BELGRADE (30 page)

During the following years gangland murders, turf wars and assassinations were common on Belgrade’s streets. In addition to the more usual drug, prostitution and protection rackets, the criminals were in charge of imports, smuggling goods through the wall of UN sanctions into Serbia.

The particular circumstances of the time dictated the kinds of criminal activity that would be most lucrative. The shortage of petrol in Belgrade stimulated a lively illegal trade with plastic bottles of fuel sold in back streets. Weapons were also in high demand across the whole of former Yugoslavia. The lack of proper border controls across the region facilitated the international trafficking of stolen cars shipped from Germany through Serbia and then, if not intended for the home market, sent further east to Russia or Asia. This route quickly developed into a conduit for drug smuggling and people trafficking from east to west. It is said that the opportunities for profit in those days of mayhem united the criminal elements on all sides, bringing together Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Albanians.

Željko Ražnatović, better known as Arkan, was one of the first criminals to return to Belgrade. In the 1970s he operated in Western Europe, where he was wanted for armed robbery and murder. It is also said that he worked for the Yugoslav Secret Service as an assassin of political dissidents abroad. He returned in the 1980s and set up business as the owner of a pastry shop. With the outbreak of civil war in Croatia he went there at the head of his own paramilitary unit, the Tigers, with the support of senior government figures, including a deputy Serbian minister called Radovan Stojičić, nicknamed Badža (meaning Bluto from the Popeye cartoons).

Arkan had a varied career in the 1990s: he led his own paramilitaries, was elected as a deputy representing Kosovo in the National Assembly and owned a Belgrade football club. In 1995 he married the country’s most popular “turbofolk” singer, Svetlana Veličković, otherwise known by her stage name Ceca. Their wedding was a huge media event broadcast on television. He was dressed in the uniform of an officer in the Serbian army from the First World War and the occasion was treated like a day of national celebration. Videos of the wedding were later put on sale. In the eyes of the media and the public they were the new celebrities; an Arkan calendar was even issued with a different picture of him for each month. Later indicted by the international court in The Hague for war crimes, he was shot and killed in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel in January 2000.

The fact that the gangsters did not live long did not diminish their status, and probably even enhanced it with false notions of a romantic demise. The independent radio and television station, B–92, made a documentary film about Belgrade’s criminals and their social influence called
See You in the Obituary
(Vidimo se u čitulji, 1995). In the programme the older criminals bemoan the disappearance of a code of honour among the city’s thieves, regarding the new arrivals as too eager to make quick money and forgetful of their place in the pecking order. Dina Iordanova in her book
Cinema of Flames
describes the appearance of the younger set: “Other elements of their B-movie–inspired styles include multiple gold chains and bracelets, sleeveless T-shirts, muscular bodies, expensive jogging suits, silk shirts, state-of–the-art pistols, well-shaven faces and trimmed hair, dark glasses, leather jackets and underage girlfriends.” By the time the documentary was complete, three of them had been killed, and by the end of the decade they were nearly all dead.

An official position offered no immunity from gangland warfare. In the early hours of 11 April 1997 Radovan Stojičić was murdered in a Belgrade restaurant. He was buried in the Avenue of Honour in the New Cemetery, normally reserved for citizens whose life and work have made a positive contribution to culture and society. On 24 October 1997 Zoran Todorović was shot and killed as he arrived for work. He was director of the company Beopetrol and general-secretary of the pro-government coalition JUL (Yugoslav United Left) led by Mira Marković, the wife of President Slobodan Milošević.

A peculiar trace of the kitsch culture spawned in these years is to be seen in the tombstones dotted around Belgrade’s cemeteries marking the graves of the fallen gangsters. Božović is immortalized in a bronze statue dressed in his military uniform. His effigy stands in front of a construction resembling a doorway decorated with two large crosses and an inscription to his “heroism” in life. Mileta Prodanović has written on these monuments in his ironically titled book
An Older and More Beautiful Belgrade
(Stariji i lepši Beograd). He describes Božović’s hieratic pose placed symbolically before the door on “the border of the world of the living and world of the dead”. Arkan’s tombstone features him in his favourite First World War uniform and sporting a medal, the Karađorđe Star, which he may have thought that he deserved but was never awarded. Another criminal, Zoran Šijan, is depicted by a life-size bronze statue and is dressed in a sharp suit. By his side stands a small table on which there is a bottle of Coca-Cola, a packet of cigarettes and an ash-tray, all fashioned from stone and marble. Prodanović considers that these elements of pop-art iconography added to his sepulchral monument, since they:

embody the value system which—in the shadow of wars and the total pauperization of the population—was established in the everyday life of the most important subculture of Belgrade in the 1990s. Its essence is best articulated in the lyrics of a popular song:

Coca-Cola, Marlboro, Suzuki,
discotheques, guitars, bouzouki,
that’s life, that’s not an ad,
no one is more than us glad.

Many of these realities of life in Belgrade are found reflected in the films and novels of the decade.

Sanctions were lifted at the end of 1995 when the conflict in Bosnia ended. Yet economic problems persisted, travel abroad was still difficult because of visa conditions imposed by foreign embassies, and criminals continued to live and operate openly. On 17 November 1996 local elections were held throughout Serbia in which the government’s candidates were faced by a coalition of opposition parties jointly known under the name
Zajedno
(Together). The opposition estimated that they easily won in all the major towns including Belgrade. However, Milošević and his allies refused to recognize these results. In reply, the opposition called on the populace to protest at such blatant gerrymandering.

