SERBIAN STARTING POINT: Freedom, nation, state, democracy

The book is a comprehensive, primarily geopolitically conceived study, full of Knežević’s insightful and witty syntagmas and neologisms – which have already entered the language of contemporary Serbian political science. The book was written meditatively, at a careful distance from daily politics, when one thinks freely and creates most fruitfully. Knežević’s erudite work, in addition to its topic, also represents a dialogue with the reader and an invitation to read carefully. The language is essayistically intoned, rich and intimate. Such language necessarily evokes a personal attitude towards the author, positive or negative, but by no means lukewarm.

The book contains five chapters. In the first chapter, the author discusses Serbia and the “Western Balkans and the magic of the term “Western Balkans”. He talks about western Serbia, the western regions of Republika Srpska, Russia, Europe and America, and the house on the “imperial road”. He deals with linguistic geography and the terms “Bosnian” and not “Bosniak” language. The second chapter is dedicated to the issues of liberation, freedom and statehood, i.e. the Serbian national and state question. In the third part, Knežević deals with the fate of the Serbian people before and after Yugoslavia. As part of this chapter, Knežević insightfully addressed the issues of Serbian countries and entities, Montenegro, Republika Srpska, Republika Srpska Krajina and Kosovo and Metohija. Here, readers can read a number of interesting, research-provocative details, such as Milovan Đilas' claim that a high-ranking Croatian communist official, later a dissident, Anrija Hebrang, sought Croatia as far as Zemun. The author dedicated the fourth part of the book to Josip Broz Tito. This chapter represents a very successful and interesting study of Tito, his personality and form of government; of Titoism, neo-Titoism and post-Titoism, titophilia, titophobia, titomania and other conceptual derivatives from the period of his absolute domination over Yugoslavia and Serbia. The final, fifth chapter is dedicated to concluding thoughts primarily on the phenomenon of the national, but not exclusively in the (post)Yugoslav and Serbian context.

At the very end of the monograph in the epilogue, if he was at all losing the indirect dialogue with the imagined reader, Miloš Knežević returns him to diary-like impressions, recounting the unpleasant time of the book's creation, the troubles with pneumonia, the hospital stay and oxygen support, which temporarily slowed down the rhythm of writing. But the book is still shaped.