That year 1975 must have been significant in the professional life of Dragan Marković, a journalist, publicist, writer, screenwriter, politician, and above all an editor who left his mark in the history of the weekly NIN and in the memories of the group of journalists gathered in that weekly in those years, in which it also includes the signatory of these lines.
In 1975, Dragan Marković became the editor-in-chief of NIN, and the television film series "Otpisani", broadcast in thirteen episodes on the then Belgrade Television, became a hit.
The series is based on the book that Dragan Marković published for the first time in Nolit in 1956 under the title "Forbidden Life: (Belgrade 1941-1944)", which may surprise today's readers by the fact that there are more verbs than adjectives in it.
The first episode of "Written Out", which was broadcast on December 22, 1974, shows the rescue operation from the hospital of Aleksandar Ranković, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the KPJ, who was arrested by the Gestapo in Šumatovačka Street, in Belgrade, on July 27, 1941, then, during interrogation in the Soldiers' Home passed out and transferred to the hospital in Vidinska Street...
In Marković's book, which for some reason is classified as a novel in the catalog of the National Library (and in an identical book entitled "Otpisani" from 1974), the actions of the Skoja soldiers in occupied Belgrade are described with precision: Đura Strugar, David Pajić, Mihajlo Švabić, Vukica Mitrović , Saving Cana Babović, Mrša Matijević...
In the series, the actors are Tihi, Prle, Paja Bakšis and others, and the character of Ranković was replaced by the character of a mother with a baby, who is an important party figure.
At that time, for the new generation, which could not identify with bronze heroes with clenched fists, a new formula was sought for fostering, as it was said, socialist patriotism and revolutionary traditions - of which there is also a trace in Balasevic's poem. Count on us.
In the interviews about "Written Out", whose first episodes were based on real events, and the later ones on fictitious ones, Dragan Marković stated that his intention was to show that the war exploits were the work of ordinary people, with virtues and flaws, and not some saints of the revolution.
SKOY, INSTITUTE FOR FORCED YOUTH EDUCATION...: Dragan Marković did not mention that he was also one of the Skoja people he describes. In the biographical notes about him, it is stated that he was born on November 3, 1927 in Valjevo, that he was in Belgrade, as a member of SKOJ from 1942, in the winter of 1943/44. arrested by the special police, that he was taken to the camp in Smederevska Palanka, whose official name was the Institute for Forced Education of Youth. From that Ljotić institute, where 1270 youths from all over Serbia were isolated, Dragan escaped to join the partisans, and he left the NOVJ with decorations and a rank. In 1974, he was a reserve captain of the XNUMXst class.
He began his studies at the Faculty of Law, then switched to journalism at the Journalism and Diplomatic Higher School, founded in 1948 and abolished in 1953.
He started working as a journalist in 1947 in the newspaper "Krila Armija", then moved to "Borba", then to "Kumunist", then to "Politik", where he was noticed for his texts from everyday life, which older journalists then called "social chronicle".
He received the Yugoslav prize for nonfiction (Zagreb, 1965) for the book Are we people?, which was also the title of the text published in "Politica" on February 16, 1964. It is a small but harsh story about the forced eviction of a working-class family from an attic in the middle of winter. The authorities brutally and brutally arrested the father, and took the sick six-month-old baby to a care home without the knowledge of the mother, who was at work. The neighbors' protests were in vain. The militia implemented the decision of the court and municipal authorities.
In the autobiographical note, published in 1992 in the collection "Two Centuries of Serbian Journalism", Dragan Marković devotes far more attention to that text than to his entire journalistic and journalistic opus, in which various major ruptures were dealt with (1948, the Brion plenum, the removal of liberals, Goli otok etc.).
Along with the story of his social chronicle, Dragan Marković paid a casual tribute to Ljuba Stojović, one of Politika's iconic editors, a journalist and editor educator, who was described in various memories as sitting in the corner of the Šumatovac tavern late at night with two children and a soda and he is waiting for tomorrow's issue of "Politics" to come out, so in the newspaper that still smells of printing ink, he re-reads all the texts, which he had already read before being released he prints and knows them by heart, then folds the newspaper and waits for his co-workers to come by to praise or scold them by making a joke at their expense.
