Boro Ramiz Monument: Restorations

Nebojsa Milikić

In Prishtina’s City Park once stood a monument for the two partisan heroes Boro Vukmirović and Ramiz Sadiku.i The structure consisted of two busts positioned side by side. However, in 1999 Boro’s bust was forcibly removed and, possibly, only his ghost can still speak with his friend Ramiz. An old custom was that Albanians and Serbians, when talking with each other, would use the other’s language out of respect.

Boro: Let me know what you see.

Ramiz: I’m sorry, comrade, that only I am able to see. But I’m glad you’re not watching. All I see is a regime, as they say, of local disintegrations in a regime of global integrations…

Boro: Well, it seems that they separated us in death after they couldn’t in life, after so many years…

Ramiz: You know the difference between a province and a periphery?

Boro: What is it?

Ramiz: The province, whosever – Ottoman, Italian, Yugoslav, Austrian – has a special structure and purpose. Even if it is just a province, it has some subjectivity, or at least a significant name or status.

Boro: Aren’t we all Balkan now? Isn’t that something?

Ramiz: As a periphery, you’re just a sort of economic resource to squeeze out raw materials or other goods from. But you don’t have any specific relation to the territory, the population, and so on. So, nationalists have to compensate for this insignificance somehow, and they build airy identity fantasies… That’s what I’m seeing.

Boro: We called them the “comprador bourgeoisie” in the Party.

Ramiz: Yes, but do you remember when the reactionaries accused us of being about nothing but ideology, of following some kind of fantasy? Just to get rid of us because they couldn’t easily oppose our goals.

Boro: Well, at least we gave them some trouble. They had to invent a new language!

Ramiz: They import even that – the language. They have rejuvenated no other but the Orwellian one. That’s the sound of the EU disintegration language. Anyway, where are you these days?

Boro: I was in Mitrovica for a while…ii

Ramiz: And, how was it? Do tell!

Boro: Bad, brother… and ugly. Above all, ugly.

Ramiz: Why? Tell me.

Boro: Well, a divided city, with everybody staying in their own half, like in two different worlds. Although, people do meet in the Bosniak Mahala iii to drink coffee, talk a bit…

Ramiz: Well, if everything is divided and disintegrated you can’t have something different in the middle… and Gračanica? iv

Boro: People from Prishtina go there to the pharmacy, to the doctor, and so on. There are only a few Serbs in Prishtina, maybe fifty. I saw “Tanja” written on the wall of a building in the center – some girl, surely not an Albanian one. She herself or an admirer must have done it a long time ago, but you can still see it, no one erased it or wrote over it…

Ramiz: And what happened to the Serbian woman who stayed in Prishtina, living behind an armored door? We once slept before that door, as additional protection?

Boro: The old woman died, with all her framed photographs and stories of Milošević.

Ramiz: Well, do not blame her, it’s not her fault.

Boro: No, it’s my fault, indeed… but mind this: in Mitrovica market, they are haggling over a bag of potatoes. Everything is cheaper in the Mahala, but again, you have to haggle… and when the haggling is over, the Serb gets generous and gives up ten cents – like, “It doesn't matter” – and the seller, an Albanian, replies, “You want to pay for everything that happened??” Haha.

Ramiz: Haha. But again, it’s a little threatening, in that place in particular… it’s not very neighborly. You know what the Orthodox cemetery in South Mitrovica looks like.

Boro: Listen, this also has to do with those European integrations. In order for European elites to feel civilized, we here have to be uncivilized, constantly quarreling tribes. In that vein, Tsar Lazar v and Isa Boletini vi monitor each other across the bridge of Mitrovica – a monument to one side, a monument to the other side. Whether people pass by with their children or bombs are thrown, they do not move. They watch and lurk like two tomcats in eternal February.

Ramiz: It’s a shame… and both of them are figures from history, from a different time. Neither of the two represents the kind of people that now erected their monuments. Is it possible that there is no initiative, no fight against all that?

Boro: Well, there are, like, some non-governmental organizations. All the progressive youth that we used to count on in our times – now they get co-opted and softly commanded to, God forbid, do this “without ideology”, do that “but without engaging in politics”. They were hooked in by these imperialists, first Western, now even Russian or Chinese soft-power attempts… it’s a general sale of souls.

Ramiz: So how come? I heard that everyone today is in faculties, well-read, smart… although, my nephews and cousins, they are all in Germany. There was nowhere else to go and nothing else to do… and these people of yours can at least make a living from selling the land.

Boro: Well, people have lost all hope. It has been washed away over decades. Now, with nothing different in sight, it’s like, let’s at least earn something, at least some pocket money.

