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Chapter 2

The Formation of Public Opinion: Serbia in 2001

There are obvious difficulties in describing the state of readiness in Serbian society to engage with questions of the recent past and responsibility for it just after the change of regime on 5 October 2000. Processes were not only ongoing, but might also be perceived as having been just at their beginning, at least as far as large-scale public opinion is concerned. But any kind of explanation of the development of public opinion needs a starting point. This study takes as its starting point the moment at which it was possible to engage in discussion free of overwhelming constraint.

It is of course not the case that all discussion began in 2001. Public opinion had been in some ways prepared before the change of regime. On the one hand, it had been prepared to resist the topic. Part of this consequence derives from the cumulative effects of propaganda campaigns and campaigns for the control of information directed by the previous regime—if they can be said to have had any effect, then that effect probably remained in place in the period immediately following the end of that regime. These effects were likely enhanced by several factors. First, there was an extended period during which substantive positions people held about concrete issues of responsibility were mixed with generalized if momentary feelings of resentment or revenge, contributing to a lack of clarity regarding what was at stake. Second, the entire issue of responsibility in Serbia remained and remains clouded by the fact that even if forces controlled and financed by the Serbian government committed the largest share of crimes, they were not the only forces to commit crimes. Third, while most people in Serbia had at best secondhand experience of the wars in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo, nearly everybody had direct experience of the NATO bombing campaign in 1999. The perception was and still remains quite popular in Serbia that any admission of responsibility in the wars of succession could amount to a justification of the NATO campaign, which was almost universally opposed in the country for reasons that would not surprise anybody.

It might be reasonable to expect that the effects of regime-era public opinion would diminish as the regime receded into the past. In this chapter it is argued that a set of conditions needed to be present for such a shift in public opinion to occur. For a variety of reasons, not all of these conditions had been achieved a decade later.

The discourse of responsibility did not emerge suddenly in Serbia. At least on a small scale, public discussions of the question began at the same time the war began. Most of these initiatives came either as private initiatives or as efforts on the part of independent (and generally small) groups of intellectuals. Among these have to be counted the ongoing “Druga Srbija” campaign of the Belgrade Circle of Independent Intellectuals (Beogradski krug nezavisnih intelektualaca), the ongoing documentation efforts of the Belgrade Center for Human Rights (Beogradski centar za ljudska prava) and the Fund for Humanitarian Law (Fond za humanitarno pravo), and perhaps most visibly, the conference “Istina, odgovornost, pomirenje” (Truth, Responsibility, Reconciliation) held in Ulcinj in the spring of 2000. Some other contributions were made in publications such as Republika, which was broadly associated with civic and antiwar movements, and Helsinška povelja, associated with the Yugoslav Helsinki Committee. The independent radio station B92 also maintained efforts to inform the debate, translating and publishing books of analysis and documentation about the wars,¹ featuring discussions of the issue in its broadcast programs,² and dedicating special issues of the journal Reč associated with the station to the theme. However, the debate could not reach a wide audience, partly because most major media were controlled by a regime that had a concrete interest in suppressing the question, and partly because the fresh experience of war (combined with mostly one-sided information about the war) did not prepare many members of the public for an open discussion.

Inevitably, early takes on the state of public opinion are likely to be distorted. It will quickly become apparent in this chapter that the most commonly used means for exploring public opinion, opinion surveys, are of only limited use in this case. It will be necessary as the narrative develops to put together some richer, if less numerical, sources in order to indicate more fully the dilemmas in public opinion at the time and to suggest some of the directions that might have been available.

Contradictory Survey Findings

Before the arrest and detention of Slobodan Milošević over the weekend of 31 March–1 April 2001, a series of public opinion surveys were conducted, generally around the question of arrest and prosecution of war crimes suspects, but with a particular focus on the figure of Milošević and the question whether he ought to be tried in Serbia, extradited to ICTY, or both.

The results of these surveys are contradictory, and consequently it is not a simple matter to get a picture of the state of public opinion from them. From the point of view of survey research methodology, this is not surprising: surveys are least reliable in unstable political environments, particularly when the questions deal with matters of great sensitivity. There has also been extensive discussion about the weakness of survey research in the states of the former Yugoslavia in particular, especially because in the period since 2000 surveys generally failed to predict the results of elections.³ It is worth pointing out, too, that many of these surveys dealt with matters on which there was rapid change both in the surrounding situation and in the way media publicity was carried out. These are also sensitive and complex matters for which surveys might not be the most appropriate instrument.

