inat – the voters responding to the slickness and overkill of the democrat with an attitude of “now I won’t even vote for what I would like”.

The malicious mixture of vengeance and envy in inat is reflected in the popular saying: Da komsiji crkne krava (“If only the neighbour’s cow would die”). The neighbour may be a fellow-Serb; but he, or his family, or even his ancestors may have wronged you in some way many years ago, or maybe just performed better than you on some occasion. So you stubbornly preserve (and even lovingly nurture) the resentful wound in your heart; and teach your young ones to do the same.

All this makes it easy to understand why Serbs say Inat je los zanat, meaning that the inat is an evil craft, knowledge or even skill. But if inat can disturb the peaceful atmosphere within a community (especially a small one), its positive aspects should not be overlooked. It is, at times, a motivating spirit that pulls the best out of you – for example, the strength to win a decisive basketball match when nobody would bet on your team. Or even, when life is not so good on a larger, national level – and Serbs have plenty of experience of that in recent years – inat can also furnish people with the resilience to feel that they can be subjects as well victims of their own history.

Today is my father’s 80th birthday. This is a milestone birthday that no one else in our family has reached, so far as we know (because in the early part of the 20th century there were no written records kept where they lived). He was born into a hard working peasant family in the village of Čaglavica in Kosovo, and he learned at an early age that you are valued for what you contribute to this world and not for what you take from it. He acquired, both through his genes and his environment, the skill of relying on nothing more than your wits and Serbian tenacity, or inat, to survive brutalities imposed on you by others, because, more often than not, everything else would be taken away from you anyway.

Recently my dad has suffered from a very serious and debilitating illness, but his inat keeps him going. He still looks ahead, he still makes plans for the future like a 30 year old. The fact that he’s made it to this birthday indicates that he might yet have a few more. The same qualities that his people possessed, which enabled them to survive one invader after another, now get him through each day. The Serbs didn’t give themselves over to their Turkish conquerors and even after 500 years of being dominated by them, and, despite being severely pressured by the Turks to do so, they never entirely assimilated into Turkish life and culture. At last the Serbs found themselves able to overthrow the Turks and they took their country back. But not long after that, during World War II, they had new self-imposed “masters” — German/Italian-aligned Albanians — lording it over them in Kosovo. When these fascists had finally been sent packing, it was Tito’s communists who stepped into the conquerors’ vacuum and mercilessly subjugated peasants all around Serbia, forcing collective farming methods onto them, which failed miserably, and taking away land that peasant families had owned and farmed for generations.

During World War II, my dad was a young adolescent whose regular job, when he wasn’t away at school in Priština, was to get the sheep to a grazing field several kilometers from the village. This was something he enjoyed – he would take in the scenery and think for hours about this and that as he watched the sheep and the reliable family dog, Karaman. This suited him as he was an introspective kid and was happy with his own company and time to dream. Every day his mother, my dear nana, packed him a lunch of traditional foods made by her and various daughters and daughters-in-law in their extended family village compound: bread and kajmak, maybe some pršut, possibly some šljive or jabuke picked in their orchards. He spent all day in the field, giving the sheep plenty of time to graze, seeing hardly a soul, except an occasional person walking in the distance. With Karaman’s help he would herd the sheep home toward the end of the day, and always before darkness approached.

One particular day, after the war had started, the boy was a little down in the mouth because all the schools had been closed, the reason given was that if they were closed they wouldn’t be full of children and teachers if they were bombed. Sitting on the grass with Karaman nearby and watching the sheep scattered all around as they lazily chomped the greenery, the boy’s thoughts were on the war and an uncertain future. This child, perhaps not yet 14 years old, sensed someone coming toward him. Sure enough, a man was walking in his direction, someone who looked to be in his early twenties. Although he was a stranger to him, the boy recognized the man as an Albanian. The boy’s family had many Albanian friends and business acquaintances in this part of Serbia where Serbian and Albanian villages existed side by side.

Soon the man came very near the boy, who waved slightly and said, “Hello.”

“I’m hungry – you got anything to eat?”, responded the man.

“Oh, sure. It’s almost noon — you’re welcome to share my lunch with me.” And the boy gave the man half his food.

