Serbias Unfinished Revolution: What has Really Changed after October 5th?

Bojan Bili

2008 VDM Verlag

Table of Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................... 5 Democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe .................................................................................. 6 Socio-political situation in Serbia characteristics of the ancien rgime ................................. 11 October 5th the turning point .................................................................................................. 16 Youth Movements and Otpor .................................................................................................... 22 Method ............................................................................................................................... 28 Participants ............................................................................................................................... 28 Procedure .................................................................................................................................. 29 Data analysis ............................................................................................................................. 32 Ethical considerations ............................................................................................................... 34 Analysis ............................................................................................................................... 50 Case-wise analysis ..................................................................................................................... 52 Cross-case analysis .................................................................................................................... 66 Discussion............................................................................................................................ 72 Epilogue Resizing the Ship at Sea ....................................................................................... 78 References........................................................................................................................... 80 Appendix A .......................................................................................................................... 86 Appendix B .......................................................................................................................... 88 Appendix C .......................................................................................................................... 88 Appendix D .......................................................................................................................... 90

In deinem Hause Wird laut gebrllt, was Lge ist Aber die Wahrheit Mu schweigen. Ist es so?

Bertold Brecht, Deutschland

Serbias Unfinished Revolution: What has Really Changed after October 5th?

in early October 2000, Timothy Garton Ash (2000) left his study at St Anthonys College, Oxford, and hurriedly headed towards Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. As a historian of modern Europe, he was aware of the fact that the Balkans had been for long producing more history than they could themselves consume (Churchill). However, it was obvious that this time the History offered an unusual insight into its own mechanism and Ash wanted to witness what he will later call the last revolution.

As the streets of Belgrade reverberated with the spirit of Gdansk, Prague, Berlin and Bucharest, everyone who took part in the event did not have any doubt that a whole era was finally drawn to its very end. By removing the last brick of the Wall (Joschka Fischer), Belgrade revolutionaries did away with the politics that stimulated inflammatory nationalism, claimed thousands of human lives and in its paroxysmal stage, turned itself against its own people.

Political actors of these memorable changes, whose denominations vary from revolt to coup dtat, laid the foundations for a new political identity and won a window of possibility (Ackerman, 1994) a window through which they could discern liberal democracy and reinvent their connections with Europe, its values and traditions

***

It has by now become almost platitudinous to argue that the dramatic collapse of communism and the sudden wave of democratization that erupted in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the former Soviet Union in the post-1989 period, constitute a watershed event in the recent European history. In this sense, Pridham (2001) convincingly claims that the process of system change, enabled by the fall of socialist ideology, operated on an unprecedented scale, given that the national cases of regime transformation outnumbered all previous occasions of transition in Europe.

In spite of the fact that the process of democratization taking place in Central and Eastern Europe is characterized by a multitude of interrelated facets, all of which require specific theoretical and methodological considerations, the present thesis focuses on the democratic revolution that took place in Serbia on October 5th, 2000. It is particularly concerned with the idea that youth movements played a decisive role in mobilizing support for democratic revolutions and facilitating regime change (Kuzio, 2006). Thus, the thesis attempts to deepen the understanding of how members of the youth movement Otpor (Resistance), instrumental in overthrowing Slobodan Miloevids autocratic regime, perceive their participation in the most significant event in the countrys recent political history as well as how they make sense of and account for the difficulties involved in the countrys transitional process.

The introductory part of the thesis is divided into four subsections. The first one of these introduces the most important features of democratic revolutions that spread across Eastern Europe and post-Soviet territories towards the end of the 20th and in the beginning of the 21st century. It particularly expounds on three closely related aspects of political transition from communism to liberal democracy, namely those of constitutionalism, dealing with the past, and the role that political elites play in such processes. This is then followed by an elaboration of the socio-political situation in Serbia that immediately preceded and provided the reason for a radical ousting of the autocratic authorities. The section traces the development of Slobodan Miloevids regime from its inception in the late 1980s to its decline in 2000. The penultimate introductory subsection takes a closer look at the October 5th revolution and positions it in the context of other democratic revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe. It also discusses the significance of this event for Serbias political life. The final introductory part examines the role of youth movements in democratic revolutions and concurrently offers the most important information regarding the youth movement Otpor (Resistance) which was instrumental in stimulating citizens to take part in the overthrow of Miloevids regime. This section points to the tradition of student political activity in Serbia and approaches Otpor as an offspring of the 1996-1997 Belgrade student protests.

The second, a more substantive, portion of the thesis starts out with an extensive methodology section that details both data collection strategies as well as the steps taken to analyze the collected material. This is followed by the analysis proper which is presented in a two-step

fashion: the first part consists of concise outlines of all the interviews (case-wise) that comprise the informants general attitude towards their participation in the October 5th revolution and their outlook on the current and future developments of Serbias political life; the second analysis subsection presents a comprehensive description of the coding scheme and thus puts forward a cross-case comparison that highlights similarities and differences in the ways in which the interviewees negotiate and account for the difficulties Serbia has been facing on its way towards democracy and market economy. The thesis finishes with a discussion of the results and a number of concluding remarks that include a self-reflexive look at the applied methodological procedure and its potential for theoretical generalizations. This section finally offers a couple of suggestions for further research within the field of Serbias transitology.

Democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe The collapse of socialist system and the ensuing democratization in Central and Eastern Europe provide a formidable challenge to political scholars who did not anticipate that this momentous upsurge of democratic transitions would take place towards the end of the 20th century (Pridham & Vanhanen, 1994). Not only were they unable to foresee the occurrence of these political and social developments, but Samuel Huntington (1984), a well-known political scientist, actually posited that there was less likelihood that democratization would happen in Eastern Europe than anywhere else in the world. Systematic explanations for the collapse of hegemonic political systems and the emergence of democracy in Eastern Europe have been ever since a recurrent issue on social scientists agenda (c.f., Vanhanen & Kimber, 1994). Such explanations will not be elaborated here as, although it might seem that this string of popular uprisings constitute a single phenomenon, the mere fact that two revolutions are frequently treated as similar does not necessarily mean that the same causal interpretation could be applied to both of them. When discussing this trans-national occurrence it is, thus, advisable to be aware of contextual specificities since the solutions appropriate for one political environment might not be transferable to a different political system. The current section will, however, outline a couple of issues that could constitute a common denominator for democratic revolutions that took place in Central and Eastern Europe and, later on, in post-Soviet territories.

In the light of what has been stated above, it is clear that every attempt to define the so-called democratic revolutions would end up with the ideal typical character of the concept meaning that no single revolution would match it perfectly. It has been actually claimed that due to the fact that the popular mobilizations that took place in Central and Eastern Europe can be positioned on a continuum between democratic revolutions and negotiated transitions to democracy, one should speak of democratic revolutionary tendencies rather than of full-blown revolutions (Thompson, 2004). However, if such tendencies (as has been the case in Eastern Europe in contrast to post-Soviet world, e.g., Hale, 2006) are powerful enough to instigate the irreversible transition to democracy, then the term revolution could be appropriately applied.

Moreover, following Theda Skocpol (1979), a scholar who comparatively studied the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions, political revolutions transform the state, but leave social structures intact. On the other hand, democratic revolutions are only those that while aiming at the establishment of democracy bring about a change in the structure of power relations rather than merely in persons who execute political control. Thus, the process of communist collapse that initiated democratization and had a strong demonstration effect on other revolutions was triggered in East Germany in 1989. This overthrow of a hard-line communist regime subsequently galvanized similar uprisings in Czechoslovakia, Romania (1989), Serbia (2000) and then moved further East to encompass Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004) and Kyrgyzstan (2005) (Hale, 2006). In the time period of two decades, the post-communist world witnessed a series of revolutions that, finally, can be defined as spontaneous popular uprisings peaceful, urbanbased and cross-class in composition which topple unyielding dictators and begin a transition process that leads to the consolidation of democracy (Thompson, 2004, p. 1).

The question necessarily arises as to why democratic revolutions happen. Among a couple of plausible explanations, Thompson (2004) highlights that all the Eastern European countries that underwent a revolutionary transformation experienced economic decline or a severe economic crisis that immediately preceded popular uprising. This economic discontent was usually aggravated by relative deprivation which occurred when citizens of Eastern European countries compared themselves to Western Europeans (this was particularly pronounced in the case of Democratic Republic of Germany). What is more, economic scarcity was usually accompanied by political dissatisfaction as Eastern Europeans grosso modo enjoyed an appreciably lower level of

freedom and human rights in comparison to those who lived in Western consolidated democracies.

Nevertheless, although economic and political frustration can be widespread, they still do not suffice to account for a revolutionary explosion and cannot explain why revolutions happen when they do. A specific triggering mechanism is always needed to produce a revolutionary moment that condenses popular dissatisfaction and turns it into a revolutionary situation. One of these revolutionary triggers that received a considerable amount of attention in the literature and is particularly relevant to the case of Serbia has to do with stolen elections. Many autocratic regimes in Eastern Europe and post-Soviet countries were (and some of those in former Soviet republics still are) quite concerned about maintaining a faade of democracy and political legitimacy. Keeping up democratic appearances used to be usually achieved by holding regular elections. On the other hand, if they did not decide to boycott them, the regime opponents tended to perceive elections as the only opportunity to defeat the authorities and seize political power. It is for this reason that the regimes attempts to manipulate and violate electoral procedures was seen by voters as a direct infringement on their status as citizens that, as in the case of Serbia, instigated mass mobilization and ended with the defeat of the political regime (Thompson, 2004).

Furthermore, an issue that usually accompanies sociological theorizations of the revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe has to do with whether the success or failure of these popular upraisings should be attributed to civic (grass-root) efforts or to elite activities. On the one hand, it is indisputable that civil society (in some instances in its quite rudimentary forms) played a very significant role in all popular protests of this kind (e.g, Diamond, 1994; Linz & Stepan, 1996; Kuzio, 2006). The issue of civic engagement in bringing about a radical social change and, in particular, youth civil movements (that can be held responsible for Serbias revolution) will be addressed in the final introductory subsection. On the other hand, it has been argued that not all attempts to overthrow (semi)authoritarian governments have been successful as they closely depended on elite involvement. It would be therefore erroneous to neglect the impact of political elites on democratization processes.

In this regard, two modern classics of political science, Higley and Burton (1989, p. 29) actually urge those who study democratic breakdowns and democratic transitions to look first at elites and to investigate basic patterns and transformations of elite relationships. Elites could be defined as people who occupy high government positions or control important economic and political resources, such as the media or political parties (DAnieri, 2006). In his attempt to theorize the role that elites play in democratic revolutions, DAnieri (2006) proposed a threshold model of protest which claims that massive demonstrations reach a tipping point (after which their momentum is irreversible) only through coordinated elite action. More specifically, proregime elites tend to defect prior to the revolution, while anti-regime elite intervention facilitates popular participation by increasing the perceived chances of protest success and simultaneously decreasing the perceived costs (through, as DAnieri shows, forming a single opposition movement, making it clear to protesters that they will not be endangered, publicizing the regimes misdeeds, etc). In this sense, successful democratic revolutions are neither essentially popular nor entirely elite driven, but come about as a result of the interaction between the two factors.

Moreover, when discussing political elites in the post-communist context, it has to be emphasised that immediately upon the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, the new political elites were confronted with numerous tasks, the most significant of which comprised dismantling the legacies of the ancien rgime. This excruciating process first and foremost entailed the reestablishment of the rule of law in order to obtain legitimacy and produce political stability. Many authors claim that, given that constitutions did not play a significant role during communist rule, the reinvention of constitutionalism in the region is in itself among the major accomplishment of the transitional process (Elster et al., 1998). Moreover, constitutionmaking in the post-1989 period was perceived not only as a legislative act, but as a symbol of political liberation as well as a revival of national sovereignty (c.f., Zubrzycki, 2001). It is, in that sense, apposite to mention that in his book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Ralf Dahrendorf (1990) argues that the abrupt regime change did not generate any new ideas, but above all meant a return to the concepts of ordered civil society.

More specifically, nascent post-socialist democracies need to legally institutionalize such a radical social change and justify the overthrow of the former autocratic government. The role

which constitutions play in drawing a legal and cultural boundary between the new (proto)democratic and the old regime is of paramount importance. Transitional

constitutionalism matters because it is, first of all, pressingly encountered by all the countries that have been undergoing (or have, by now, finished) the process of transformation from communism and authoritarian rule to capitalism and democracy in Eastern Europe; and, second, more fundamentally, because constitutionalism lies at the heart of how a group of people living at a certain territory establish itself as a political entity governed by durable legal rules.

More specifically, as an embodiment of peoples struggles for personal freedom and efforts to avoid arbitrary political rule, constitutionalism indisputably represents one of the most venerated and enduing features of liberal democratic theory (Schochet, 1979). It essentially entails the reliance upon formal limitations on political power which stems from popular sovereignty and which is nearly universally accepted in the contemporary world (Preuss, 1996; Schochet, 1979). These formal limitations represent either written or unwritten expression of the purposeful and public articulation of a politys normative architecture that aims at confining power holders and ensures protection against arbitrary or absolute rule (Walker, 1993).

In spite of the fact that the previous section pointed to the nearly universal presence of constitutions in the contemporary political systems, it would be erroneous to assume that a mere existence of a constitution in either written or unwritten form necessarily implies that the polity in question practices constitutionalism. Eastern Europes almost half a century of communist experience testifies to the fact that a constitution can be turned into a meaningless document that is ignored by the countrys leadership. Following the collapse of the communist power and a subsequent renewal of the Polish constitutional tradition, Jan Rokita, a member of the Sejm, said the following about the constitution adopted by the previous regime: From the point of national honor, the present constitution is an insult; from the point of law, it is a monstrosity and an oddity; from the point of substantive politics, it is a document devoid of all meaning (as cited in Brzezinski, 1991, p. 49).

Although the countries in Eastern Europe and their paths to democracy differ in a number of important ways, the case of Poland is used here only to illustrate that, as Elster, Offe and Preuss (1998) argue, constitutions did not play a prominent role under communism. The fact that there

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was no real constitutional significance is tightly related to the notion of political freedom being at the heart of constitutionalisms ideological and philosophical principles. Given that, in general, political freedom did not rate high on the communist leaderships agenda, polity was constituted on the basis of one normative standard that of the rule of one man or one group (communist party) what completely subverted the idea of constitutionalism. Dimitrijevic (2005) posits that, despite the fact that communist Eastern European countries had a legislative structure that resembled the one present in modern states, the Party was beyond the institutional framework of the constitutional order having the status of a metaphysical sovereign free to determine the scope of the state and law.

The crucial question within the realm of post-revolutionary constitutionalism pertains to how the process of constitution-making harnesses and channels the revolutionary energies and to what extent it capitalizes on them to solidify the desired social change. Transitional constitutionalism has long-lasting effects since it aims at providing the legal platform on which transition is to take place. In this regard, a complementary issue has to do with the ways in which transitional constitution-making takes into account and responds to past repressive rule. The passage to democracy and its consolidation necessarily entail drawing a demarcation line between the legacies of the past regime and the new (proto)democratic government. An official recognition of the injustices is necessary, first, in order to acknowledge and satisfy the victims of the repressive system and, second, to reconstruct a morally just order that would encourage the public to embrace democratic values (cf., Huyse, 1995). This is nicely captured by Ruti Teitel (1997) who argues that transitional constitutions are simultaneously both backward- and forward-looking and, although appearing in different processes and serving multiple roles, they should be informed by a conception of justice which is distinctively transitional. This important question of how the past is legally and ethically managed will be addressed in further detail in the introductory subsection that deals specifically with Serbias democratic revolution. Before that, the following section will offer an outline of the most prominent features of the sociopolitical situation in Serbia under Slobodan Miloevids regime.

Socio-political situation in Serbia characteristics of the ancien rgime Thompson (2004) claims that the struggle for democracy in Serbia has gone largely unnoticed by studies of democratization in the past decade. This has happened despite the fact that Serbia

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represents an interesting case since it appears that, due to a range of long-term historical cleavages, it has its own path-dependent transitional dynamics and does not exactly follow the pattern of post-communist transitions in other Central and Eastern European countries. Providing an outline of the recent political developments is not an easy task as the sheer dynamics of political life is hardly amenable to summarization.

