In German archives on the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, Montenegro was the Yugoslav republic in 1991 that received the least attention from that country's diplomats, and the then Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Đukanović, ambassador Hans Jorg Ajf wrote only two sentences in the report.
This was stated in an exclusive interview for "Vijesti" by the long-time correspondent for Southeast Europe of one of the leading German media outlets, "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (FAZ) and a writer, Michael Martens.
"The head of government, a young economist, is still struggling to present his role. He seemed a bit pale and not sufficiently independent," reads the report on Montenegro that Aif, the German ambassador to Belgrade, submitted to the Foreign Ministry in Bonn in May 1991, and which Martens had access to.
In an interview with "Vijesti" conducted via email, Martens said that this could be called the irony of history, stating that Ajf died in 2019 and did not experience Montenegro without Đukanović.
The German journalist pointed out that the report contained a lot of criticism of Montenegro, and that Aif obviously harbored sympathy for the leader of the then opposition People's Party, Novak Kilibardi.
He stated that in the German archives, which he is processing for his new book on the collapse of Yugoslavia, he has not found the slightest evidence to support the "legend" that Berlin wanted to destroy Yugoslavia by recognizing Slovenia and Croatia in 1991.
Martens said that archives show that Germany was the main driver of the adoption of the Law on the Protection of the (Serbian) Minority in the Croatian Parliament, which was a prerequisite for the European community to recognize Croatia as an independent state.
He stressed that he still maintains his position that it is unlikely that Montenegro will be a member of the European Union (EU) in 2028, 2030 or thereafter, that is, that he does not see Podgorica's prospects for full membership.
You are working on a book about the breakup of Yugoslavia based, among other things, on research into German archives that were opened after a thirty-year period of blockade. What is the most surprising thing you have discovered in those documents?
Let me first make a small correction - I wouldn't say that this was a blockade of the archives. What existed was just the usual 30-year ban on access, which exists in most countries. Now these documents are publicly available and I decided many years ago that I would definitely study the archives as soon as they were opened.
I wanted to know what was going on behind the scenes in German politics when Yugoslavia was falling apart. Of course, one should not be naive and believe that archives reveal everything. They always contain only a part of the truth, and sometimes it is a smaller part.
But, when combined with other sources, the archives still reveal quite a bit. The most surprising thing I've found in the documents so far concerns the role Franjo TuđmanAlthough it was widely known that he had the idea to divide Bosnia and Herzegovina with (Slobodan) Milosevic, it wasn't clear to me how openly he talked about it behind closed doors in his meetings in Germany.
I was also previously unfamiliar with his works “The National Question in Contemporary Europe” from 1981 and “The Wasteland of Historical Reality” from 1989. In these books, he writes quite openly about why he considers Bosnia and Herzegovina to be a kind of “work accident” in history and why he does not believe that there is a Bosniak people. This year I will start studying the Austrian archives in more detail and I am very interested in what I will find there.
Is there anything in these documents that could seriously change the dominant narratives about the breakup of Yugoslavia and the nature of that state? You once said that the "legend" that Germany in 1991 "by prematurely recognizing Croatia and Slovenia" triggered the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia is not true...
It depends on what we consider the “dominant narrative.” For someone who still believes in the legend that Germany wanted to destroy Yugoslavia by recognizing Slovenia and Croatia in 1991, my book will be a disappointment, because I have not found the slightest evidence of such a policy in Germany. On the contrary, in the first half of 1991, Bonn pursued a strict policy of preserving Yugoslavia.
Unlike the governments in Italy and Austria, the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Minister of Foreign Affairs (Hans - Ditrih) Genscher They even refused to receive Tuđman, Milan Kučan or other presidents of the republics for talks, because they feared that this would strengthen separatist tendencies in Yugoslavia.
Only in the second half of 1991 did this policy change. Why and how, I describe in my book. The book is an attempt to show the complexity of the factors that played a role in the disintegration of Yugoslavia. This complexity existed both in Yugoslavia and in German politics.
Why then do some Western diplomats, such as former British Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Sir Ivor Roberts, claim that Germany was "rushing" to recognize Croatia? He said that he considered the decision to recognize Slovenia and Croatia "without guarantees for minorities" to be very bad.
Mr. Roberts is insufficiently informed about the events of 1991. Germany invested a lot of time and energy in the second half of that year precisely to provide those guarantees for minorities that he claims did not exist.
