FOREWORD

The book describing the two afternoon hours of October 5, when the fortress of Slobodan Milosevic and his regime, built for thirteen years, was knocked down, is a result of talks with sixty people - politicians, policemen, soldiers and citizens who, in their different roles, found themselves in Belgrade on that day to make it, some even by doing nothing at all, one of the most memorable dates in the long and stormy history of Serbia.

Aware that writing about historical events requires a distance and abundance of material, data and documents, and is a job for historians, the authors of the book, their ambitions notwithstanding, focused on a sole task - that is, to draw on the assistance of the actors themselves in order to reconstruct the events of October 5, to arrange and uncover them to the extent possible, to dispel the numerous rumors and, probably most importantly, to demonstrate that October 5 was a personal story of every one of the hundreds of thousands of participants in the event which is, today, referred to in a variety of different names - from revolt, and revolution to putsch and coup d'état.

There can be no doubt that some kind of organization did exist in the demonstrations; that the leaders of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) made an effort to predict what would happen that day, as best they could: that the police and the army obstructed the orders given by Slobodan Milosevic himself; that a sort of agreement on "non-aggression" between the DOS and sections of the police had existed even before October 5; just as it is certain that, for instance, Bogoljub Arsenijevic Maki, quite on his own, decided to organize a group to set fire on the Parliament and Radio and Television Serbia (RTS) buildings; that the now famous bulldozer operator Ljubisa Djokic - "Joe" took his decision to set off for the RTS in the night between October 4 and 5, consulting no one but a cup of coffee and a pack of cigarettes.

"I was so angry," Joe said, much later, talking to the authors of the book and this statement is but one of many reasons, offered in as many interviews, substantiating the claim that October 5 simply had to happen, on that or another day, organized or by itself, no matter.

Those whose testimonies helped unravel the events of October 5, include the President of Yugoslavia Vojislav Kostunica, President of Serbia Milan Milutinovic, Chief of General Staff of the Yugoslav Army Nebojsa Pavkovic, Federal Foreign Affairs minister Goran Svilanovic, chief of the Serbian State Security Service Radomir Markovic, Vice-President of the Serbian Government Nebojsa Covic, President of the Democratic Party Zoran Djindjic, Co-Presidents of Nova Srbija (New Serbia) Velimir Ilic and Milan St. Protic, President of the Christian Democratic Party Vladan Batic, President of New Democracy Dusan Mihajlovic, former minister of tourism in the government of Serbia and president of the Yugoslav Left Belgrade Board Slobodan Cerovic.

In addition to them, statements about October 5 were also given by generals and colonels of the Serbian Ministry of Interior (MUP), members of special units, both those who wished to remain anonymous, which however, does not affect the validity of their statements, and those who, like the commander of the Police Brigade Colonel Bosko Buha and inspector of the Division for Internal Affairs of the city of Cacak Zoran Boskovic, under their full names and titles. Those who, among others, shared with us their own bits of truth about October 5 are Milder, Gigo and Sekula from Kraljevo, Igor and Dragan from Cacak, "Delije" (the "Red Star" football team fans) Marko and Ivan, Peca from Dorcol, an old part of Belgrade, doctors Slobodan Ivanovic and Dragan Joksovic, citizens of Belgrade who beat policemen, and those who hid them, members of the "Otpor" (Resistance) Movement, former policemen, employees of the old and new RTS, firemen called in to fight the fire in the Yugoslav Parliament and RTS buildings.

This book is as authentic as are the above-mentioned testimonies. The authors did not alter them in any way, although in some cases when the interviewees displayed major differences in speaking about the same event, their testimonies were checked, to the extent possible and the more credible version was used for the book.

The authors are, however, aware of the fact that this is not the whole truth of October 5 and that many of the participants spoke only what the post they occupied and the lack of time distance allowed them.

All of them agreed to one basic condition - that their accounts would not be published in the form of interviews but rather used to put together a large mosaic - the story of October 5.

The authors extend their sincere gratitude to all those they talked to, and especially the numerous, on this occasion, nameless people who helped them collect the most diverse pieces of information, aware that but for them this book would have been so much the poorer.

In Belgrade
30 November 2000

Copyright © 2001 Dragan Bujosevic, Ivan Radovanovic