Nevertheless, a possible departure point would be to note that, as Dimitrijevic rightly (2005) claims, in the wake of the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Serbia witnessed a process in which Yugoslav socialist ideocracy was substituted by a nationalistic ideocracy that inherited from communist collectivism the so-called enemy principle as the crucial element of social life1. This meant that the regime that managed to turn the country into an entity resembling the state and simulating institutionalized political order constantly generated enemies and promoted fear, distrust, desolidarization and a general dissolution of society.

Slobodan Miloevid, a high-ranking official of the Yugoslav League of Communists and subsequently the untouchable leader of its successor Socialist Party of Serbia became a personification of the regimes destructive force. Although it is at this point rather clear that he could be held responsible for a sweeping involution of the Serbian society throughout the 1990s, it should be nevertheless pointed out that the international community used to assume quite ambivalent stances towards his political rule, occasionally recognizing him even as the factor of stability in the Balkans and thus further strengthening his grip on Serbian political life (see e.g., iek, 1999). This incapacity of the international community to fully appreciate the real character of Miloevids rule became particularly pronounced during the 1996-1997 protests which are now remembered as the first serious attempt to overthrow the autocratic authorities. These month long demonstrations represent an important instance in the history of Serbias political life and they will be further examined in the final introductory subsection. Before that, however, a more detailed analysis of the genesis and survival of Miloevids regime is in order.

For an exhaustive analysis of the unusual political coalition between orthodox communists and extreme nationalists, see Vujacic (2003).

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As has been mentioned above, upon the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, most frequently associated with 1989, Serbia was not ready to face the challenges of political modernization. While attempting to secure the legacy of the Yugoslav communist government and consolidate his personal power, Slobodan Miloevid adopted a nationalist legitimation strategy that stimulated aggressive nationalism and heralded ethnic confrontations in the former Yugoslavia (Golubovid, Spasic, & Pavicevic, 2003; Thompson, 2004). Moreover, Miloevid promptly capitalized on the enormous political potential of national populism and abused nationalist sentiments that became particularly destructive in the atmosphere of Yugoslavias dissolution. He thus established himself firmly at the helm of a dangerous political project that was supposed to gather all Serbian people in one state. Practically all material resources that the regime had at its disposal were oriented towards the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo what, in turn, pauperized the country that used to have significant comparative advantages in relation to other socialist states (Golubovid et al., 2003).

In order to subjugate the state apparatus to his command and assure his personal control, Miloevid eliminated alternative power centers by stripping the provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina of their autonomy. This move made the national minorities feel increasingly insecure in the territories that they inhabited for centuries. With such a sweeping domination over all state institutions including the media and backed with a strong presidential constitution, Miloevid was afforded an opportunity for a relatively smooth manipulation of electoral and party laws that provided the authorities with a faade of political legitimacy. It should be noted however that the regime increasingly resorted to electoral manipulations towards the end of its rule, while it enjoyed considerable levels of popular support immediately upon the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the introduction of the multy-party system in 1989. Thus, for example, a newly created Socialist Party of Serbia won nearly 80 per cent of the parliamentary seats in the 1990 elections and Miloevid was elected president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with a majority of 65 per cent (Jakid, 2001; Thompson, 2004). Along with his notorious tactical skills that prevented his reign from descending into full-blown sultanism, Miloevid could safely neglect his political opponents for a good part of his presidential tenure. Scattered, disorganized and beset by their internal confrontations, Serbian opposition leaders hardly ever posed a serious threat to the well consolidated regime.

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Thus, without anyone to restrain his political supremacy, Miloevid systematically usurped economic resources and formed a party oligarchy that was allowed to accumulate enormous wealth in return for its political loyalty (Golubovid et al., 2003). As the members of the nomenklatura were becoming richer, the society was growing poorer and reached the lowest standards of living in comparison with other former Yugoslav republics as well as an extremely high unemployment rate. The economic power of Serbian society progressively declined from 3 300 dollars per capita in 1990 to 1 100 dollars in 1994 to 700 dollars towards the end of the 1990s (Golubovid, 2001).

In relation to this, the legislative activity of the authorities always suited their economic interests. For example, according to the so-called Labour Relations Act, the managers of big state companies, who were themselves appointed on the basis of the party criteria, were afforded absolute prerogatives in dealing with their own personnel. As in many other transitional economies, the state frequently acted as a grabbing hand that discriminated against firms with low bargaining power to maximize the private interests of politicians and bureaucrats (Hellman, Jones, & Kaufmann, 2000). A small number of loyal businessmen were allowed special trading conditions that circumvented market mechanisms and turned them into powerful oligarchs who, in turn, started manipulating politicians and controlling the media to secure their wealth at the expense of the social interest.

In this regard, Hellman et al. (2000) conceptually unbundled corruption in transitional economies differentiating between influence, administrative corruption and state capture. Whereas influence refers to the firms capacity to impact on business flows without recourse to private payments, administrative corruption actually comprise bribing public officials to distort relevant regulation. However, state capture is particularly in evidence in transitional economies such as Serbia and pertains to shaping the formation of the basic rules of the game (i.e. laws, rules, decrees and regulations) through non-transparent private payments to public officials (Hellman et al., 2000, p. 3). State capture necessarily results in substantive private gains to captor firms, on the one hand, and considerable social costs, on the other, as it radically weakens state structure and its administrative capacity (see e.g., Ganev, 2007). Moreover, with the aim to homogenise the population around government authority, Miloevids regime ruthlessly exploited the media. The Information Act was passed in the

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Serbian Parliament to restrict media freedom and either shut down or bring the unyielding media producers under the state control. The state indoctrination, along with a widespread economic downfall and general cultural regression, reached its climax with the dissemination of a range of conspiracy theories. The regime tended to propagate the idea that the whole world, spearheaded by Vatican and Western countries, was against Yugoslavia. In such a political constellation, Yugoslavia was allegedly supposed to defend the international law and wage a don quixotic war against the new world order. The internal isolation of the country was further aggravated by the external isolation brought about by the economic and political sanctions of the international community that completely devastated Serbian already fragile economy and made it very difficult to leave the country.

It is then clear that throughout the 1990s, Slobodan Miloevids regime was systematically promoting the so-called psychology of survival (Golubovid et al., 2003). As a result of this, fear was established as the most predominant feeling governing social life. In such a political system in which the judiciary was plagued by corruption, citizens felt helpless and physically insecure. Beleaguered by constant existential uncertainty and fearing that something worse could still happen, a vast majority of Serbian population complied with the regimes ever more taxing measures that discouraged them from engaging in political activity and indirectly consolidated the status quo. In this regard, while discussing political culture in todays Serbia, Golubovid (2005) maintains that both primary (within the family) and secondary (within social and political organizations) socializations are burdened by the heritage of the patriarchal past that deprives an individual of their subjectivity and produces a political subject rather than a citizen.

Golubovid (2005) goes on to argue that the authoritarian heritage stems from two basic sources: the first one of these is associated with the traditional, patriarchal society that revolves around patriarchal family established on the principle of submission and subordination (women to men, children to parents, individual to the collective); the second source that keeps perpetuating the authoritarian heritage is related to the authoritarian system which, while itself established on the basis of conservativism and traditionalism, promotes the party and the party state as the supreme political and social arbiters.

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Moreover, although Golubovid (2005) offered some possible socio-psychological mechanisms that could account for the genesis of Miloevids devastating rule, the above concise account still begs the question of how such a regime could survive for more than a decade in a neighbourhood of either well-established or nascent European democracies. In his book The Culture of Power in Serbia Eric Gordy (1999) ponders exactly this issue which, according to him, contradicted most measures used to predict the success or failure of political regimes. The government that waged four losing wars, produced more than half a million refugees and generated the greatest hyperinflation in modern history should not have lasted that long. The answer that Gordy derived from his multifarious investigations of the everyday life in Serbia suggests that the regimes successful strategies of self-preservation are closely associated with the destruction of alternatives. According to his plausible explanation, the regime perpetuated itself not by seeking direct support of the electorate and thus working in its own favour, but by making alternatives to its rule unavailable. The cumulative result of the destruction of alternatives was the preservation of the regime, but it has to be emphasized that the regimes interventions were naturally the most successful in those areas of everyday life that are most amenable to control on the part of the state, such as electoral and legislative processes, media or the value and supply of the national currency (Gordy, 1999).

Ultimately, in 1999, determined to resolve a decade long problem that the Albanian population of the Serbian province of Kosovo posed to Serbian authorities, Miloevid initiated a large scale ethnic cleansing that forced thousands of Kosovo Albanians to seek refuge in neighbouring Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro. In an apparent effort to avert yet another humanitarian catastrophe, NATO started a three month long bombing campaign that further devastated Serbias infrastructure and resulted in numerous civil casualties. The 1999 bombing marked a complete exhaustion of the regimes political resources which became manifest when a candidate of democratic opposition defeated Miloevid in the 2000 presidential elections. Miloevids reluctance to acknowledge a new state of affairs prompted waves of revolt after which he finally resigned. This event is generally perceived as one of the most significant in Serbias modern history and it is also the focal point of the current thesis. It will therefore be described in more detail in the following section. October 5th the turning point

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Once the socio-political situation in Serbia throughout the 1990s has been sketched, the penultimate introductory subsection will take a closer look at the Serbian democratic revolution that put an end to Miloevids rule. It will proceed in a chronological sequence by providing a brief account of the events that immediately preceded and brought about the revolution and it will then continue with the most important information about the popular upraising itself, its protagonists and effects. The current section will finally position Serbias revolution in the context of other similar events in Central and Eastern Europe and in that vein discuss a couple of issues that are, albeit to different extent, applicable to all of them.

It has been shown above that a decade of Miloevids rule left Serbia impoverished and disorganized. In an atmosphere that upid (2001) described as the rule of controlled chaos, Miloevid committed a mistake that would prove to be fatal he brought forward presidential elections to September 24, 2000. Thompson (2004) maintains that, like other autocratic rulers who meddle with electoral policies, Miloevid overestimated the level of support on which he would be able to count and, concurrently, underrated the political capacity of his opponents who passionately seized the opportunity to remove him from power. The opposition leaders had already formed a fragile union that was now waiting for a catalyst which would help resolve its mobilization difficulties and provide it with a momentum for a historical change. The elections proved to be such a trigger and Miloevids opponents were determined not to lose this chance.

Realizing that defeating Miloevid would be possible only if they acted together, the opposition leaders decided to form a coalition known as the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) a broad electoral alliance that comprised 18 parties representing all parts of the political spectrum. This diverse coalition had two pillars the Democratic Party led by Zoran inid, on the one hand, and the Democratic Party of Serbia, led by Vojislav Kotunica, on the other. Surprisingly enough, Vuk Drakovid, a long-standing critic of the regime was not satisfied with his potential share of power within the DOS and thus refused to join the assembled coalition a move from which his political option, widely popular towards the beginning of the 1990s, would not recover for years to come.

The DOS, massively assisted by both international community and Serbian civil society, had to come up with its presidential candidate who would be Miloevids major rival. Of course, this

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was not an easy task as many opposition leaders had their own ambitions, most notably Zoran inid. However, they agreed on Vojislav Kotunica who proved to be the most suitable candidate for at least two reasons. First of all, Kotunica was perceived as a moderate nationalist who publicly condemned the NATO bombardment and spoke against the International War Crimes Tribunal. In this regard, as Thompson (2004) rightly observes, it was hardly possible to accuse Kotunica of conniving with the West and wanting to betray Serbian political interests. Secondly, Kotunica managed to establish and maintain a reputation of an honest, modest and incorruptible politician that in the atmosphere of corruption and almost complete societal criminalization was quite an achievement.

With practically all oppositional forces rallied around him, Vojislav Kotunica defeated Slobodan Miloevid already in the first round of the presidential elections that took place on September 24, 2000. This was apparent due to the parallel vote tabulation activities that the DOS organized as it could not rely on the official electoral statistics. Taken aback with such a development, Miloevid ordered the Federal Election Commission to stop the vote count and banish all opposition representatives from its session. The Commission subsequently announced that Miloevid won 38.62 per cent in contrast to Kotunicas 48.96 per cent. Thus, the Commission distorted the numbers in a desperate attempt to enable Miloevid to buy some time and force his opponent into a second round that was scheduled for October 8th. However, the opposition, confident about the victory of its candidate, refused to comply with Miloevids intention and resorted instead to massive demonstrations. This further exasperated the regime after which the Constitutional Court completely annulled the results of the presidential poll. The day after the Constitutional Courts decision, on October 5th, thousands of people (the estimates range from 500 000 to 1, 5 million) headed towards Belgrade to finally unseat the recalcitrant regime. The revolutionaries seized the Federal Parliament and set it on fire. They also devastated the Belgrade headquarters of the state-owned radio and television agency (RTS) that used to be the central platform for the regimes propaganda which earned it an illustrative name among those who opposed the regime TV Bastille. Strong police forces that surrounded the Parliament promptly defected, and in spite of the fact that the upraising claimed two human lives, the vast majority of participants remained surprisingly peaceful. The revolution reached its climax when, on the following day, October 6th, Miloevid appeared on the liberated Serbian

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television acknowledging his defeat and saying that he would no longer participate in Serbias political life. In fact, soon after and not without tensions among the new authorities, he was extradited to The Hague Tribunal where he died in 2006, thus leaving his marathonian trial for war crimes committed in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo without the Tribunals final judgement.

*** In the wake of the October 5th revolution, many political analysts looked for the reasons that could explain why this attempt to oust Miloevids regime was successful. At the end of the day, it is widely known that Miloevid used to steal both presidential and parliamentary elections and manipulate the state media in order to secure his political supremacy. The question therefore arose as to why the citizens of Serbia became particularly sensitive to the regimes machinations and perceived them as a trigger for a radical change.

In his informative article Why did it work this time? Pribidevid (2001) claims that at least five reasons could account for Miloevids defeat: first of all, he argues, the people of Serbia were economically exhausted what gave the 2000 elections a referendum character where the voters opted against Miloevid rather than in favour of any particular party; second, towards the end of his rule, Miloevid was surrounded with a clique of bureaucrats who were his only source of information what, in turn, made him lose the sense of reality; third, although traditionally favoured by the working class, Miloevid could not count on their support any longer. The workers protest was initiated on September 29th when the Kolubara coal miners went on strike thus endangering the supply of fuel for Serbias electricity plants; fourth, at the apex of his popularity, Miloevid chose the majority election system, which this time directly countered the interests of his political party. Finally, as mentioned above, he had to confront Vojislav Kotunica, who enjoyed considerable support among the electorate.

However, although he offers a plausible account, Pribidevid (2001) fails to address a complementary issue concerning the interaction between civic and elite activities in brining about a successful regime change. Civic efforts were in Serbias case most notably represented through a youth movement known as Otpor (Resistance) that was instrumental in mobilizing peoples support for and participation in the democratic revolution. Members of this

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movement, their perceptions and experiences, are the focal point of the current thesis. The organizations developmental path and its most important features deserve particular attention and will be therefore outlined in the following subsection. Before that, it is appropriate to briefly examine the role of both old and new political elites in the context of the October 5th uprising as it has been argued that their impact on the success of post-communist revolutions, in general, has not been sufficiently appreciated (DAnieri, 2006).

It has been already mentioned that pro-regime elites tend to defect prior to the revolution, while anti-regime elite intervention facilitates popular participation (DAnieri, 2006). This was undoubtedly the case with the 2000 Serbian democratic revolution. Thompson (2004) posits that, at closer inspection, a significant element of planning can be revealed in the Serbian uprising. A substantive number of elite members that were formerly oriented towards the regime started supporting and financing protest preparation, most likely because they feared that their own interests would be at stake after Miloevids removal. On the other hand, as has been outlined above, the opposition leaders were unified more strongly than ever in the past what created an impression that these protests might be successful and emboldened people to take part in them.

