Eastern approaches

OBELIX, the fat Gaulish friend of cartoon character Asterix, has a catchphrase: "These Romans are crazy!" Walk around Skopje, the Macedonian capital, and you find yourself thinking the same about Macedonians. I don’t mean this to be snide. But the pace of building in and around the city does bring to mind the Mansions of the Gods.

Skopje has long needed sprucing up. But opponents of Nikola Gruevski, who have long accused the prime minister of populist nationalism, will hardly be dissauded by the nature of the construction boom (which the government has christened Skopje 2014). With an election in the offing, Mr Gruevski will no doubt enjoy taking credit for the new structures mushrooming throughout the city centre.

In Skopje’s central square a massive plinth is being built. It will soon be topped with a huge statue of Alexander the Great. Many Macedonians could not give a fig for Alexander. But they will be delighted to see the Greeks, who have been blocking Macedonia's EU and NATO integration over an objection to the country's name, turn apoplectic with rage when it is unveiled. The Greeks accuse the Macedonians of appropriating Alexander and trying to steal their Hellenic culture.

But that is just one element. Museums, domes, a new foreign ministry, a bridge bedecked with statues of lions and, as in the Asterix book, a triumphal arch are all springing up, transforming the centre of town. Some of the buildings suit the landscape, but the new constitutional court (pictured), with its massive Corinthian columns, seems a trifle overpowering.

Skopje 2014, which we first wrote about last year, has accentuated bitter disputes between the majority Orthodox Macedonians and Muslim Albanians, who make up a quarter of Macedonia's population. Whenever someone suggests building or rebuilding a church in Skopje, the Albanians demand the same for a mosque. Tensions invariably mount.

The most vivid example brought small groups of Macedonians and Albanians to fisticuffs. Recently, a church-like steel skeleton appeared on the site of an old church inside Skopje's fortress (pictured). The authorities claimed they were merely building a museum in the shape of a church. But Albanians reply that under the original church is an older Illyrian structure; as, they say, they are descended from Illyrians, the site should be theirs. Construction has now stopped, but the issue reveals the delicate balance between Macedonia's two communities, in which religion, identity, land and power are all deeply entwined.

The erection of statues of historical figures and grandiose public buildings looks like an expression of ethnic Macedonian identity. But they are not the only ones; their structures are merely the most visible to outsiders visiting Skopje's centre. Visit Albanian districts in and around the capital and you come across hundreds of new mosques.

Macedonia’s Albanians have a reputation of being much more religious than their brethren from Albania or Kosovo. Their mosque-building has even begun to alarm Albanians from Albania, where they have been labelled as "Talibans" in television chat shows.

Yet the Democratic Union for Integration, a Macedonian Albanian party, which is in coalition with Mr Gruevski, has strictly secular roots. So one wonders whether there is a sub-plot to the mosque-building frenzy. In most cases, a new mosque declares not only the glory of Islam, but that the land on which is stands is Albanian. The paradox is that you can find Albanian-controlled town halls flying American flags a stone’s throw from new mosques sporting Saudi Arabian ones from their minarets.

This is one reason why the church-museum affair is so touchy. Many Macedonians say they keep quiet about the often illegally-built mosques for the sake of social harmony. That is why it irks them that an attempt to build something that merely resembles a church becomes a huge incident. Albanians, by contrast, see Skopje 2014 and related projects like the church-museum as a project designed to shove “Macedonian-ness” down their throats. To be continued.

SHREDDING a historical archive is an unorthodox step, but this is, in effect, Hungary’s answer to the 20-year conundrum of what to do with the files left behind by its communist-era secret police.

The government is planning legislation that will allow the subjects of files compiled by the security services to take home documents that refer to them. Then they can do what they like: burn them, bin them or publish them.

Individually, the reports hold little of interest to anyone other than their subjects. But taken together they constitute a priceless record of Hungary’s post-war history. Once dispersed, the archive will no longer serve as a trove for historians seeking to shed light on Hungary’s chaotic 20^th century.

"Without the archive, we lose the ability to find out who we are as a society," says János Kenedi, a historian of Hungary’s security services. "And it’s society as a whole that’s committing hara-kiri, because it’ll be the files’ own subjects who’ll destroy the archive”.

Bence Rétvári, a junior minister tasked with drafting the legislation, which is due to be passed in November, says the reports are the "immoral documents of an immoral regime… The individual should decide whether he wants to make them public or put them in a drawer."