From his sitting position on his rug on the grass, the boy turned to check on the sheep when suddenly he keeled over. Standing over him, the man had taken the boy’s shepherd staff in both hands and cracked it against his head with enough force to kill him, enough force to break the staff. He must have been satisfied that he had killed him because he left him as he lay, there on the ground, and finished the business that had brought him there. Later, people who had been walking on the nearby road said that on that day, at about that time, they had seen a young Albanian man walking with a lamb over his shoulders; however, because Albanian fascists ruled Kosovo at that time, there was no investigation, and while his child victim lay in a coma, near death, this potential murderer was left undisturbed to lick his fingers as he ate his lamb kebabs, without so much as a slap on the wrist.

When the boy came to, he saw only darkness. It took him a few moments to realize that his head was covered in blood, and for an instant it occurred to him that he must have been blinded, but, no — it was dusk. He tried to feel his way around with his hands, to crawl away from there, but soon he fell into unconsciousness again. When he next awoke it was very dark, but he heard voices in the distance calling his name. When he didn’t show up at home, his family and a number of other villagers came looking for him. He vaguely felt them lift his limp body into the bed of a horse-drawn wagon and he spent the ride home drifting in and out of consciousness, catching an occasional word as one person or another wondered, astonished, who could have done this.

In Kosovo during the war years Serbs were not allowed to be treated by Serbian doctors. Only Albanian doctors could be called. Not only that, but Albanian “officials” felt free to impose themselves on Serbian homes at will and to demand whatever they wanted – under pain of death. One such Albanian especially liked my grandfather’s farm and would show up every so often from his office in Priština to enjoy long weekends of eating their tasty food while he languished about the place however and wherever he liked.

It was important that it be seen that an Albanian doctor had examined his son, so one was called, or their situation would have been even more dangerous, but my grandfather often sneaked the family’s Serbian doctor into their house during the night. The trauma to his brain put the boy into a coma for a month. Of course, in those days there were no MRIs, and certainly no fancy equipment or techniques for saving someone from such a severe brain trauma, even less the possibility of finding out exactly what damage had been done. And, yet, the family was satisfied — although the Albanian doctor had immediately given the boy up as a terminal case, the Serbian doctor pulled him through. He lived, which was more than the family had dared to hope. He came out of his coma with deficits, unable to walk, speak, or read and write, but his inat hadn’t left him, and the boy relearned those things over time, so well that no one could tell he had once been unable to do those ordinary things.

It was only very late in his life that my father got medical confirmation of why he had been so over-sensitive, so obsessive-compulsive and often overly focused, why he has found it difficult, almost impossible, to trust others, and why life has generally been such a struggle for him. It was not due only to the traumatic effects of growing up in wartime, living in constant fear for yourself and your family, and subsequently, during Tito’s regime, enduring his family’s persecution and the pain of losing a dear older brother who was murdered by the communists. As though that wasn’t enough, that thief had permanently damaged his brain – at the back, toward the left of the head, a very important area for normal functioning. Effectively, my dad has had to function like a sprinter who has a broken leg, but continues to run; therefore, very imperfectly. And all his life, after that brutal attack by someone who had no qualms about taking a boy’s life so he could steal one of his sheep, all his life after that, my dad’s inat helped him to overcome, however he could, the disability imposed on him by this Albanian “neighbor.” My dad’s ways didn’t always endear him to others, but he survived the only way he knew how, by hyperfocusing, and all along the way, amazingly, he maintained his integrity.

The great irony in this story is that, had the man told the boy that he had no food at home, had he simply asked for a lamb, the boy would more than likely have invited him to help himself, because that was how my grandfather had brought him up – to share what you have with those who have less; that to give is much nobler than to receive.

Many people have tried to exterminate the Serbs, but, as Darwin showed us, the stronger of the species survive to procreate and pass down their traits. Serbs were tested time and again, and it was those with inat who survived and overcame one adversity after another in Serbia, and that tenacity, that pride and never-say-die attitude, even at your own expense, is not gone. It has been passed down millions of times, and it is still in the Serbian people. They have often endured for long periods, they had faith in the truth and waited for it to save them, but when pushed to the brink the Serbs’ inat showed itself, and it will show itself again.

Many enemies have threatened to annihilate Serbs, including my father’s ancestors and his immediate family members, and have tried to do it. Many expected my father to die – that Albanian thief left him lying in the pasture, convinced that he was dead. More recently, my father’s doctors thought he would be gone by now and are amazed at how well he has been doing despite all their dire predictions. During that time he has celebrated 2 more birthdays, and this, his 80th is very noteworthy.

There is a lot to be said for inat – when it’s part of your makeup there isn’t much that can keep you down. I am exceedingly proud to possess my own inat.

Happy birthday to my father!