It is, in relation to this, particularly significant to take a look at the behaviour of the army and the state security forces. Prior to the elections, one of Miloevids most faithful generals and the Army Chief of Staff Neboja Pavkovid ominously announced that the army was interested in the elections outcome, probably implying that he would be ready to recourse to military power to secure Miloevids victory. However, confronted with widespread defection, but, more likely, as a result of a deal that the opposition leaders had with him well in advance, Pavkovid subsequently proclaimed the armys neutrality and support for the results of the election process. This, of course, stimulated the protesters as it ensured their safety (DAnieri, 2006). It is therefore symptomatic that (again not without tensions among the post-revolutionary authorities) Pavkovid remained in his influential position long after the revolution (de KrnjevidMiskovic, 2001).

Similarly, Francisco (1996) maintains that the decision of state security forces to either repress or ignore the protest is decisive for the course of the revolutionary movement. DAnieri (2006)

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actually posits that it is the role of security services that makes the greatest difference between the failed and the successful protests. As long as state security forces remain loyal, the government is considerably less vulnerable to mass demonstrations. However, clinging to power becomes a sub-optimal solution when the state monopoly on violence starts to decline as a result of state security defection. Thus, one of the keys to the success of the October 5th revolution, at least in the sense of unseating Miloevid, lies in the fact that the DOS leaders negotiated with the state security forces to allow them access to key buildings by declaring themselves neutral or even actively supporting the protests (DAnieri, 2006). However, this sort of clandestine political compromises with powerful people who are primarily concerned about preserving their own positions inevitably has political costs and thus, as it will become quite apparent in the Serbian case, endangers long-term revolutionary effects.

***

It has been shown that the role which elites play in producing a post-communist revolution lies at the heart of the discussion on whether such uprisings really deliver appreciable political and social changes. Given that the new authorities were in many instances dependent on, if not closely associated with, the representatives of the old regime, a long sought discontinuity with political practices of the past could rarely occur. Therefore, a comparative analysis would readily demonstrate that the popular protests that took place in Central and Eastern Europe were often a source of disillusionment since they did not manage to install a democratic system as quickly as it was expected by those who brought them about (Thompson, 2004).

More specifically, in spite of the fact that the full range of societal destruction, marked by the total criminalization and exhaustion of all economic resources, became apparent upon the collapse of Miloevids regime, in the wake of October 5th, Serbia entered a period of vigorous political and economic reconstruction under the Prime Minister Zoran inid. This is evident from a sweeping empirical investigation done by Golubovid et al. (2003) that explored the ways in which 300 Serbian citizens experienced the last years of the former regime as well as the period after October 5th, 2000. The authors were particularly interested in the motives that propelled their interviewees to either take part in or refrain from collective actions aiming at a radical social change. Their 2003 study, closer to the turnover day, documented widespread

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feelings of optimism and belief in the potential for an authentic societal transformation. In that sense, the October 5th, was not perceived merely as a shift of political authorities, but as a precious opportunity for forming an organized and ideologically re-defined political community that would enable the people to start living normal lives.

However, with the passage of time, political differences within the DOS were growing bigger and the coalition practically disintegrated in 2004 when the Democratic Party of Serbia decided to withdraw its deputies from the Parliament. Moreover, Serbias reformatory course received a severe blow when the Prime Minister Zoran inid was assassinated in March 2003. This assassination, from which Serbias democratic public will hardly recover, blatantly showed that a coupling of the old and the new authorities, supported with the survived security and army structures, proved particularly resilient and eager to obstruct Serbia on its way towards democracy and the rule of law. It is also of relevance for the current research to note that one of inids closest colleagues, edomir Jovanovid, was not satisfied with the direction that the Democratic Party took in the wake of inids assassination. After an unsuccessful attempt to constitute a fraction within the Party, he formed his own Liberal Democratic Party that claims to be the authentic successor of inids political course. In the light of such circumstance, the 2005 replication of the Golubovid et al.s study found that the initial euphoria was substituted by disappointment and resignation (Golubovid, 2005).

The particularities of Serbias democratic revolution cannot be appreciated without understanding the evolutionary path and organizational principles of Otpor a youth movement that was crucial in stimulating people to take part in the uprising. The following and concurrently final introductory subsection will, first, consider the role of youth movements in Eastern and post-Soviet democratic revolutions and then turn to a closer examination of Otpor.

Youth Movements and Otpor It has been claimed that elite coordination is particularly important for a successful outcome of a popular upraising. The discussion of elite involvement should not, however, obscure the fact that every revolutionary process critically depends on its bottom up aspect. In this sense, an interesting feature of the recent democratic revolutions, ranging from the Philippines peoples power protests in the mid-1980s to Kyrgyzstan in 2005, is that young people played the central

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role in mobilizing support and facilitating regime change (Kuzio, 2006). It has been actually claimed that the popular uprisings would not have taken place in Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004) if it had not been for the energy and enthusiasm of the youth. Moreover, the youth movements in these countries, Otpor, Kmara and Pora (respectively), had very similar organizational structures characterized by a horizontal and decentralized network divided into smaller autonomous units. It is obvious that there was a lot of inter-state transfer of revolutionary knowledge that drew upon successful examples and comprised a variety of organizational matters, protest tools and strategies as well as training schemes which were then applied to the specific political atmosphere of the country in question. It should not be forgotten however that autocratic political regimes also learn on the basis of the preceding cases what, in turn, forces the protestors to come up with innovative solutions to resist political repression.

One could wonder about the reasons that propel young people to take such an active part in political activities that can sometimes endanger their lives. Kuzio (2006) maintains that the young readily engage in a revolutionary process because they simply have less to lose. They are not concerned about families, established careers or financial matters and are thus more willing to take risks. On the other hand, young people are in general preoccupied for their future and in that sense can perceive election fraud as an infringement on the opportunities for fulfilling their life ambitions. Moreover, youth NGOs often acted as a cohesive force that managed to overcome political divisions which characterized older generations and played an important role in the creation of unified democratic opposition blocs. A new post-communist generation was appreciably less tolerant of the remnants of the communist past as it was much better informed about the alternatives to living under an autocratic regime (Kuzio, 2006). In relation to this, it should be noted that young people are much more conversant with the latest communication technology. They frequently drew upon rapid communication channels to circumvent the authorities and reach a great number of people through emails and mass messages (e.g., Castells et al., 2007).

More specifically, Serbia has quite a long tradition of student protests, particularly in the postWorld War II period (1954, 1966, 1968, 1971, 1989; Milid & ikarid, 1998). Similarly, under Miloevids regime, the country witnessed more than a decade of sustained political resistance that was usually spearheaded by the youngest members of the academic community. For

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example, as early as 1991, on March 9, the Serbian Renewal Movement, led by Vuk Drakovid, organized a mass protest against the reporting of the state-controlled television that they rightly perceived as a harbinger of numerous ills which would affect the country in the years to come (Binnendijk & Marovic, 2006). Miloevid brutally responded with tear gas and water cannons as well as with army tanks that patrolled the streets of Belgrade. The protesters were forced to retreat and their leader was arrested. This event, the first to challenge Miloevid practically at the apex of his power, assumes a prominent place in the history of Serbias political opposition.

However, Otpor, the focal point of the current thesis, has its immediate precedent in the 19961997 student protest. These protests, which constituted a formative political experience for many of those who would bring down Miloevid a couple of years later, were organized as a response to the falsification of the 1996 local elections in Serbia. The ruling party distorted the election results in an attempt to keep its positions in the countrys major urban centres (including Belgrade) in which the opposition scored an indisputable victory. The student protests started in Belgrade on 18 November 1996 and spread to other cities throughout Serbia. The Belgrade students, exposed to very low winter temperatures, constantly protested for 120 days regardless of weekends or holidays. Four months after the elections, Miloevid recognized defeat of his party at the local level thus allowing the local assemblies to be constituted by the representatives of the opposition parties. Moreover, in spite of his numerous machinations aimed at obstructing the students, the pro-regime Chancellor of the University of Belgrade was forced to resign. The protests finally ended on 12 March 1997.

Two Serbian sociologists, Anelka Milid and Lilijana ikarid (1998), published the book Generation in Protest based on their research that dealt with both social and personal characteristics of the students involved in the 1996-1997 protests. Particular attention was paid to determining the extent to which the family socialisation process impacted on the formation of a personality with a pronounced pro-social activism and interest in the participation in political life. The authors surveyed three groups of students: the protagonists those who led the movement and organized different protest activities; the walkers students that took part in the walks and other actions; and the non-participants that acted as a control group. They found that the authoritarian parental style was two times rarer within the group of protagonists than in the group of non-participants. Moreover, the study demonstrated that, as had been

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expected, there was a positive correlation between the participation of students in the 19961997 protests and the participation of their parents in the 1968 worldwide student rebellion. In that sense, the student protest had a political socialisation function as it consolidated social, political and cultural identities of the participants and made them acquire the necessary courage for combating the regime until its removal (Milid & ikarid, 1998).

As Lazid (1999) rightly argues, such a long duration of the 1996-1997 student protests had a remarkably delegitimating effect on Miloevids party. The sheer number and perseverance of the students frustrated the authorities and, as Lazid (1999, p. 20) says relieved the citizens of fear, the penultimate guardian of the regime. Although the students thought that the governments days were numbered, it became clear that, while he acknowledged his defeat at the local level, Miloevid still remained an untouchable power in the country. Just a year after the Belgrade protests, the Serbian government passed the University Act that practically annihilated academic liberties and autonomy of the university. According to the Act, the government was in charge of appointing all deans and chancellors and the university teachers, regardless of their position in the professional hierarchy, were forced to sign work agreements that were actually expressions of loyalty to the authorities.

Therefore, the student movement Otpor (Resistance), the focal point of the current thesis, was established by a group of the University of Belgrade students in October 1998 (Otpor u nadlenosti policije, 2000) as a reaction to the repressive University Act. The movement quickly spread to other university centres and the activists started to publicly voice their requests for democratisation of the country. Otpor had an easily recognizable visual identity embodied in a stylized fist that was designed on the basis of the French World War II Resistance Movements symbol. The fist was perceived among the citizens as a mark of courage and determination (Otpor u nadlenosti policije, 2000).

As mentioned above, according to the majority of the accounts, Otpor was a rhizoid organization with a number of decentralized and practically leaderless networks across the country (Kuzio, 2006). The core of the group comprised only a couple of students based in Belgrade who coordinated the protests, but the activists around Serbia were free to act at their own discretion. The movement, whose activities largely drew upon Western theories of non-violent

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resistance based on Gene Sharps strategies (Sharp, 1973), mostly incorporated people born in the 1970s and 1980s. However, towards October 5th the movement grew exponentially, went beyond the control of its academic originators and gathered people of different professional and political orientations around the idea of overthrowing Miloevid.

In the light of the past failures to achieve a favourable result, Serbian organizers wanted to learn from the past and were aware that sustaining a long-term popular presence in the streets as the one in 1996-1997 would be a very difficult task. Otpor strategists realized that they would need to wait for a trigger which would provide them with an opportunity to mobilize at least one million protesters who would confront the regime. Miloevids blatant election fraud in September 2000, which has been outlined above, proved to be such a critical point.

Moreover, the second objective of Otpor was to make sure that Serbian security units would defect and basically allow the demonstrators to accomplish their goals. In that sense, the organization was particularly concerned with undermining the loyalties and obedience of the regimes police and military structures as it was rightly perceived that the regimes monopoly of physical force was critical for consolidating its political domination. Thus, the movement organizers paid particular attention to developing strategies that would increase the costs of repression and discourage state security forces from taking action against them (Binnendijk & Marovic, 2006).

The major strategy comprised rapid mass mobilization that would, first of all, further harm the regimes legitimacy and also, more practically, clog the narrow streets of Belgrade thus hindering the movement of people and vehicles. On the other hand, the activists were aware that large crowds could not be easily controlled what posed a risk for their non-violent strategies. It is for that reason that the movement organized training programs to teach volunteers how to contain a potentially explosive situation and confront police and military personnel. Otpor street performances, with which they tried to raise peoples awareness and mobilize their support for a social change, often had a carnivalesque character (see DragicevicSesic, 1997) and humour and ridicule were crucial in undermining fear of the authorities (Kuzio, 2006). The activists mocked the post-titoist socialist-nationalist regime also through an adroit

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use of music that was juxtaposed to a hybrid musical style promoted by the regime as an apparently authentic expression of Serbias music tradition (c.f., Collin, 2001; Gordy, 1999).

Needless to say, as other similar movements, Otpor was perceived as a danger by the Serbian authorities. The fact that the movement was generously assisted by the Western countries earned its members the label of national traitors and terrorists. The regime actually introduced a new anti-terrorist legislation in order to destroy the movement and prevent its members from protesting. As a result of this, the police arrested and often brutally treated more than 2000 activists and 400 opposition party members only in the period between May and June 2000 (Otpor u nadlenosti policije, 2000). In spite of such police repression, Otpor managed to successfully complete its mission and mobilize around a million people who unseated Miloevid on October 5, 2000. Torn by internal tensions that aroused in the wake of the revolution, the movement did not succeed in turning itself into a political party. It officially disintegrated in 2004 when some of its leading members collectively joined the Democratic Party.

Moreover, in spite of the fact that Otpor was celebrated both in and out of the country, it seems that it did not provoke a lot of social scientists interest. Although Serbian sociologists cannot be excused for not producing an exhaustive analysis of the phenomenon that marked the countrys political scene in the last decade of the 20th century, the lack of such a study might be accounted for by the fact that, as will be discussed in the following section, there was hardly any formal registration of the activists, which makes it difficult for researchers to approach them. Also, in the wake of the revolution, the movements importance and presence in the public sphere sharply subsided and with its numerous conflicts, the organization became but a reflection of the plethora of diametrically opposed ideological positions that keep characterizing Serbias political life.

There are, however, three exceptions: first, Naumovid (2006) offered a rather theoretical account about Otpor as a complex and even contradictory social movement heavily influenced, both financially and ideologically, by Western countries. This quite subjectivist interpretation, which is not particularly relevant for the current research, was criticized by Golubovid (2007) for affording the foreign factor a primary role in overthrowing Miloevids regime and thus practically underrating the contribution of Otpor activists.

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Moreover, on the basis of newspapers reporting and questionnaires distributed to 600 Otpor activists in the second half of October 2000, Ilid (2001) particularly emphasized Otpors capacity to articulate and amortize divergent political ideologies with the aim of mobilizing support for regime changes that were supposed to precede much more radical improvements of the social system. The author showed that Otpor lacked a personalized cult symbol that would embody what the activists would be for and had, instead, Slobodan Miloevid as a symbol of what they struggled against (Ilid, 2001). Finally, Collin (2007) devoted one chapter of his book on young rebels to Otpor where he, in a popular style and thus rather superficially (although on the basis of interviews with some of the most prominent activists), discusses the strategies that the movement used to resist the autocratic authorities.

Interestingly enough, I was not able to trace any qualitative studies in which the members of Otpor were directly approached and systematically interviewed about their perceptions of the post-October political developments. The present thesis therefore aims at starting to fill this void by exploring how the former Otpor movement activists, people with the highest stakes in the regime change, look at their participation in the October 5th revolution seven years after it took place as well as how they make sense of and account for the difficulties that Serbia has been facing in its transitional process.

Method Participants Recruiting participants for the current study was informed by the fact that there is no systematic documentation about the studied population that would include all Otpor activists. According to Ilid (2001), even the lists of activists that could be found are incomplete and often irrelevant for research purposes because many of those who did not have the activist status were tightly associated with the organization and involved in its activities. Although the number of activists fluctuated through time, Ilid reports that, according to the Otpor central office in October 2000, the movement had around 60 000 followers, the number that he, on the basis of his own recruiting experiences with the population, considers exaggerated.

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The sample for the current study included 11 Otpor activists. In order to maximize variation in a small sample, the composition was based on two criteria: geographic heterogeneity and political orientation. The persons known to the researcher were asked to locate information-rich cases in one small provincial town (3 members) in Serbia (20 000 residents), one regional centre (Novi Sad, approx. 500 000 residents, 3 members) and the capital Belgrade (approx. 2 million residents, 5 members). The geographic heterogeneity criterion pertained to the assumption that differing opportunities for engagement in political activity as well as different levels of economic development and life standard (provincial vs. urban environments) might be reflected in the way in which the participants experienced their involvement in October 5th and in which they talk about the present-day situation. Similarly, with a view to the second criterion, the informants political orientation, the sample included those Otpor activists that were members of the governing political party at the time of the interviews (Democratic Party), those that belonged to one of the democracy oriented opposition parties (Liberal Democratic Party) as well as those that were no longer politically active (4, 3, 4, respectively). It was thought that different political orientations might colour the participants perception of the event in question.

