My life Predrag J. Marković, historian

in 2017: “The greatest class in Kviskoteka was Belgrade history student Predrag Marković. May none of our people get angry, but that is the truth. He was phenomenal.”

Predrag gained enormous popularity across Yugoslavia during his time participating in this quiz, proving more popular even than the most famous stars of film and music of that time. He today talks about that time as a fond memory of Mr Goluža and presenter Oliver Mlakar (1935), with an explanation that’s seemingly inherent in him to provide justification whenever his successes are mentioned.

“That was in 1990, on the very eve of the war, and everything that happened prior to the war acquired an aura of nostalgia. You should know that that was a big country with just two television channels and so few programmes that everyone watched everything that was broadcast. The prize for Kviskoteka was a language course in Washington. And I also received a scholarship for England and was in London. So, I basically disappeared at the peak of my media popularity, spending more than six months in countries where I was nothing and nobody. I went through the best course in modesty, because I was in big cities where nobody knew me. All budding youngsters should go to some bigger city to temper their self-adoration.”

He recalls where he was when war broke out in Yugoslavia, and responds in the affirmative when asked if Yugoslavia really had to disintegrate.

“It probably did have to, but it didn’t have to happen like that. Yugoslavia was an incredibly complicated country. More complicated than the Soviet Union. Not to mention Czechoslovakia. In Yugoslavia there were many similar sized nations, with terrible shared wounds. The Soviets didn’t have a tradition of fratricidal war like us. As a Srbijanac [meaning a Serb from Serbia], I knew nothing of the traumas that the Bosnian Serbs have. I saw that when the war erupted, because they couldn’t bear to live in a new NDH [a reference to the WWII Nazi puppet state of the Independent State of Croatia]. And that was obvious. Slavko Goldstein wrote about that in his book 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning. They restored the former name of the currency, restored the name of the army from the era of the Ustaše [WWII Croatian fascist and ultranationalist organisation], and the Croatian regime did nothing to appease the Serbs. Their ideal was obviously ‘Croatia without Serbs’, and that’s what they ultimately achieved.”

Many experts are of the opinion that Germany undoubtedly played a role in the collapse of the then Yugoslavia, which Marković explains in his capacity as a historian.

“That doesn’t seem to be entirely true. German diplomatic documents that have now been published show that Germany actually only broke when the war spread to the areas around Vukovar and Dubrovnik. Prior to that, both Germany and America were actually in favour of somehow preserving Yugoslavia. Attacking Dubrovnik and Vukovar was an unbelievably stupid decision. So many stupid moves were made that only the attack on Ukraine is stupider. You attack Dubrovnik, one of the world’s most beautiful cities, for no reason and that is unfortunately attributed to the Serbs, although it was assaulted by Montenegrins and the future darling of the Americans and the European Union, Milo Đukanović. And then you also attack Vukovar, that’s like Mariupol in Ukraine. You destroy a city with a national composition that’s actually predominantly Serbian.

“I increasingly believe that stupidity is one of the greatest forces in history; stupidity that is greater than any conspiracy. The problem with drawing lessons from history is that you don’t know which lesson to draw.”

As a professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications, he has the rare privilege and satisfaction of receiving the highest ratings among students year after year, and they enjoy attending his classes. He lectures on Media History, the History of Family, the History of Propaganda and Intercultural Communication. He says that he makes an effort around his students, because students love enthusiasts.

“I’ve had various experiences in teaching. I spent a long time going to Petnica [the Petnica Science Centre], which is attended by the best possible students, and I taught at the Teacher Education Faculty when the dean was Aleksandar Jovanović, a wonderful man. It was delightful to lecture at Petnica. Those are inquisitive children who write papers better than the majority of much older researchers. The most important pedagogical experience for me was represented by the lady teachers. Those are girls who don’t really have much love for history, because history is still preferred by men. I taught them in the evening slot, when they could hardly wait to go home, or to the dormitory, because most of them are from the heartlands. There I practiced all my skills to arouse interest among an audience that was completely indifferent to the subject.

“The practise is very different at the Faculty of Media and Communications. There is an overabundance of information on offer today and there are multiple canons. On the other hand, some canons that were valid for a long time have since been destroyed. For instance, the literary canon has been destroyed, the hierarchy of writers, and the fact is that more books are being sold than ever before. Today there are more copies in circulations and more titles. You could say that this is scribomania, as is the case in historiography. Computer-based writing has made writing easier for various scribomaniacs. That is a worldwide trend. Something that was once mandatory isn’t any longer. You can now complete literature studies without reading Chekhov.”

When it comes to his position as a vice president of the Socialist Party of Serbia, he says that party president Ivica Dačić utilised him very intelligently.

“He is a very wise man who allowed me to be a more or less independent intellectual, because it is better for people to simultaneously recognise the socialist and independent intellectual in me than for me to be some party soldier. And that gives me ample opportunity to primarily speak and interpret as a historian.

“My son taught me that, in history, the best story wins; the best told story leaves the strongest mark. The only problem is that there are a lot of stories.”