When that story about the forced emigration of a working family was published, a stormy reaction followed, and the journalist fell into the trap and accepted the insufficiently reliable facts about the corruption of judges that some citizens brought to him after the publication of the chronicle. When the lawsuits followed, none of the lawyers wanted to defend him, but in the end, lawyer Velja Cvetić volunteered, an interesting and colorful person, a native of Jezdina near Čačak. He joined the partisans in 1941, in 1943 he was wounded, captured, imprisoned first in Mohács and Budapest, and then interned in a camp in Norway, from which he escaped and joined the Norwegian resistance movement. He was demobilized in 1949 as a colonel. He graduated from the Faculty of Law and Philosophy, worked briefly as deputy director of the marble factory in Arandjelovac, and in 1956 became a lawyer and became famous for his unconventional defenses.
Dragan Marković also praised the poet Rista Tošović, the editor-in-chief of the old NIN, as one of his teachers, who led him to investigate how a high school student was killed by a plainclothes policeman, which then shook Belgrade.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF TELEVISION: "Written Out"
After Tošović's remark that it was not an ordinary murder, that the roots were deeper, Dragan talked to high school students, professors, the police, sociologists, and even the murderer - who, he says, opened his eyes, so that the picture of the tragedy became more complete.
He describes the killer as a young, nice, lonely guy, who loved the uniform, who had nothing, but believed that as a militiaman he would become everything, he would become someone, the power in the capital. That night in the trolleybus, the hanging of those boys annoyed him. They were smiling, carefree, with girls, they sang and pretended to be important, it was obvious that they were children from "better houses". They had an argument, reached out, and he shot - he doesn't know why, he just couldn't bear to be humiliated...
Dragan called that newspaper research a search for the so-called the third dimension, which was nurtured in NIN even then, and later was probably the main recipe for the success of Dragan Marković as editor-in-chief of NIN between 1975 and 1979.
From the moment he became the editor-in-chief of NIN on July 20, 1975, until the end of 1979, when he left that position despite fierce opposition from the editorial office, Dragan Marković had to see that most younger journalists were running away from topics in the field of dry politics. as if from God's punishment, so during his mandate he directed the majority towards social issues, which, as we can see, was also his intimate journalistic philosophy.
YUGOSLAVIAN, WHO IS THAT?: In the old NIN, to which he moved in 1965, Dragan Marković earned a party fine for the poll "Yugoslav, who is that?".
The editors of NIN published the results of the research of the Institute of Social Sciences on the ethnic distance between nations in Yugoslavia, held round tables in various environments, and began to survey readers and many public figures. Once, while Dragan Marković was on a business trip, there was a big uproar because of the statements of some interlocutors that were published in the press, but no one actually read them.
In "Politica" from August 29, and in NIN from September 1, 1969, while the poll was still in progress, an article appeared under the title "Yugoslavism or anti-Yugoslavism", signed by the liberal Bora Pavlović, then secretary of the City committee of Belgrade, in which those polls are compared with the views of pre-war general Petar Živković: "Viewpoints identical in essence to the hegemonic aspirations with which they Serbian communists calculated most decisively in the armed revolution and in all the political struggles of the socialist forces after it."
Miloš Mišović, a long-time editor and passionate historian of NIN, writes in "Heirs without a will" that it was the beginning of a public political trial of the editors of the old NIN, in which the prosecutor was not only Bora Pavlović, but in two marathon meetings of party organizations , Ninove Čerečile and many colleagues from "Politika" house.
That obedient careerist zeal may have been based on the proverbial intolerance that reigned in the "Politika" house towards the "gentlemen from NIN", as Danilo Purić called them (director of "Politika" from 1951 to 1965, member CK, later ambassador), who with a heavy heart agreed that at the transition from 1959 to 1960, NIN became part of "Politics".
NIN's drama with Yugoslavia at that time ended when the editor-in-chief Đorđe Radenković, a benevolent and widely educated journalist, who apparently neither ate onions nor smelled onions in that matter, took all responsibility upon himself, resigned and was transferred to editorial office of "Politics". Dragan Marković, as the editor who conducted the survey, was given a party punishment - a reprimand.
