Despite the physical and mental barriers that often characterize our Balkan space, Shkëlzen Gashi (known as Xeni) and the organization ADMOVERE, through the volumes “The Other Serbia,” have proven that there are voices that seek to break through these barriers and find threads which can be weaved together to make a path. Through this path, one can go from a state of conflict to peace, from disbelief to faith.

Thus, by looking down the barrel of the gun, one comes to a position that sees communication as the best means of agreement and understanding.

It is in the nature of cowards to build walls, while the brave build bridges. This is best explained by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges in his essay “The Wall and The Books,” where he writes about the building of the Great Wall of China and the burning of books due to a fear of the truth they carry.

From this point of view, Xeni’s will and perhaps his intellectual courage should be recognized, because such ideas are still uncommon in the Balkans, where people mostly believe outdated myths and where emblems and flags put people against one another. An example of this is the myth that Serbia has a historical right over Kosovo, which contradicts reality and produces misunderstandings which lead to conflict.

Xeni has published these three volumes about figures who represent a different Serbia: the architect Bogdan Bogdanović (volume I, 2021), the politician Miloš Minić (II, 2021) and the lawyer Srđa Popović (III, 2022). In doing so he has focused on the attitudes and thoughts of these characters in relation to Kosovo.

In “The Other Serbia,” fragments from interviews from various media outlets and various periods are presented to build a chronicle of events, which enables us to better understand the situation and the position of groups who today are in the process of a difficult dialogue. “The Other Serbia” should be seen as beneficial to the internationally-mediated dialogue that has been going on for years between Serbia and Kosovo.

Srđa Popović, the peerless lawyer

Everyone knows that during war the truth is first to be killed — books and newspapers get burnt. Then people are killed and burnt, something we have seen and experienced firsthand. The inhabitants of these spaces are immersed in lies and deceit. It is also known that the life of an intellectual is a life for the truth, the whole meaning of their being rests on this premise.

Such are the three characters of the “The Other Serbia” volumes, who had the courage to rise above the rubble of lies and deception that Serbian state policy had built, using myths as a means to suppress the rights of others.

The third volume was published in 2022 and was promoted at the Mirëdita Dobar Dan Festival in May 2023. This volume focuses on the lawyer Srđa Popović.

Popović was an intellectual and passionate about the truth. Similar figures are hard to find in this region, where philosophical thought is not cultivated and where history is fictionalized. 

Popović was born in 1937 and died in 2013 in Belgrade. He started his controversial activities early on, when in 1976 he was sentenced to a year in prison because of the beliefs he shared  with his client, poet and Serbian dissident Dragoljub Ignjatović.

As a lawyer, he bravely defended the students and professors of the 1968 demonstrations in Belgrade and also the students of the 1981 demonstrations in Prishtina. In 1990, he founded the weekly newspaper Vreme as a response to the instrumentalization of Serbian media outlets by the regime of Slobodan Milošević. A year later, he was elected president of the European Movement in Serbia before, after constant threats from the regime, he moved to the U.S. He returned to Belgrade 10 years later, after the Milošević regime fell.

An intellectual like Popović transcends national dimensions and becomes part of universal values, regardless of race, ethnicity or faith. In these spaces you can find other intellectuals who act as political opponents, but those intellectuals who appear as national opponents are very rare. Popović is one of these exceptions. 

In the introduction to this book, in the form of a preface, Xeni rightly states that intellectuals like Popović were inspired by the Serbian social democrats led by the writer and politician Dimitrije Tucović, who, after the Balkan Wars when Serbian forces invaded present day Kosovo to expel the Ottomans, Tucović stated: “The fundamental cause of all [Serbian] troubles from which we suffer today and from which we will suffer a lot in the future is that we have entered a foreign land.”

More than a century later, this statement from Tucović is only supported by intellectuals such as Popović, who are seen with suspicion and disdain.

Popović, in defending the truth, supported the idea of NATO attacking his homeland — perhaps considering that this intervention was long overdue. This was despite the fact that Popović was a pacifist. He believed that he could preserve truth and justice. He openly stated that he could not remember another Serb who had done as much harm to the interest of Serbia as Milošević. It should be mentioned that in 1993 he signed a petition that was sent to the U.S. President Bill Clinton that urged him to act against Serbia’s actions in Bosnia.

Because of these attitudes and commitments, Popović was not only called a traitor in Serbia, but also received threats against his life. Today, time has shown that he was a real Serbian patriot.

In a 1991 interview for the Prishtina-based newspaper Koha, Popović said that when an Albanian thanked him, he replied: “I am not doing this because of you, but primarily because of my conscience.”

He had the courage to speak openly about the brutal human rights violations against Kosovar Albanians during the 1990s and thought that the Albanians were never integrated into Yugoslavia, but were treated as second-class citizens.

Notably, in an interview with the journalist Darko Vukorepa for the Croatian magazine Feral Tribune during the 1999 NATO bombing campaign he said “After the genocide committed in Bosnia, now they are committing a new genocide in Kosovo.”

When asked in August 1999 by journalist Igor Vukić from the Zagreb-based newspaper Novi List  whether the attacks by NATO made sense, Popović answered: “Right now, the situation there is obviously severe. The international representatives still do not have the strength to suppress revanchism, which I understand in a way, because terrible, massive crimes were committed against the Albanians,” adding that he is afraid that NATO’s intervention will be misunderstood and not be seen as humanitarian.

In a 2008 interview in the Belgrade-based web magazine Peščanik, right after Kosovo’s declaration of independence, he said that Kosovo is an independent state and that that fact cannot be changed. Popović added that “The truth is that those politicians, parties and citizens who are the first to be brave enough to openly say that the king is naked, that Kosovo is independent and that the ‘battle for Kosovo’ is the nonsense of demagoguery, deserve to be appreciated not only for their honesty and courage, but also for their true patriotism.”

This book, perhaps these entire volumes, published by Shkëlzen Gashi in three languages, comes to us as a manifesto of understanding and good faith. This is something that we, the inhabitants of these spaces, who continue to live with hatred and prejudice, are in great need of.

We who live in these spaces — where even bridges are thought of as walls, as is the case with the bridge over the Ibar River — need to learn as much as possible from the characters from “The Other Serbia.” If we become advocates of the truth, as this book instructs, we also become advocates for justice. 

Feature Image: Aulonë Kadriu / K2.0