The Rising Phoenix – The Southeastern Chapter in the European Tale
(Ales Vidmar, June 12th 2004, Skopje, Macedonia – International Student Conference of the Borjan Tanevski Memorial Fund supported by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation)
Dear Tanevski family, friends of Borjan, members of the audience, international professors and students, members of the press…
First of all, let me thank the Tanevski family for putting this event and people together, it is no easy task, fundraising, preparing, crisis management, etc. It is an enterprise. Thank you for your efforts.
There are two reasons why I am here, why we all are here, two special but symbolically intertwined reasons.
The first of them is to remember Borjan Tanevski, and to feel an emotional sense of loss, but at the same to form a bond of positive thoughts that brought us here together and will bring us together in the future too. We are here to offer support to the Tanevski family that has ENDURED WHAT NO ONE SHOULD.
Borjan Tanevski, was a friend of mine
He won me over in a minute. He was the favorite participant at a project I took seriously and organized for the first time. It was Brave New Europe that strives to bring the ideas that first sparked the European project to the SEE youth. In 2002, it was a fresh event and the personalities of the participants were the ones that would either make it a success or a failure. There were less than thirty of them, and I got to know them quite well. But of all the people there, Borjan stood out. He won me over in a minute. It was in the evening, first evening after official beginning of the course. We were all standing outside the dorm where people were staying, having a nice getting-to-know each other event. We were standing and talking about who we are, where we are from and schools when I saw an interesting figure among us. Did we order catering I thought? From a moderate budget we had, of course not, but there was a 2 meters guy going around with a silver plate offering small breads with Ajvar on it. It was Borjan.
Borjan knew how to do it, with this small gesture everyone got to know him and with his incredible ear-to-ear smile we put him in our mind maps as a pleasant and charming person. Even the people who were joining us for the first time and the last in the event, remember him now, 3 years on.
It might have been a small catering gesture, if you want, but I see it as an action of how to give a small portion of oneself’s energy and good will to improve the group’s collective emotion, I see it as a show of leadership. Borjan was not afraid to stand out from the crowd and in front of it, and to do so not to beg for respect and appreciation. He could win you in a minute.
When he left I had promised him and reserved for him a place at the next BNE. When I was saying goodbye it was to an ever joking Borjan, telling me how he plans to drink for 1 month for his sister’s wedding that he was forcing her into, 2 weeks before and 2 weeks after. He did not have a drinking problem, it was just the emotions of sheer joy and love he was already building up for the day of marriage. He had extreme capacities for both.
I kept in touch with him and was sad to hear he was not going to Natolin, I had called him up from time to time, and talked to him, his energy was running lower but still he convinced me that he was only temporarily beset. This is where I think was my mistake, I had kept calling and exchanging jokes, but did not really take a hold of the severity of the situation and kept expecting him for the summer in Ljubljana. Expected him to let me know he got a job at the European Integration department, to keep visiting and to stay in touch until one day, I could say Good day Minister Tanevski. He had the potential, and I am sure he would have been one of the few that would keep politics clean and meaningful.
Borjan Tanevski, was an extraordinary person, with a great deal of the characteristics that I would call perfect. He has left a mark on me as well as a great void that memories of him remind me of. The world is a lesser place without him.
However, the hole in our realities and especially for the Tanevskis is so huge that one cannot imagine. But still miraculously, Tanevskis stayed in the ring of the unfair and unjust life, and keep fighting, not just to remember and build monuments to past glory or could have been glory. The commendable pro-active stance makes me respect Josif, Vinka and Dorka, extremely, with their activity they make us know, that there is so much love around us, so much strength and ultimately success.
For that I thank them, for that I will help.
2.
Here I come to the second part of my presentation, the second reason why we are here. In a broader sense our region has experienced innumerable similar losses. In the Balkans, as Tanevskis so did so many. Endured what no one should endure.
Balkans and the transition
In medias res: Balkans – is it a word of positive or negative connotation?
It is a land of very warm and hospitable people, that sing the world’s greatest love songs, people that are still communities, which is a disappearing feature of Western Society.
But Balkans is also a land of the sharpest and bloodiest knives.
What went wrong? Or more importantly what must go right?
If you are e.g. Muslim in Bosnia, Serb in Croatia, a democrat in Serbia, you might be disappointed with the last decade to say the least.