Moreover, the participants in the present study were recruited through the snowball sampling an approach for locating information-rich informants whose number increases as they themselves suggest additional participants (c.f., Patton, 2002). This is an appropriate (purposeful) sampling strategy given that, as has been already stated, the movement disintegrated in 2004 without leaving a centralized database that would allow access to its former members. Intensity/extreme case sampling, that would include only the movement leaders or those members that were most publicly known, was initially considered, but ultimately decided against as this strategy oriented towards outstanding examples would not be appropriate for an organization that is allegedly rhizoid and without a leader (c.f., Patton, 2001). However, although the most prominent members could have been identified, this would not be in accordance with the research question that aimed to take into account a variety of experiences of Otpor ordinary members rather than focus on the most intense cases.

Procedure Data collection was conducted in November 2007 by means of mp3-recorded semi-structured interviews lasting between 40 minutes and 1,5 hours. All participants were interviewed face-to-

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face in a place convenient to them (their hometowns in Serbia). Interview has been selected as a data collection method for the present study since the researcher, rather than focusing on factual information, was interested in gaining insight in the meanings attached to the event in question (Patton, 2001). Semi-structured interviews, in particular, allow for establishing a conversational style and stimulate exploration of emergent themes while remaining focused on a predetermined subject (Patton, 2001). Observation would not have been a viable research method here since the study was essentially concerned with a past event, whereas focus groups, although plausible, would not have been sufficiently conducive to the informants individual narrative (Patton, 2001).

The interview guide with the overall themes was composed on the basis of the relevant bibliography and used in the interviews to ensure that all themes pertinent to the research questions were covered. The interview guide was developed in detail as all important issues were specified in advance. This, however, does not mean that all the questions were asked in the same order to all respondents since efforts were made to ascertain that every interview, while touching upon the relevant issues, has a spontaneous conversational flow. Of course, only the most important questions within each interview guide category were selected in case it was made clear to the researcher that a participant did not have an hour and a half at their disposal. Please refer to the Appendix A for a complete interview guide.

As it can be seen, every interview started out with a broadly formulated question Could you please tell me how you got involved in the October 5th revolution? The question provided the participants with an opportunity to freely narrate a biographical episode that revolved around the democratic revolution, comprising thoughts, feelings and behaviours that propelled and accompanied their participation in the studied event. This was done in such a manner because Daiute and Lightfoot (2004) as well as Elliott (2005) claim that initial interview stages should afford the respondent sufficient discursive space that can personalize the interview. The introductory stage is then characterized with a rather restricted interviewers intervention.

Once the narrative part was over, the informants were asked for clarifications and examples in order to enhance the quality of responses and deepen the researchers understanding of the participants opinions and experiences. As the interview guide shows, the major question in this

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section had to do with the informants expectations from the October 5th revolution. This question is important in the sense of establishing a sort of a benchmark against which the revolutions achievements would be subsequently evaluated.

Similarly, given that the success of the October uprising was accounted for by a set of sometimes divergent theories (e.g., Pribidevid, 2001; Naumovid, 2006; Thompson, 2004), it was interesting to see, in the first post-narrative interview section, what the participants themselves would identify as the main reason that could be held responsible for Miloevids final overthrow.

Moreover, given that both Ilid (2001) and Naumovid (2006) claim that the movement subsided immediately upon the revolution, the respondents were asked whether they were still politically active at the time of the interviews. It was then discussed how the fact that they were (or were not) engaged in political activism after the revolution could be relevant for their perception of the present-day political situation in Serbia. This interview section was in general devoted to the respondents perception of difference and their evaluations of todays Serbia. I wanted to see to what extent the informants would confirm Golubovids (2005) finding that in the wake of inids assassination, the most predominant feelings among the electorate were those of disillusionment and resignation.

The following set of interview questions examined the interviewees perceptions of the role of political elites in the wake of the revolution. It has been said that elite coordination is the key to a successful democratic uprising (DAnieri, 2006). However, Adam and Tomi (2002) have shown that post-socialist elites have various social and historical origins and often include (more or less ideologically altered) members of the ex-communist nomenklatura who might obstruct the reformist course of the new authorities. The elite question is, as Eyal and Townsley (1995, p. 723) one of the most salient political concerns in the region and it was therefore important to see how the movement members discuss the issue. Elite transformations are thus at the heart of whether such a huge social action as the October 5th revolution can be considered completed.

This is tightly related to a set of questions concerning the process of mastering the criminal past that revolved around the issue of lustration which would prevent the members of the former regime from assuming publicly significant positions. Trkulja (2005, p. 96) argued that there was

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a completely failed lustration attempt in Serbia, so I was interested in finding out whether the respondents would agree with such a statement and, if yes, how they would explain the lack of political will for the application of the Lustration Act.

At the end of every interview, the informants had an opportunity to take a look at the future of Serbias transition and add any aspect that they might have considered relevant to the topic of the study and which was not covered by the interview guide. Once the most salient interview topics were discussed, the participants were asked how they felt throughout the interview and whether there were any questions that they found problematic or inappropriate (c.f., Patton, 2001). Such feedback was taken into account in the subsequent interviews.

A context protocol was written immediately upon the completion of every interview in order to facilitate contextualization of responses in the data analysis. The documentation sheet (available in the Appendix B) was adopted from Flick (1997) and modified to include both the crucial demographic information about the interviews and the most salient interview properties.

The interviews were consecutively transcribed verbatim meaning that a thorough orthographic transcript of all verbal utterances was produced. Given that the present study focuses on what was said rather than how it was said, the circumstances of speech production did not need to be specifically represented in the transcript (Cook, 1995). Paralanguage was taken into account solely in those cases in which it was particularly pronounced (e.g., a long pause, laugh, etc.). Verbatim transcription strategy, on the one hand, afforded the opportunity for the interviewer to remain attentive and focused during the interview itself and, on the other, ensured that the transcript retains all the necessary interview information in a way most closely approximate to its original nature. Transcription process clearly informs the early analytical stages and helps the researcher to obtain a far more thorough understanding of the collected data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). In this sense, some authors go so far as to argue that transcribing should be perceived as a key phase of data analysis within interpretative qualitative methodology (Bird, 2005).

Data analysis Once the interviews had been transcribed, they were analyzed by using inductive thematic analysis. Thematic analysis is generally perceived as a foundational method for qualitative

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analysis given that all qualitative approaches, albeit to different extent, comprise thematizing meaning (Holloway & Todres, 2003). Broadly put, thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analyzing and reporting patterns within data and it has been promoted by Boyatzis (1998). In spite of the fact that theme identification is one of the most fundamental tasks in qualitative research, there is for the time being no consensus on what exactly constitutes a theme (Ryan & Bernard, 2003). Boyatzis (1998) defines a theme as a pattern in the information that at minimum describes and organizes the possible observations and at maximum interprets aspects of the phenomenon (p. 161). A theme captures an important and recurrent response or meaning within the data set and is dependent on the research question rather than on any quantifiable measures (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006).

Inductive (data-driven) thematic analysis has been selected for the current study as it is suitable for providing a rich account of the most predominant themes in the entire data set. Braun and Clarke (2006) maintain that this is a particularly pertinent method when, as it is the case here, investigating under-researched areas or working with participants whose views on the topic are not known.

The analysis proceeded in four closely related analytical phases. In the first phase the entire data set was coded by systematically reading and re-reading the transcripts and identifying basic segments of the raw data that could be meaningfully assessed in relation to the research question (c.f., Boyatzis, 1998). Coding was performed manually by using highlighters and writing notes on the analyzed text. Once all data have been initially coded, the second phase of the analysis consisted of the attempts to sort the different codes into potential themes and group all the relevant coded data extracts within the identified analytical categories. Units of text dealing with the same issue were thus collated together and given provisional definitions. Moreover, the third phase comprised refinement of the potential themes and sub-themes as a result of which some themes were dropped since they were not sufficiently substantiated by the data. At this stage, particular efforts were made to ensure both the so-called internal homogeneity meaningful cohesion of data within themes as well as external heterogeneity which denotes clear and identifiable distinctions between themes (Patton, 2001). All the collated extracts were reread to ascertain that they formed a coherent pattern and a couple of extracts were disregarded from the analysis as they did not correspond to any of the identified themes and

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were subsequently organized in a new category miscellaneous. The codes rearrangement was finished once it became clear to the author that further coding would not add anything substantial to the established coding frame which already provided a representation of the data set. The final, fourth analytical stage consisted of specifying the scope and content of the identified themes and sub-themes and giving them concise names. Please refer to the Appendix C for a tabular representation of the coding scheme.

It might be useful to mention that, in order to provide an account that would not compromise richness of the data, theme is here understood as a concept that would be equivalent to variable in quantitatively oriented scholarship. That is to say that theme is seen as a dimension that can vary and its values correspond to individual codes.

Furthermore, as any qualitative research inevitably carries with it a number of assumptions about the nature of the data and what they stand for it terms of our ability to access and comprehend real world phenomena, the current analysis can be positioned in the broader theoretical framework of critical realism in the sense that it is governed by an approach that bridges the gap between essentialism and constructionism (e.g., Willig, 1999). Thus, thematic analysis as applied here can be understood as method that both reflects reality in the sense of acknowledging the ways in which individuals make meaning out of their experiences and concurrently appreciates the broader social and interactional context in which this construction of meaning takes place (Willig, 1999).

Ethical considerations The informants received verbal (and in some cases written) information concerning the design and procedure of the study and gave their informed consent. They were also informed about how the interview data would be analyzed, documented and presented. Time and place for the interviews were scheduled after the informants had agreed to take part in the study. Participation was voluntary and the participants confidentiality was respected throughout the project (Berg, 1995). The original names were kept in the following text only in those cases in which this was specifically requested.

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Analysis

The analysis of the collected material will proceed in two consecutive steps. First, in order to do justice to the singularity of personal experience, the initial part will offer a rather brief case-wise account of all the interviews. It will be restricted to the essence of the informants attitude towards their participation in the October 5th revolution and the way in which they perceive both the current situation as well as the future of Serbias political life. This part will also contain some of the information that, given that they are specific to a certain interviewee, have not found their way into the final coding scheme. As it has been explained in the preceding section, the respondents will be grouped on the basis of their political orientation since it is considered to be the most salient identification criterion in the present context.

The account will start out with four members of the Democratic Party which was the major government party [although, due to convoluted electoral calculations, the prime ministers position belonged to Vojislav Kostunica (Democratic Party of Serbia)] at the time of interviewing in November 20072. It became clear already at that point that the government coalition between the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Serbia would be severely challenged by the forthcoming presidential elections (December 2007) and the independence of the (then) Serbian province of Kosovo. The account will continue with three members of the Liberal Democratic Party that first appeared as a fraction within the Democratic Party which, while propagating the authentic inids political program, has been in favour of more radical solutions for Serbias transitional ills. It subsequently separated from the Democratic Party and in the meantime managed to enter the Parliament. The first analytical subsection will finish with the accounts of four politically inactive Otpor activists. Political inactivity here refers to the fact that the respondents are not (any more) officially associated with or involved in the work of any political party.

Moreover, the case-wise account will be followed by a cross-case analysis that will practically represent an exhaustive description of the coding scheme accompanied by the most illustrative interview citations. If at least one value-code is subsumed under a dimension-theme, then
2

For better understanding, the Appendix D brings a list of the major (more than five MPs) parliamentary parties in 2007

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DIMENSION will be bolded and capitalized, while the individual code(s) constituting the theme in question bolded and italicized. However, there are cases in which a code in itself represents a dimension-theme and does not have any subservient codes.

In contrast to the initial section which is individually oriented, the cross-case approach will offer an opportunity for establishing the points of contention, highlighting both similarities and differences between the 11 interviews and thus discovering heterogeneity within a group of people whose divergent political orientations were at a specific point in their lives subsumed under a rather one-dimensional political aim.

Case-wise analysis Politically active respondents

Democratic Party

Respondent 1 The first respondent is a prominent member of the Democratic Party who is concurrently a member of the Serbian Parliament and a professor at the University of Belgrade. She emphasises that her political awareness was formed during her high school days (in spite of the fact that all political thinking was inevitably coloured by Marxism), but claims that it is actually for her pedagogical profession that she considered it her moral obligation to support the students and take part in Otpor activities. In this regard, she is convinced that her participation in the youth organization was a precious experience that she would undoubtedly repeat in case of necessity. According to her, the October 5th could be understood as the apex of a decade of abuse and humiliation that was terminated because it simply could not have been supported any longer. Her opinion is that the essence of the current political situation in Serbia resides in the, as she says, immaturity of the political scene where program orientations and the aims of the leading political parties have not been sufficiently defined. She goes on to argue that systemic corruption, stimulated also by the way in which political parties are financed, as well as the

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maintenance and resilience of the former regimes value system are important elements of Serbias transitional difficulties. The respondents argumentation revolves around the idea that the October 5th did not fulfil its primary function, namely a complete discontinuity with the former authorities whose people and ideology, to a considerable extent, continued their existence within the Democratic Party of Serbia. The failure of the uprising to secure the irreversible transition towards democracy and market economy came about as a consequence of the opposition leaders incapacity to produce organizational and strategic plans that should have been applied in the wake of Miloevids removal. She claims that a couple of years will be needed for a complete ideological differentiation of the Serbian political parties and the consolidation of the political scene.

Respondent 2 The second respondent is a close collaborator of the President of the Serbian Parliament and a person with a long experience in civil disobedience in Serbia. In this regard, he was a prominent figure in the 1996-1997 student protest and played an important role in logistically supporting Otpor in the initial phases of its development. The interviewee insists that his involvement in politics should be understood as civic rather than political activism. Therefore, instead of perceiving Otpor as a defined institution, he prefers to approach it as an idea that stemmed from the need to respond to the numerous misdeeds of the former regime.

Furthermore, this respondent claims that, despite the fact that the changes have been occurring quite slowly, everyone who took part in the October revolution could be satisfied as they did what should have been done at such a historical moment. Also, although Serbian institutions are better today than they used to be in the past, the current situation is evaluated as the worst ever. This is due to the perception that the weak political opposition cannot seriously challenge the government which, in turn, assumes a decadent course. According to the respondent, in spite of the fact that the previous regime still has not been dismantled, Serbia is nowadays a democratic state on the basis of the minimalist definition of democracy which includes free and regular elections. The impossibility to conclusively separate the ruling from the opposing parties in terms of their ideological orientations is seen as a toothing problem of Serbias political

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system. Years will be needed to reach a satisfactory level of other elements that would enter into an extended definition of democracy (e.g., human rights etc).

Interestingly enough, respondent 2 was the only one to turn his attention to the post-October media claiming that, although they have been decentralized, they are now controlled by great corporations that, according to him, might act as agents of political power. What used to be a rather straightforward (but extremely asymmetric) black-white division between those who supported or opposed Miloevids regime, became today a confusing mixture of political and financial interests.

Respondent 3 The third respondent is one of the most well-known officials of the Democratic Party in the Serbian (northern) Province of Vojvodina and also a politician who obtained her formative political experience as a student participating in the 1996-1997 protests. The interview makes it clear that the knowledge accumulated during these demonstrations proved crucial for her subsequent efforts to establish a network of Otpor activists outside Belgrade. As practically all informants, she feels proud about her participation in the October 5th revolution in spite of the fact that many important changes, concerning particularly corruption, criminals and the (former) state security forces, still have not taken place.

More than any other interviewee, the present one insists on the idea that ideological cleavages that have been characterizing Serbian society can be understood as generational confrontation. This, she claims, has become apparent to her in the wake of the revolution and once she herself became an integral part of the system. It is argued that all political parties include certain members who are used to the old, communist way of doing politics and who, thus, obstruct the country on its way towards a better life standard for its citizens. Serbia is perceived as a weak state that is at the moment technically and financially unable to come to terms with its numerous issues (e.g., extradition of war criminals). In this regard, the system which was established in the post-October period is still volatile since democratically oriented parties can, for the sake of staying in power, coalesce with either Miloevids Socialist Party of Serbia or the Radical Party and thus acquit them of the responsibility for their involvement in the wars of

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Yugoslav succession. Ultimately, she maintains that a generational shift is needed for the final consolidation of the political system that can take place in at least two electoral cycles (2012).

