Coming to terms with reality is the most unpleasant thing for politicians: it is much better to live in a world of myths. Especially if your existence in this world is supported heroically by a whole army of faithful advisers, journalists, and a population prepared to believe in your myths as in their own.
I would be interested to know what will be doing the Kremlin after Slobodan Milosevic’s regime ceases to exist — and how it will end! In Moscow during the last decade people were being told about Russia’s Balkan allies and the fraternal Serbian nation. What a disappointment it will be for the Russian people when its brother nation rushes to the arms of the West as soon as the former dictator departs for Hague tribunal under escort! When the Museum of NATO’s and the Serbian Nation’s Joint Struggle Against Dictatorship is opened at the corner of Clinton Street and Schroeder Boulevard, the speakers will of necessity recall Moscow’s position, which did not associate itself with Western civilization, nor did it support the Serbian nation in its struggle against the dictatorship.
“I wish I had myself been at the controls of the aircraft that dropped the bombs on the residence of bloody Slobo and Mira,” will cry the poetess in exultation, who recently wrote Clinton an open letter demanding he stop the persecution of Serbianism. Serbianism? According to her new version it is an obvious part of the western civilization; we need only recall Andric, Pavic, let us recall how Yugoslavia got out Soviet clutches in Tito’s times, how it spat even in the face of Stalin himself!
Well. It should have happened sometime. Yugoslavia to the West means Russia without allies in the Balkans. I do not know what kind of lesson this should be for the Russians but I am reminded that there were quite enough people within the Ukrainian political and journalistic establishment who tried to analyze the situation in long-suffering country through Soviet glasses.
I cannot forget how my colleagues reproached me after STB aired “Vikna tyzhnia” (Windows of the Week) with my calling the Milosevic’s regime a regime and the action of NATO simply an action, not aggression as it was in the habit of Russian propaganda. Well, my dear, it is not long to wait and the Serbians themselves will use the same words, in the streets and at the official level alike. If then you did not want to accept the reality that the West was defending the Albanians in Kosovo from the insanity of the Belgrade regime, accept it now at least, when the time has come to rescue from Milosevic the Serbs themselves.