One possible explanation for the lack of clarity in survey results might simply be that opinion was still in formation, or was in transition, with regard to several of the questions asked. It may be possible to make a more ambitious suggestion that after decades of varying types of authoritarian rule, public opinion itself was still in a formative stage in Serbia in 2001. This suggestion was offered by sociologist Stjepan Gredelj in presenting the results of a general survey, when he presented among his conclusions that “at last something is changing in Serbian public opinion, and at last critical thought is appearing.”⁴

In relation to known or suspected perpetrators, particularly people who held positions of power in the Milošević regime (as well as Milošević himself), there seemed to have been a general consensus that they ought to be charged and tried. There was somewhat less of a consensus on the question of what they ought to be charged with and tried for, with some people emphasizing offenses against the domestic criminal code, and others emphasizing offenses against international law. Opinion became sharply divided over the question of whether they should be tried in domestic courts or extradited to ICTY, although over the first half of 2001 a majority seemed to be developing, arguing that the former rulers ought to be tried both by domestic courts and ICTY. Some discussion was promoted in 2001 (among others by Serbian premier Zoran Djindjić) of an arrangement whereby charges for war crimes and crimes against humanity could be heard in Belgrade, with some level of official participation by ICTY prosecutors and judges.⁵ In general, however, while there continued to be strong resistance to ICTY, the position of complete rejection seemed to become a less popular one, held mostly by nationalists and supporters of the former regime, during the course of 2001.⁶

An informal online survey by the daily newspaper Večernje novosti asked the question, “Do you think that the arrest of the former president of SRJ Slobodan Milošević was justified?” and found 66 percent answering yes and 34 percent no.⁷ While these results are as reliable as the results of any nonscientific online survey with a nonrandom sample, the readership of Novosti is nonrandom in an interesting way: the paper was not only the most prominent pro-regime paper in the 1990s (together with Politika), its readership was also demographically closest to Milošević’s base of support (older, less educated, rural).⁸

However, other surveys produced contradictory results. A survey released in May 2001 by the Strategic Marketing agency, Seeing the Truth in Serbia (Vidjenje istine u Srbiji), found that more people blamed the United States than Milošević for the bombing campaign of 1999, and more people blamed former Croatian president Franjo Tudjman than Milošević for the fall of Yugoslavia. The same survey also found that respondents identified the indicted war criminals Ratko Mladić, Radovan Karadžić,Željko Ražnatović, and Slobodan Milošević as the “greatest defenders of Serbhood.”⁹ These results suggest methodological rather than political problems: respondents were asked about immediate “responsibility” for particular events rather than situations, and responded consistently. Similarly, the list of “defenders of Serbhood” gives the appearance of demonstrating more support for the indictees named than probably existed, since only people (and we do not know how large a group this is, although election results tell us it is a minority) who accept the nationalist ideas of the regime represented by the names on the list would be likely to offer any answer at all to a phrase like “defenders of Serbhood.”¹⁰ It is probably unnecessary to point out that respondents who were not ethnically Serbian (35 percent of the population of Serbia in the 1990 census) may not have automatically regarded the category in a positive light.

The Strategic Marketing Survey of May 2001 is primarily interesting for the contradictory nature of several of its results. It gave pessimistic findings in relation to the possibility of reconciliation, with 21 percent of respondents aged between eighteen and twenty-nine, and 34.6 percent of those over sixty, declaring they were completely unprepared for reconciliation. Similarly, 29.4 percent of respondents between eighteen and twenty-nine and 44.2 percent of those over sixty expressed extreme distrust toward members of other national groups.¹¹

On questions related to responsibility, respondents in the survey showed a marked tendency to project responsibility onto factors far from themselves. For example, asked to name the most important reason for NATO intervention against SRJ in 1999, 29.8 percent named “the policy of the Milošević regime,” while 55.2 percent identified either the political or economic “interest of the West.”¹² The factor of distance applies on comparative scales as well. Asked to choose between two options for “guilt for misfortune,” respondents named Slovenes (45.3 percent) more than Serbs (10.8 percent), the United States (27.3 percent) more than NATO (25.2 percent), the “international community” (44.8 percent) more than “all the peoples of the former Yugoslavia” (20.5 percent), Milošević (42 percent) more than “the people who elected him” (17.6 percent), and the interests of international business (53.7 percent) more than the interests of domestic business (11.2 percent).¹³