Respondent 4 The fourth respondent is also a prominent party official at the level of the Province of Vojvodina and a person with a long history of involvement in student and civic movements that resisted Miloevids regime throughout the 1990s. It is therefore no wonder that the 1996-1997 student protests represent a referential point for his political orientation and subsequent activism. He describes his engagement as civic rather than political and considers himself to be one of the founding members of Otpor. The interviewee shares the opinion that the direct involvement in the October 5th was a precious experience that he would gladly repeat, but maintains, however, that many revolutionary goals have not been achieved. This particularly refers to the perception that there has not been a clear-cut discontinuity with the previous regime. It is, according to him, due to the fact that the members of Otpor, who would have implemented a more radical approach, lost a lot of their influence in the wake of the revolution since divergent political parties started to dominate political scene. In this sense, a number of crucial laws that would have systematically resolved some long-term issues, such as corruption and organized crime, have not been passed. The current state of affairs can be also accounted for by the fact that peoples habits have been formed in a long period of time under the communist rule and cannot be easily changed. He argues that the institutions are not appreciably better and that their faster improvement is hardly possible in the atmosphere in which the countrys sovereignty is constantly threatened (Kosovo). However, he remains convinced that the countrys future is tightly linked with the European Union and that at least ten years will be needed for a generational shift that will bring a new political discourse based on democratic values.

On average, the interviewees associated with the Democratic Party have a long history of involvement in civic movements in Serbia and consider their participation in Otpor as one of the most important experiences in their lives. In spite of the fact that they might be more or less disappointed about the immediate results of the October 5th uprising, they seem to believe that

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Serbia has sufficient democratic capacity and that the right political course has been set. Rather than being dependent on any structural difficulties for whose perpetuation they could find themselves responsible, the end of the countrys transitional issues is a matter of the consolidation and clarification of the political scene. Such a process is, of course, tightly related to the generational shift and a change of fundamental value orientations that could take place in a couple of electoral cycles.

Liberal Democratic Party

Respondent 5 The fifth respondent was 16 at the time of Otpors founding in 1998 and he was the youngest interviewee included in the sample. Coming from a Belgrade-based family with a history of civic activism, he was in charge of Otpors high school section. Although he looks favourably at his participation in the movement, he argues that the need for Otpors existence was over after October 5th as its essence was intertwined with Miloevids rule. The function of the movement was to unite the dissonant opposition leaders and wake up the people who, as in all closed societies, were rather apathetic.

In the wake of the revolution, confident of its success, the respondent decided against further involvement in politics and enrolled at the University of Belgrade. However, his enthusiasm sharply subsided after 12 March 2003 when the Prime Minister inid was assassinated. He became a member of the Liberal Democratic Party as he realized that, given that the former regime structures are still so powerful, Miloevids removal can be considered the only appreciable result of the October 5th uprising. In that sense, the current political situation is characterized by the efforts of the former regime elements to preserve their influential positions.

Moreover, Prime Minister (Kotunica) is directly accused of impeding profound political and economic reforms by protecting Miloevids legislature under the pretence of the rule of law. On the other hand, the Democratic Party unfortunately decided to moderate its political program, practically purged all inids closest associates and by doing that assisted Prime Minister Kotunica in slowing down the country on its way towards European integrations. The

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respondent insists on the idea that Serbia, the country that should be held responsible for the wars in former Yugoslavia, still has not confronted its criminal past. Improvement of the political situation is inconceivable in the atmosphere in which war crimes are officially negated. A rather pessimistic outlook on the current situation is cemented by the belief that Serbia will witness October 6th a metaphor for finishing the October 5th revolution.

Respondent 6 The sixth respondent came to Belgrade from a provincial town in which he formed an Otpor network unit. He was rather resistant to the idea of being interviewed about October 5th that he considers merely a day in which all the pieces fitted in the right place, but which was, much more importantly, preceded by a year and a half of hard work. He sees the NATO bombing of Serbia as the primary stimulant for taking part in the protests since it marked the point after which there was nothing. This interviewee was the only one who reflected on October 5th as a topic for sociological research claiming that it would be impossible for him to position it in a historical context because he has not stopped dealing with Otpor and is still constantly preoccupied with the ideas that encouraged him to join the movement. He also claims, quite in contrast to the general impression, that Otpor was a strongly centralized organization with a lot of foreign money. In that sense, the movement can be understood as a manipulative brand offered to the Serbian youth in time of desperation.

The interviewee posits that seven years after the revolution, and especially in the wake of inids assassination, Serbia is an extremely isolated place where paranoia is the institutionalized form of thinking and where being different is still dangerous. There is a dispute over the elementary civilisational values reflected through the problems of war crimes, national identity and Kosovos status.

Similar to the previous respondent, this one argues the inids death is a blow for the generations of Serbias citizens. This is due to the perception that after inid, the pro-right ideology, spearheaded by Prime Minister Kotunica, managed to reassume its dominant position

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on the political scene. The respondent finds living in todays Serbia frustrating and considers leaving the country as the only viable option.

Respondent 7 The seventh respondent was an Otpor activist in a small provincial town in northern Serbia. In the wake of the revolution he remained politically engaged within the Democratic Party where he was in charge of working with the youth. However, as the previous two respondents, he felt that the Democratic Party betrayed inids vision after his assassination what made him join the Liberal Democratic Party. He is very satisfied with his Otpor experience and particularly proud of the fact that the movement was supported by all societal levels and absolutely devoted to non-violence.

Although rather disappointed with the speed and scope of revolutionary changes, this respondent is somewhat less critical of the current authorities. He claims that peoples expectations from the October 5th were not realistic due to the fact that they could not comprehend the real nature of Miloevids regime and thus the amount of time necessary for recovering from it. However, the country is now, according to him, in the second most painful transitional stage and in need of a more liberal, more aggressive transition that would connect it faster to the world. This interviewee is particularly concerned about the perception that the process of lustration and dealing with the past, the pillar of transition, has not been done. The former regime members were thus allowed to preserve their influential positions. A lack of political will for such a process was apparent during inids rule and became especially pronounced after his death since when there has been no political will for profound political reforms.

All in all, the interviewees associated with the Liberal Democratic Party are not only appreciably less satisfied with the achievements of the October 5th in comparison to those from the Democratic Party, but have many serious misgivings about the future of Serbia. They are concerned that the Democratic Party, generally perceived as the agent of societal transformation, deviated from its authentic revolutionary course set by Zoran inid and thus indirectly strengthened the forces that keep opposing the lustration process. Bringing the war

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criminals to justice is, according to them, a precondition for Serbias normal future development.

Politically inactive respondents

Respondent 8 The eighth respondent, Dr edomir upid, is nowadays a professor of political anthropology at the University of Belgrade. When I informed him that, in accordance with ethical guidelines, I would change his name in the final research report, he protested saying that our conversation (that took place at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade) was a public act and that there should be no reasons for anonymity. Such an attitude was not surprising since Professor upid is a prominent public figure who has been for years insisting on the idea that transparency and responsibility should become the main characteristics of Serbias political life.

This respondent was associated with Otpor practically from its inception and was among a small group of Belgrade University teachers who were invited by the founding student activists to establish the Council an advisory body, consisting of the people with unblemished professional reputation and moral integrity, which was supposed to coordinate the movements actions. Similarly to the first interviewee, he found it a moral and professional obligation to support the student protests. In the wake of the October 5th uprising, he was closely engaged in the attempts to transform the organization into a political party and withdrew from active political life after the failure of this project.

Professor upid claims that the new post-October authorities were not able to use and properly channel the revolutionary enthusiasm as the new political leaders themselves were not democratically mature. Serbia has not benefited from the transitional experience of the neighbouring countries and thus has had a wild privatization process in which many of those who became rich under Miloevids rule, were allowed to buy state property. He characterizes the current functioning of the political system as uncontrolled chaos where there is no repressive central power but a network of so-called calculating powers that work in their own interest. Corruption continues to be the crucial problem as there was no relevant legislature that would have systematically resolved this issue. Professor upid quite pessimistically

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maintains that the differences between the former and the current regime are slim and the future of the country uncertain.

Respondent 9 The ninth respondent was 20 years old at the time of the October 5th uprising and he is therefore one of the youngest in the sample. He claims that he became politically conscious in high school and took part in the 1996-1997 protests, but for him and for many of those from his generation the only political aim was Miloevids removal. In this regard, the interviewee recalls that at the time of the revolution, there was no clear cut alternative strategy that could substitute the autocratic authorities. As some other respondents, he argues that Otpors purpose was exhausted with the end of the revolution. The movement should have finished its activities at that point instead of attempting to transform itself into a political party. For this respondent, the October 5th was an incident in the history of Serbia whose positive effects were quickly undone primarily due to the ideological heterogeneity of those who took part in the revolutionary process. It is important to note that the new government was formed three months after the revolution, what, according to him, gave the former state security structures enough time to burn the archives and reorganize their positions. However, he posits that political vocabulary has changed in the meantime and that seven years after the uprising, Serbia does not have a problem with the former regime members, but with the habits inherited from them and with the increased influence of the orthodox church.

In comparison to the pre-October period, Serbian institutions are perceived as different but still catastrophically bad. The privatization process, done in an unjust manner, is almost finished and Serbia cannot be considered a transitional country any longer. The respondent claims that nothing is clear about the countrys future except for the fact that the criminal past has to be confronted and the war criminals handed over to the Hague Tribunal.

Respondents 10 and 11 The last two respondents are close friends in their early thirties who established an Otpor network unit in a small provincial town in Serbia where the movement, according to their estimate, had around 15 activists prior to the revolution. Their attitudes towards both the

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participation in Otpor and the present socio-political situation in Serbia are very similar and will be therefore described in a single section.

Both respondents are proud of their participation in Otpor which they perceive as a movement specific to the Serbian political context which managed to overcome divergent party interests. They are, however, quick to emphasize that the idea of the movement was abused in the postrevolutionary period when many activists thought that they could financially benefit from Otpors reputation by exporting it as a product to other (mostly former Soviet) countries with dictatorial regimes.

These two respondents are particularly radical when it comes to the level of disillusionment with the achievements of the October 5th uprising. This, as they say, might be due to the fact that they feel particularly responsible for having taken part in the October 5th as their political activism was very conspicuous in a small environment in which they live. According to them, there are almost no differences between the former and the current regimes as both seem to be devoted to their private rather than public interests. The majority of the population is being pushed to the existential margin, while, on the other hand, Miloevids tycoons grow richer. The privatization process was done in a way that robbed the citizens of what essentially was their own property and made thousands of workers lose their jobs. This is accounted for by the fact that the leaders of the new authorities were socialized in the communist system which could not have taught them to how to responsibly assume a publicly important function. The crucial revolutionary moment was not properly used and there are no indications of future improvements.

On average, it is clear that the respondents in the final sample category lost an interest in political activism not because their political aims had been achieved but because of their perceived incapacity to make a difference in Serbias political life. Their profound disappointment with the effects of the October 5th stems from the awareness that the revolutionary uprising did not manage to disturb the ideological structures and ways of thinking that have been inherited from the communist regime and therefore continued to govern social life. More specifically, in the privatization process, devoid of the sense justice and the right to appeal, Serbia has remained, they would claim, an economically polarized state in which the

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middle class still cannot reappear. These respondents do not therefore perceive any crucial differences between the current and the former political practices and remain sceptical, if not indifferent, when it comes to prognoses concerning Serbias transitional process.

Cross-case analysis IMPORTANCE OF THE OCTOBER 5TH This theme pertains to the participants subjective feelings and evaluations of the October 5th revolution seven years after it took place and it comprises two codes: October 5th as a formative political experience and October 5th not important in itself. October 5th as a formative political experience The vast majority of the interviewees characterize their participation in this event as one of (if not) the most significant experiences in their lives. Many of them perceive October 5 th as a historical moment that represented a culmination of a prolonged period of struggle to oust an autocratic regime that completely isolated the country and prevented them from living normal lives. This is also a day that the informants primarily associate with feelings of relief, freedom and regained optimism. In that sense, October 5th continues to be a very positive episode in spite of the fact that some of its promises have not been fulfilled. Moreover, it seems that the success of the October 5th revolution had an important psychological effect with long-term implications. This event released a considerable amount of democratic potential as the people radically changed their relation towards the authorities. They understood that they are not necessarily and unilaterally dependent on governments decisions, but that, to the contrary, democratic regimes critically depend on the will of the electorate. Participation in the revolution made them realize that they possess political agency and can thus take control over their destiny. It finally taught them that political authorities are changeable and can be held responsible for their actions. Thus, the October 5th proved to be a formative political experience for many respondents in spite of the fact that they had been politically active prior to the revolution. The most illustrative citations substantiating this theme can be found in the table below.

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Respondent 2

Citation A qualitatively new contribution of Otpor was that it did away with the strict division between politics on the one hand and society on the other, it made a link between these two sectorsat that moment it was a phenomenon of epochal importance

I am very proud about that period of my lifeI remember often those eventsthere are some things that marked me as a human being and which I will carry with me all my life

I have learned a lotby participating in these events, I further developed my embryonic political being, I crystallized my political opinions and I am very proud about taking part in that

It was for the first time that we really tried to do something, and when we try we succeedeveryone should stand in front of a mirror and ask themselves whether we really needed so many victims, so much blood here, we were saying for 10 years, no, noit is not worth it, and then you try once and it is successful

11

That was the essence of Otpor, to show resistance in different waysit was an act of freedom that frustrated the regime and motivated the people to take an initiative themselves

October 5th not important in itself However, Respondents 1 and 6 have a somewhat different perception as they claim that October 5th was only a day that marked the end of long-term efforts to remove the autocratic authorities and that it is not important in itself and does not have much of a symbolical value for them personally.

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Respondent 1

Citation October 5th as such is not what really mattersthat thing is that we were not preparedthe problem was in 10 years before October 5th, or 7, 8, or 9 during which we were preparing ourselves for that dayso we as the opposition did not organizationally and strategically define what, who, when and how would be doneand that is what was missing I dont think that October 5th is important as suchOctober 5th was one day in which everything clicked, in which something that was being done for 50 years or 10 or 2 finally reached its end, and that was a day when you felt free, as if someone removed a burden away from your shoulders

OTPORS IDEOLOGICAL HETEROGENEITY The interviews make it clear that Otpor was a very heterogeneous organization when it comes to the ideological and political orientations of the people who took part in its actions. The respondents frequently refer to the fact that the aim of removing Slobodan Miloevids regime proved to be the only cohesive force that could unite the movement activists belonging to completely disparate political options. It is obvious that the organization activists were aware of the importance of neutralizing their ideological differences for the sake of confronting the retractable authorities. However, many respondents claim that it is exactly this plethora of ideological orientations that would disable the organization to continue existing once they regained their saliency in the aftermath of the revolution.

Respondent 5

Citation On the one hand, Otpor did not have any specific political colouring, on the other hand, however, many people who were in Otpor belonged to a variety of political partieswhen you entered Otpor you had some kind of awareness that your political orientation was not importantnevertheless, once the aim was fulfilled, it was simply untenable for these people to agree on what to do next

Otpor had only one goal what gave it a certain flexibility in the social contextpeople who attached themselves to Otpor were ranging from the

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extreme leftist to the extreme rightist, it was simply a massive movement

10

there was no formal membership in Otpor, you could have been a member of whatever partythat was done on purpose so that the movement could be greaterthere you could find everything from anarchists to fascists, from the extreme right to the extreme left, you could find a monarchist, someone who is for independent Vojvodina, any possible political option

11

In the movement, you had people ranging from a civic orientation to, lets say, those who were Nazisfrom those who were in favour of Great Serbia to those who were pro-Europeanso, how should I say, it was a range of orientationsthere was no foundation, the only cohesive force was the wish to unseat the regime

DOSS IDEOLOGICAL HETEROGENEITY Differences between the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Serbia The variety of ideological orientations present among Otpors activists is in a certain way reflected among 18 political parties that decided to form the so-called Democratic Opposition of Serbia and challenge Miloevid in the September 2000 presidential elections. However, in spite of the fact that this long sought after cooperation proved to be the winning strategy, it became apparent (rather soon after the elections) that such a broad and internally unstable coalition would be untenable.