Dragan would later describe the case surrounding the survey "Yugoslav, who is that?" as a serious resistance of the editorial office of NIN to pressures to label Yugoslavia as Serbian unitary hegemony...
When the commotion passed, he accepted cooperation with the journalists who exposed themselves in that attack - with Fran Barbieri, with whom he would cooperate in conceiving the newsmagazine formula of NIN, and later clash with him politically. He also collaborated with Mališa Marović, whom he would later bring to NIN and appoint him to the position of an important editor.
TEXT WITHOUT SIGNATURE: Frane Barbieri, who later became the head of NIN, changed the concept of the paper and founded its newsmagazine formula. He went too far by asking NIN, known for their lavish pens, to print texts without signatures, which caused consternation in the audience, so it was quickly abandoned. Along with Fran Barbieri in conceiving the new formula were Sergije Lukač, editor of the culture column Žika Bogdanović and Dragan Marković.
Many years later, in an interview published in "Heirs without a will", he will say that he believes that the transition from the "old" to the "new" NIN did not come naturally, that it was not matured in the editorial office, but that it was imposed, and that the political pressure to bring Barbieri, who enjoyed the trust of the political structures, to change the formula, but also to make personnel changes, was crucial.
Dragan Marković took over the helm of NIN when, somewhere outside the Politika house, it was decided to retire Uča Milivojević, who, according to Mišović, after the dismissal of Barbieri and the cutting of the liberals, had too much deadened NIN with an overly cautious editorial policy.
According to Mišović, Dragan Marković accepted the technique of Frano Barbieri (with whom he had a political reckoning after the collapse of the Liberals) to hear the opinion of the collegium and editors, but to make final decisions himself, or to decide on the selection of people who will move from other editorial offices to NIN, in which, Mišović writes, both of them had very good moves, but also bad ones...
As a kind of coach, he brought those who revolved around NIN from the bench to the field, slightly softened Barbieri's newsmagazine formula and during the previous three years, the doped NIN crossed the then sound barrier for that type of paper with a circulation of 110.000.
"A month or two before Dragan Marković became the editor-in-chief, the editorial staff of NIN was strengthened with six outstanding journalists. They were young people - some of them we received after a long check in part-time work, and some we took over from other newsrooms - and they soon became and remained the main force of NIN for a long time..." writes Mišović. The one on the left must have been me.
I WILL BE LIKE SERGE...: In front of our younger colleagues, the old residents of Nino didn't mention the old tensions very much. Miloš Mišović testifies to this as follows: "While Frane Barbieri did not hide that some of the old Nino members were a nuisance to him (while he was ready to sacrifice several well-known reporters), Dragan Marković did not publicly say that the old Nino members were an obstacle to the new NIN, but in private conversations, he did not hesitate to mark them as one of the problems of the new NIN."
Once, Mišović writes, Dragan Marković shouted that Sergije Lukač, who worked part-time at the Faculty of Political Sciences, where he established the Department of Journalism, was late for a meeting of the editorial board: "Well, let him transfer to the faculty, I don't need second-hand, but whole people." According to Mišović, the fact that some of Dragan's epigones also repeated such an attitude influenced Sergije to leave NIN and transfer to the university, where he soon received his doctorate and was elected professor of journalism.
In front of us, the younger members of the editorial staff, Dragan did not speak badly about our professor Lukač, whom he called Serž - but he repeated the following mocking anecdote many times in a jovial tone:
While the two party members, Dragan and Frane Barbieri (whom they replace at that moment due to their closeness to the liberals and because of the comment "Gordi's knot, dress or cut"), are bloody verbally fighting in the smoke of the party meeting, through the open door you can see how Serge, elegantly dressed, after washing his hands and disinfecting his mouth with some spray, he puts his hat on his head, takes his briefcase and leaves.
We didn't think that Dragan was envious of Sergi, but that he was wondering in front of us why he, Dragan, needed this party gladiatorship, but it turns out that the other side of that anecdote is more difficult than we thought.
Sergije and Dragan were two worlds apart in journalism. Sergije was all about modernism, the promotion of physical culture and a healthy life, multidisciplinary psychosocial illumination of phenomena, a polyglot and erudite who repeats that the time of bohemian journalists has passed, a wounded fighter on the Srem front who was taken out of his father's "bourgeois" house in 1945 to it was moved in by "our staff" (Sergije was the child of a Swiss woman and a doctor from Mostar, who as a volunteer moved Albania in 1915 and survived the Ustasha pogrom in 1941)...