In November 1991, Gensher and Kohl “offered” to Tuđman’s government to send the most famous German expert on minority rights, Professor Hristiana Tomusata from Berlin, “for consultations” on the Law for the Protection of the Serbian Minority. However, if you look at things more closely, it was not an “offer”, but a German ultimatum. The message sent behind the scenes was quite clear: either you will adopt the Law for the Protection of the Serbian Minority that Professor Tomušat will dictate to you, or there will be no recognition.
How did the Croatian side react?
The Croats had no choice but to accept the German demands. Tuđman knew that the European Community (the forerunner of the EU) would not recognize Croatia without Germany as the driving force behind this policy.
The German demands were very clear: The Law on the Rights of the (Serbian) Minority must have constitutional rank, therefore, it must be adopted by a two-thirds majority.
On November 25, Genscher met with the Croatian Minister of Foreign Affairs (Zvonimir) Šeparović, said that it is crucial that minority rights are regulated as Lord (Piter) Carrington proposed at the Yugoslav Conference in The Hague. Genscher also made it clear that the adoption of such a law was a prerequisite for recognition. Only after the adoption of the law would Germany propose recognition of Croatia to its partners in the European Community.
Separovic said that this request could be seen as an ultimatum in Croatia, but Genser rejected this. He said that a good system of minority protection is in Croatia's own interest and therefore should not be seen as an ultimatum.
Was that law really adopted?
Yes. Germany sent Professor Tomušat and an interpreter to Zagreb to oversee the details. Before that, Tomušat was invited to the German Foreign Ministry, where he was explained what he should pay special attention to during his stay in Zagreb.
The solution for South Tyrol was to serve as a model. The Croatian side raised the question of why Croatia should grant the Serbian minority rights that Serbia does not recognize for the Albanians in Kosovo. However, this argument was not accepted in Bonn. It was considered that this was essentially true, but that Croatia, if it wanted recognition as an independent state, had to offer a generous package of rights to its minorities. Only then would recognition be acceptable to the whole of Europe. With these instructions, Tomušat traveled to Zagreb at the end of November on a three-day mission.
His reports clearly show that the Croatian government fulfilled his demands on every point, although there were some initial disagreements and he requested corrections and additions. Genscher and his diplomats attached great importance to keeping Germany's role in the formulation and adoption of the law unknown to the public.
Why?
Ambassador Aif in Belgrade warned in early December in a report to his ministry that if the impression was created in Yugoslavia that the Law on Minorities in Croatia was essentially a German project or even a "German diktat", there would be a great danger that the Serbs would reject it, because they did not trust the Germans.
Therefore, it was important that the concept of minority protection, which Germany considered good, be presented to the public as a demand of the entire European Community.
In early December, the law was then passed by the Parliament under emergency procedure. Genscher was personally informed about this.
His legal experts translated the law into German, and after confirming that the law met the highest European standards, Bonn gave the green light and convinced other European Union countries to recognize Croatia.
Is Montenegro mentioned in German archives and in what way?
Montenegro is mentioned, but mostly only in passing. From a German perspective in 1991, the country was overshadowed by much greater interest in Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia.
Besides Macedonia, Montenegro was the Yugoslav republic that received the least attention from German diplomats in 1991. One of the rare exceptions was the six-page report by German Ambassador Hans Jörg Eif from May 1991, which only mentioned Montenegro.
When Ajf returned from his trip and arrived in Belgrade again, he immediately submitted a detailed report to his ministry on his impressions and the statements of his interlocutors. In Titograd, in addition to Milo Đukanović, he also met with the then Speaker of the Parliament Risto Vukčević, as well as with opposition politicians Novak Kilibard and Ljubiša Stanković.
Momir Bulatović was in Belgrade for talks that day, so the meeting with him did not take place. Interestingly, the German ambassador reported in the most detail precisely on his conversation with Kilibard.
What was discussed in that conversation?
Aif wrote that Kilibarda described himself as an “anti-communist Serb from Montenegro” and added that Kilibarda told him that Montenegrins were Serbs.
Kilibarda also told the ambassador that he was a member of the Serbian Writers' Association, and he obviously spoke positively about it. Dobrica Ćosić and said he had sympathy for Vuk DraškovićThis, therefore, was the exact opposite of what Kilibarda later said and is a good example of how identities are not fixed categories, but can change.
The German ambassador apparently had sympathy for Kilibarda, for he wrote: “Kilibarda is easy to talk to. He is well-educated and a good address for questions on history and sociology concerning his country.” However, Aif reported little positive about the general political situation in Montenegro in his report to Bonn.
