Twelve Years of Freedom: The Rise and Fall of the October 5th Republic

The French have five republics and they are doing quite well, and the October 5th Republic - let's call it that - was the first republic in the history of Serbia.

In the nineteenth century, first a principality, then a kingdom, in the twentieth century a communist dictatorship, then a nationalist dictatorship, finally a populist dictatorship, Serbia was only in those twelve years after October 5, 2000, a free country where free citizens lived. The changeability of the government was not questioned by any political factor, the division of power was functioning, the fragile republican institutions were slowly being strengthened, the freedom of the media was at a very high level (too high, if one may note, considering the fragility of the republican institutions), the level of violence in society, it was dramatically reduced, the state, in quite a few cases, became a partner to the citizens, and Serbia, as a democratic republic, got the opportunity to freely decide about itself.

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It is hardly necessary to say how fragile this and that republic was, far from the old and tested models - for example the French - which were built and consolidated for decades, but this was not unexpected. If a state community has never in its history had the opportunity to experience the life of a republic, life in a republic (thus life in freedom), if it has lived under dictatorial boots for decades, even taking into account that the communist dictatorship had a certain modernist potential, if, finally, immediately before the establishment of the first Serbian republic, it went through the darkest period in its history filled with the destruction of neighboring countries, indescribable crimes against other ethnic communities, abuse of people of the same ethnic roots, by state terror within the borders, if, therefore, all that is taken into account - and one cannot not take it into account - then it was really immature to expect that the Serbian republic emerged from nothing and without a single day of experience as a free country , join the countries where people are born free and die free. Namely, the Republic has its own customs and routines that have not been consolidated in Serbia.

Heisenberg nicely noted that quantum mechanics is child's play in relation to the establishment of an organized human community, and among all political forms, the republic, as an order of free people, is undoubtedly the most complicated. At first glance, it is, in its democratic form, the most fragile. But if it manages to survive long enough, the democratic republic can defend itself against various attacks (well, America defended itself against Trump, and the Weimar Republic, vulnerable and fragile, is not against Hitler). Just as Piero Soderini's Florentine republic, which lasted exactly as long as the 5th of October, did not resist the Medici, so the 5th of October did not resist the return of the old regime. Republican institutions have been overthrown or usurped, the legislative, executive and judicial powers are in the hands of one man, the public scene has been destroyed, violence is increasing every day, the state, if it exists at all, is barely functioning, and the majority of citizens have been zombified and turned into subjects.

For the first time in the October 5th Republic, Serbs had the opportunity to decide for themselves, freely, about their destiny, about their past, about their present and future. But freedom did not know how to sing the way the slaves sang about it, because freedom - this cannot be said more tenderly - does not sing, but requires citizens who are ready to take responsibility for their lives, instead of being subjects, with open mouths and fixed eyes , they are waiting for what the leader will decide for them.