DISCOURSE OF HATE TOWARDS THE VILLAGE AND THE PEASANT IN YUGOSLAV AND SERBIAN (NEO)COMMUNIST IDEOLOGY: FROM FORCED PURCHASE OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS AND THE “SHEPHERD’S” ROCK TO THE BOOK ABOUT MILUTIN

Abstract

The subject of the research is the discourse of contempt and hatred in Serbian academic and public discourse directed towards the countryside. The author attempts to sketch the history of such a discourse, which has been reproduced in our country for almost a century and a half. It mainly functions based on primitive ideological distinctions such as openness-closedness, mythical irrationalism-rationalism, Balkan-Europeanism, and more recently, mud-asphalt, and is reduced basically to the opposition village-city. The author provides an overview that ranges from Skerlić through communists and forced purchase, the discourse on palanka, to the attack on Popović’s Book About Milutin and examples with shepherd’s rock and “turbo-folk”. It is emphasized that this still dominant discourse leads to the decline of the countryside as the food and demographic base for the survival of the Serbian people, thereby endangering the basic demographic security and survival of this state.