An attempt to rationalize history (Final project)

     This is all based on a story. No real plot, it’s just a bit of family history. My grandma Olga went to prison when she was 18. She never talked about it, but some bits and pieces survived with brief exchanges and visits and images from my great-aunt (her sister), who told my mom while she lived with her in college, who told me, again in bits and pieces over the years, told in passing, on walks around the neighborhood with my mom, in dinner conversations with relatives, a historical footnote from my parents. Every time, there’s some new context that makes me hear it a bit differently.

     I’m going to write this story a few times. Right now I’m writing from my bedroom during the age of coronavirus. I’ve been told, “you should keep a journal this is a very historic time,”. Okay look, nobody’s going to be reading my journal as historical evidence, it’s not even about coronavirus. It’s about the normal shit teenagers go through, figuring out a complex and morally unstable world they weren’t given a study guide for. And to be honest, everything is very bleak, “unstuck in time”, I’d say. There’s a song I like, “I Hate it Too” by Hum, and especially how it starts: “Morning gray ignites a twisted mess of foreign shapes and sounds/I wish the ceiling was the ground”. Every time I wake up with no real reason to log onto a Zoom call (and I won’t), I understand those words a bit better. 

     It’s all a disassociated mess, simply put. So, thank you to the May 6th first draft deadline for this story, for reminding me that the ceiling is the ceiling and that the floor is the floor. If you left me to it, I’d give up, unsure of the point of telling stories anyway. But evidently my graduation depends upon me telling you this story, and a lot more heavy things depend on this story being told. 

     Olga was born in Pristina, Kosovo, Serbia, but her family was ousted from the region during World War Two. She attended high school in a village in southern Serbia, but after the war ended she and her family were reunited in Belgrade. The post-war years were almost as bad as the war itself, a bleak string of days, coming off of the anxiety of war, defined by economic hardship and political turmoil. 

      She was a party member, and somewhat by choice. She believed in the cause, even going against her religious family. One of her sisters had married a Russian man, and she was also a member of the Russian club in her neighborhood. But a lot of things happened beyond the control or knowledge of the average person, somebody like her, which would shape their lives and their nation and their children and their children’s children. 

      On a grander scale, the postwar years in Europe were a political shitshow. Sorting out borders, dividing up nations into different spheres of influence, deciding how things were to be done. Stalin took Eastern Europe, Tito reunited Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was treated like any over Soviet satellite state, but this wasn’t about to fly with Tito. He and the Yugoslav partisans freed Yugoslavia themselves, and they felt that they should be treated as such. They wanted more independence, and support from the West financially as well. Stalin claimed that Yugoslavian socialism was “no longer revolutionary”, and then Tito and his fellow chair members went to the meeting with all of the other communist leaders, they were ousted and thus began the Tito-Stalin Split in 1948. 

      The next years were tense, Russian influence no longer welcome in Yugoslavia, and furthermore, there were convoluted ideological differences thousands of people were sent to labor camps and prisons. To paraphrase Ishmael Reed, “Marxism is secularized christianity”. And to paraphrase Slavoj Zizek, “In Christianity, all men are brothers. But that also means those who do not accept brotherhood are not men,”. Socialism is for the people, meaning you and everyone else. But to be against socialism is to be against the people. Enemies of the state are enemies of the people, and it’s easier to convince people that you’re a danger for being against the government when you’re against them as well. To be honest, it’s a very clever form of control, of maintaining the status quo. And especially in an era of paranoia about outside attacks, when your country is weak. Tito, I assume, had good interests here. (Many people who do bad things do them believing they are doing good). If you imprison the supposed enemy within your own nation, you will preserve that nation for everyone else, and them and their children as well. 

     What did people get arrested for? Imagine this scenario: Milojko was a bureaucrat in the party, and in the whole debacle that was the Tito-Stalin split, he supported the Stalinist model ideologically. Tito was a sellout, he thought. He and his family attended an airplane show of a female pilot, who Milojko knew. He had expressed his frustration to her about the political situation, how Tito had sold out and didn’t preserve the unity of the socialist movement. 