The most spectacular events unfolded in Belgrade where the demonstrators were joined by students from the university in daily marches through town that continued for three months. The streets rang to the strains of a carnival atmosphere with ever more imaginative slogans, such as “I think, therefore I walk” (Mislim, dakle šetam). One day, instead of walking, people were invited to drive into the centre of town where, mysteriously, every single car broke down at the same time and the whole city centre was blocked for the rest of the day. Every evening at 7.30 the city was filled with the noise of whistles and people banging on saucepans or whatever else came to hand for a solid half hour in order to drown out the lies broadcast on the main television news programme. The student body was particularly adept at putting its feelings across with a sense of humour bordering somewhere between farce and irony. Students took to standing by traffic lights, stepping out only when the red light appeared to warn pedestrians not to cross, and in so doing disrupted the flow of traffic. The point of their actions was to show that nothing meant what it was supposed to mean any more in Belgrade.

The demonstrators were supported by many national institutions such as the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Orthodox Church, and by a strong chorus of voices from outside the country. In February 1997 the government finally conceded that it could not continue to defy the daily demonstrations. But rather than admit defeat, the National Assembly passed a special law to recognize the opposition’s electoral successes—as if it had not really won but that the government was giving in to outside pressure.

This was not the end of the stand-off between Milošević and the liberal opposition in Belgrade. The ruling coalition tightened its control on the media to ensure that television stations and the main newspapers reported in their favour. Then the government decided that appointments to the directorships of public enterprises, social service institutions, all spheres of education and health, and commercial enterprises where possible, should become part of the political process. This move brought the Socialist Party two advantages: first, the opportunity to reward its supporters in other political parties; second, to reinforce control over large parts of the country’s institutional infrastructure. Milošević was particularly anxious to bring the University of Belgrade to heel and passed a law to make the deans of faculties government appointees. The measure met with fierce opposition from staff and students but the Socialist Party and their allies were determined to divide the spoils among themselves. The opposition group Together did not survive much longer, dividing into a number of factions with recriminations on all sides.

The world that emerged from the period of hyperinflation looked a very different place from what had existed before. A country had disappeared, but one had barely been constructed to take its place. Ordinary citizens were still reeling from the effects of sanctions, the civil wars in former Yugoslavia and the corruption of the very people who were supposed to be guardians of public order. Little actual help was coming from outside and by 1999 Belgrade was drained, disillusioned and confused.

Knez Miloš Street runs from King Alexander Boulevard to the large road intersection called the Mostarska petlja (
petlja
corresponding in meaning to a “spaghetti junction”), or more often simply Mostar, the name of a kafana that was built hereabouts. The route was known as the Topčider Highway, or Topčiderski drum, until 1872 when it took its name from the man who became knez of Serbia twice. Between 1922 and 1946 it had the grander title of Miloš the Great Street (Ulica Miloša velikog), but the reference to the nineteenth-century knez as “the Great” was dropped after 1945—which is a pity since the origin of this wide and impressive thoroughfare was his idea. The Topčider Highway had some advantages, from his perspective, as a district to develop. It lay at a safe distance from the immediate reach of Ottoman Belgrade’s guns. The way to reach it from the city was through the newly conceived way stations on Terazije, the growth of which he was also trying to stimulate. Unaware that the street would be honoured with his name, Knez Miloš built for himself a palace here and surrounded it with barracks and other military facilities. Very little is left of these projects from the 1830s except for the 1837 Turkish bathhouse (or
amam
) that belonged to the palace and can still be seen in the courtyard at 12 Admiral Guépratte Street topped by a tiled roof and distinctive cupola. As he had done elsewhere, Miloš gave out free parcels of land for building. One story tells how he gave such a plot to one family, only to take it back without warning when he saw that not even so much as a fence was put up around the property. Rulers of Serbia after Miloš continued the trend of developing this particular street in both functional and aesthetic terms.

Miloš provided his soldiers with a makeshift church, but this was replaced in 1863 with a new church at the top of Admiral Guépratte Street, the Church of the Ascension (Vaznesenska crkva), to serve also the religious needs of those living in this expanding suburb some distance from the Cathedral. A new building for the National Assembly was opened on the corner of Knez Miloš and Queen Natalija Streets in 1882. It was, alas, a squat and ugly building, rather small for the purpose of running the country, and replaced before too long. The Ministry of Defence was constructed at the crossroads with Nemanja Street, completed in 1895 but burnt down in 1941, and on the opposite corner from 1908 stood the Ministry of Finance.

Individuals were allowed to build villas and private dwellings on the street, provided that they were of an appropriate grandeur and with the regulation line facing the street. Elsewhere in the city private villas tended to be planned with a garden in front separating family life from the street. Here, however, the city authorities deemed it important that a continuous architectural line was required behind the trees planted the length of the pavement. The street became a chic area at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Everything was neatly planned and regulated, offering a safe environment for the country’s elite. Men of importance would go from one ministry building to another, attending the meetings where they ran the country’s affairs. Industrialists, politicians, actors and public figures lived in their opulent homes, secure in their private world on one of the main roads at the edge of town. It was almost as if someone had designed the street for chaperoned walks by fashionable young men and women among the parks where small concerts were given.

Construction of new government and army buildings in a monumental style of architecture continued in the 1920s and 1930s along Miloš the Great Street. The communists, in power after the Second World War, carried on the trend and built a new federal Ministry of Defence and General Headquarters of the Army of Yugoslavia at the crossroads with Nemanja Street. It was a centre of state activity, graced with government ministries and numerous foreign embassies. In the decades after the split with the Soviet Union, when Yugoslavia was establishing its own identity and place in the world, this long and straight stretch of imposing roadway provided a fine opportunity for prestigious processions. Foreign dignitaries could be driven down the street in a cavalcade of open-topped limousines. The broad pavement provided ample space for flag-waving crowds cheering from the side. Schoolchildren were drafted in to ensure impressive numbers by taking a morning or afternoon from the classroom.