From Montenegro to Slovenia

[Ivo Skoric]

As I was leaving Montenegro I've read that USAID bought a nice new 
garbage truck for the town of Ulcinj. I hope they put it to a good 
use, soon. 

The prevailing feeling in Montenegro is that for independence. Main 
newspaper, although it is printed in Cyrillic, does not miss an 
opportunity to flatter Croatia - for its help to put down forest 
fires, for its help with emergency electrical power, and for its 
superior tourist economy, which Montenegro will like to imitate, and 
which Montenegrins believe, they will have better luck doing if they 
are on their own.

As in the other places in the Balkans, for their Southern and Eastern 
neighbors, there is always a healthy dose of suspicion present.

Pure pragmatism supports that idea in general. Small, impossibly 
mountainous place, like Montenegro, with population the size of 
Vermont, would be easy to manage if it is moved apart from its poorer 
and much more numerous neighbors Serbia and Kosovo.

On the other hand, almost nothing is produced in Montenegro, making 
the place fully dependent on imports from Serbia, Croatia, and 
Slovenia. Montenegrins still use 15 year old Gorenje laundry 
machines. The largest number of under-repaired old Yugo and Zastava 
101 cars can be found there. 

Suicidal driving habits, garbage collection apathy, and other visible 
maladies, are symptoms of a society damaged by years of war economy, 
in which large number of males in their productive age is unemployed 
and shattered by their participation in the wrong war, and in which 
life does not have the same value as in the Western societies to 
which Montenegro, as all other post-communist societies, accustomed 
to buzzwords, aspire. The buzzword is the same as it is in Croatia: 
euro-atlantic integrations.

As they had decided to stick with Serbia for all those unfortunate 
years of war and mismanagement, they share Serbia's problem, only, 
because of their size, on a smaller scale. In that there is the case 
for independence: it would be easier to tackle those problems on that 
scale, and it would open an opportunity to learn how best to do it, 
making it easier to apply that experience on larger scale when trying 
to help Serbia.

Montenegro would have a chance to get in the EU sooner than Serbia - 
just like Slovenia will before Croatia - but that would not be bad 
for Serbia: on the contrary, Montenegrin experience could be used to 
accelerate Serbian accession. The alternative may be that together 
Serbia-Montenegro may need a decade to get to that point.

-/-

On airport in Podgorica it seems like time stopped 15 years ago. So, 
landing on airport in Ljubljana, glossy, air-conditioned, ultra-
modern structure, that looks like having been freshly built 
yesterday, is a culture shock.

True, Slovenia was the most advanced part of former Yugoslavia, long 
before the country's collapse. In the eighties it had the highest 
income per capita in the entire country. But now the gap looks even 
wider.

While Montenegro and other former Yugoslav republics were fighting 
wars, Slovenia built highways, and today it looks like Germany in the 
seventies. There is a couple of healthy ideas that Slovenia may 
export to Montenegro - particularly in the realm of garbage 
collection.

Still, there are other sad things to observe in Slovenia. First is 
the loss of its uniqueness to the Westernization. It is becoming 
slightly too perfect. And too eager to prove that it is worthy of 
being there where it is, at the price of freedom. To the point that 
has more stringent traffic enforcement than Germany.

The other is hunger. Once the capitalism is discovered, the most 
important question, for those interested to remain sane, is: when is 
enough? Rule of law offers plenty of opportunity to screw other 
people for profit, perfectly within reams of legal books.

The newly capitalist countries often become wild places like 
Montenegro, where there is a very thin line between business and 
looting. Slovenia is more "civilized" and maintains a better social 
safety net (which in Montenegro is provided by ones extended family, 
mostly), but not less rapacious.

Everything is about winning a race: who is going to be the first in 
the EU, who is going to control which EU traffic corridor, etc. There 
is no place for cooperation. Only competition. Ultimately, that 
destroyed the movement that brought about the change that put 
Slovenia on course to democracy, and that set the stage for the 
dissolution of Yugoslavia.

Paradoxically, the movement was helped out of existence by early 
abundance of foreign help: it was literally drowned in money. Today 
its members are immersed in bitter quarrels, rarely on speaking terms 
with each other, competing in formal professionalism to attract more 
foreign money. Alternatively, they are out of the game, altogether, 
living on the farm with sheep, bees, and a bull.----------------------
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Ivo Skoric
19 Baxter Street
Rutland VT 05701
802.775.7257
ivo at balkansnet.org
balkansnet.org