Ramiz: Well, I am not condemning… but it’s sad. We fought, resisted, defied…

Boro: We should better shut up! That’s why they cut us down. And we could have lived a bit, too.

Ramiz: But then we wouldn’t have a monument.

Boro: Well, when I see what our sculptors are doing now… some eerie monuments, in Belgrade, some where you don’t know if it’s a carnival requisite or not.

Ramiz: Who knows what we would have done if we were still alive?

Boro: Well, now everyone is after those stories. “What would it be like if…?” They call it “alternative history”. And we are portrayed as some naive fools or adventurers at best…

Ramiz: It’s not condemnable, it’s sad. But it’s also ugly, when you’re proud of some kind of independence, justice, normalcy – and the people around you have their hands tied, pockets empty, and a worn-out language of problems – or tied tongues, all the same. We fought with the police just to proclaim a slogan – while they could take to the streets whenever and however they want. Everyone is informed, eloquent – it’s a pleasure to see – but passive, so passive, and all are “networked”. A strong net indeed, they are all tightly wrapped up in it indeed, haha! But the reason that they beheaded you was not only against Serbia – it was also against the socialist past. I listen to them when they come in the evening to have a drink. You see, this is how it is: first, they idealized capitalism, then disappointment came, and shock, followed by self-degradation, some whining of “we will never be like blah, blah, blah”, and then hatred toward socialism, as if it is to blame… all according to Brussels’s agenda.

Boro: Yes, and the whole plan is to finish college here and then go elsewhere and work as a painter or plumber, or to sell property, some land or the forest and then… just blow the trumpet: democracy, transition, tolerance! As if it could simply appear out of thin air at the periphery, due to someone’s good will.

Ramiz: And all this without any leftist ideology, without the politics of emancipation, the Communist Party?

Boro: Well, just that phony wording: Cold Warrish human rights, civil society, normality, democracy. But what about economic democracy or equality? It’s like some distant undiscovered planet…

Ramiz: It comes across as a new religion. At least it is a common one…

Boro: Common, but confrontational, too. People are making fun of that topic. Some guy from Belgrade came to Mahalla e Muhaxherëve a couple of years ago. vii Not knowing where he was, he went to photograph a building. Probably he was interested in the new informal type of architecture. Anyway, a building like a greenhouse – blue glass façade, very “transitional” in style – he saw it from the main street and approached. A bunch of locals were sitting in the coffee shop and they greeted him just to check who he was and why he was walking around with a camera: “Qysh je o kojshi?” And he said in English,

“I don’t understand Albanian. Do you know English?”

“Ah, English… OK, OK. Where are you from?”

“…From Belgrade…” the guy stammered.

“Belgrade, ah… well, OK, OK…What?! What OK bre?! Belgrade? BEOGRAD????!!!!”

“Yes…” Sticking to English, just in case.

Ramiz: Haha, let’s say he tries to “hold ground”…

Boro: Wait! This happened when “standards before status” viii narrative for Kosovo was around, you remember? And the guy in the coffee shop thought for a second or two and said, “WELCOME TO STANDARDS!”

Ramiz: Ah haha… nice, nice…

Boro: Gorgeous! But we should actually turn it around. Let’s really define the status before the standards. Let’s see… here, now, what is our status? Aren’t we, like most Eastern European countries, a country of imposed deindustrialization and rapidly devastated economies, whose “development” is inevitably dictated by central capitalist economies? So, why then do they impose standards on us as like if we were not a periphery, as if we were something completely different from any capitalist periphery?

Ramiz: You know, sometimes I’m sorry that I was cemented here, so I can’t wander around a little. I heard how many have to pretend to be English. Not only Serbs, but also others from Yugoslavia, also Bulgarians, Czechs. But the shopkeepers recognize them by their accents and immediately switch to Serbian. One asks, “How much” and the keeper answers, “Dva i po evra”, haha.

Boro: Haha, yes, and they go on as if nothing happened. But the best was this: they addressed an Albanian officer in KFOR in English and he answered in Serbian explaining: “When addressed in a language of an occupier, I answer in a language of an occupier. However, I know Serbian better…”

Ramiz: Well, it’s not exactly like that, but…

Boro: Who asks us for our opinion at all? And another difficult topic: once you had to say “Shiptar”, ix now you can’t, at least not if you are a Serb. In fact, it has become derogatory. They wanted to punish an older guy for that when he called the police to complain about an Albanian neighbor. He lost his temper in the conversation, but he didn’t mean to insult – he grew up with Albanians. Before it wasn’t a problem but later it was – and when I remember the Belgrade press of the eighties, it’s clear to me why it became one…

Ramiz: Well, a good role model for the media here during the 2004 riots against the Serbs… x

Boro: Not even close to the eighties, believe me, if not for other reasons, there wasn’t the burden of war back then… and still, whoever I ask around here, they will be like, “Serbs should return, we are the same people in the end”.

