Samuel Vaknin

“ The truth is completely the opposite: The West has yet to find the East. The East, which provided the foundation of contemporary Western civilization, literacy and Christianity, still hibernates within its traditional values as an essential element of the endurance of the people and perhaps as the unique salvation of mankind. The West has to burst into the wisdom of the East to keep the very roots of life, the wisdom to live in peace and in harmony with God and with nature. ”

“ The deal was simple: mumble the mantras of the West, establish Potemkin institutions, keep peace and order in your corner of the world, give the West strategic access to your territory. In return the West will turn a blind eye to the worst excesses and to worse than excesses. This was the deal struck in Russia with the "reformists", in Yugoslavia with Milosevic, the "peacemaker", in the Czech Republic with Klaus the "economic magician" of Central Europe. It was communism all over: a superpower buying influence and colluding with corrupt elites to rob their own nations blind. ”

“ Economic collapse, massive unemployment, social dislocation, growing disparities between rich and poor, the educated and the unskilled – led to societies increasingly permeated by crime, drugs and prostitution. A grey cloud of hopelessness and neglect descended upon vast territories populated by zombie-like herds of people, eyes with extinguished light, adrift in the uncharted waters of a new, ominous reality. The physical deterioration of infrastructure and public services reflected the inner state of its ever more desparate consumers. ”

“ To get rich quick through schemes of crime and corruption is thought by these people to be the epitome of cleverness (providing one does not get caught) , the sport of living, a winked-at vice, a spice.
Yet others embarked on paths of rivalry and enmity and destruction. This hydra has many heads. From scratching the paint of new cars and flattening their tyres, to spreading vicious gossip, to media-hyped arrests of successful and rich businessmen, to wars against advantaged neighbours. The stifling, condensed vapours of envy cannot be dispersed. ”

“ The Euro-Atlantic structures are evolving, assuming ever more ambitious and comprehensive goals, and growing ever more impressive antlers. They roam the whole earth, administering human rights and free marketry. They impose their will. They are awesome to behold. But from within they are being depleted and consumed by their very own incoherence. It is the eternal cycle of prowess and vanquishment. NATO, struggling to redefine itself and perpetuate its totally superfluous existence. The EU struggling to secure peaceful markets to its east and south. Europe struggling to assert itself. ”

“ Under the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, Serbia became de jure an independent country. Its anguished delegation, eager and paranoid, gave up Kosovo in dealings behind the gilded scenes. It was a tactical move, which the Serbs reversed in the First Balkan War (1912) – when they regained Kosovo – and in the Second Balkan War (1913) when they regained Macedonia. In these bloody rehearsals of the World Wars, the Serbs succeeded to redefine the borders – but also to give birth to Albania. It is an irony of history that Serb bellicosity and nationalistic dreams gave rise to the modern Albanian state. ”

“ It is here that the repressed memories of history, its traumas and fears and images reside. It is here that the psychodynamics of humanity – the tectonic clash between Rome and Byzantium, West and East, Judeo-Christianity and Islam – is still easily discernible. We are seated at a New Year's dining table, loaded with a roasted pig and exotic salads. I, the Jew, only half foreign to this cradle of Slavonics, four Serbs and five Macedonians. It is in the Balkans that all ethnic distinctions fail and it is here that they prevail anachronistically and atavistically. ”

“ But others went on to marry foreigners, to give birth to their children and, in time, to travel to far, affluent lands. They keep in touch, sending home photographs of sumptuous houses and shiny cars and of suburban lawns. From time to time, they wire some money or deliver gifts. They visit once or twice a year, clad in new, faddish clothes, their accents strangely inflected, their speech suffused by foreign words. They made it, the envy of their sisters, the objects of much adulation and emulation, lean and lustrous proofs that dreams come true. ”

“ Universalistic philosophies such as socialism fought racism tooth and nail. European history became a blood-dripping pendulum, swung by the twin yet conflicting energies of separation and integration. The present is no different. The dream of the European Union confronted the nightmare of a dismembered Yugoslavia throughout the last decade. And ethnic tensions are seething all across the continent. Hungarians in Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine and Serbia, Bulgarians in Moldova, Albanians in Macedonia, Russians in the Baltic countries, even Padans in Italy and the list is long. ”

“ Without it the wheels of commerce and finance, investments and technological innovation will immediately grind to a halt. But many operators are so risk averse that, in effect, they increase the inefficiency of the market in order to avoid it. They act as though they are resolute, risk assuming operators. They make all the right moves, utter all the right sentences and emit the perfect noises. But when push comes to shove – they recoil, retreat, defeated before staging a fight. Thus, they waste the collective resources of all that the operators that they get involved with. ”