YU was not Czecho-Slovakia saying AHOJ at the conference table and dissoluting peacefully into two states. Balkans took the hard way, hard, and bloody.
Now as we may look around at the decaying industries, shelled houses, graves, poor infrastructure, and the young ones, most productive ones leaving… We may see it was not the optimal solution. If there was no war, the region, including Slovenia would be richer, Bosnia would be richer, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, all would be richer, richer in materialist but also humane terms.
But what is the greatest problem, challenge or issue, now is that nationalist rhetorics, thinking and emotions –remains worriedly strong.
Today Balkans is a post-conflict region, but can we safely say there will not be a conflict or another war soon? I would like to, but the events this March showed that because economic, political and individual situation is not satisfactory there is frustration, and too often frustration is not transformed into what should be improvement and innovation, rather it is in burning the other’s sacred buildings.
The best lessons are the ones we learn the hardest: e.g. for EU it could be Iraq – its response and reorganization will be interesting, for Slovenia it is the being non-SEE country – we have been excluded from many projects that would require our engagement in SEE. (to SEE or not to SEE, we are no longer blind, we are back to engage and support, the recent visit of our Prime Minister shows this.) Anyway, Slovenija back in the family.
For the Balkans the lesson clearly should be that wars are not solutions, and in Macedonia you are learning minority protection and how to release and overcome the ancient fears of the ‘other’ (goes for both entities).
So are we ready for the future or are we going to dwell on the past?
Nationalist myths belong to the past, today we have to deal with realities. I do not see an economist or businessman thinking when doing business about 1389 or 1461 or 1911… Not when he is doing business, it would mean he or she would have to discriminate against e.g. the Turks and loose out if not cooperating according to economic standards. This is what we can learn from a businessman - not to loose because of negative emotions.
We all have to realise that the idea of GREATER SERBIA is not the answer, but of a greater Europe may be. Change of focus, refocusing of energies… As it was with post WWII Europe.
Although, Adorno wrote, “how can there be poetry after Auschwitz – it would be barbaric.” Well there is poetry, even Jewish people write, even they joke. The memory is there, but after the Western Catastrophe, Germans, the French have started, timidly at first, to cooperate, and then a whole plethora of nations that were competing, engaged in deadly combat, emotionally deep in hatred of each other – made the calculation – it does not pay off. They rose from the ashes and Europe lives. Now the idea can be rekindled.
I see great enthusiasts among Balkans youth and Europe is the buzz word. But remember you are not just RETURNING TO EUROPE – you are REINVENTING IT.
SEE is also saying goodbye to communism and passive taking of what someone else gives us. There is a double transition, the two PCs we are in now are - Postconflict and Postcommunism. The task: Young should be motivated, flexible, entrepreneurial and ambitious, liberal and not vigilant, past oriented and passive.
In one of my reasoning on the East-West dichotomy I came up with, is that we both have geniuses, however the West uses theirs better, use of the talent, individual etc. is much better. Now to catch up, it is not enough to have a consecutive economic growth BUT to develop the HDI, the people’s ability to release frustration into production and innovation (achievement is the easiest self-sustainable phenomena in Human reality). To have a vision and to include into networks.
If nationalist myths belong to the past – new need to be invented. EU is intended to inspire the reform for the measures of prosperity etc. That is what we in Ljubljana are trying to do, trying to inspire the positive connotations of Europeanization, and to make EU more motivating, not just funding. But enthusiasm is everywhere, more elsewhere than in Brussels!
What Macedonia and Balkans have to find out is to offer to the EU their specific positive traits. While EU most of all would like is PEACE and social and economic development. Conflicts in SEE were Europe’s nightmare too.
SEE will get from EU infrastructure, tourists, investment, networks, programs… There is abundance of opportunities.
Now let me conclude, the title of this short talk was: “The Rising Phoenix – the Southeastern Chapter in the European tale”.
I talked about two phoenixes - the first: Tanevskis rising and Borjan’s energy remaining in a way through us convening and dedicating a portion of our successes to his memory.
And the second: the whole region rising from the ashes. And if I talked about the myth or inspiring motive for SEE, this is one. Learning hard lessons as this rising bird, from the ashes rising, STRONGGER, WISER and MORE BEAUTIFUL.
After this self re-assertion a good thing will come.
See you in EU!
And thank you for your attention.