The DOS revolved around two pillar parties, the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Serbia, and the rivalry between the two became increasingly pronounced every time an important political decision had to be made. The code Differences between the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Serbia was used whenever the respondents referred specifically to the two parties. Alternatively, the relevant interview material was coded with DOSs ideological heterogeneity, but both codes essentially pertain to the same issue.

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Respondent 1

Citation In the ruling coalition, there are at the moment a conservative and a completely pro-reformist option, that is to say that between the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Serbia there are great differences in terms of how to reform the economic system, financial system, health system, whatever, pensioners fund, everything that is a clearly defined difference in the world and on which electoral victories are basednot to talk about the national question, not to talk about the impact of the church on state matters

You should keep in mind that the parliament consisted of 17 or 18 parties of the winning coalition [DOS, BB] and that soon after the revolution, two most important parties became rivalsthere was a conflict betweem Yugoslavias President Kostunica and the Prime Minister inidWhen he became the president of Yugoslavia and while the DOS still existed Kostunica constantly obstructed some root and essential changes.

There was an incredible number of compromisesthere were consequences of such kind of manipulations with the electorate where they simply had to vote for a candidate [Kostunica, BB] who was supposedly uncorruptedbut that afterwards returned like a boomerang

Even a year before his assassination, Zoran inid could not express his political willbecause he won the elections with a coalition of 17 parties among a couple of which supported rapid transitions, but there were also parties that acted like breaks and among these there was Dr Vojislav Kostunica

because no one could have majority in such a big coalition, they were forced to make some rotten compromises and they you get what, from the aspect of the system functioning, you could call uncontrolled chaos

10

The thing is that there were 18 parties in the DOS and that each party was struggling for its own interests, for its own positions, and then there was a confrontation between inid and Kostunica

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TWO SERBIAS The current theme refers to the idea (present in the public discourse) of perceiving the political sphere in Serbia as being polarized between two diametrically opposite political options. The socalled first Serbia would be characterized by conservative and anti-European attitudes and its traditional orientation towards Russia, whereas the second Serbia would be the one turned towards Europe and its values of liberalism, democracy and the rule of law. The theme comprises two codes, namely Two polarized political options, two Serbias and Two polarized political options, but not two Serbias.

Two polarized political options, two Serbias The respondents in this category claim that the Serbian electorate is polarized to the extent which allows one to talk about two Serbias. They argue that these two options can be clearly discerned in the Serbian public. It is interesting that such an opinion is found also among the members of the ruling Democratic Party in spite of the fact that the idea of two Serbias is sometimes used to accuse those who might be propagating it of wanting to divide the nation and pit the two opposing blocks against each other.

Respondent 2

Citation If the question is whether there are one Serbia that is pro-European and the other Serbias that is conservative, then I think it is true that there are two Serbias, that is a division that exists in intellectual circles and is not so pronounced at the level of citizens and the people

maybe it will sound shocking, but I think that two Serbias existbut I looked at it in its metaphorical senseso, in peoples heads there are two Serbiasyou can see that when you are in contact with the citizensaccording to peoples attitudes, you can immediately say what is the Serbia that he belongs tois it pro-European, democratic, liberal Serbia or is it the old one, conservative, antiEuropean

Yes, I believe in two Serbias, I see them everywhere, I saw them then [on October 5th] and I see them nowso it is normal that after everything, a half of

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the time is not satisfiedbecause you had the same goal, but two impossibly different teams

Two polarized political options, but not two Serbias Another group of respondents, however, recognize that Serbias political life is to a considerable degree characterized by such an ideological fissure, but claim that this fact still does not constitute the ground for talking about two Serbias. They tend to insist on the unity of the country and its people and posit that the characteristics of the so-called two Serbias can be successfully combined. Also, there is a belief that, in spite of the fact that the two basic orientations are dominant, the complexity of Serbias political scene surpasses binary divisions.

Respondent 1

Citation There are two political options that are not sufficiently crystallizedthe one is conservative, traditional, clerical-national and, on the other hand, there is this pro-reformist option, but if you think about Serbias electorate, then unfortunately there are no two Serbias, but around fifteenbecause if there were two, we would have a situation like in Great Britain or in the States

There are no two Serbias, I think that such things dont existlook, I am a modern politician, I have modern attitudes, I am aware of Serbias position, but there are no two Serbias, there is only one Serbiathere are two concepts, one of them is led by the Democratic Party and it envisions modern Serbia that will not be isolated

I dont believe in two Serbias, that seems to be a popular topic in some intellectual circles, but I have to say I dont understand itI dont like the need to divide society in such a way and I dont think that people who vote today for the Democratic Party of Serbia or for the Radical Party are Serbias enemiesthey are simply transitional losers

If you take that criterion modernization vs traditionalism, then you have two Serbias, but if you take the actual state of affairs, then you dont have two

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Serbias, because if you had two Serbias, you would have a divided electorate and you would have the situation like the one under Milosevic where you really had two Serbiasnow it is more a desperation, a great disappointment

CONSTITUTIONAL REGRESSION Constitution-building deserves a theme status as it figured prominently in the interviews and became symbolic of Serbias transitional difficulties. Constitutionalism lies at the heart of how a group of people living at a certain territory establish themselves as a political entity governed by durable legal rules and is an issue pressingly encountered by all the countries that have been undergoing the process of transformation from communism and authoritarian rule to capitalism and democracy. Young post-socialist democracies need the rule of law in order to justify the overthrow of the former autocratic government and constitutions play a decisive role in drawing a legal and cultural boundary between the new (proto)democratic and the old regime.

The interviewees claim that the current Serbias constitution does not represent a rupture with the criminal past, but is in many of its aspects a deterioration in comparison to Miloevids constitution which it substituted. Moreover, a substantive portion of the participants argue that the current constitution does not afford human rights the status they have according to the European standards and they see this as a consequence of the post-October increased influence of the orthodox church and the process of clericalization of society. The informants are particularly critical of the attitude promoted by the political authorities that one of the major advantages of the current constitution is that it can be easily changed as the procedure for its modification has been considerable simplified.

Respondent 2

Citation I think that we did not get a new constitution, we got a new version of the old one which in many respects does not represent a qualitative improvement in comparison to the previous one, many people would tell you that some things were better dealt with in the previous than in this one

This new constitution does not make a substantive discontinuity with Milosevic, Milosevics constitution was good, it did not say that Serbia is a state of the

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Serbs, it was much broader

The constitution was passed very hastily without publics involvement and with many disadvantages it has and which will be, I hope, corrected through constitutional amendments

The document that was passed, was passed in a month and without any public discussion The citizens were not asked, professional organizations were not consulted

It would have been better if they had not passed itit was like, ok, we did not pass a new constitution, so lets pass whateverthat was the greatest contradictionit will be a stone around our neck in the years to come

That is the first constitution in the history of Serbia that separates the Serbs from other citizensthat is a segregationfor the first time in our history it is said that a women does not have the right to give birth, but that everyone has that rightthat was done because of the Church

11

New constitution could have been passed immediately, but they did not do it as they wanted to create chaos so that everything could be bought, now when tycoonization is over, now is possible

LEGALISM AS AN IMPEDIMENT TO THE RULE OF LAW This theme points to the informants observation that in the wake of the October 5th revolution a specific discourse developed within a group of the political elite that can be labeled legalism. The members of this group established themselves as alleged defenders of the legal order that highlight the necessity to abide by legal norms. Such a self-legitimizing political position is frequently (and primarily) assumed in opposition to those members of the democratic

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authorities who supposedly do not conform to legal procedures. This refers particularly to the attitude towards those indicted for war crimes by the Hague Tribunal.

However, this politically instrumentalized insistence on legality combined with the defense of national dignity in reality represented a strategy of assuring continuity of the practices and values associated with Milosevics regime. The so-called legalists can be held responsible for protecting the essence of the former regime state security and army structures that thus managed to keep their influential positions long after the revolution took place. By doing this, the political actors who have been advocating legalism paradoxically found themselves promoting an ideological stance that is at odds with the rule of law.

Respondent 1

Citation If you say when you take up the power as the current Prime Minister [Vojislav Kostunica, BB] didok, until yesterday we were encouraging you to be civilly disobedientand then if tomorrow I take the power and say great, now I am the one and all these laws are valid and you should abide by them because they are excellent, because now I am the guarantor of these laws

It is sad that many laws actually mock democratic procedures although everything is done in a procedural waybut you can see that very often when laws are passed, there is no essence of democracy, people are not consulted and that is a deficit that will accompany us in the future

Once he became the president of Yugoslavia and while there still was DOS coalition, Kostunica was constantly obstructing some deep and essential changes, especially in terms of personnel and he was doing this under the pretext of legalism

After they killed Zoran Djindjic, Vojislav Kostunica became Prime Minister with his pro-right policies and laws

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It is obvious that here we have people who are not democratically maturepeople who dont really know what is a compromisewho dont know that you cannot make a compromise between the good and the evilfor example, I remember that DSS promised that there will be a rule of law and that nothing will be any longer dependent on the will of the parties, but on expertise and resultshowever, that didnt happen

We were practically kids at that time and it is only from this perspective that I understand that it was impossible to achieve anything with legalismfew people were aware of the severity of the problem

BLURRING OF TRADITIONAL IDEOLOGICAL DIVISIONS This theme highlights the ideological and symbolic confusion that continues to characterize Serbias political life. All the participants note that it has become impossible to ideologically differentiate among numerous political parties as the usual left-right political spectrum has lost its significance and cannot be any longer applied. They recognize that (as will be shown below in further detail) in order to appeal to difficult living conditions and attract the voters of Miloevids Socialist Party, the Serbian Radical Party, which is supposed to be positioned at the extreme right, has incorporated many leftist elements in its political program. On the other hand, Socialist Party of Serbia, supposedly positioned at the extreme left, presents itself as a defender of nationalist values.

Respondent 1

Citation nothing is clear herethere are things in the programs of political parties that are completely contradictorythe political scene is not sufficiently

differentiated, the same is the case with political orientationsand then you have this problem that the right parties use what is characteristic of the leftthe radicals talk about socialism much more than the socialists themselveswhen you listen to their economic goals that, for example, public companies should be the only employer, the state as the main employer, well, what do you want, that is the most socialist you can imagine

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The classical division between these left and right options in Serbia does not exist and we will still need a lot of time to crystallize these political blocksThat is something that fascinates me as an individualto make such shifts, but then still to maintain some kind of identity, like SRS or SPS or it does not matter which party

Look at it this way: imagine that the Serbian political scene is circularand the more you go towards the left the closer you are to the rightSerbia will become a normal country only once these things are clear, who is left and who is right

Both government and opposition get a good portion of their finances from the same sources and that is one of big problems of our societyWhat used to be a black and white division, Milosevic on the one hand and democratic Serbia on the other is very foggy now

10

These categories left-right do not exist here, you can forget that

11

A former member of the communist party how became a member of the radical partythey themselves cannot explain thatsomething is wrong there

PARTY CONVERSION The preceding theme has already shown that changing political parties, also known as party volatility, is a recurrent phenomenon in times of political and economic transitions. Members of the former regime party that either lost the elections or was forcefully removed, tend to join the winning block. Some of them, however (particularly those that can be referred to as hard-liners) affiliate with a more radical political option closer to the former regime. In this regard, the current theme comprises two sub-categories, The Socialist Party members joining the DOS and The Socialist Party supporters joining the Radical Party.

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The Socialist Party members joining the DOS Many informants maintain that in the wake of the October 5th revolution, a substantive number of the Socialist Party members capitalized on the confusing situation and managed to infiltrate themselves into the Democratic Party of Serbia. By doing so, the former regime representatives were successful in the attempt to keep their political and economic positions after the turnover day. On the basis of the interviews, it appears that the Democratic Party of Serbia was particularly receptive of the former Socialist Party members.

Respondent 4

Citation the October 5th cannot be attributed to the political parties, because when you look at the membership of these oppositional parties, you seem a minor number of people therefor example, in Novi Sad in April 2000, the Democratic Party of Serbia had 64 members, while in December 2000, it had 600 members, so you can easily conclude who were the people that stated joining after October 2000h

a considerable number of the former regime officials spilled over into the new regime, into the DOS and I think that was the mistakethe people who broke human rights and did some financial machinations should not have been allowed to legally enter the new system

10

not only there has not been any justice, any trial, but simply the same people have only reoriented themselves and found among the DOS parties people who support them now and they just went on doing what they did before

11

In the wake of the revolution, everyone entered the DOS, mostly SPS people as two big parties were destroyed SPO *Vuk Draskovics party, BB+ and SPSalso the Radical Party was revived at that pointsome incredible transfers took placethe Democratic Party of Serbia all of a sudden accepted so many former SPS members, the DS membership also increased rapidlyit is impossible to say who did not join these parties

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The Socialist Party supporters joining the Radical Party The current code is used for the interview excerpts that refer to the recent political situation characterized by a sharp increase in the popularity of the Serbian Radical Party. As has been touched upon above, the informants account for such an increase by claiming that a

substantive number of people who were supporting Miloevids Socialist Party are now deeply disappointed with the effects of political and economic reforms. They therefore decide to join the Radical Party whose political program, although controversial and economically untenable, seems to be addressing those most afflicted by transitional restructurings.

Respondent 1

Citation The enormous number of votes that the Radical Party gets is based on the disappointment of someone into somethingthe voters of the Socialist Party to a great extent reoriented themselves towards the Radical Party once the Socialist Party failedit was a powerful party with many voters and many of them spilled over into the Radical Party, because this pro-reformative option did not manage to convince them that it is actually the closest to the socialdemocratic option of modern Europe

The Radical Party got a substantive number of its votes because it insisted on that socialist conceptyou can always talk about corruption and crime and about that socialist policyso the radicals started telling that story and that is why they got so many votes

many of those who can be considered transitional losers joined that conglomeration that is called the Serbian Radical Party, that is, however, inevitablein every country, there are losers and winners of transition, but in ours there are mostly losers

PAST The introductory part of the thesis showed that Serbia was involved in a range of military conflicts that resulted in serious human rights violations. Therefore, every actor on the Serbian political scene encounters the need to assume a stance towards the committed war crimes.

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Mastering the past is a frequent topic in the everyday public discourse and it inevitably appears in the interviews of this kind. The past is discussed not only within the scope of the intranational political debates, but primarily in terms of the countrys obligations under international law.

The current topic comprises four codes: collective responsibility for the criminal past, past as a matter of individual criminals, past as elites responsibility, and negating the past.

Collective responsibility for the criminal past The informants in this category maintain that Serbia as a state can be to a considerable extent held responsible for the wars of Yugoslav succession and therefore every Serbian citizen shares in the responsibility for the policies of the former authorities. This does not mean, however, that they personally feel guilty for any of the crimes committed, but they do recognize that human rights violations happened on behalf of the group of people to which they themselves belong. The respondents subsumed under the current code advocate an active approach towards confronting, reflecting on and punishing the perpetrators of the criminal acts and perceive it as a condition for further development of the country.

Respondent 3

Citation Moral collective responsibility will surely always be therenot for all people, however, but for those who care about moralityI will always feel it and I still ask myself what I could have done as an individual, should I have started with Otpor earlier, should I have showed resistancebut when everything started I was 18 years old, where were those who were aware of the situation?

If a society like ours wants to go forward, I think that it is necessary that it confronts its pastwe are not simply a communist country that was under a dictatorship and then found itself on the way to democracy, but this is the country in which the war policy was created, the war with Croatia started in Serbia, the war with Bosnia stated in Serbiathe last thing this society should do is negate the past and its participation in the warsthis means that the whole state should make efforts to arrest Ratko Mladic and he is apparently in Serbia

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We should clearly say that we are ashamed of what was done on behalf of the state and all its citizens and we should offer the hand of

reconciliationhowever, the dominant parties here say that we have not committed any crimesI as an individual was against that, but that does not change the historySerbia was found guilty by the International Justice Tribunal, ok, not directlybut it is the first sentence saying that a country did not do anything to prevent genocide

Past as a matter of individual criminals On the other hand, a certain number of informants reject the ideas of collective responsibility and claim that the guilt for any criminal offence must be individualized. They cannot see themselves as responsible for the state policy, although they feel that the international community has been enforcing such an attitude.