“ Their institutions are a travesty, their parties nests of avarice and vile. Their media prostituted and defiled. The farce of elections and the newspeak of democracy and human rights and freemarketry are props to hide the vast wilderness of moral bankruptcy. These are Potemkin states run by Chicago mobs. Instruments of extortion and coercion no different to their predecessors – only they provide less security, both physical and economic. They know no different. They think no different. They swear by their malaise and by their malaise they shall die. ”

“ In other words, the investors believe that they can outwit the organizers of the pyramid. The investors collaborate with the organizers on the psychological level: cheated and deceiver engage in a delicate ballet leading to their mutual downfall.
This is undeniably the most dangerous of all types of financial scandals. It insidiously pervades the very fabric of human interactions. It distorts economic decisions and it ends in misery on a national scale. It is the scourge of societies in transition. ”

“ All over the world, intellectuals are the vanguard, the fifth column of new ideas, the resistance movement against the occupation of the old and the banal. Here intellectuals preach conformity, doing things the old, proven way, protectionism against the trade of liberal minds. All intellectuals here – fed by the long arm of the state – are collaborators. True, all hideous regimes had their figleaf intellectuals and with a few exceptions, the regimes in the Balkans are not hideous. ”

“ It was, therefore strange to see the body language of the octogenarian president of Macedonia with his much younger Albanian counterpart. They stood apart and made diametrically opposed declarations about the future of Kosovo. Watching the old communist apparatchik Gligorov, I was reminded or Milosevic when he announced the Serb victory in operation Allied Force. He stood so rigid, as though about to break and leaned towards the camera, creating an eerie fish lens effect. Balkanians are not proud people, they are adaptable. ”

“ Biology, the West and international financial institutions all conspire to retire the beast. New blood, new ideas, new hopes and aspirations are in evidence. Still overwhelmed by the abrupt and cruel exposure of their elders, still taken aback by the enormity of the project of rehabilitating the very psyche of their people, still torn between illegal self enrichment and service to their fellow citizens – but there they are, the young ones. The battle is on. The consensus of the baksheesh and the political assassination is replaced, ever so gradually, by the dissension of the market place. ”

“ Crime is a major engine of economic growth in some countries (where drugs are grown or traded, or in countries such as Italy, in Russia and elsewhere in CEE) . In many a place, criminals are the only ones who have any liquidity at all. The other, more visible, sectors of the economy are wallowing in the financial drought of a demonetised economy. People and governments tend to lose both their scruples and their sense of fine distinctions under these unhappy circumstances. They welcome any kind of money to ensure their very survival. This is where crime comes in. ”

“ Materially revamped, nationally revived, militarily vindicated, an invigorated power that withstood the mightiest alliance in history – Serbia is in an excellent position to emerge as an important, nay, indispensable, regional, pivotal player. It can have its choice. In Rugova it will find a genteel, compliant, respectable and submissive partner. In Thaci – a fellow bully. Serbia can conduct business with both. As it tramples over internal dissent, suppresses Montenegro and tightens its grip on its minorities – Serbia will strive to split Kosovo. ”

“ Yet the disorder in their own homes was broadcast live, day in and day out, into the cubicles inhabited by the very people they sought to so transform. And they conspired and collaborated in all manner of corruption and crime and scam and rigged elections in all the countries they put the gospel to. In trying to put an end to history, they seem to have provoked another round of it – more vicious, more enduring, more traumatic than before. That the West will pay the price for its mistakes I have no doubt. ”

“ It is, perhaps, the kernel of this Greek tragedy: that real people are sacrificing real people on the altar of the abstract. It is a battle of tastes, a clash of preferences, an Armageddon of opinions, judgements, and lessons. Armies are still moved by ancient events, by symbols, by fiery speeches, by abstract, diffuse notions. It is a land devoid of its present, where the past and future reign supreme. No syllogism, no logic, no theory can referee that which cannot be decided but by the compelling thrust of the sword. ”

“ Germany's economy collapsed following a reparations agreement, which sapped and consumed less than 10% of its GDP. America's economy collapsed, its unemployment soared, its stock exchange vanished and it entered a deflationary cycle, which necessitated the most pervasive federal intervention in its history – mainly because of multilateral trade restrictions.
Macedonia has endured trade embargoes, international isolation, wars, and an influx of refugees – and still survives as an intact, functioning economy. There is no civil war, no hyperinflation, a stable currency and no famine. ”