In 2004 Serbia celebrates 200 years of its statehood and the official ceremonies have been held in Belgrade and Orasac on February 14-17. Speakers, artists, foreign dignitaries of perhaps lower government levels... converged on the area and left an unimpressive mark on the populace in Serbia. While Serbian independence is this year, technically, 126 years old and not 200, the celebrations brushed aside this technicality and continued its love affair with Karadjordje, the leader of the 1804 uprising, with an erection of another statue to him, with more books on history of the events that led to the First Uprising against the Turkish (mis)rule of Serbs...
 

Left also unnoticed amongst the Serbian populace was another golden gem that not only typifies the loose jurisdictional constraints that plague Serbian republic but also a 200 year old search for its solution: central government allocated over 70 million dinars ($1 million) for these events but simply gave that money to the Arandjelovac municipality to pay for the organization.
 

Significantly, however, this giant milestone in Serbian statehood has also gone by with very little ideological spin prompting the acting Serbian Prime Minister Zivkovic to triumphantly declare that "this is the first time in the past few decades that a significant national event will be celebrated without any political and ideological elements." Evidently, and to the great victory of sanity, ideologies have exhausted their value among the Serbian populace.

We Expect Jobs Not Celebrations - Although the media has detailed government's activities over the 200 years of Serbian statehood, ordinary voters are not interested in festivities. The reporter from the Serbian independent weekly, Marko Lopusina, explains that "People were not much interested in this jubilee because they expect jobs from government and not celebrations." Although Serbia became independent in 1878 and not 1804, the word is that someone in the Democratic Party thought up the 1804 date although there still isn't anyone who can think up the removal procedures of the communist pentacle that still remains in the Peoples Assembly in Belgrade.

The valuelessness with which the events of Serbian statehood are being observed, on the other hand, also illustrates the amebic sense of national confusion profusely exhausted with the journey that, under communism, declared these events chauvinistic expressions of Serbian hegemony and under socialists led by Milosevic, were embraced only for the images of aggrieved Serbs in order to amass plunder posses that ravaged property and men throughout the Balkans.

Yet, post WWII Serbia is not the only time period when misinterpretations of Serbian destiny have ruled the roost. In fact, ever since 1844 and Garashanin's publication of Nacertanije (Draft) a consistent subversion of ideals of the men of the First and Second Serbian Uprising has occurred, masquerading in various forms of elitist statism, so that the nationalism of the 1990s is only the logical epitaph.

The Bourgeois Uprisings

A Turkish janissary clique known as Dahiye that seized power in Belgrade in 1801 by murdering the Turkish pasha Hadji Mustafa pursued a policy of plunder of populace and fearing that Serbs may raise up arms against them rounded up Serbian wealthy dignitaries and cut their heads off. In 1804, a group of wealthy Serbian merchants gathered together in Takovo to discuss options left to them against the blatant threat upon their life and property. These merchants decided to raise up arms against the Turks and elect Djordje Petrovic, known as Karadjordje, a wealthy pig merchant with military experience in the Austrian army. Karadjordje twice rejects the leadership offered to him with an explanation that his hatred for the Turks may irrationally impact the objectives of the elected office. Karadjordje finally accepts the election with an agreement that no one should question his rough military tactics during the campaign.
 

By 1807 Karadjordje's reasons for rejecting leadership proved to be haunting. Although offered autonomy they reject it because Russia was promising them independence. The ensuing diplomatic improvisation that rejected the originally intended objectives eventually deprived these merchants of any victory. Karadjordje flees to Russia and by 1815 a new, pragmatic, breed of leaders emerges. Led by another illiterate merchant, Milos Obrenovic, Serbians raise up arms again and get what Karadjordje didn't.
 

The Serbian nationalist revolution of 1804-15 that defined its nationalism on protection of life, liberty and property may be only one among the ensuing many that swept the Christian world of the 1800s, yet the fact that illiterate merchants who know how to create value added made the revolution victorious once again attests that imagined nationalisms of intellectuals and scribes is precisely that - never constructive, only fantastic.

Djordje Petrovic, known as Karadjordje, the elected leader of the First Serbian Uprising Against the Islamic rule of Turks.

The Subterfuge

The oriental flavor with which Milos Obrenovic ruled Serbia is in many ways a juxtaposition to his Europeaness marked by spectacular diplomatic and economic prowess. While the Serbian Constitution to which Milos finally agreed alarmed Europe, the alarm was not out of fear that the document may spread tyranny but that it may inspire others to pursue liberal revolutions. To the joy of Milos, Great Powers and mainly Russia, replaced that Constitution with one that made the cause of liberty in Serbia a trivial pursuit.

