Half a century has already passed since Yugoslav socialism received its first blows from the left. It was noted that young demonstrators in Belgrade, but also in Zagreb, Sarajevo and Ljubljana occupied the universities in 1968 and sought more equality and socialism. Many are nostalgic about the events that heavily shook up Yugoslavia and nothing is like it used to be.

Although it undoubtedly had a huge influence on the fate in the Yugoslav society and the state itself, this rebellion still leaves many open questions today. In those days the linden tree spread ravishing fragrance, just like today, and forced people to believe that the world can be a better place. The well-known saying Let’s be realistic, let’s demand the impossible, one of the most famous slogans of “sixty-eighters”, spread from Paris and swept over many European and American cities and, of course, strongly influenced Yugoslavia, which was just carrying out its first (unsuccessful) economic reforms.

From Žilnik to RTS

Therefore, it is no surprise that many relevant media from the South Slavic territory made an effort to celebrate the jubilee of the first student protests with special shows devoted to the June Turmoil, which is also the title of the ten-minute documentary by Želimir Žilnik, an unprecedented document about those turbulent times. In ten minutes, Žilnik managed to say more than anyone else who tried to remake his 1969 work.

Serbian public service RTS also touched upon the subject of June Turmoil by broadcasting a two sequel show, authored by a journalist Nataša Mijušković. Both sequels, along with the popular protest songs from American songwriters and some tapes from the well-preserved UDBA archives, are filled with memories of student protest participants, who speak about their youthful false beliefs, fight for freedom and justice, clashes with the police, all with nostalgia and enthusiasm…

They all singalong to Hej Sloveni (in Belgrade) or Padaj silo i nepravdo (in Sarajevo) and similar patriotic and partisan songs in Zagreb, and Dragoljub Mićunović, Sonja Liht, Latinka Perović, Žarko Puhovski, Zdravko Grebo and many others, known and unknown, are trying to resurrect the June drama once again. Among them are Veljko Vlahović, Miloš Minić i Branko Pešić who negotiated with the students and, of course, Tito, who just like the deus ex machina from the old Greek plays brings the resolution to the conflict… All is well, dreamy, fabulous and romanticized in a way that the viewer must pose a question about the meaning of that romanticized halo. The answer to that question cannot be found in RTS shows, although the interlocutors are right about the fact that the wave of 1968 protests, for example, brought forth the whole Black Wave in film production, but also conquered new spaces of freedom in culture and arts. Also, the shows don’t discuss the influence of the unrests on the political processes in the early 1970s, the upcoming Croatian Spring (MASPOK) or for example Serbian liberalism, not to even mention the raging nationalisms that will culminate in the 1990s, each in its own way overturning our common state.

What do Nenad and Žarko Puhovski say

Somewhat balanced show, dealing with the same subject, interlocutors and film tapes of heavy truncheoneering of the students in Marindvor, is Ideal 68 brought by the cable TV programme Al Jazeera Balkans, but probably best work on the subject was made by Nenad Puhovski, who with his documentary Generation of 1968 aims to speak in front of his generation to today’s youth. Interestingly, all three projects show how the masses were manipulated just like today, what is convincingly conveyed by another Puhovski, his brother Žarko. So it was enough that „someone“ tips the Zagreb locals that Mihajlo Marković turned up with the ushanka and chetnik cockade at the Belgrade protest to immediately mark the end of the Zagreb unrest.

Of course, many important questions remain unanswered: how did many leaders of student unrests end up far, far away from the Red Karl Marx University, as one of the main slogans hung over Kapetan Mišina building (Rectorate of the Belgrade University) said. How come many ultra-leftists ended up on the far right and transformed themselves into hard-core nationalists. And most importantly: was the birth in fact a miscarriage? Maybe 1968 wasn’t the time it really happened, but twenty years later it became clear that everything was forgotten in the name of the national idea. Some will mark this as a positive, some as a negative sign, but the sociological and political analysis and direct association of historical incidences and processes is probably still ahead of us.

Boris Dežulović gets fired over Ramadan

Fifty years after the June Turmoil there are still mass gatherings and protests. For example, gatherings organized against the enormously high price of gasoline. Some claim that those are being organized by the authorities themselves, to badmouth the weak opposition and to correct some of their own mess, such as impudently high excises on petroleum products.

Hence the impression that this year’s June Turmoil, in what is now geopolitically called the Western Balkans, was marked by one man. A writer and journalist who has been fighting to extend the boundaries of the free written word for years now. Boris Dežulović. Editor of Oslobođenje from Sarajevo, Vildana Selimbegović, fired Dežulović because he thought it was inappropriate that Bakir Izetbegović attributes to Tayyip Recep Erdoğan some of the divine qualities he, of course, doesn’t possess. All that during the time of Ramadan. But Boris, as was obvious, with all due respect for the Ramadan, Muslims and Bosniaks, took his right to proclaim that in his personal calendar it is June or lipanj, in which just like during any other month of the year, it is allowed to cross over the freedom frontiers only up to the moment it starts threatening someone else’s freedom. Even at the price of getting fired from Oslobođenje.

And possibly, not even knowingly, to show that the 50 years old slogan Let’s be realistic, let’s demand the impossible hasn’t lost its relevance.