What was the ambassador's criticism about?
Aif believed that the democratization process in Montenegro was less developed than in all other Yugoslav republics. For example, the mass media were still in the hands of the communists, Aif wrote.
Otherwise, he saw little reason for optimism. He approvingly quoted a self-critical statement by one of his Montenegrin interlocutors, according to which Montenegro had until then lived too largely on loans and subsidies, that is, at the expense of others.
AIF also criticized that the public administration in Montenegro was even more bloated than in other republics. In addition, there was “insufficient willingness to work” in Montenegro, as the ambassador put it. However, there was one development that AIF assessed positively.
What development was that?
The ambassador was optimistic about interethnic relations in Montenegro. He wrote that even a “Serbian nationalist” like Kilibarda shows a “surprisingly rational and constructive attitude” towards Muslims in Montenegro. Regarding the Albanians, one of Ajf’s interlocutors said: “To whom the cattle belong, the mountain belongs” and added that a solution to interethnic conflicts can only be found in dialogue, with equality and without violence. This, in the ambassador’s opinion, was a much better attitude than in Serbia.
It is interesting that Ajf summarized all his conversations in detail - with the exception of the meeting with Đukanović. He wrote only two sentences about Đukanović in his report: "The Head of Government, a young economist, is still struggling to present his role. He seemed a bit pale and not sufficiently independent". This can certainly be called the irony of history. Ajf died in 2019, and he did not experience Montenegro without Đukanović.
How does Montenegro look to you today, five years after the fall of Đukanović's government, and what did it look like during the thirty-year rule of his Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS)?
Unfortunately, I haven't been to Montenegro for a long time and, looking from afar, one should be very careful with assessments. But, quite apart from all the details: when the same party and the same politician remain in power for three decades in a row, it is hard to imagine that this can be good for democracy. In Germany we had Angela Merkel 16 years as chancellor - and at least the last four years were too many.
How close is Montenegro to EU membership in the near future, in your opinion? Do you still claim that it is naive to imagine that Montenegro could become a member in 2028 or 2030?
I would like to claim otherwise, but that would not be honest. Of course, none of us know what will happen in ten years, but from today's point of view I consider it unlikely that Montenegro will be a member of the EU in 2028, 2030 or beyond. At least I do not see the prospect of full membership. At a level below that, there could be creative solutions. At the moment, rhetoric aside, there is no real willingness in either Berlin or Paris to admit a new country to the EU. And I do not see that this could change in the coming years.
It is not about money, as some people think. There are several studies on how cheap it would be to admit the Western Balkan countries into the EU. But, apart from the fact that such studies are of only limited value if they do not take into account Ukraine, which is strategically much more important for the EU, one crucial aspect remains neglected. It is not, at least in the case of the Western Balkans, about money.
It is a question of the political right to participate in decision-making. Or, to put it more clearly: it is a question of whether new members should have veto power in the EU or not. Not only in Berlin and Paris, this question is often answered in the negative.
Do you think that future EU enlargements might fail because the community does not want to accept additional members with veto power?
French President Emanuel Macron has often said in his speeches that he cannot imagine how an EU with 30 or more members with veto power would function, when the EU with 27 members is often unable to make quick and clear decisions due to a single veto. Macron is not alone in this. Many politicians in the EU believe that it would be irresponsible, in the current state of the Union, to admit new members - both towards the EU itself, but also towards the new members who would thus be invited into a dysfunctional club.
That's why Anton Hofreiter, chairman of the European Affairs Committee in the German Bundestag, has proposed that membership be offered only without the right of veto. More precisely: new members should not have the right of veto until the day the EU completely abolishes the veto. But it is questionable whether this will ever happen.
I want to meet with Hofreiter in February to discuss this idea in more detail. His party, the Greens, is currently only in opposition, but it seems to me that his idea of membership without a veto is also widespread in government circles. When I recently spoke to a German politician about this, I asked him whether he really believed that any Western Balkan country would accept such a solution, because it would still be second-class membership.
His answer was: “Well, I want to see a government of a Western Balkan country that will say ‘no’ if it is actually offered EU membership, even without a veto. When such an offer is actually on the table, it will be attractive even without a veto.” We will see if the debate really develops in that direction.
How open is Berlin to EU enlargement? Why has no one in power in that country, as those familiar with the situation in Germany claim, pledged their authority for years to admit the Western Balkan countries into the EU?
