By Richard Humphries
Asahi Weekly January 26, 2003
The Vovjvodina is Yugolavia’s best farming region. It’s black earth belt forms part of the great Hungarian plain. It is a region that is relatively flat and well-suited for agriculturture. Attractive. Through the centuries, it has experienced many invasions and migrations. The Romans, Huns, Avars, Byzantines, Turks, and Habsburgs all passed through or controlled it. When premature attempts by Austria, one overlord, to overthrow Ottoman rule further south failed, many Serbs fled northward to this region where they settled under their vojvodes, or leaders. After World War 1, the Vojvodina was awarded to Yugoslavia.
?There are people from 28 ethnic groups here,? Marianne Ratkelic, a university professor told me. ?They include, for example, Serbs, Hungarians, Romanians, and Ukrainians. Serbian is the state language but some groups still speak their national languages at home.?
Such wide diversity has made for somewhat better relations between peoples than elsewhere in the Balkans. The region’s capital Novi Sad is a lively, peaceful, and welcoming small city. Today, it may best known as the birthplace of tennis star Monica Seles. The famous physicist, Albert Einstein, lived there in 1905. Novi Sad’s old center, rebuilt after being largely destroyed during the 1849 Hungarian revolt, is a pleasant center of 19th century architecture that houses small shops and restaurants. And, just 800 meters from the center is the city’s most famous site—in fact, its reason for existence.
Petrovaradin is a massive, 112 hectare, fortress of stone, situated above and guarding the Danube River. The Habsburgs, using a French design popularized by the great French military expert, Marshal Vauban, constructed it between 1688 and 1780. It is the second largest fortress of its kind in Europe. Under Habsburg rule, Vojvodina was part of the great Austrian Military Frontier, separating Central Europe from areas under Ottoman control. Novi Sad literally grew up under and near the walls of Petrovaradin.
Novi Sad was not completely immune to the turmoil of the last decade when the Yugoslav Federation imploded. ?The last ten years have been for us like living in a ghetto,? Ms Ratkelic said.
“And we used to have autonomy here,” she continued, referring to the old Titoist system whereby Vojvodina and Kosovo, though within Serbia, had considerable local control. “Milosevic took it away but now we want it back,” she insisted.
During the air war between NATO and Yugoslavia in 1999, Novi Sad was in the news when, on April 1, its three bridges across the Danube were destroyed. One 29-year-old man, Oleg Nasov, was killed, and a memorial plaque marks this. Two of the bridges have been rebuilt and a third, a temporary pontoon one, is still in operation. The largest, however, the Freedom Bridge, is still in ruins with sections underwater. Opinions vary on causes and responsibilities but one man did tell me, “The bridge destruction has nothing to do with you. The guilt for that belongs with Milosevic.”
Radomir Jelic, a political activist with the Novi Sad branch of the Democratic Party told me that the eyesore would soon be gone. “There are already plans to rebuild the Freedom Bridge and it will take maybe two years to complete the task,” he said. “Money is coming from the European Union and the Danubian Commission.” Jelic also informed me, since I lived in Japan, that a member of his party branch had recently been appointed ambassador there.
The 1990’s Yugoslav wars have added another element to the population of Novi Sad and the Vojvodina. When Croatia recaptured the Krajina in 1995, huge numbers of Serb fled, becoming refugees. And, as with the failed wars of the 17th century, many came to the Vojvodina. ?About 200,000 in all came to Vojvodina and at least 30,000 to Novi Sad, where they now make up 10% of the population,? Radomir Jelic said.
There has been a small amount of discord over this. “Those Krajina Serbs are not really like us here in Novi Sad,” one woman told me privately. “They are rather simple people, sheep herders, and not as sophisticated as we are.”
More than likely this was nothing more than part of the age-old stereotypes that city people and country people around the world have for each other. Within a few years the new inhabitants, if they can’t return to Krajina, will be an integral part of an already diverse mix. (RH)