Respondent 1

Citation There is no collective guiltyevery guilt has to be individualizedbut, unfortunately, the international community and some NGOs here see it as collective guilty, but that is unacceptable, I as an individual cannot accept that I am responsible for anyones crime

I think that the idea of collective responsibility, either moral or political, is a bad oneat the end of the day, not even Germany was accused in Nuernberg of collective responsibility to put an label to the whole nation is senseless, starting with ourselves as individuals, do you feel responsible for what happened? Everyone should ask this question to themselves, have I done anything what resulted in a crime committed during the 1990s

Well, I am not sure about collective responsibility, that is not really my cup of tea, I remember that when I go to spend holidays in Croatia and when someone there insults mebut I do think we cannot get out of it easily

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Past as elites responsibility Moreover, a couple of respondents position past-related issues solely with the national political and intellectual elites. The past is here perceived as a discursive space open to different and ideologically loaded interpretations. The citizens are, on the other hand, the subjects to which the past happens as they are not themselves capable of intellectually and ethically engaging with it.

Respondent 1

Citation ...elites are the main culprits, yes, elitesstarting with the Serbian Academic of Sciences and Arts, to historians who have been abused for political purposes and who themselves used history for political purposes and such an attitude then spilled over into politics, into everyday life, into schools, starting with the elementary school upand they you get a false interpretation that is being created for years that we are some kind of great, important peoplebut why? We are unhappy people with unhappy, terribly unhappy history

The way in which Serbia generally approaches its past is loaded with mythomania, we tailor the past as we would like it to be and the history is written so that it can serve the supposed function of our future developmentI think that it is very bada lot of responsibility for that lies with our educational system and with people who write history books that promote values which are unacceptable in the 21st century all the way from the elementary school level up to the university

The question of the past is the question of the responsibility of political and intellectual elitesthat is not the question of the citizens, citizens have enough of their own existential issues that they cannot deal with this, the are not qualified, they are not educated, and they look up to the elites, but our best people, those who should be the best, they are not ready for that, they are slaves of the past, they are not up to that task which only shows their intellectual and creative weakness

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Negating the past Finally, much to the surprise of the researcher, one respondent in the current sample negated the magnitude of the Srebrenica massacre which, according to the Hague Tribunal for War Crimes in Former Yugoslavia, has been described as the act of genocide. He claims that the international community works against Serbias interests by overemphasizing Serbias responsibility and pressing charges against too many Serbs while concurrently undermining the roles of other former Yugoslav republics.

Respondent 11

Citation for example, they accuse Ratko Mladic of Srebrenica, they say that he killed all male population therethey are talking about seven thousand people, but that is bullshitand that place Srebrenica did not have five thousand people before 1991, it could have had a maximum of two thousandand now what? How can you explain to people that the Hague Tribunal is just?!

LUSTRATION The process of preventing members of the former regime from assuming publicly important positions in the post-revolutionary period (lustration) is closely related to the preceding topic, but can also encompass a range of former officials who were not directly involved in war activities (e.g., local level authorities, judiciary, police forces, etc). Lustration is, of course, an important issue in transitological literature and it figured prominently in the interviews. The theme comprises two codes: Lustration a missed opportunity and Lustration no longer necessary.

Lustration a missed opportunity The informants in this category argue that the lustration process did not take place after October 5th in spite of the fact that the government passed the so-called Lustration Law which was supposed to regulate the matter. This is mostly accounted for by two reasons. The first is that lustration could not have occurred in the atmosphere of legal continuity with the previous regime as the new authorities were not sufficiently determined to set a clear-cut boundary between the past and the present. Secondly, there is a perception that such a demanding

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process would require strong institutions and people with unblemished moral integrity that Serbia did not have in the wake of the October uprising.

Respondent 1

Citation Lustration was not possible because there was no real discontinuity with the former regimeit is not possible without a complete discontinuity with the former value system where the judicial system is also included, we should have come up with a new constitution and new laws that would stem from itwhen you dont have that, the continuity of the former regime which is still deeply rooted

The Lustration Law could not have been applied because in this society we never had institutions with sufficient moral credibility that could carry out such a processso, that would mean that you decided someone disrespected human rights, although they did not break the lawthat would require an impeccable moral authority and I think it was hard or impossible to form such a body, so that law was inapplicable from the beginning

That Law was never applied because the new authorities were afraid that that one day they could be themselves lustratedwe, as Otpor, had a very strong wish to apply the law, but one of its greatest problems is that there was no body or committee that would be in charge of its applicationI wish that law had been applied, but, as we can see, it is just an illusion

The Lustration Law was passed after inids assassination and there was simply no time anymore, a new government was formed and in that government there was no political will for conducting lustrationso, there is the law and it is, what surprises me, quite good

You see that in all electoral campaigns in the last seven years, every party has been promising that when they form the government, they will punish the officials for their misdeeds, but when they take power, nothing really happens and everything goes on as it used to be

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Lustration no longer necessary However, there are also respondents who claim that the current political life is no longer under the influence of the former regime and that there is no need for a sweeping lustration. According to these informants, the most prominent members of the Socialist Party have been already removed from their positions and cannot any longer exert any appreciable influence on the decision making process.

Respondent 2

Citation I would not say that many members of the former regime are influential, I think that a part of it still is influential, but if we talk about the former political establishment, we can see that the majority of them have been removed at least from the first layer of political decision makersI dont see lustration issue as a very important problem

Hm, I dont know whether the former regime members are still influentialif you ask me about the current government, I can tell you that we dont have problems anymore with the former regimeI can see that on the basis of the phrases, the phrases have changed a lot, I think that money is much more important now

STATE SECURITY SURVIVAL

The issue of the survival of the state security forces is tightly related to the lustration process discussed above. The state security is perceived by a substantive number of participants as a remnant of the communist past and the ideological as well as operative core of the previous regime. The apparent failure to unseat the state security forces seems to be perceived as the most tangible indicator that the October 5th revolution did not achieve its aims and it has been therefore afforded the theme status here. Some informants argue that it was the intention of the Prime Minister Kotunica to let many of Miloevids closest associates within the state security sphere keep their positions after the uprising. Such an attitude, they claim, obstructed the reformist course of the new authorities.

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Respondent 3

Citation I expected that the state security service would have been completely decomposed immediately, in a monthlike by a decree, a new guy comes in and says, you see, it is not you anymore, other people do this job now

Any normal idea or conception of revolution would contain the necessity to do away with state security forces or security police, or at least to fire the chief of that police, in Serbias case the man who is definitely responsible for a couple of political murders in his careerKostunica, however, decided to protect him

even now you can hear stories about the archives that were burned because Rade Markovic [State Seccurity Chief, BB] stayed in office for three, four months after October 5th

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because as long as state security forces have not been changed and such things that should have happened in the wake of the October 5th, you cannot talk about any real changes, there have not been any concrete changes

INSTITUTIONS When judging the accomplishments of a transition process, the question necessarily arises as to whether the state institutions have been improved, whether they have modernized themselves and become more efficient. The respondents are also divided when it comes to the range and scope of institutional changes in the post-October Serbia and the current theme therefore comprises two codes: no institutional changes and some institutional changes.

No institutional changes The respondents in this category maintain that there are no fundamental institutional changes and that the institutions in Serbia are as inefficient as they used to be under Miloevids regime. It is recognized, however, that institutional recovery is a long-term process that might take a couple of generations.

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Respondent 1

Citation No, the institutions in Serbia are not fundamentally different and one has to say that clearlyof course, I aware of the fact that one thing is to put something on paper, and another thing is its actual applicationwe have a great discrepancy between what the law says and what is the reality

No, no, no, no, the institutions are not differentthe system that has been established will still need a lot of timewhen new generations, more educated and more honest, start coming into the institutions, then important changes will take place

Generally speaking, our institutions are not different compared to before October 5ththere is a certain progress in some institutions, but, generally speaking, that cannot be done over night and in an unstable political situationwe cannot in a day change the people who have been working in these institutions for 20, 30 years

The judiciary is a great problemnothing or very little has been done in that sphereit has inherited a great burden that only grew in the meantime, there are at the moment 920 thousand unresolved judicial cases in Serbiaalso reforms of the army are going slowly because there are no finances

10

Not only that the institutions here are not any better, they are worse than they used to bethey are actually the same, it is the same group of people that has been ruling for 50 yearswhen you enter, the only thing that is missing is Titos picture, everything else is the samethey are slow and irresponsible

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Some institutional changes On the other hand, there are participants who posit that the institutions in todays Serbia are not the same and that some progress has been done in terms of their improvement. These changes are conspicuous, but still insufficient to really match what the people expected from the October 5th revolution.

Respondent 2

Citation I think that the institutions in Serbia are different following the revolutionbefore all decisions were made exclusively in one centre, but the powersharing is much greater nowthat is of course still not democracy or the ideals that we would like to have, but such political decisions are no more dictated from one centre

the institutions have changed, you cannot say that there are no changes, but these changes are not of such quality to allow one to say that they are really functioninga lot of things have changed, there is no repression anymore, there is no absolute power

institutions in Serbia today are different, but they are still catastrophically badI must not say that everything is the sameI will never let myself say that

CORRUPTION Corruption is a widespread problem in Central and Eastern Europe and it is closely associated with the improvement of institutional functioning that was discussed above. Many participants identify corruption as the major obstacle that impedes a faster economic progress and maintain that it has become systemic by infiltrating practically all spheres of social life. Some informants claim that it was the intention of Otpor to apply a set of legal actions that would eradicate corruption in the wake of the October 5th revolution, but this initiative was not supported by certain groups with the new authorities. A lack of more determined governmental action allowed therefore this damaging practice to continue existing long after the October uprising.

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Respondent 1

Citation According to me, corruption is the fundamental problem and corruption here is systemicthat is what I would mark as the central issue, systemic corruption, which might not be such an issue were it not directly encouraged by the way in which political parties are financed I expected that there would be less corruption after October 5thwhen you look at public opinion surveys now, you see that there are three greatest problems, the first is unemployment, the second is corruption and crime and the third is economic development

corruption is a great problem, the whole region has a problem with corruptionwe have passed some laws that could deal with that, but there is no political will for their applicationyes, corruption is a great problem

A great amount of people started practicing small corruption, which is not great, but which is apparent and it incredibly humiliates the peopleI was arguing in favour of a set of anti-corruption laws that would regulate everything and among those the one on the property origin would have been the most important In the wake of the October 5th, we in Otpor immediately set out to fight corruptionbut they [the DOS, BB] actually started cooperating with all those people *former regime criminals, BB+nothing can be done without judiciary reform, corruption is widespread, that is something incredibleeveryone knows what kind of thieves we arehow robbed this country is, how robbed this city is

11

KOSOVO The interviews for the current project took place in November 2007 a time of intense negotiations concerning the future status of the (then) Serbian southern province of Kosovo. The conflict with the Kosovo Albanians has a long history, but it intensified after the dissolution

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of Yugoslavia. Discussions of the Kosovo problem have been pervading the Serbian public space for a couple of years now and it is therefore no wonder that the majority of the informants referred to them when evaluating the countrys transitional difficulties. The theme comprises two codes: Kosovo as the central political issue and Kosovos problem used to distract attention from other issues.

Kosovo as the central political issue The informants in this category argue that the countrys integrity is a matter of paramount importance and that Kosovo makes an integral part of Serbia. They perceive the dispute over the future status of the province as the axis around which political life in Serbia justly revolves as no major issues can be successfully tackled in the atmosphere of territorial uncertainty. They understand, however, that it would be difficult for Serbia to keep Kosovo within its borders.

Respondent 3

Citation Kosovo was the central problem of our constitutionalismthis administration managed to give Serbia a say in this matter from which we were removed for yearsalso the late Prime Minster was aware of that, it would be very difficult to say that we are left without Kosovo or that we cannot influence its status

If you look at the political situation in Serbia at the moment from a global angle, you see that Kosovo and Metohija is the greatest problem, that is to say, the countrys integrity, the situation is not at all encouraging, all political parties, even some of those that are in the opposition, are struggling to keep Kosovo within Serbia

11

No one is interested in the fact that at the moment Serbian people live in Kosovo as if they were in a ghettoand they [the international community, BB] want to declare independence of the province

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Kosovos problem used to distract attention from other issues On the other hand, the majority of the interviewees are critical of the governments attempt to make Kosovo the focal point of Serbias political interests. They feel that the Kosovo crisis has been manipulatively used by the authorities so that more pressing everyday concerns could be put aside. The governments current attitude is perceived as an instance on the territory, rather than an effort to devise the ways though which the numerous Albanian population in Kosovo could be reintegrated into Serbian society. The participants find it rather unlikely that Serbia will manage to maintain its territorial integrity and they, therefore, maintain that the countrys officials should accept reality and turn their attention to more important matters.

Respondent 5

Citation Kosovo is the greatest absurd that we are currently livingwe have this territory with two million of some people that dont want to live with us and we call them our enemies, but we dont let them go and they say Kosovo has to be ours at all costs, but I just dont see howthey just want some kind of symbolic victory

There is a serious issue with the value system, about the consensus on war crimes, about the national identity and with presenting the Kosovo problem as something that is essentially important when you simply have all these other issues

Serbia today is Kosovos hostagethey [the authorities, BB] are trying to cheat on the peoplethey are disregarding the issue of severe economic situation and talk about patriotism, about the holy Serbian land, but they are ignoring the fact that people live on that land and that there are people here as well

And when they [the authorities, BB] talk about Kosovo today, no one mentions what was happening there during Milosevics rule, we just want everyone to forgive us for thatand today it is defended by people who never went there

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Discussion The current thesis represents a first attempt to explore the ways in which members of the Otpor movement account for the difficulties Serbia has been facing in its transition towards democracy and market economy. These difficulties are here discussed in the light of a range of themes to which the interviewees refer in their efforts to make sense of the transitional situation. According to the results of the study, it is evident that in the wake of a period of enthusiastic social and economic revival, the transitional process in Serbia has been impeded due to divergent interests of the new political elites. Such interests are primarily reflected in conceptualizing the past as a technical rather than moral and political problem as well as through constitutional regression, blurring of traditional ideological differences and insufficiently controlled and transparent privatization process. More specifically, there is no doubt that October 5th represents the most significant event in Serbias recent past as Serbia managed to liberate itself of tyrannical rule and start building a new political order. Political actors responsible for bringing about this transformation, among the most important of whom are Otpor activists, have clearly won a chance to establish the society on a different value system. However, in spite of the fact that the autocratic regime was overthrown, some of its prominent members managed to obstruct complete dismantling of both communist and nationalistic heritage and thus slow down the country on its way to democracy and the rule of law (cf., Trkulja, 2005). This stands in contrast to other Eastern European countries in which, although intermittent and fraught with difficulties, the lustration process of preventing the former regime members to assume important public positions was considerably more successful (as, for example, in Czech Republic, cf., Huyse, 1995).

Given that the participants exhibit (sometimes diametrically) different attitudes towards the issues that are symbolically charged (the past, lustration, Kosovo, etc), it could be plausibly argued that Otpor and, similarly, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia were ideologically heterogeneous organizations with constant internal tensions. These two groups did not possess a clear-cut political strategy that would go beyond Miloevids immediate removal. In that sense, one can only agree with Puhovskis (as cited in Vasovid, 2001) observation that in the wake of the October 5th revolution, the prevalent sentiment among Serbias political leaders was antiMiloevid, but still not post-Miloevid. The orientation towards the former president of the

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country and his devastating policies still seems to be the departure point of every political discourse which is only perpetuated by the relatively widespread perception that although there has been a discontinuity of political personnel, there is a continuity of political ideas.

