Kosovo as the Final Test of a New Serbia

Dear Saša,

The student protests in Serbia have brought something that for years seemed almost unimaginable: new energy, civic courage, and a demand for accountability. In a time of deep political apathy, they have opened space for the belief that society could be different. That is precisely why their Memorandum on Kosovo deserves serious attention.

Because, in reality, it is exactly here that the final — and perhaps the most difficult — test of every new political generation in Serbia seems to begin.

Reading the Memorandum, it is difficult not to notice a pattern that has been familiar for decades. When speaking about democracy, institutions, accountability, or corruption, the language becomes rational, modern, politically concrete, and appropriate. However, when it comes to Kosovo, politics gives way to symbols, historical metaphors, and moral categories.

Kosovo is described as an “inalienable part of Serbia,” a “covenant,” the “source of the national code,” a “spiritual space.” All of this may have its place in the collective memory and identity of a nation. But politics cannot survive on symbols alone.

Because politics demands an answer to a simple question: how?

If Kosovo is not a matter on which one negotiates “the essence,” then how is the future envisioned? If the goal is preserving Serbia’s constitutional order in Kosovo, by what means? Through another war? If there is insistence on a sustainable solution and international cooperation, what exactly is the content of that solution if one simultaneously insists on “inalienability” and Kosovo being an “integral part of Serbia”?

The Memorandum offers no answer to these questions.

And perhaps therein lies its greatest problem.

There are almost no people in the text. There are no Serbs from Kosovo who live every day between institutions, uncertainty, and political experiments.

Particularly absent is the reality in which Serbs in Kosovo live today. After the withdrawal from institutions, following a deep security and political crisis, the events in Banjska, the departure of people, and growing uncertainty, the position of the Serbian community is going through perhaps its most difficult period in the last twenty-five years.

For many people today, the issue is not some grand historical dilemma, but rather a very concrete matter of existence: as the Serbs themselves say, whether to stay or leave, where their children will go to school, how institutions will function, whether there is a political perspective, and whether there is a sense of security.

Precisely for that reason, it is striking how much the Memorandum speaks about Kosovo as a symbol, and how little it says about the Serbs who actually live in Kosovo today.

There are no young people leaving. There are no questions of security, schools, salaries, local self-government, or everyday life.

And the complete absence of Albanians is even more striking. There is territory. There is an interpretation of history. There are churches, covenants, and collective memory. But people almost do not exist.

This is not merely a shortcoming of this Memorandum. It may be the most enduring pattern of Serbian policy toward Kosovo: speaking about Kosovo without the people who live there.

Even more interesting is something else. The generation that rose up against a closed political system, against monopolies over truth, and against political irresponsibility, when speaking about Kosovo consciously adopts precisely the patterns against which it rebelled.
There is no dilemma. No political complexity. No room for questions.

There are only absolute truths.

But if the last thirty years have shown anything, it is that Kosovo does not punish a lack of patriotism. Kosovo punishes a lack of political honesty.

Therefore, perhaps the biggest question is not what the students think about Kosovo. The question is whether they are prepared to do what previous generations of politicians failed to do: speak about Kosovo as a reality, and not only as a symbol.

Because a new Serbia will not emerge simply through changing the people in power.

It will emerge only when Kosovo ceases to be the one issue still spoken about in the language of the past.

Best regards,
Ilir