In both parties of the current coalition, the conservative CDU (Christian Democratic Party) and the social democratic SPD, there are certainly politicians who are serious about EU enlargement. They have understood that in these times, when the EU is under threat from Moscow, Washington and from within, it must come up with a serious offer if it wants to continue to be taken seriously. But these politicians are in the minority within their own parties.
In the CDU, the chancellor's party Friedrich Merz, in my opinion, there is no majority for enlargement, quite the opposite. For some politicians in the CDU, even the idea of “enlargement light”, i.e. enlargement without a veto, goes too far. They do not want enlargement at all, because they believe they cannot explain it to their voters.
Is the Minister of Foreign Affairs Joachim Wadeful, who rhetorically advocates EU enlargement, is really prepared to invest a lot of political capital to argue against the majority of his parliamentary group on this issue? I'm not sure. The far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany), which is not only against EU enlargement but against the EU as a whole, has not made things any easier.
If the majority in Merc's party is not in favor of EU enlargement, how do you view his recent message that the writing of the Treaty on Montenegro's Accession to the EU should begin?
I have the impression that Merck has understood well that the EU, in order to repair its damaged credibility in the Western Balkans, must finally show that its promise is not just rhetorical. It must finally become credible. However, I also have the impression that German policy towards the Western Balkans has been strongly marked by improvisation for years. Something is said, as if words mean nothing. Something is promised, as if there is no tomorrow. Behind the scenes, there are many signs that indicate that there is no majority in the most important political parties in Germany for the admission of new members. Behind the scenes, on stage, the behavior continues as if this doubt does not exist.
I hope it doesn't end badly. But, of course, it's possible that my pessimism is wrong. Maybe Montenegro will become a member of the EU in 2030, and I'll look like a skeptical old grumbler who always sees everything too dark. I'd be happy if that were the case.
Are there, besides these, any deeper reasons for your skepticism?
If one follows what the most important politicians in Germany and France have been saying for years, one can, in my opinion, only come to skeptical conclusions when it comes to EU enlargement.
Take, for example, Macron's visit to Serbia in July 2019. He received a lot of applause for giving a speech in Serbian in Belgrade. It was a charming gesture. But the essence of his message was anything but charming for Serbia, because in Belgrade the French president spoke out against EU enlargement. He explicitly said then that the Union cannot accept new members until it has been reformed from within - and of course he knows very well that the key reform, the abolition of the unanimity principle, will not happen.
Some claim that Macron changed his stance after the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022.
But where is this change visible? In January 2023, Macron, together with the then German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz published a joint article in the FAZ. In it, both of them say that before admitting new members, the principle of qualified majority decision-making must be expanded - that is, without the right of veto.
However, Macron and Scholz did not explain how this change could be implemented. The mood in Berlin is similar to that in Paris. In June 2023, the CDU, then still in opposition, submitted a proposal to the Bundestag on the Western Balkans. In this proposal, the CDU demanded “an end to the exclusive focus on full political membership of the accession candidates”. As an alternative, it proposed an “intermediate step”. This meant the inclusion of the candidate countries in the EU internal market.
A CDU politician said that the goal should be to integrate all countries into the common market by 2030. There was no talk of full membership. In the meantime, the CDU entered the government and maintained its critical stance towards new full memberships.
The coalition agreement between the CDU and the SPD contains a short clause stating that the EU's internal reform must take place no later than the next enlargement. The unanimity principle, the CDU and the SPD say, must not become a brake on decision-making. This basically applies to all decisions in the EU Council, which continue to be taken unanimously.
Essentially, this means that Berlin is distancing itself from the rhetoric on EU enlargement so far. In my opinion, it is naive to ignore all these signs and messages.
Contribution to a better understanding of Andrić
Your previously published biography of Ivo Andrić has received a lot of attention in the region. What motivated you most to write about Andrić and how did you approach the analysis of his literature through the historical and political context of the time in which he lived and created?
Your question already contains part of the answer: I really wanted to show Andrić not only as a writer, but also as a child of his time. Or, to use your words: in the historical and political context of the time in which he lived and created. Of course, that is not necessary. Is it necessary to know the historical and political context of the Spanish late Renaissance in order to enjoy “Don Quixote”? No.
A great novel works even without knowing the circumstances in which it was written. But a man who, unlike me, knows a lot about Spain in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, may read “Don Quixote” with even more enjoyment. Above all, such a man will better understand what Cervantes wanted to tell us and why he wrote what he wrote. The same is true of Andrić.