This form of projection did not necessarily arise from ignorance about the behavior of Serb military and paramilitary forces in the wars. Asked to name three events “which first come to mind” in relation to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the three most frequent responses were atrocities committed by Serb forces: the mortar attack on the Markale market in Sarajevo (48.1 percent), the siege of Sarajevo (28.8 percent), and the massacre in Srebrenica (21.3 percent). Respondents named atrocities committed by other forces far less frequently: the bombing and destruction of the bridge in Mostar (12.7 percent), the sniper attack on the Serb wedding party in Sarajevo in 1991 (12.6 percent), and general “crimes against Serb civilians” (7.2 percent).¹⁴ However, this pattern did not apply when the same question was asked about the war in Croatia. Although the siege of Vukovar was the second most frequently offered response (53.1 percent), actions on the part of Croat forces were dominant, such as the reconquest of the Knin region (55.3 percent) and the arrival of refugees from Croatia (30.5 percent). Only 5.3 percent of respondents named the bombardment of Dubrovnik.¹⁵ Asked to identify three war crimes committed by Serbs in the preceding ten years, a large majority named the massacre in Srebrenica (69.4 percent), while large numbers named the destruction of Vukovar (31.4 percent) and the massacre in Račak (18.6 percent).¹⁶ Results were more spread out when respondents were asked to name war crimes committed against Serbs: the three most frequent responses were the exodus of Serbs from Croatia (49.1 percent), the NATO bombing (35.4 percent), and the “suffering of civilians in Kosovo” (16.2 percent).¹⁷

A curious contradiction emerged with regard to the question of knowledge. The preceding results suggest that knowledge of at least some events was widespread in Serbia. At the same time, when asked directly, respondents did not indicate that they believed they were well informed: 22.3 percent of respondents considered themselves well informed about the wars in Croatia, while 19.4 percent considered themselves well informed about the wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina.¹⁸ Nor did respondents indicate that they believed their fellow citizens were well informed.¹⁹

However, when asked the long and possibly confusing question, “Has it ever happened that a new fact which you have learned from any source about any event related to the conflicts (wars in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo) caused you to change your thinking or position about the role (responsibility) of the warring sides?” an overwhelming 85.5 percent answered in the negative.²⁰ Despite this somewhat discouraging result from the point of view of efforts to promote information, the survey results suggested some potential ways in which efforts to disseminate information might have a more meaningful effect. The results indicate a wide gap between the sources of information people trusted and the sources they actually used. Asked to name their primary sources of information during the war, responses broke down as shown in the first table. When people were asked what sources of information they trusted, the structure of responses was different, as in the second table.

RTS-TV/state media	80.4%
Independent papers (Blic, Glas, Danas)	67.9%
Stories of witnesses	62.3%
Stories of relatives	45.5%
State-controlled papers (Politika, Ekspres, Novosti)	43.1%
Independent radio/TV (ANEM, B92)	42.4%
Personal experience	17.4%21

Source	Trusted	Did not trust
RTS-TV/state media	23.2%	42.5%
State-controlled papers	28.8%	36.5%
Independent papers	44.7%	17.9%
Independent radio/TV	62.4%	16.2%
Relatives	68.6%	16.2%
Witnesses	62.2%	15.4%22

The results suggest that efforts to shape opinion by using media already inclined to participate in a campaign of reshaping opinion would suffer from some important limitations. First, the question of availability of information arises—why did people tend to use most the sources of information they trusted least? The answer would most likely have to do with the structure of distribution and availability, and immediately suggests that one source of disjunction between events and perceptions has to do with the quality of information people receive. Second, aside from the broadcast programs offered by ANEM and B92, respondents expressed the most faith in interpersonal sources, particularly relatives and witnesses. The personally close category of “relatives” attracts more trust than the potentially unlimited category of “witnesses.” Here, as in the attribution of responsibility, distance is a factor. International media, especially the programs sponsored by governments with an eye toward influencing public opinion in Serbia (such as the VOA and BBC language services) are not mentioned, but the distance of these sources might interfere with the level of trust they enjoy. The same might be said of international nonmedia sources, such as statements from international governments, the United Nations, or ICTY.