Yet, it is not the foreigners that sunk liberty in Serbia, but the very-own group of men, misnamed the Constitutionalists, that made liberty a scribble on a paper.

By 1843, these Constitutionalists became emotionally enamored with imperialist feelings inspired by international adventurers with romantic imaginings of some utopian Pan-Slavism where Christian Slavs, presumably, are to hold hands across Europe and sing kumbaya. Absent of any proposals that may enhance industry, Constitutionalists swallowed the entire dogma of these Pan-Slav adventurers, lock, stock and barrel. To prove their obedience to the fantasy, Constitutionalists provoked a revolt in 1843 that removed ruling Prince Michael Obrenovic and "elected" a new one: Aleksandar Karadjordjevic, son of Djordje Pertrovic. The revolt sent a clear massage: to be a ruler of Serbia, forget liberty.

In order to create an intellectual underpinning behind this new anti-libertarian  imperialism, a leader of Constitutionalists and a man that abandoned making money for a political adventure, Ilija Garasanin writes his "Nacertanije" (Draft) that is to be a Programme for Serbia's foreign and national policy at the end of 1844. Writes Serbian historian Dusan Batakovic:

- Combining the Jacobin ideology, built into the experiences of the Serbian national revolution, with the general ideas of liberal Catholicism which they themselves advocated, the Polish émigrés offered their own version of the ideology of Yugoslav unity as a synthesis based on religious tolerance and Slavic mutuality. In Belgrade in March 1843, a Polish representative delivered a copy of the [Polish Prince Adam Czartoryski's] Conseils to Garasanin who was temporarily in charge of the Serbian government. Czartoryski's advices left a strong impression on Garasanin, and were the points of departure in formulating the final text of Nacertanije.

While the word "freedom" occurs twice in Garasanin's text and may therefore foreshadow the amount of interest he dedicates to this great human cause, it is also telling to note the purposes he uses it for.

Milos Obrenovic, leader of the Second Serbian Uprising against Islamic rule of the Turks.

In the first instance, the ideal of freedom is (mis)used to assign a leadership role to Serbia in the Balkans: "The Serbs were the first, of all the Slavs of Turkey, to struggle for their freedom with their own resources and strength; therefore, they have the first and foremost right to further direct this [unification] endeavour." Garasanin's stealthy introduction of the oriental packing order in essence substitutes fiction for truth: Serbs were the leaders because they sought liberty most fervently in the Balkans, and not because they were the first to seek it.

The second usage of freedom is on the point of freedom of religion because it is valuable in achieving the unification of all Southern Slavs, and not because it’s good in of itself.

From these two initial sparks, the paradox multiplier then takes off on its own. Is it Greater Serbia or Yugoslavia? Is it unity of all Southern Slavs or unity of All Serbs? Is it unity with Russian help or British, French...? Bishop Artemiye sums up the achievements of Garasanin's fantasy:

- Two hundred years after the First Serbian Uprising, Serbia is in a sorry state: without clear borders, without an anthem, a flag, without a president, a parliament, basically without a single state and diplomatic symbol. It is located more or less within the borders of the former Belgrade pashadom and without any of the fruits that came after the First Serbian Rebellion.

The fact that the West is accusing Serbs of fomenting Greater Serbia when in fact they endorsed it a century earlier should not be a condemnation but rather an awakening that needs to ask a question that every successful merchant does: how to make the acquired land more profitable?

Grasanin and his ilk have spent over a century seeking ways to acquire more land without questioning what to do with it once it's gotten. To this end, the royalists have "elected" a new prince several times in Serbian history, while intellectuals opposed the royalists because they wanted the acquisition to be more romantic. A plethora of romantic groups in Serbia and Croatia, for example, sprung up in the 1800s and early 1900s fantasizing about Garasanin's unity of Balkan peoples without any sense as to how to make their merger mutually profitable. Croats were particularly frenzied over unification when declaring an unequivocal unification with Serbia while its government was exiled on Corfu, confused as to what is transpiring. In 1945 the intellectuals finally succeeded in their desire to unify all of Balkan Slavs and remake it into their dysfunctional image.

The lesson of the illiterate merchants of 1804 is not that nationalism is bad but that nationalism is a willingness to risk life for life, its liberty and property. The small matter in the contemporary Serbian history is that the sophisticates that defined nationalism in the 1990s have forgotten why these illiterate Serbian merchants risked their life and property.