Advice from former Yugoslavia for regions chasing the dream of autonomy.
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A Nation has a thousand year old dream of independence, of its own country, with its own constitution, laws, and institutions. It is a dream for democracy, liberty, and equality. It is a dream for freedom, it is a dream for justice, for equal shares. A dream for commonwealth, for healthy people and beautiful children, for happy workers and fertile land. Yes, it is a dream.
The start is a dream for independence of course. After that, all other wishes of the naive and manipulated mob are just decor in a well prepared plan for deconstruction of a larger country into several smaller ones.
These days we are witness to separatist movements in Ukraine. The people of Crimea have already broken down its ties with the institutions in Kiev, and they are on the same path as some regions in the eastern part of this country.
For the next year, there are concluding dates for organizing referendums in Scotland and Wales. It’s very early for presumptions, but it’s possible that Great Britain will end up in a unity of only England and Northern Ireland. On the same page are Cataluña and Basque in Spain, and the region of Venice in Italy. People are dreaming of their own independence. It’s legit, but also very dangerous.
Here in the Balkans we had a country called Yugoslavia. At the beginning, it was capitalistic, after that a communist country, then something in between. However, it was prosperous, social, open, and wealthy. Then the people dreamed their dream. Serbians, Croatians, Slovenians, Bosnians, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Albanians all had the same dream of independence. The problem was that they all had a different view of the same dream and very soon it became a nightmare. War! A big nasty one with every scary aspect of it—murdered people, raped people, hungry children, and devastated cities. A shattered peace, which came after never ending hostility and established perpetual hatred among newly constituted countries, was never real enough for full recovery. Instead of democracy, social rights, justice, and commonwealth, the people of former Yugoslavia became citizens of corrupted, non-democratic countries where only government connected tycoons were allowed to make business. A thousand year old dream of independence turned into a waking nightmare.
Not long after, leaders of the now small and insignificant countries understood that their resources and capabilities of economy and industry were divided among them, so they started openly to negotiate treaties for cooperation on many levels.
At the beginning they lived together in peace and prosperity, and after that they started to dream. The glorifying dream became a horrible nightmare with the utmost horrifying things that men can do. Everything was burned, pillaged, and destroyed by the same ones who called for the “dream to come true.” After all of that, politicians sat around the table and discussed treaties for cooperation. Smart ones would say that it was better in the first place to fight for more unity instead of independence, but the truth is otherwise.
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Today my fellow Europeans and people around the world are awakening some long forgotten spirits from past times. No need to preach, but if someone calls for me to dream all over again, I’m just going to slap myself on my chubby cheek and stay awake.
A thousand years of old dreaming is either expired or the batteries are low. People must be very cautious or otherwise will lose everything they already have. They will lose their lives, homes, and families.
It is every nation’s dream to live under their own roof, under one law and under one rule. It is the same for people of the East to people of the West, from Ukraine to Scotland, and from Crimea to Cataluña. It is a thousand year old dream, a dream that is so old and so fragile that it is easily broken and can be shattered into thousands of pieces.
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