The clear implication here is that if minds were likely to be changed, the way that would happen would have to be through the stories people tell one another, rather than the stories people are told by institutional sources. To offer a concrete example, Serbian prosecutors did not declare an intention to investigate Slobodan Milošević for war crimes after the ICTY indictment, or after demands for prosecution by European and American politicians, but after domestic media revealed a case in which there was clear indication of efforts to remove evidence of massacres on the part of high state authorities.²³

An earlier survey by the same agency raised related questions. Here respondents were asked about the possible guilt of specific individuals and about the prospect of cooperation with ICTY. While a great majority believed that Milošević was probably guilty of corruption, treason, and electoral fraud, only 10 percent believed he was guilty of war crimes. Most respondents expressed some degree of opposition to cooperation with ICTY, especially to extradition. About half responded that Serbia should cooperate with ICTY only in exchange for international aid.²⁴

The findings of surveys asking directly about the question of responsibility and the role of ICTY may only get us so far, however. We have seen from the review of results presented above that some findings are contradictory, that there are problems with regard to how widely information is believed, and that public opinion on concrete questions is more likely than not in a state of transition. Given the not entirely clear findings of survey research on questions directly related to guilt for violations of international law, it might be instructive to explore some indirect avenues toward the question.

In the first place, institutions that might deal with questions of guilt had weak credibility at the end of the Communist period and continued to be largely discredited afterward. In 1999 a survey indicated that just 23 percent of citizens expressed faith in the judiciary as opposed to 45 percent who did not.²⁵ This put the judiciary well behind institutions with traditional authority (65 percent trusted the military and 14 percent did not; 56 percent trusted the Church and 18 percent did not), and behind some other institutions remarkable for their corruption and lack of credibility (the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts was trusted by 45 percent and distrusted by 18 percent, police were trusted by 39 percent and distrusted by 35 percent).²⁶ Yet the judiciary “scored” higher than political institutions, whose authority was rejected in the survey by majorities ranging from 51 percent (opposition parties) to 62 percent (ruling parties).

In relation to institutions that could approach questions of responsibility more informally, traditional institutions like the military and the Church enjoyed relatively high levels of public trust. The military was, however, poorly positioned to engage in an exploration of the recent past because of its extensive complicity in the worst events of the period. The same could be said for the Church.²⁷ Media were similarly distrusted, privately run media (trusted by 19 percent, distrusted by 37 percent) somewhat less than state-run media (16 percent, 61 percent).²⁸ Perhaps in searching for institutions that could be helpful in addressing psychic and emotional needs related to responsibility, a residual high level of trust was still enjoyed only by cultural and educational institutions.

These general points regarding perceptions of institutions, though, are at best signpoints along the way to the fundamental question, which is how people perceived themselves in the light of the experience all of them shared to some degree. Some interesting research has linked the power of nationalist mobilization to the various dimensions of personal powerlessness people felt during the declining years of SFRJ.²⁹ This current of research continues a trend of general lack of hope for the future already noted in the 1960s, but which became overwhelming in Serbia in the 1990s.³⁰ A meaningful change in feelings of hope and self-efficacy would not be likely to occur without major changes in social and material conditions, but also without a fundamental transformation of values and self-perceptions. Such processes are neither impossible nor unknown, but they occur slowly and subtly, and are unlikely to be massive. In this regard, public opinion surveys are unlikely to be of much help at all. The indicators we are after are mostly cultural in character.

What this early snapshot of public opinion probably does show is that Serbian society in 2001 was neither wholly prepared for the confrontation with the past that was being demanded of it nor did it entirely reject the idea. There were institutional weaknesses that made a quick engagement less probable (if quick engagement was indeed ever probable): these included a political and legal establishment with severely degraded credibility, a media system largely discredited for a variety of reasons, and institutions of traditional authority with severe restrictions on their capacity for active engagement.

The data also suggest that any efforts or initiatives to promote campaigns for public engagement would have had to meet several conditions in order to succeed. They would have to be perceived as having their origins in the society rather than being imposed from without. Within the society, they would have to be perceived as originating from or involving institutions with meaningful public credibility. They would have to be perceived as taking into account not only calls for regret but also sources of grievance. And they would have to involve, not only authoritative sources directing discourse toward the public, but active exchange of discourse among the public.

Further on in the text, analysis of the work of ICTY and related initiatives will show that these efforts did not meet the conditions described above and so did not make the expected contribution to the process of developing a discourse around guilt and responsibility. In this regard, they were not helped by a political and institutional structure that was either unprepared for the challenge or declined to take it up. This meant that much of the work of developing an understanding of the recent past took place not in the field of politics and law, but in that of culture.

If the surveys cited so far have offered representations of latent or existing public opinion around 2001, the explorations in the following chapter draw on cultural expression to get at what might have been emergent public opinion.