Changes in Serbia, they appear when an agreement is established between the left and the right, progressive and conservative Serbia or those who are perceived to be such. In politics, as well as in Serbia, representations and reality do not necessarily coincide, but neither one nor the other, nor representations, nor reality, if it is one, must be denied its importance.
Overcoming ideological frictions does not only shape a pragmatic majority, temporarily assembled in the name of a higher and more important goal. It establishes a new, no matter how short-term, majority social flow: ideological détente renews the experience of social and political priorities, allowing to overcome established social and political divisions, and often intractable social crises and confusions. The first usable example is the early fall of 2000. In two steps, in the elections on September 24 and in the popular uprising on October 5, a social and political change took place that led to the creation of the October 5th Republic, the collapse of the Milosevic regime and the long-lived platform from which that regime emerged. At the basis of that change is the alliance of the left and right center as a centripetal force around which the majority society has gathered. While the changes were advocated only by the center left or only the center right, they were operationally not possible, while in the political sense those changes did not express the majority attitude of society. The majority melted into the differences that maintained the inertia of the regime's survival because they did not threaten it from within. Overcoming ideological differences removed obstacles to change.
Two autumn events from 2000 are often viewed separately or in such a way that priority and importance is given to one of them. Some believe the key lies in the election result on September 24. That day I spoke on the phone with a historian. I asked him what election day was like in his part of town. He answered me with words that seem to be from some historical document: "Rivers of people go to the polls..." The key was in those "rivers of people". There were elections before, but there were no such "rivers". Rivers of people did not just arise, something started them: in the harmony of differences, people saw the inevitability of change. And yet, without the popular uprising on October 5, the elections of September 24 would have been just one in a series of elections during the Milošević era. Even that rebellion would not have happened if people did not have hope and faith that changes are possible and that an active and rebellious majority was created in society. The October 5 rebellion made it impossible to hold the second round, which the defeated Milosevic had already scheduled.
The end of the October 5th Republic is in the same sign as its beginning, only without the accompanying drama and uncertainty, which testifies to the fact that the society has become democratic in a little more than a decade. The changes were not a matter of "to be or not to be", during those twelve years several political groups changed, among which the differences were not only personal or only party. There was no question whether anyone would recognize the election results.
NEO-RADICAL WAVES
The changes in May 2012 followed because an alliance of left and right was formed before them. Overcome ideological differences first enabled change in the elections, and then simplified the transition of power after the elections and the co-opting of parts of the defeated elites into the new government. The key force of change - the SNS as a disguised, remade and renamed SRS - won, individually, in most elections after 2003, but without any coalition potential and a real political possibility to come to power. That change was not acceptable either internally or externally. Only the adoption of the European narrative, change of rhetoric and cooperation with internal and external actors allowed this voice of the radical right and transitional losers to bridge ideological differences with sufficiently dissatisfied actors of the left and to pave the way for change that will lead Serbia to a new authoritarianism. It is a wide range from the neo-radical waves of the SNS through the ruling party such as the SPS, which as a key legacy of the Yugoslav left from the second half of the 20th century took over the will to power, the right-wing center embodied in the DSS, the techno-managerial currents of G17 plus and its equally ideologically uninterested local factions, to the left-wing voices that, coming to the same camp for different reasons, embodied the losers of the transition and incomparably fewer, but publicly influential white ballots. often representatives of the left center or extreme left.
DEMOCRATIC AND NATIONAL
Why is this alliance of the left and the right needed for all the important changes in Serbia? Because Serbia is an ideologically and politically, socially and culturally, economically and geographically divided society. In so many divisions, long without any consensus on important issues, it is difficult to lead a realistic policy and bring people together, while the extent of long-term social poverty is a strong source of dominance for any government, especially autocratic ones. If there is no consensus created through real politics, then circumstances create consensus.
However, we should not forget that the age of crises inevitably requires non-standard solutions: crises arise because standard solutions are not good, no longer work, or reality has rejected them. In the wake of the restoration of the multiparty system, Borislav Pekić wrote about the need for a policy that will unite democratic and national: democratic by values, national by concrete society in which those values are realized in contact with real life. In Eastern Europe in 1989, the revolutions were national (liberation from the Soviets) as much as democratic (liberation from communism). Only together, those two elements led to the social mobilization before which those regimes collapsed. Long before that, at the end of the 60s, Huntington wrote that mass social mobilization for changes, especially when they are of a revolutionary character, is not possible if it is based only on ideological elements, but also needs national elements. Long before that, Milan Grol, himself an intellectual aware of the reasons for politics and a man who knew the importance and role of parties, testified, writing an unparalleled portrait of Jovan Skerlić, about a political choice faced by his short-lived schoolmate: "In the fever in which the country was, the questions were not raised programmatically, but morally, and solutions were sought immediately."
For everything else, the two events of the 2000s - the creation and collapse of the October 5th Republic - are different to the extent that the democratic and authoritarian order are different, but they are similar in that dimension: in the agreement of different ideological elements that change is more important than mutual ideological differences.
OVERCOMING NARCISSISM OF SMALL AND BIG DIFFERENCES
An authoritarian order is always more difficult to change than a democratic one. Democracies are prone to change, and citizens in democracies do not feel the risk of change that is inevitable in the case of autocracies. By taking that risk, the citizens will divide it among a multitude of individual actors if the rebel society manages to unite within itself the differences and the will for change, leaving aside ideological narcissism and exclusive policies. Thus, risk becomes acceptable, and change becomes a political reality, not just a social need.
Change occurs when a significant number of people consider the risk of participating in change more acceptable than the risk of continuing the existing circumstances. Changes do not occur when a number of people assume their small, immediate and limited interests to the interests of society and their long-term interests.
In a democracy, changes are ideological: one ideology is replaced by another, one policy is replaced by another. In autocracy, the changes are supra-ideological: autocracy is replaced by democracy. Ideological differences in a democracy are valuable. In an autocracy, they are often an obstacle to change if society does not have the strength to prioritize goals. If we replace the struggle for freedom with the struggle for ideologies and policies, then the most likely outcome is that we will not win freedom, nor will we realize the policies and ideologies that we stand for. Ideologies are for democracy. Only a unifying spirit of change can open space for policies and for the construction of a pluralistic political community.
It is the same today. Citizens have long been aware that changes are needed. But now they are also aware that changes are possible. The true possibility of change was shown in the emergence of a rebellious society as an expression of majority Serbia. That rebellious society is too broad to be reduced to any political or ideological color or tone. After all, that is neither politically wise nor operationally rational. The rebellious society became the majority precisely because it overcame the narcissism of small and large differences on which the regime of Aleksandar Vučić has been parasitizing for fourteen long years, destroying political life, making elementary reasonable social agreement impossible, dividing people, sowing bad blood and unrest in the people, creating enemies from everyone, and in the end recognizing the main enemy in an entire generation of young people.
At a time when the generational movement of young people bridged deep differences by restoring a political community based on the ideas of freedom, justice and anti-corruption in an atomized, apathetic and divided society, a necessary and sufficient condition for changes in Serbia was created.
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