Dragan was of a different socio-political pedigree - from Skoje, a partisan, a member of the Central Committee, who in the evenings in Madera hangs out with politicians and those who hang out with them, and in the daytime gathers the members of his young newsroom like chickens around the pub tables near Lipa, near Šaca and in on occasion, he leads the entire editorial office at Ace Devetka.
That pub gathering (today we would call it "team building") should definitely be distinguished from bohemian journalism, which took away the excellent reporter Tiko Lešić, from the sumptuous bohemian Zuka Džumhur, and from the flirtatious smack of the light-hearted writer and painter Moma Kapor, associate of "Yugoslavia Publika", later "beginner Chetnik".
Once, there was a systematic medical examination in the editorial office of NIN. Those who smoke and drink passed with "well, it's good, considering...", and Sergiu Lukacs, who has been involved in sports all his life, found it annoying because of being in an unhealthy environment. That anecdote was retold for at least a decade. In the meantime, all but one of those who "passed" the systematic examination died - some ten, some fifteen years before Serge.
ABOUT GRAPHIC ARTISTS AND ARMY GENERALS: In front of us, the younger members of the editorial staff, Dragan Marković jovially showed his distance towards those at the top: "They don't shout anymore. Now they speak quietly on the phone, you tense up to hear what they say and you don't have time to answer them..."
Miloš Mišović writes that Dragan Marković was one of those journalists who sincerely loved his calling and approached it with the passion of a researcher, but no matter how much he loved journalism, and no matter how faithful he was to it, it was not his only love: He loved politics equally and devoted himself to it with the same passion. I don't know if he was like that because he entered politics before becoming a journalist and that he carried something rebellious in the best sense of the word throughout his life, but I know that the crucifixion between two passions often turned into a personal drama. Dragan Marković was aware of this, but he did not have the strength to give up one love in favor of another, although he did everything he could to remain faithful to both politics and journalism."
Although it was broken in higher forums, as a member of the Central Committee Dragan showed firmness in 1986: completely alone, he voted against the election of Slobodan Milošević as President of the Central Committee - the one who would declare at the beginning of 1987 that the editorial office of NIN should be thoroughly reconstructed.
Just as, when he finished work, he removed everything from his desk, which was always clean, unlike ours, which were cluttered with all kinds of folders, so Dragan Marković did not show his political involvement in front of the editorial office.
Mišović states that Dragan Marković, as a prominent journalist who has the support of the newsroom, needed the support of political factors less than he was necessary for them as a respected journalist and a reliable man at an important media point.
"IS SERBIA LAGDING BEHIND?": Many years later, we learn something about his "string game" between journalism and politics.
Immediately after the election of Dragan Marković as editor-in-chief, at the assembly of the Association of Journalists in Vrnjačka Banja, where Dragan was elected president of the Association of Journalists of Serbia, Draža Marković, responding to a journalist's question about Serbia's economic backwardness, said that the issue should be investigated.
In the car they were returning to Belgrade, Dragan Marković tells Mišović that the topic "Why Serbia is lagging behind" should be covered already in the next issue, in which he will not participate because he is on a business trip.
WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN EDITOR: Dragan Marković
The thorough Miloš Mišović, who was Dragan's deputy at the time, in cooperation with Steve Nikšić dug up everything that could be found on the subject, relying, first of all, on verified data from the Federal Institute for Planning on the Development of Yugoslavia and each republic separately, and on Miloš Sindjić, director of the Federal Institute for Planning. They write the title topic "Why Serbia is lagging behind".
It was an analytical presentation of the development of the Yugoslav republics in which it was shown that Serbia developed more slowly than other republics for a long period of time due to the structure of the Serbian economy, which for years shared the fate of energy, food and raw material production, whose products were not economically valued on the domestic market. In the conclusion, there was a cautious warning that these facts should not be ignored when creating a new five-year economic development plan, the preparation of which was in progress.
