Stojan Cerović

Stojan Cerović (9 July 1949 in Titograd, PR Montenegro, FPR Yugoslavia – 21 March 2005 in Paris, France) was a Serbian journalist.

Graduate of the University of Belgrade in psychology (1973), Stojan Cerović made a name for himself as an uncompromising political critic for the independent weekly magazine Vreme. He often discussed his ambivalent feelings towards both the regime and the opposition, particularly with a long-time friend Eric Gordy, who is associated with the Collegium Budapest-Institute for Advanced Study (Hungary) and author of "Culture of Power in Serbia":

"As far as I am concerned, I do not care much for any of the opposition parties, not even for all of them together. I have nothing against the regime, except that I consider it responsible for the war, the sanctions, for poverty, theft, crime, and the strangling of the free press. It does not seem to me that anybody in the opposition would be any better, only less effective, which is an advantage. It also seems to me that it is too late to hope for any great improvement in the quality of life, whoever may come into power." (Načelo Otrovanja, Vreme, No. 222, 23 January 1995, p. 8).

Cerović's entire professional life was spent first opposing Tito's long dictatorship in his post-graduate years, the 1970s, then the Milošević regime, and the opposition. He had twice evaded the draft. In 1992, during the wake of the war with Croatia, Cerović co-founded the Centre for Anti-War Action in Belgrade and refused induction into the armed forces, calling on his peers to do likewise in a widely-broadcast radio interview. For weeks Cerović was forced to lay low in Montenegro, but returned to Belgrade when things simmered down and resumed writing his column lambasting Milošević and his cronies who were still in power.

In March in 1999, a week before NATO began its 77-day bombing spree of Serbia-Montenegro, Milošević decided it was now time to censor Vreme, which up until then was free to criticize the regime. Cerović was called upon to join the military. Once again he refused to be conscripted, but this time he had to flee the country. In April (1999) he drove to Sarajevo with his wife and children and from there boarded a plane for Hungary. In Budapest his family was provided with accommodations and given the red carpet treatment by the Hungarian government, a privilege no other Serbian draft dodger and his family was ever accorded with such deference. There Cerović was asked to join an Anglo-American sponsored shadowy government-in-exile, which he refused. In 2000, from January to November, he was employed by the United States Institute of Peace, a U.S. Congress sponsored organization, as a Senior fellow with Special Project Focus. Other demands were made on Cerović and soon Budapest's hospitality soured. The next few years he lived in a Paris apartment with his wife and three children before he died of cancer in 2005.

He is the author of "Bahanalija", published by Vreme, 1993.

He once remarked: "The boundaries between real and surreal [were] erased a long time ago." Cerović who expressed this paradox succinctly many times and on many occasions, appeared as a quote in P. H. Liotta's book "Dismembering the State: The death of Yugoslavia and Why It Matters."

References

• Gordy, Eric D., "The Culture of Power in Serbia: nationalism and the destruction of alternatives" (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), p. 7
• Liotta, P. H., "Dismembering the State: The Death of Yugoslavia and Why It Matters," published by Lexington Books, Maryland, 2001, page 174