Ivan Milenković

Serbia on the streets

What are the reasons for the longevity of protests against Vučić's regime? The interlocutors of "Vremen" answer this question from different perspectives, but one motive runs through all of them: advanced injustice and intolerable lies.

Ivan Milenkovic

Opening of "Prokop" in 2023: It already has to undergo reconstruction

Comment

Nebulous government speech

Aleksandar Vučić is no longer able to restore balance in the rebellious society. This is best seen in the level of speech: none of his remarks go through anymore

Ivan Milenkovic

Roman

Light in the shadows

June Fosse, Septology; translated from Norwegian by Radoš Kosović; Third Square and Silver Tree, 2023–2024.
Other name (I-II), I am someone else. (III-V), New name (VI-VII)

Ivan Milenkovic

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić visits the new section of the E-763 highway

Comment

Pakovraće - Požega: Vučić on the road to irrationality

And how will firefighters, police and doctors take care of unsafe tunnels? Well, by keeping an eye on the hill and being ready if the hill falls on the bus, for example

Ivan Milenkovic

THE BEGINNING OF COMMUNITY AND UNPARALLELED PERSISTENCE: Slavija, student protest, December 2024.

Student and civic gatherings

The change has already happened.

"After these seven months," says psychologist Zoran Pavlović, "repression becomes quite clearly counterproductive. Regimes that use excessive force often inadvertently mobilize citizens, because violence delegitimizes the government, and gives people moral clarity and emotional strength to oppose. Repression, in other words, will not only passivize society (which the regime plans), but will only strengthen the border between 'us' and 'them', will strengthen the identity of resistance and strengthen cohesion within the group that suffers injustice. The number of people taking to the streets is not decreasing, but increasing"

Ivan Milenkovic

Interview: Alpar Loshonc, philosopher

Europe cannot be understood without ordoliberalism

In 2012, Barack Obama sent his finance minister to reason with his German colleague who, against the over-indebted Greeks, emphasized the moral importance of suffering pain in the short term, for the sake of integrity in the long term. The persuasion failed. In any case, one cannot understand the creation of the EU without ordoliberalism, as well as Germany's position in Europe. In fact, even the XNUMXth century cannot be interpreted without it

Ivan Milenkovic

Comment

Chatter and fear before Vidovdan

Aleksandar Vučić's threats and his attempts to discourage citizens from joining the Vidovdan protest sound like whistling in the dark.

Ivan Milenkovic

Comment

Vučić and the wolf

Aleksandar Vučić doesn't have enough thugs, black jeeps, paid čats to patch up all the holes he made with his insatiable and unstable nature.

Ivan Milenkovic

Interview: Aleksandar Rakezić Zograf and Stevan Vuković

Adventures of a Dreamcatcher

Zograf's themes, says Vuković, are phenomena, people and objects suppressed from the mainstream of history and culture, with which his autographed avatar introduces us. Thus, on the pages of his comics, one finds the characters of anonymous witnesses of wars, aboriginal artists, local personalities, poison grandmothers who believe that their dreams have determined their fate, characters who, in fact, are a very good match for the superheroes of the industrialized comic business.

Ivan Milenkovic

Report

Warsaw on the move

I fall directly into the hustle and bustle of the city, the buildings are low, mostly two stories, cafes and restaurants as far as the eye can see. Nothing socialist. I stand for a few minutes leaning on the suitcase and simply look

Ivan Milenkovic

Government and its rhetoric

The scarecrow is in the mirror.

A new directive from the Leader has arrived - to declare rebellious students and citizens fascists and Nazis. And the Essenes do it with a lot of enthusiasm. However, there are two serious problems. The first is that the rebelling Serbian students and citizens are a phenomenon that is as far from fascism as it can be. The second is that it is the SNS that nurtures many features of fascism to a good extent

Ivan Milenkovic

Comment

The regime is denying the truth that it happened

The example of the elections in Zaječar and Kosjerić shows that the truth is not given, but assumed. Truth is a task that a citizen fulfills. She always wins

Ivan Milenkovic

Comment

Unraveling the Dictator: Political Masterpieces of Rebellious Students

With small political masterpieces, the students brought down Aleksandar Vučić. What did they understand that we older people didn't understand all these years