It did not help much that the cautious Miloš Mišović softened the headline "Why is Serbia lagging behind" on the front page to "Is Serbia lagging behind". In the political top of Serbia, they were dissatisfied that the topic was raised in such a way, so it was discussed three times in the executive body of the Central Committee.
At the reception on the occasion of July 7 at the Presidency of Serbia, Draža Marković asked Dragan Marković: "For God's sake, why did you publish it that way?"
Dragan later told Mišović how he tried to pass it off as a joke: "Well, you're not going to interfere in the graphic editing of the newspaper, are you?", but that it didn't help, because the reason for the discussion and criticism were not mistakes, but just starting the topic, compared these are the writings of the Zagreb press during the Croatian "maspok".
Draža allegedly warned him: "Don't let Mišović write topics that cause a reaction."
Dragan Marković allegedly carried it out step by step, under the pretext that Mišović should be more engaged as deputy editor-in-chief, which he did not care about, and later appointed him to the position of editor of NIN's volumes. (In that edition, by the way, a series of about twenty books on Eurocommunism, terrorism, armed interventions, the university of the future, the world in crisis...) was published.
WE DON'T WANT YOUR SECRETARY: Dragan Marković, by the way, encouraged our journalistic self-love, repeating that every NIN journalist can be a minister, and that few ministers can be a NIN journalist. He sometimes supported this with an anecdote about pre-war graphic workers, who, when asked by the director: "Well, gentlemen, are you asking for the salaries of the divisional generals?", answered: "Then you bring the divisional generals to make your newspaper..."
We must have taken it seriously.
At the end of Dragan's term in NIN, a crisis broke out because the newsroom, which had grown wings, wanted him to remain at its head. However, he made a statement to the director of "Politics" Vukoj Bulatović that he will not run for office.
No one said anything specific about why Dragan "must go". "There are no secrets, but there are explanations that should not be made public, because they can get different interpretations," Saša Gligorijević, president of the GK, told us.
The story revolved around the fact that, allegedly, in a conversation with Miloš Minic in Igalo, or with someone else in Zlatibor, Tito mentioned something about NIN among the remarks related to the situation in Serbia. There were also speculations that Dragan Marković no longer has protection in Serbia, since Draža Marković, with whom Dragan was close, is leaving for the weak post of president of the federal assembly. Who will remember what function your chronicler was in at that time at one of the many meetings where the deputation from NIN sought clarification as to why Dragan Marković was not allowed to run, this time with the president of the Central Committee of SK, Saša Gligorijević...
Steva Stanić, a great reporter and connoisseur of art, interlocutor of Margaret Jursenar, Henry Moore and many icons of that era, and on that occasion with a bag in which he was carrying newspapers, notes and some necessities for the house, tries to decipher the atmosphere, points to a large painting of Peter Lubarda all over the wall in the office of the president of the City Committee, with "Oh, look here Lubarda..." and begins the story about an interesting composition and painting invoice...
"He needs to get out of here." It's been there for a long time," Saša Gligorijević interrupted him, pointing his hand upwards. At that moment, Vukoje Bulatović, the director of "Politics", arrived at the meeting with a large figure, and I guess that's why he was always smiling. "Well, hello Vukoja, you managed to arrive after all." I already explained everything to them…”
Only then does your chronicler realize that the head of the GK was not talking about Lubarda's picture at all...
Dragan later announced that he was running under pressure from the editors, which Miloš Mišović in the book Intestate heirs called "alleged". Your chronicler can hardly agree with that "alleged", because he has a vivid memory of how, on May 16, 1979, in the hall of the Workers' Council of the "Politika" house, in a heated three-hour discussion, it was ordered that "comrades" have no right to the position of editor-in-chief they send a reputable weekly - their secretary.
It is no longer important who said it, and to whom it referred, nor how much he was offended, that was the attitude of the majority of the editorial staff, which was later talked about in the bazaar that kisses and kills.
At that meeting, a rather large team "from above" gathered - from SK SSRN, from CK SKJ, CK SKS, from GK SKS. Some of them began to threaten, and the deceptive memory says that GK member Ratko Butulija stood out, who kept craning his neck while speaking. The matter was interrupted, it seems to me, by professor Miroslav Pečujlić, then in a very high federal party position, who exchanged views with Špir Galović, then in charge of ideology, or something like that - and said that we should think a little more...