     Afterwards, the pilot was talking to Milojko’s brother, who had reading his copy of Politika. He turned to her and said, isn’t this a funny comic? It was Karl Marx, with a portrait of Stalin hanging up behind him. Funny, isn’t it? The pilot shyly chucked, and said, you know not everyone thinks that. Think what? That it’s funny. Oh who? He asked. He’s very close to you, she said. You know him better than anyone. It was his brother, Milojko. But his brother was even higher up in the party bureaucracy, and regardless of his opinions on the situation he frankly valued his life, his position, his family, and he would not let his brother drag him down. (This is the plot of When Father Was Away on Business (1985)).

    And that was how people got sent to prison. Brief exchanges and inconvenient associations. It didn’t really have to be important or real. And you had to be careful, everyone was just trying to cover their ass, because frankly they might not even know that they were in the wrong. A bit like corona, if you want to be pessimistic about society. Of course, you should wear a mask to protect yourself. But sometimes, the point isn’t even that, it’s simply to make a point that you're an upstanding and moral citizen who is taking precautions. Frankly, a cotton mask or an overused surgical mask might be ineffective (reading the news is another layer of dissociation I’d rather not dive into). But even if your mask is ineffective, at least save face, don’t scare the people around you. 

     Olga was at the Russian culture club, as she normally would be. They knew the situation was bad, but they were all just teenagers at a culture club, that wasn’t a political statement. But frankly, in real life the truth is a bit irrelevant. The police came and picked them all up that day. 

     Her family went to look for her that night, seeing as she hadn’t come home. Any government office in the Balkans could easily be the setting for an absurdist comedy. Police stations are employed by young women who age too quickly, who are always angry, slow, and fixing their nails. Doors are always closed, and they run between them all business like, but are all sitting behind the closed doors drinking coffee and complaining about the quality of the produce at the market or their husbands and children or their neighbor Milica who was a real bitch. They waited in a police station for hours, late into the night, trying to make way in some argument with a tired secretary. Eventually a kind officer came out, took them to another room, and explained where their daughter was. The charges she had been arrested on, where she was, when they could visit, what they could take. 

     Olga spent a year in prison. Her prison was on Ada Ciganlija (Gypsy River Island), today a popular park to go to on hot summer Belgrade days. The prison is no longer there, but the facilities were shabby to say the least. The park is nice when it’s clean today, with paths and barbeque resteruants and happy teengers. But it was probably very dirty, reeked of unbathed prisoners, shit, bodies, stagnant diverted river water. 

      It’s hard to say what happened within the fences. Most of these prisons involved forced labor - there was a lot to build in a poor, rebuilding nation. And many involved ideological reeducation programs. She told basic stories to her sister, but didn’t include details about her day to day. And there wasn’t much her family could say or do either, they just had to wait. For those on the outside, waiting, unable to talk to those you love the most, is perhaps as much torture as you can imagine. And for those on the inside, the psychological torture left wounds which scarred not only them as individuals, but the nation as a whole. 

      There’s no better way to control people than to have them control each other. We’re all supposed to be social distancing, but how do you enforce that? There are no police to control you, no official forces. There’s a “law”, but you’re doing it out of civic duty, out of the better knowledge that this way, less people will die. And you don’t meet with people because other people can see you, other people can say something. But if you meet someone, just don’t say anything. It’s not a sin if you do, but you avoid other people, posting on social media. People use social media, neighborhood emails lists, and such, to shame people. Instilling a sense of personal responsibility and shame among people works phenomenally. 

      Whoever ran these prison camps knew this point well. Instead of constantly inflicting torture, be it physical or psychological, you make the prisoners do it to each other. They are not only traumatized by what happened to them, but made to feel guilty for what they have put others through. If they didn’t think they were criminals before, they did now. My great-aunt said that my grandmother had said that they make you do such awful things, that you never forgive yourself. You’re ashamed of yourself, and you won’t ever talk about your experience in prison because you can’t do it without incriminating yourself as well. People, even under oppressive regimes, still have a voice, especially in masses. But they became a silent generation, because nobody could be brave enough to speak out. They were too ashamed to. 