As it has been the case in the majority of post-communist countries in their early transitional stages, the politics of symbols, revolving around the national identity issues, tended to overshadow the so-called politics of interest that centres on economy and distributional matters. A shift from the former to the latter, that in many of these cases took place shortly after the first free elections, was perceived as the consolidation of the new party system that was indicative of the nascent parliamentary democracy (Szelenyi, Fodor, & Hanley, 1997). As Antonid (2006) rightly argues, the countries like Hungary, Poland or Czech Republic, whose transitions are now considered successfully finished, could more easily switch to everyday existential concerns since their ethnic homogeneity and consensus around geopolitical strategy helped resolve state formation problems. However, it seems that even seven years after the October upraising, a decisive move away from the politics of symbols still has not happened in the Serbian political context as the axis dividing the electorate in terms of their orientations towards the nation, state, culture or religion has proved surprisingly resilient.

It is in this regard that the analyzed interviews would imply that the case of Serbia can serve as a nice illustration for the point that the attitude towards the past and the legacy of the previous regime is of critical importance for the direction that a country will take in times of profound social change. The old regime in Serbia bequeathed to the new political elites an extremely burdensome legacy that primarily consisted of devastated political institutions and authoritarian political culture. Instead of unambiguously opting for the confrontation with the past through moral reflection, a severely disunifed new government chose the opportunistic orientation to the future and the strategy of oblivion in which moral, legal, and political elements of the committed war crimes were ignored (Dimitrijevic, 2005).

For example, the fact that it took the new political elites three years to create the Constitution (adopted in 2006, six years after the revolution, primarily to acknowledge in its preamble that the province of Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia), a document that represents a normative framework on which a new legal and political order is to be established, testifies to the severity

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of ideological cleavages and consequent symbolic confusion in the countrys political life which by no means work towards its democratic consolidation. Such an atmosphere, in which the different reformist trends have been competing for popularity and legitimacy, is conducive to the idea of conceptualizing normative continuity as a preservation of the ideological and political core of the old regime (Dimitrijevic, 2005).

In spite of the fact that they might offer differing argumentative substantiations, the participants in the current study unanimously agree that the political institutions inherited from the former authorities have not been profoundly transformed. This is most frequently accounted for by the fact that very soon after the October 5th revolution, the Democratic Party of Serbia, which is characterized by a rather conservative and nationalistic orientation, started propounding a discourse of legalism which was used to, first, (in the name of national dignity) harness the more reformist attempts of the Prime Minister Zoran inid, who was in favour of a determined policy of cooperation with the Hague Tribunal; second, to (in the name of supposed non-retaliation), assure legal continuity despite the fact that adoption of a new constitution was one of the central promises of the pre-revolution coalition of which it was an important part.

As has been already touched upon, democracy cannot be established if the societies going through transition do not in one way or the other confront the human rights violations committed by the previous regime and thus provide a new value foundation of politics (c.f., Cohen, 1995). This is particularly true in those countries in which, as is the case with Serbia, the elementary prerequisites for a civil society were destroyed by the previous regime. In that sense, Stinchcombe (1995) actually maintains that the new democratic government must overcome past legacies through a moral reflection and consequent legal action and establish its victory as the losers new sense of justice.

Comparative analysis would probably show that post-communist (and post-revolutionary) normative transformation, a central prerequisite for any successful transitional process (e.g., Slovenia, Hungary) has been essentially characterized by a trade-off between continuity and a total legal rupture. Generally speaking, this is due to the fact that a radical political rearrangement in times of uncertainty and upheaval might not be possible or even desired by

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the new political elites. Creating the political system ex nihilo could destroy the already tenuous social tissue and promote fears of disorder and authoritarianism (c.f., Podunavac, 2001).

However, the practical impossibility of completely breaking with the former regime is by no means tantamount to saying that its political structures should be preserved. In this regard, already completed Eastern European transitions overall demonstrate that the manner of legal transformation could be evolutionary (what would comprise compliance with the inherited legal procedures), while the scope of its results could be revolutionary. This particular strategy of continuity aims at delegitimizing the old regime and establishing a qualitatively new society (Dimitrijevic, 2005).

It is clear that even when executing reformative policies, the first post-communist government must recourse to the institutional and legislative framework inherited from the former regime. In that sense, the new authorities may even be tempted to themselves abuse the institutional vacuum and depend on hybrid structures in spite of the fact that they find them inappropriate (Pavlovid & Antonid, 2007). This would, in accordance with the path-dependency paradigm, show how such survived institutional design might condition the behaviour of important political actors years after the regime has been formally changed. Institutional reshaping that follows the dislocation of socialist system might or might not quickly result in important irreversibilities firmly setting the country on the path towards democracy and market economy. It is for sure, on the other hand, that such a process can also incur high transactional costs for which the new political elites may not be prepared (Chavance & Magnin, 2000). This can be further complicated by the interest of the political actors to draw upon the inherited system in order to maintain their influential positions (c.f., Pavlovid & Antonid, 2007).

In that sense, the interviews with Otpor members would overall suggest that Serbias peculiarity resides in the fact that the post-revolutionary political elites did not, in contrast to many other countries in the region, sufficiently capitalize on an enormous amount of revolutionary energy that was released in the wake of October 5th. Instead, the idea of legal continuity, normally understood as the application of the already existent positive legislation for a dismantling of the past governments legacies, was subverted and practically turned into a defense of the

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ideological values of the previous regime, what was by no means compatible with the democratic coalitions insistence on the rule of law.

The persistence of disunified elites (cf., Higley et al., 1998) enabled the post-October perpetuation of the repressive elements and produced a series of unstable regimes marked by the tension between democratic legitimacy and the faade of legality. Therefore, the October 5th revolution can be perceived as an unfinished revolution and a missed opportunity for an authentic decommunization of the country that challenges its nascent political institutions and considerably impedes the process of Serbias accession to the European Union.

***

Finally, as it is quite common in qualitative research, a critical self-reflexive look at the methodology used in this project and the implications that it might have for the results of the study is in order. In terms of validity, it could be argued that internal validity is not applicable as a criterion given that it refers primarily to exploratory designs, whereas the current study is more descriptive in nature. However, when it comes to external validity, it is important to note that the purposeful non-probabilistic sampling strategy applied in this study does not permit statistical generalizations. Qualitative studies in general are not designed to allow systematic generalizations statements that would automatically apply to the whole population (Maxwell, 2002). Therefore, the term theoretical generalization here implies that the phenomenon in question is theorized on the basis of a certain level of similarity that has been found within the sample at this point in time and it acknowledges that the same process at another temporal point and with other participants could lead to different results.

In terms of reliability of the interviews as a data collection method, the current research would have probably benefited from a more extensive pilot-interviewing which would have afforded the researcher an opportunity to practise interviewing skills and thus better manage the interview situation. However, given that the interviewing skills improved as the number of interviews increased, what is manifest by a rich interview corpus, the researchers interviewing inexperience did not interfere with the reliability of the study. The fact that the author himself

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transcribed all the interviews further reduced any potential sources of interference with the original material (c.f., Silverman, 2000).

On more substantive grounds, it can be claimed that the subjectivity of data analysis is an important methodological concern of the present study. In spite of the fact that qualitative research in inherently subjective and the authors co-constructionist role is acknowledged and appreciated, the study would unarguably benefit from a second coder. This would strengthen data analysis and thus also enrich the quality of theoretical generalizations based on it. Similarly, in order to measure the extent to which the analysis condenses the interview corpus, it would be beneficial to use a software that would show what percentage of the data have been allocated to at least one category.

Furthermore, in terms of the analytical tools applied to the interview corpus, it should be said that inductive thematic analysis intentionally sacrifices some depth and thematic sophistication while providing a description of the most important issues in the entire data set. Given that a certain level of data complexity is invariably lost, further research could approach the data with a deductive method that would provide a more detailed and nuanced account of a particular theme and thus refer to a specific question or area of interest. An alternative and possibly most fruitful strategy would be to combine the two approaches and analyse the material through both inductive and deductive coding.

In this sense, it is obvious that the themes identified here are not equal in scope, as it appears, for example, that impeded transformation could serve as a meta-theme that could actually incorporate constitutional regression and blurring of traditional ideological divisions. It is for this reason that the proposed themes would need further specification and refinement. This would by all means do justice to the richness and dynamics of the data and much better appreciate the subtle ideological differentiations evident among the participants in the present study.

What is more, a potentially promising approach that could take the current research further and expand on its results, would be to put it in a comparative context of East European transitions. Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia and Albania look like suitable candidates for such an analysis given their structural similarities as well as their shared efforts to join the European Union. It is, of

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course, understandable that a comparative examination would much more conclusively highlight particularities of Serbias transition and in that sense possibly offer further insights into their causal mechanisms. Ultimately, given that the involvement in the October 5th revolution provides the participants with an important common denominator, a series of focus groups could be conducted to refine a variety of perspectives and revise the identified patterns. It would be particularly interesting to observe the group dynamics and get high-quality data in a research design that would aim to bring together informants occupying different sections of the political spectrum.

Epilogue Resizing the Ship at Sea

Ralf Dahrendorf, one of the leading scholars in the field of transitology, posited once that the countries in Central and Eastern Europe will need six months to establish the institutions of constitutional democracy, six years to introduce the system of market economy and sixty years to build up a democratic political culture that can consolidate the new political regime (c.f., Dahrendorf, 1990). It is not altogether clear, however, to what extent this general statement can be applied to the case of Serbia, a country whose social structure practically collapsed under the pressure of wars and long-term international isolation. The main feature that makes Serbias transition deviate from the observed regional pattern is the fact that seven years after the regime shift, it still finds itself in the midst of state-formation process.

In that regard, on 17 February 2008, around three months after the completion of the interviews for the current thesis, Kosovo, the land that has been for centuries at the heart of Serbian identity, declared independence. Some of the leading players in international affairs, including the United States and Great Britain, promptly recognized the newly born state perceiving its emergence as the final stage in a two-decade long Yugoslavias dissolution. They tend to claim that the last loose piece of the Balkan jigsaw has now been pushed into its proper place what can only benefit the region by bringing it stability and cooperation. On the other hand, Serbian diplomats, backed by Russia and China, incessantly argue that the independence of Kosovo undermines international legal order, affirms the outdated idea of the nation-state

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and, more importantly, creates an important precedent that many other monoethnic territories in the world might follow.

Any prognoses regarding the future of the Kosovo problem would, of course, go beyond the scope of the current thesis and overstretch the collected empirical material. It is, nevertheless, sure that Serbia, already crucified between, on the one hand, its efforts to share into the European political corpus and, on the other, move closer to Russia, obtained a new symbolical axis that, it seems, will be dividing its population for years to come. The country, therefore, remains what Wolfgang Merkel, a well-known German political scholar, would call defective democracy, one that has accomplished the institutionalization of political rights and free and fair elections, but still suffers from a deficient implementation of the rule of law and political groups that are able to sway the democratic agenda and hinder the effective power of democratically legitimized authorities (Merkel & Croissant, 2004).

Moreover, the abovementioned deep polarization between struggling to keep Kosovo within Serbias borders at the expense of joining the European Union and realizing that Kosovos independence is a price, however high or unjust, that the country has to pay for the mistakes committed in the past, became particularly pronounced in the recent parliamentary elections (11 May 2008) that, not unlike many that preceded them, had a referendum character. Rather than for any of the numerous political options, Serbian citizens were voting for or against the European integrations, the topic around which the whole political discourse in the country seems to be revolving. It is, in that sense, interesting to note that Otpor, organization that disintegrated four years ago, was revived immediately prior to the elections, most likely with new people and a new set of political strategies. The central question of the current thesis what has really changed? could not have hoped for a more conclusive answer.

Finally, whatever the result of post-electoral calculations, it is beyond doubt that, sooner or later, Serbia will have to assume its proper place within the European community of nations. However, before it can reconcile itself with its neighbours and the world, it must critically reflect on the past it inherited from its irresponsible leadership. It owes this to its future generations, because as Thomas Hardy said: Way to the better exacts a full look at the worst.

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Appendix A Interview Guide SERBIAS UNFINISHED REVOLUTION: WHAT HAS REALLY CHANGED AFTER OCTOBER 5TH?

Brief introduction of the interview principle Confidentiality issues Narrative part Could you, please, tell me how you became involved with Otpor? Personal Pre-October 5th o o What motivated you to join Otpor? What were your expectations at the time of October 5th? How do you feel about your involvement in this organization and October 5th event? o What does your participation in this event mean to you?

Post-October 5th o

Follow-up questions October 5th o How do you account for the fact that among tens of attempts to overthrow Miloevids regime, only October 5th was successful? o What was Otpors strategy? What did you like about that strategy?

Consequences and the current political situation Perceptions of difference o o o Are you still politically active? What has changed in your life after October 5th? What has happened with the energy and enthusiasm with which Otpor members imbued people throughout Serbia? o How would you evaluate Serbias current political situation? o o What bothers you about Serbias current political situation?

To what extent have the new (after Miloevid) governments been really new? Do you think that Serbias political institutions are fundamentally different now?

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How do you account for the fact that some people claim that we need October 6th? If you agree, what is that that October 6th would bring?

Political elites o How do you feel about the fact that many members of the former regime are still influential? o o What do you think about the idea that there are two Serbias? How do you account for the popularity of the Serbian Radical Party?

Past o o How do you feel about the way in which todays Serbia deals with its past? Why do you think there has never been political will for enforcing Lustration law that would prevent the members of the old regime to play an important role in public life? o How would you account for the fact that the Serbian authorities still have not extradited the criminals held responsible for the Srebrenica massacre?

Transition o According to your opinion, how much time will it take until democracy has been consolidated in Serbia? o o What are the obstacles to its consolidation? What do you think about Serbias transition? o According to your opinion, why is transition taking so long?

How do you account for the fact that election turnouts have been very low over the last decade?

o o

How do you feel about living in Serbia today? When you look back at October 5th, what do you think should have been done differently?

Evaluation and small talk o o Is there anything that you would like to add? Was there anything bothering you during the interview?

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Appendix B Documentation sheet

Contextual information about the interview (adopted from Flick, 1997)

Date of the interview:

Place of the interview:

Duration of the interview:

Indicator for identifying the interviewee:

Interviewee

Gender:

Age:

Profession:

Peculiarities of the interview: Appendix C Coding scheme

Case analysis section

Otpor o o Organization and strategy Participation in Otpor

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 o o Serbia o o o

Pride, satisfaction Disappointment

Protests 1996-1997 Post-October 5th Otpor Serbia before October 5th The present-day situation Future of the country

Cross-case analysis section Importance of the October 5th o o October 5th as a formative political experience October 5th not important in itself

Otpors ideological heterogeneity DOSs ideological heterogeneity Two Serbias o o Two polarized political options, two Serbias Two polarized political options, but not two Serbias

Constitutional regression Legalism as an impediment to the rule of law Blurring of traditional ideological divisions Party conversion o o The Socialist Party members joining the Radical Party The Socialist Party members joining the DOS

Past o o o o Collective responsibility for the criminal past Past as a matter of individual criminals Past as elites responsibility Negating the past

Lustration o Lustration as a missed opportunity

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Lustration no longer necessary

Institutions o o No institutional changes Some institutional changes

Corruption Kosovo o o Kosovo as the central political issue Kosovos problem used to distract attention from other issues

Miscellaneous o o o o o Media Political transition as a generational shift problem Negative political influence of the Orthodox Church International community Changes of the Democratic Party after inids assassination

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Appendix D

Major Parliamentary Parties in Serbia in 2007

Party

Party abbrev.

Party leader/founder Vojislav eelj

Political orientation Ultra-nationalist

Number of MPs 81

Srpska radikalna stranka Serbian Radical Party

SRS

Demokratska stranka Democratic Party

DS

Zoran inid

Center-left

60

Demokratska stranka Srbije Democratic Party of Serbia

DSS

Vojislav Kotunica

Centre-right

33

G17+ G17+

G17+

Mlaan Dinkid

Centre

19

Socijalistika partija Srbije Socialist Party of Serbia

SPS

Slobodan Miloevid

Nationalist

14

Nova Srbija New Serbia

NS

Velimir Ilid

Centre-right

10

Liberalno-demokratska partija Liberal Democratic Party

LDP

edomir Jovanovid

Liberal

Source: Official site of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia http://www.parlament.sr.gov.yu/content/cir/index.asp Accessed on May 3, 2008

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