Ramiz: Just imagine, we are sitting in the Grand Hotel, or in Mitrovica, and you listen to Albanian and Serbian mixed… also Turkish and Romani here and there.

Boro: I could gladly imagine – if only I had a head. Now it is not that easy for me…

Ramiz: In Goraždevac, xi do Serbian people cross the river to their fields?

Boro: I don’t know, I haven’t been there for a while, but you know how it was there? All the mass graves haven’t been located yet. People from neighboring Albanian villages are desperate…

Ramiz: And in Svinjare, xii did people return?

Boro: Well, you can see somebody working in the fields, but they are not the same people, I think.

Ramiz: Maybe neighbors, to make sure the land isn’t neglected?

Boro: I’m not sure. There are a lot of complaints, but nobody solves anything.

Ramiz: One day, a guy from some non-governmental organization, a Serb from Gnjilane, xiii was expelled even though he didn’t participate in the war. They looked down at him as a child and insulted him because he was a Serb – “Shkije, Shkije” xiv – they called him hurtful names. Kids. Now he tells strangers about it whenever he has the opportunity. And let him tell. Nothing is black and white…

Boro: But he was not attacked just because he was a Serb. I know him, he was the son of a municipal employee for social support. His wife, again, an official, was rude and too strict, even vicious toward Albanian children. She belonged to the upper class and the class of oppressors, at least from the point of view of several of the families from which the children came, you know how it was…

Ramiz: Well, there was an upper class and there were oppressors within the Albanian community, too, but their children were not attacked so easily. Let me tell you, comrade, Tito was very lenient toward the existing – as we called it – semi-feudal and patriarchal hierarchy in Kosovo. And Ranković xv and his team were shamefully aggressive and criminal, so it was reinforced in both ways. What was our hope? Investments, “integration in the international division of labor”, as our comrades say… modernization with world with world-wide goons, let me tell you, ehhh…

Boro: Well, that was done, but again, somehow the Serbian and Montenegrin populations got more benefits from that modernization. They almost privatized the state apparatus. In the nineties it was transformed into a sort of apartheid. Some minorities profited here and there, like the Turks and Goranci, xvi because the administrative apparatus pretended to follow the official policy and the rhetoric of multinationality. Eh. It ended with multi nationalisms…

Ramiz: Multiplied indeed. And now, since this liberation, I hear people talking. From the 400 and some places where Serbs lived in Kosovo, there are now about 100 places left.

Boro: And what about the hundreds of thousands of expelled villagers and their burned and looted villages during the war? And the thousands and thousands of murders and rapes?

Ramiz: Of course – and again, it was a war. Few people came out clean, everybody guilty and anybody responsible must be trialed and punished… still the quilt and the responsibility are not one and the same thing, many guilty ones are in fact more guilty than ones that are responsible but they still are considered innocent… if you know what I mean… but now there is at least peace…

Boro: Not everybody came out equally dirty… nevertheless, there is no peace in class society, it’s just a question of what means are used when the war is being waged. You know what the Albanian peasants say when they meet the international community representatives to negotiate about letting Serbs cultivate fields and repair houses? “Well, we would like to repair our houses as well, help us too”.

Ramiz: We are buried alive! At least you don’t have to watch…

Boro: This is how I see it: if my head were on my shoulders and Albanian names could be found above the windows of small businesses in Belgrade, maybe we wouldn’t be the periphery.

Ramiz: Lenin explained everything in Imperialism – but it ended up in blindness again. If only I could not see all this, find someone to take my petrified eyes and upgrade his own…

Boro: Sorry to leave you alone. You didn’t leave me then, but at least you could have chosen. Today, we have all these elections, free movements, and organizations, but alas, where do you find yourself? Stuck in society and in the world and in the mind since your birth – and you’ll stay there forever…

Ramiz: Only to head off like you… so to speak? Broken and taken anywhere.