      It’s a little bit of deontological ethics here; your actions are only just so long as if everyone did the same thing, it would still be just. It’s a sort of “no exceptions” kind of philosophy. Doesn’t matter if this time it wouldn’t be bad, it’s just a bad idea to set a precedent for breaking rules. It’s all about rules, duties, expectations. 

       Maybe I’m wrong, but I think a lot of people who are more likely to take to deontological ethics are Christians (I’m taking a series of liberties in my logic here, okay?), and again Christianity and authoritarian Communism aren’t too far apart. It doesn’t matter that your specific reason for being in prison wasn’t a real crime. The goal is to keep the state safe, and if everyone was let off the hook on a case-by-case basis, then the state would certainly be destroyed. Just because my grandmother had no real crime, it was better safe than sorry. And in the eyes of the leadership, it is in the best interest of the prisoners as well to preserve the state which provided for them. And in the odd twist of irony, this is what they did. The same nation which robbed my grandmother of her youth, of her sanity, of her integrity, provided healthcare, a job, an apartment, an education for her children, a safe life for them as well. Everything turned out “okay”, but everything always does. Trauma doesn’t stop the Earth from turning. But what’s the cost? Why did it have to be the way it was?

      Humans have a lot of ways to rationalize and cope with existence, and that’s often where they disagree. Even though Olga and her cellmate Svetlana were both in the same prison for one larger “crime”, they rarely agreed. Svetlana was in prison more because she was religious and had come from a well-to-do family. Our family has been well-to-do and religious, but Olga stood out a bit there. Svetlana held onto her belief in God, her faith, to survive. They told her often that she was wrong, but her faith was stronger. Svetlana was outspoken, but she knew what she believed and she said it. This didn’t exactly help her practically, but maybe for her it felt better. Sometimes that’s what matters more. 

       My mom often told me that my grandma and I were similar people. We had a drive and ambition in our lives and academics, the flip side being what she considered obsessive and anxious tendencies, and often called “suicide Sunday syndrome” - when there’s nothing to do on a Sunday, we can’t relax. Instead we fret over work we should be doing, depressed that our idealistic expectations were not lived up to. And we didn’t really know what we wanted, were rather passive, and pretended to hide our emotions. A lot of times, I wish I could pick up the phone and call her. Ask her what life was like, what she could tell me about just being a human. What she felt, what mattered. I think she’d know, and I really think maybe she’d get me. 

       But maybe I can imagine what she felt, how she coped. She probably put up this shield, and like Svetlana had serious faith. But it was much more pessimistic and vague. She didn’t know why she lived, but she expected, albeit unrealistic, that one day she could live under the radar of the government. Or maybe just abide by their rules and live the life she wanted. It was a naive idealism, a kind of compromise with the powers beyond you. She tried to not take anything very personally, to just keep going. She just assumed this would pass. 

      In her last few days, Svetlana told Olga that her faith in God had never been stronger. But she realized that as long as you live in this country, there will be somebody who is more important than him. 

      It’s hard to fully express what Communist culture felt like. It’s a lot like those women in the police station, hustling between offices very busily, but hiding behind closed doors. Tito made his birthday “Children’s Day”, because they were the pioneers of the future. The five year plans were being fulfilled in just two or three! The TV was filled with stories of national heroes, of industry, of positive international relations, of the brotherhood of the six republics. But everybody knew the government was full of shit. It’s funny, recollecting all of those little elements of the culture. But it’s tragic. It’s tragic to live in a place where your first instinct is to think everything is bullshit. 

