76 Books & arts The EconomistOctober 5th 2019
2 tioned demonstration. In a reversal of their
habitual bias in favour of traditionalists,
security-service agents offered the festival
team their support to deal with the threats.
Local officials stepped in to mediate.Caution: religion
Conflict between Russian conservatives
and liberals is common. In Yekaterinburg
thousands of people took to the streets this
spring to protest against plans to build a
church over a popular park, eventually
leading authorities to find a new location
for the building. Two years ago, in the same
city, an activist drove a minibus laden with
gas canisters into a cinema that was set to
screen “Mathilde”, a controversial film
based on the love affair between a ballerina
and Nikolai II (the last tsar, who was killed
with his family in Yekaterinburg and is
now an Orthodox saint).
Artists who confront the devout have
typically fared badly. The church is close to
the state, providing President Vladimir Pu-
tin with a spiritual foundation for his de-
fence of “traditional Russian values” in the
face of the supposedly decadent West. After
Pussy Riot performed their anti-Putin
“Punk Prayer” in the Cathedral of Christ the
Saviour in Moscow in 2012, three members
of the collective were imprisoned for hoo-
liganism. The case led to the introduction
of a law that made “offending religious sen-
sibilities” a crime. But as far back as 2003
organisers of an exhibition called “Cau-
tion: Religion” were convicted of inciting
hatred, after the show drew protests from
believers. In the years since, the head of a
regional opera house was sacked after the
church took against one of his productions
of Wagner, exhibitions have been attacked
and theatres picketed.
Such stand-offs rarely end in compro-
mise. But in the case of the “Suprematist
Cross”, both sides were determined to hear
the other out. “I want to create art that un-
ites people,” says Pokras. After talks with
his opponents, he has agreed to break up
the cross into three rectangles, shrugging
off criticism from fellow artists who say he
is violating the integrity of the work: “If I
can bring people together by adding two
lines, it means more to me than making a
point.” He even called Ms Ivanova while
she was being held by the police to express
solidarity, for which she says she is grate-
ful. “Of course many people are post-mod-
ernist,” she acknowledges. “We under-
stand that.”
Mr Kolokolov thinks the whole episode
has engendered a sense of “catharsis”—as
long as Pokras can find space in his sched-
ule to adapt the work before winter covers
the square with ice and snow. But the festi-
val organiser takes a sober view of whether
the case could serve as a model for dialogue
in an increasingly polarised society. “I
hope so,” Mr Kolokolov says. “I doubt it.” 7T
hechroniclesofBosnia’ssufferingin
the 1990s that have reached Western
readers have mostly been written by out-
siders or exiles. Now the wartime stories of
two Bosnian authors, Faruk Sehic and Ha-
san Nuhanovic, have arrived in transla-
tion. Their experiences—and their books—
are radically different from one another’s.
When the war broke out in 1992 Mr Nu-
hanovic was a mechanical-engineering
student in Sarajevo; Mr Sehic was studying
to be a vet in Zagreb. Because his family did
not flee in time, Mr Nuhanovic ended up in
Srebrenica, the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim)
enclave that was besieged by Serb forces;
eventually he became a translator for the
un. For his part, Mr Sehic signed up to
fight, and led a group of 130 soldiers in his
native Bihac area, which was also sur-
rounded by Serbs.
Mr Sehic revisits that experience in
“Under Pressure”, a book of powerful semi-
autobiographical vignettes, mostly (but
not only) from the conflict. The narrator
and his comrades drink copiously, take
drugs, have sex and loot if the opportunity
arises. Most of their fighting is done in a
war within the war: in the “Bihac pocket”,
Bosniaks not only fended off the Serbs but
battled a cultish, Serb-backed Bosniak
splinter force led by a man who had previ-
ously run a huge agricultural concern.
The tales that Mr Sehic tells are graphic.
When the narrator’s outfit seizes a trench,they find a still-warm corpse. In his wallet
is a passport-sized photo of the dead man:
“He had a receding hairline. Large, melan-
choly eyes. With the sharp edge of the pho-
tograph I floss bits of apple from between
my teeth.” As the narrator pops pills,
throws punches and succumbs to post-
traumatic stress, his heart skips “like a se-
ries of short bursts of machinegun
fire”—as does Mr Sehic’s writing.
Whereas Mr Sehic is now an established
poet and novelist, Mr Nuhanovic is an ac-
tivist. He made legal history when he suc-
cessfully sued the Dutch government be-
cause its contingent of un troops had
handed over his family to Bosnian Serb
forces, who murdered them when Srebren-
ica fell in 1995. But “The Last Refuge” is not
directly about that massacre of some 8,000
Bosniaks. Instead it is a grimly fascinating
account of how, after first fleeing to his fa-
ther’s ancestral village, Mr Nuhanovic’s
family made it to Srebrenica, and of every-
day life there. That sounds mundane. It is
not. The narrative is crammed with details
that only someone who lived through that
hell could know. By filling in one piece of
the jigsaw, the book will—like the memoirs
of Holocaust survivors—help future read-
ers understand the bigger picture.
Mr Nuhanovic recounts other stories
besides his own. In stark contrast to Mr
Sehic’s debauches, hundreds of starving
Bosniaks, led by small numbers of armed
men, raid surrounding Serb villages for
food. At Kravica on Orthodox Christmas
Day in 1993, one explains, they found a feast
laid out ready to eat. There was shelling and
shooting outside the house, and the roof
was on fire. But, the man says, “all of us
started attacking the cake with our fingers.
I was stuffing myself with whipped cream
like a madman.” Later, when natoplanes
began dropping food and a massive pallet
smashed through the roof of a home, the
(unhurt) inhabitants “didn’t mind at all.”
After all, “mending a roof was much easier
than finding food to feed your family.”
Today, despite the conclusions of two
international courts, Serb politicians vie to
deny that an act of genocide took place in
Srebrenica. For Bosniaks, meanwhile, Sre-
brenica continues to grow in importance
as a symbol of resistance and steadfastness
under attack. Mr Nuhanovic’s gripping,
beautifully translated book may help coun-
ter the denials; but as important in its way
is his frank acknowledgment of the impact
of war. As the fighting ground on, he writes,
some of the compatriots trapped alongside
him remained committed to defending
Bosnia. But most thought: “Take Srebren-
ica, take everything, just let me get out of
here.” If only they could have been certain
of not being killed, tortured or sent to de-
tention camps, large numbers would have
surrendered, Mr Nuhanovic says. Alas, “of
that they could not be sure.” 7Bosnian literatureA pocket of war
The Last Refuge.By Hasan Nuhanovic.
Translated by Mirjana Evtov and Alison Sluiter.
Peter Owen; 320 pages; $24.95 and £14.99
Under Pressure. By Faruk Sehic. Translated
by Mirza Puric. Istros Books; 166 pages;
$16.95 and £9.99