Boro: This is exactly what most of the popular songs of both Albanians and Serbians are about…

i Borko "Boro" Vukmirović (1912–1943) and Ramiz Sadiku (1915–1943) were two partisans during World War II and among the organizers of the anti-fascist resistance in Kosovo. Italian forces executed theme together on April 101943, after having been arrested and tortured, refusing to provide information on their combatants. In Yugoslavia, the Serb/Montenegrian Boro and the Albanian Ramiz became a symbol of Brotherhood and Unity and were posthumously awarded the Order of the People's Hero.

ii Mitrovica is a city in North Kosovo. Divided by the Ibar River, the northern part of the city is mostly populated by Serbian people, whereas the south is dominated by the Albanian community. Since 2013, both parts have been separated in administrative terms.

iii Bosniak Mahala is an ethnically diverse neighborhood in Northern Mitrovica on the banks of the Ibar, dominated by small shops and craftsmen.

iv The Serbian Orthodoox Gračanica Monastery, located a few kilometers south of Prishtina, was built in 1321. An outstanding example of medieval art, it has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2006.

v Lazar Hrebeljanović (around 1329–1389) was a medieval Serbian ruler who died at the Battle of Kosovo in June 1389. Lazar is venerated in the Serbian Orthodox Church as a martyr and saint, and is highly regarded in Serbian history and culture.

vi Isa Boletini (1864–1916) was a revolutionary commander and an important person in the Albanian national Rilindja movement. Boletini was involved in a 1910 revolt against Ottoman rule, participated in the Albanian Declaration of Independence in 1912, and fought against the Montenegrin and Serbian army after they occupied Kosovo in the Balkan Wars.

vii Mahalla e Muhaxherëve is a neighborhood in Prishtina, southeast of the historic center. Its name refers to the term Muhaxhirë, Ottoman Albanian communities that were displaced from, for instance, Greece, Serbia or Montenegro and settled in nowadays Albania and Kosovo. The first inhabitants of Mahalla e Muhaxherëve have arrived from Niš, after it has been conquered/liberated by Serbia during the Serbian–Ottoman War (1876–78).

viii “Standards before status” was a policy undertaken by the international community to not discuss the legal status of Kosovo before it could meet certain standards of democratic development and governance, which had been defined be the United Nations in 2003. The free movement of Serbs through Kosovo was integral part of the targets. So, if a Serb from Belgrade can move freely in a quite troublesome quarter in Prishtina, it is standards are seemingly respected. Why troublesome? Refugees are always exposed to hostility of surrounding population so they in return become hostile to the surroundings. The added-value moment here is that somebody from Belgrade (where the neighborhood’s initial trauma, i.e., the expelling from Serbia originates from and has been updated and deepened by the trauma of 1999 war) can freely walk through the mahalla.

ix Slavic version (Šiptar) has officially been introduced in the 1960s as term for Albanian population, but increasingly got reframed in an offensive way. Nowadays it is used as an ethnic slur. Therefore, Albanians consider it derogatory when used

x In March 2004, tensions between Albanian and Serbian communities escalated (also due to a heavily hostile campaign in Albanian media based of misinformation) and led to the killing of twenty-seven persons in total. Several thousand Serbs and members of other minorities, in particular Roma, were forced to leave their homes, with their houses destroyed. Twenty-seven Orthodox churches and monasteries were also burnt.

xi Goraždevac is a village in Northwestern Kosovo close to Bistrica River, with Serbs constituting the biggest share of inhabitants. Since the war it is impossible for Serbian farmers to work on their land – located on the other side of the river. In 2003, a Serbian teenager and a child swimming there were shot by automatic rifles. The perpetrators have never been identified.

xii Svinjare is a village in Northern Kosovo. During the 2004 unrest, its Serbian inhabitants needed to be evacuated by KFOR. Shortly after, their houses and properties were burnt down and looted.

xiii Gjilan (Serbian: Gnjilane) is a city with around 50,000 inhabitants in Eastern Kosovo.

xiv Shkijet is derogatory Albanian term for Serbs, but also for other ethnic groups in Southeast Europe, including Greeks and Italians. It is possibly derived from the term sclavus (Slav) and contained the traditional meaning of a neighbor that doesn’t speak (our) language or more generally neighboring foreigners.

xv Aleksandar Ranković (1909–1983) was Yugoslavia’s Minister of the Interior (1946–1953), Deputy Prime Minister (1949–1963), and Vice President (1963–1966). Ranković was a proponent of a centralist Yugoslavia allegedly dominated by Serbia and an opponent of Kosovar autonomy that would overcome central authority of Serbia. He and the secret police under his command were responsible for the oppression of dissidents and Albanian activists, including torture and murder, and for repressive policies against the Albanian population in Kosovo.

xvi Goranci (or Gorani) are a Muslim Slavic minority in Kosovo of around 10,000 people inhabiting the region bordering Albania and North Macedonia. Their dialect, Goranski, is a variety of the South Slavic language.