Ivan Milenkovic

Interview: Marcin Napjorkovski, director of the Museum of the History of Poland

The struggle for a complex past

What does effective resistance to totalitarianism and falsification of memory consist of? Srđa Popović pointed to the Serbian example. Resistance to the falsification of the past consists in creating symbols that reconnect us and act as the sand we threw into the cogs of the falsifying machinery. Resistance is in reminding yourself of what reality is and in re-establishing common ground

Ivan Milenkovic

Comment

Destroying the University: Violence, Power and the Potty

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić is trying to destroy Serbian Universities in order to stay in power. He does not realize that without the University he loses the society from which, like any parasite, he sucks the life-giving juices. He kills what keeps him alive

Ivan Milenkovic

Interview: Adam Mihnjik, editor-in-chief and editor-in-chief of "Gazeta Viborča", writer

Students are the good future of Serbia

I look at the students' rebellion with great hope. Because it is the idea of a different Serbia. It may not be political, but it is certainly cultural, civilizational. And that is the future of Serbia. A good future. In Serbia, there has always been a tradition of something remaining independent. The Serbian intelligentsia was very freedom-loving. Of course, the part that was democratic. I knew those people. You could talk to them normally. But of course, first there was Milosevic, now Vučić

Ivan Milenkovic

Amendments to the Law on Higher Education

What will happen to "useless" disciplines

There are many ways in which philosophy can be harnessed to the wagons of the whole society: it is cheap to educate philosophers, we would get new jobs, and society would, in the long run, feel the healing effects of thinking. In addition, as a discipline that teaches how to think, philosophy educates free citizens with backbone and integrity - the two new ministers in the reconstructed government, for education and information, philosophers by training, are the exceptions that confirm the rule

Ivan Milenkovic

Interview: Galeb Nikačević, guest coach of Beldocs

Reality is a matter of agreement.

If we want to talk about the freedom of a society, there must also be a social agreement and consensus regarding what we consider unfreedom, as well as what and what kind of boundaries we use to describe a society

Ivan Milenkovic

Central meeting within the framework of the National Assembly

Comment

Vučić has nothing more to offer, no one and no way

In a speech that made no sense from the point of view of logic and integrity, Vučić offered his voters everything they wanted to hear. But, all in contradictions. The spirit of rebellion can no longer return to the bottle because the bottle is broken

Ivan Milenkovic

Re-readings

How (and why) to read Mihnik?

Adam Michnjik, Thinking about modern democracy. Essays, letters, interviews; translated from Polish by Biserka Rajčić; B 92, Belgrade, 1995.

Ivan Milenkovic

Comment

There will be no election.

The knee-jerk Supreme Being trusts in the local elections in Kosjerić and Zaječar. It must not be forgotten that for 13 years he poured heavy poisons, especially in the province, and that detoxification is a long and painful process.

Ivan Milenkovic

Roman

Damn America…

Namik Kabil, Amarcord
Academic book, Novi Sad, 2025

Ivan Milenkovic

What do government representatives and pro-regime media say about the new protest

Comment

Long student march: How the government is crowned

Serbian students repeated a hundred times that this is a marathon. Similar to Adam Mihnjik in the eighties in Poland, when he talked about the "long march". The government in Serbia is on the way to the end - you just need to be patient

Ivan Milenkovic

Comment

Regime Fall: Reality Strikes Back

If in reality the principle of balance is violated - the way the incompetent regime violated the relationship between the concrete elements at the Novi Sad Railway Station - reality will behave like a canopy: it will fail to obey

Ivan Milenkovic

Interview: Saša Ilić, writer

No story of resistance is a story of defeat

A characteristic of each of the narrative streams is learning about different forms of resistance. That's why I wrote the novel under a working title Resistance, although I knew I wouldn't publish it under that title. Over time, I realized that there is a common denominator between that working title and the place where the action takes place - the mountain Rtanj, two letters that remind us of the chemical element that the heroes of my novel are fighting for. And that is the "Cape", which, in addition to denoting the protruding free part of the land, is also a symbol for Freedom - a critical mineral that we desperately lack.

Ivan Milenkovic

In memoriam: Mario Vargas Llosa (1936–2025)

The poetics of dissent and other subversions

Ivan Milenkovic

Comment

The arrest of Dejan Ilic: Entering the phase of terror

Depriving Dejan Ilić, an intellectual with an impeccable life and work biography, of his freedom, without the slightest meaningful reason, is just one of the brutal indicators that the regime has turned against its own citizens and is entering a phase of terror

Ivan Milenkovic