In the seventh chapter of the “Travnik Chronicle” there is a particularly magnificent scene in this already magnificent novel. In it, Andrić describes Travnik at night. The French consul Daville sits thoughtfully at his desk in a lonely study.
In the room above him lives his younger colleague de Fosse, also lonely and also occupied with nightly, gloomy thoughts. And on the other side of the Travnik night, the Austrian consul von Mitterer is also sleepless. Three people with their worries, fears and hopes, alone in the night.
To feel how great this scene of the Travnik night is, you don't need to know anything about Bosnia at that time, because it is about human life, about our short existence, about our hopes and fears in the face of our transience. That has been and will always be the same, as long as there are people.
But, if one knows Bosnia at that time and the life and thought of Ivo Andrić, some other scenes of the "Travnik Chronicle" will be better understood. For example, the visit of French diplomats to the Guča Gora monastery and de Fosse's dialogues with the monks.
One does not have to know that Andrić expresses his Yugoslav ideology through de Fosse in order to enjoy this scene. But if one knows this, the scene will be understood more deeply. With my biography, I wanted to contribute to a better understanding of Andrić and his literature by describing and explaining such contexts.
Who is Ivo Andrić today and who should he be?
I can only answer this question for myself: he is a great writer whose most important novels, as well as some short stories, though not all, are works of art that are worth reading and that rightly continue to be read. This does not mean that Andrić, as a diplomat and political figure, should not be critically examined, just like any other writer.
The right is growing, but nothing is unstoppable in politics
The rise of right-wing and populist movements has become one of the most visible political changes around the world. What do you think are the main causes of the rise of the right in Europe? Is it a matter of time before such forces take power in some of the most important centers of the West?
The expectation that it is only a matter of time before right-wing radical forces come to power seems defeatist to me. Politics is not a natural science with strict certainty of cause and effect. Nothing in politics is unstoppable, not even the rise of the enemies of the EU. But we must not ignore what has happened in recent years.
In the United States, a corrupt gang of tech oligarchs and populists has taken power. This gang is transforming the country at an incredible speed. I still have basic confidence in the self-healing powers of American democracy, which has already survived many crises. But the current situation is serious, and in Europe too.
The fact that the AfD is so strong in Germany has something to do with, but not only, uncontrolled mass immigration from Muslim countries, which is linked to the systematic abuse of asylum rights. This not only upsets many people who are actually in favor of asylum rights. However, migration is not the only explanation.
The AfD's success is based on a mixture of apocalyptic fear of the future and nostalgic embellishment of the past. Fear and nostalgia are not good recipes for dealing with life, but they are very seductive, because they promise simple answers to complicated questions. It seems to me that this longing for simple answers exists in many European countries.
The rise of the right is accompanied by historical revisionism. It is also omnipresent in Montenegro, the most recent example being the attempt to erect a monument to Chetnik commander Pavle Đurišić in Berane. At the same time, in Croatia, according to the assessment of political commentators there, the country is undergoing a complete rightward shift, which, they claim, gained momentum after Thompson's July concert in front of hundreds of thousands of people in Zagreb. What are the main factors fueling the growth of revisionist narratives in the Balkans, and where might these processes lead the region?
It is absurd to claim that the hundreds of thousands of people who attended Mr. Perković's concert in Zagreb were all Ustashas, as some extreme commentators have written.
Perhaps it is even true what interlocutors from the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) often claim - namely, that many young people do not associate the cry "For the homeland - ready" with the fascist regime that brought great shame to Croatia and Croats between 1941 and 1945, but with the fight against Serbian aggression in the 1990s.
But, if that is the case, if young people in Croatia are graduating from school without knowing how the cry “For the homeland - we are ready” was misused in the darkest hours of Croatian history - what does that say about the quality of the Croatian education system? We do not need to emphasize how dangerous such processes are for the Balkans. That is obvious. Among the deeper reasons for the re-strengthening of such narratives, it seems to me, is the deep insecurity of all Europeans, which I have already spoken about.
The balance of power in the world is shifting to the detriment of Europeans. For centuries, the great European nations have enslaved other continents and used their military superiority to forcefully impose their interests in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
Those times are coming to an end. North Korean soldiers are fighting in Ukraine, with Chinese and Iranian support, and we may see more of these examples. Europe no longer determines the fate of other continents. Other continents determine the fate of Europe, the peoples of Europe are shrinking and can only compensate for this development through migration. This makes many people insecure and therefore they turn to the past, which they believe was better.
See more:
Download the app and follow the news
FOLLOW US ON