After that meeting, still hot, we went to Dragan Marković's office to talk over a drink. Dragan addresses Miloš Mišović in a special tone: "Well, Mišo, Mišo, how many chief editors have you changed? Is it eight?" Mišović counts to himself and says: "It's not eight, but seven, because I didn't find Najdan (Pašić, later a professor of the FPN and a judge of the Constitutional Court) when I came to NIN."
Until 1979, no editor-in-chief of NIN left that position normally. Each had to leave under some pressure.
After all those episodes, the legacy of Dragan Marković is that the editorial office has the right to significantly influence the choice of the editor-in-chief. We may have believed in editorial autonomy and self-management back then, but that heritage has disappeared.
When the negotiations between the editorial emissaries with Slava Đukić and Kiro Simić about their candidacy began, Dragan Marković took part of the editorial staff to "Grafičar" for lunch with Kiro Simić (Slava could not come) in order to convince him to run for the position. editor-in-chief. We must have shown too much affection to our previous editor-in-chief at that lunch, or the sensitive Kira Simić realized that we also perceived him as an "imposed solution", he just refused to run for office.
A new one is emerging. horror vacui.
After persuasion, in which I believe Dragan took part again, Slava Đukić and Kira Simić still agreed to come "as a package", that one would be the editor-in-chief and the other the deputy, so that they would then be replaced.
When it was announced at the editorial meeting, with a feeling of relief we spontaneously applauded like children at the end of an exciting movie, which Kira mentioned for the rest of his life.
While I was applauding with the others, I saw the face of Dragan Marković, who was obviously hiding his emotions like a poker player, but he was not comfortable - his blue eyes and pallor gave him away.
Although he cheered himself up with the joke that after "The Written Off" comes "The Return of the Written Off", Dragan Marković had a hard time taking his departure from NIN. He had a heart attack.
In a conversation for Intestate heirs he says about it: "I must say that I was impressed when I became the editor of NIN, and I was not excited at all when (two years after my shift at NIN) I became the director of 'Politics'." Almost nothing. The best proof of that is that I left very easily, without excitement. I didn't have another heart attack. And when I left NIN, I don't know if that was the reason, but it probably was, I had a heart attack..."
Old Dramas of the Ephemeral Profession – The Book of Oblivion, the “Written Out” Section…
When I once talked about that era in front of younger people, and mentioned Dragan Marković, a younger colleague naively asked: "What, you worked with Palma?"
Run away, child, to your fucking mother! What a Palma…
Newspaper feuilletons on old political topics were considered circulation at that time, although they were the focus of attention of the ideologues of the time. If the circulation drops, it was known that something about the replacement of Leka Ranković, or the Informbiro and Goli Otok, or the capture of Draža, would help.
Dragan Marković, who obviously had access to many archives, or those who have access to them, published many journalistic texts on these topics. He wrote a book with Nikola Milovanović, the officer who, by switching sides, enabled the OZNA to arrest Draža Mihailović, and Đuro Rebić Peace warriors, about Cold War conflicts with emigrants; with Sava Kržavac about the Ranković case, with historian Tihomir Stanojević about Tito's life and work.
In the book about the prisoners of Goli Otok from 1987, he wrote with a lot of information about how that camp was established in the circumstances of an undeclared war in which people died on the borders of the country, but he also condemned in great detail the excessive police repression of the prisoners. Although he did not go beyond the framework of the official historiography of the time, perhaps in that topic he was the closest to what is now called confronting the past.
In the editorial office, he did not talk much about these matters of "political archival science", which may have seemed boring to us at the time. Maybe.
We would have cheered when he told anecdotally how one year, when he had written the biography of Aleksandar Ranković, he was invited to a formal academy on the occasion of Udba Day and was given a place in the quite decent twelfth row. However, the head of a man in the fourth row seemed somehow familiar. At one point, as someone who was late was walking to his place in that fourth row, that man stood up and turned around and said, "Hello, Dragan!"
Dragan finally recognizes the face he sees every day: Pera the porter from "Politika"...
It's not WHAT you think. Pera the porter was a war invalid. It seems to me…