      It’s very unnerving to see a dead body. I’ve only been to one funeral, for a schoolmate who I didn’t know well, but it was an open casket. They’re very still, very peaceful, but it's very disturbing. Even if you consciously know it’s all okay, your body goes into shock. Blood leaving your head, panicking, sweating, shaking. Somehow I stumbled to my car after the service. I felt pathetic, unable to see through my windshield, to move the frozen stick shift, to drive normally. I pulled over and I don’t know what it was. I hyperventilated, sobbed. Just overwhelmed. It’s a natural response to a traumatic thing, but a conscious knowledge that somebody’s life has ended too early. That everyone who was mourning there had lost someone. And for the person, the death is alright, but it's the circumstances which really are sad. 

      Svetlana hung herself one day, and Olga found her. I don't know what she felt. And I can’t rationalize to you why she did it. Maybe it was the endless days of labor and psychological torture. Of despising herself and fully disassociating. Of knowing she’d never be the same after that prison, that she did not live in a nation which cared for her and that she could never be fully human again. I don’t know. Olga probably wondered why it was Svetlana and not her. She figured, it didn’t matter who lived and who died. It wasn’t a choice humans made, it just happened.

       The guards came and cleaned the body away. And then the cell was just Olga. And the string of days passed insufferably slowly. And then one day Olga went home. There was nothing grand to separate the two kinds of lives she lived, the string of days just continued. But when she got home, it felt like nothing had happened for a year. It was just a void. 

       I guess she was right to have faith. She entered university, where she studied geology and met my grandfather. They moved to Bosnia to work in a small mining town. But it was provincial, the kind of place where everyone who had problems with the government in 1948 ended up. It was a common story. But according to my mom, they had a very good life. A spacious apartment, weekend camping trips, good jobs, really there wasn’t much to complain about. 

       One time my mom had a school project where everyone was assigned a topic from Yugoslavian history. She told her mom, who went from being very cheerful to sullen, anxious, almost angry at her. She kept asking her, why you? Why did you get that topic? My mom was maybe in elementary school, and she let it go. But my grandma kept whispering, why you? Why you? Why you? all through dinner that night. 

       Here’s the thing about us as people. We think we have very good walls against things, but we’re really just sponges soaking it all in. And eventually the burden you carry breaks you. The calm that was her and my grandfather's life became another story of untold suffering conveying in snippets. Two years under siege during the 90s wars, a war created by mistrust and a silent generation, stuck inside with barely any food. 

       A bus had been arranged from Bosnia to Belgrade for Serbs who needed to escape. But they were stopped along the way by a group of Islamic militants. They were searching for anything valuable, stripping everyone down to their underwear. Technically, the UN peacekeepers who were escorting them weren’t allowed to do anything about it. It was sort of between the people and the soldiers, and my grandfather refused to open his briefcase full of film. The soldier got angry, shook it open, and began slicing away. Years of memories slipped into oblivion. Many things will be left in the past. 

        I remember her when she lived with my aunt and uncle. She was awfully grumpy in her old age, but she made a wonderful cake. Sponge cake, with layers of syrupy fruit, all covered in whipped cream. They always used the fake whipped cream because it was cheaper. It’s more sugary and glossy than normal whipped cream. That’s what mattered when I was 8 and she died, so I don’t exactly think it was something I processed. I cried less because she died and more because it freaked me out how loud my mom was sobbing. 

      I’m not sure what closure is. Like romantic breakups, I guess? But those are statements of the obvious, if they even happen. Funerals? None for my family. Graduation? Not even for high school, just a few extra hours in my day after some arbitrary date. There was nothing grand to separate the two kinds of lives I lived, the string of days just continued. 

      Three in the morning is a nice time to lie in the grass at the south farms. I feel very free, very much my own. It’s fleeting, but to be honest, I’m glad it can happen at all. It’s very nice to be a guest in these farms, in this town, in this country, in this life. I don’t think Olga was thinking about too much either, just trying to find happiness in the small things. Because any attempt to say something real feels very unsatisfying. I could never really express what this all meant, but I hope it meant something. Each story means something, and means something new every time you retell it. I’ll write about this again one day, with fresher eyes.