Secret-police archives have been a problem throughout ex-communist Europe. For one, they provide a wealth of material to blackmailers. Péter Medgyessy, a Socialist former prime minister of Hungary, never recovered after it was revealed, in 2002, that he had been an informer. And then there is the personal cost in broken relationships when files reveal individual betrayals and deceptions, sometimes decades after the fact.

No country has found the perfect answer. Hungary’s archives have been open to authorised historians with an approved research topic. Other countries allow individuals to consult (but not remove) the files of which they are the subjects. In Romania, files on prominent figures in politics and the church are, notoriously, missing, with no explanation of how they vanished.

Historians are worried. Christopher Adam, a historian at Carleton University in Canada, has written:

It is very difficult to see the destruction of Hungarian archives as anything other than a crude political move on the part of politicians who are concerned about potentially unpleasant and embarrassing documents on their relationship with the former regime that may one day be found by historians. Such documents may even suggest that some of the most fervent anti-communist politicians today were of a rather different opinion only two decades ago.

Mr Adam has started up a protest petition, which has been signed by a host of world-class historians. One is Cambridge’s Richard Evans, who said the destruction of the archive would be a “scandal”.

Mr Kenedi, who has devoted years to researching stories of persecution and unjust imprisonment in the 1950s and 1960s, points out that the documents remain useful. Moreover, he points out, many never made it into the public archive. About a third of the political police’s files remain in the hands of five successor organisations, where they are classified for 60 to 90 years. These will not be released.

“What the national security services think important is being preserved,” he says. “And everything else is being destroyed.”

KOSOVO marked the third anniversary of its independence on February 17th in sombre mood. Only last July the country's leaders were riding high last year in the wake of an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice that its declaration of independence had not been illegal. Now their reputations are in tatters.

First came allegations of fraud in last December’s elections, which angered its strongest supporter, the United States. Soon afterwards, a report produced by Dick Marty, a Swiss politician and former prosecutor, made lurid claims about the involvement of Kosovo's leadership in organised crime. In the last few days two new documents [PDF: download site] have come to light that appear to bolster the most nightmarish of those allegations. 

First, a disclaimer. In Balkan politics, the dictum, “if you are not with us, you are against us” usually applies. Some readers have attacked this blog simply for reporting on the Marty affair. As a fog of confusion, claims and counter-claims swirls over the allegations laid against Kosovo's leaders, we lay out here what is already known about the issue, and what is new.

The allegations

Last December, Mr Marty delivered a report to the Council of Europe that alleged that Hashim Thaçi, who has just begun a second term as Kosovo's prime minister, was close to people who, after the 1999 Kosovo war, had kidnapped some 500 Serbs, Albanians and others, all of whom were eventually killed. Some of them, the report claimed, were murdered so that their organs could be harvested and sold. Mr Thaçi has vigorously denied the claims.

Mr Marty's allegations were not new. Their first public outing was in a 2008 book by Carla Del Ponte, the former prosecutor of the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY), and Chuck Sudetic, a former ICTY analyst.

Now, however, documents have been leaked to the Serbian press that appear to strengthen Mr Marty’s claims. They contain transcripts of original interviews with witnesses gathered by a key source known to me and handed over confidentially in 2003 to the then UN administration in Kosovo (UNMIK). The witnesses in the documents are quoted as saying they believed kidnapped Serbs and others had been killed for their organs.

At the time there was no corroboration for these claims. But they did inspire UNMIK investigators and a team from the ICTY to visit, in February 2004, the now-infamous “yellow house” in rural north Albania, near the town of Burrel, where the witnesses said the killings had taken place.

A forensic report [PDF: download site] produced by UNMIK says that the team found traces of blood at the yellow house, but that these did not constitute “conclusive evidence” of criminal acts. Neither ICTY nor UNMIK undertook a search for bodies, and no full criminal investigation was ever undertaken. Yet the traces, as well as medical paraphernalia found outside the house, could have been considered to be corroborative physical evidence of the claims made in the witness statements we now know about.

Why did UNMIK shelve the case? Political expediency, basically. It had to work with the men implicated by the witnesses on a daily basis. The implications of what a criminal investigation might uncover horrified those in the UN charged with building a modern and stable administration in the post-war territory.

As for the ICTY, its prosecutors concluded that, even if crimes had been committed, they were beyond their jurisdiction because the had taken place after the Kosovo war had ended. Several years later, in a mysterious and embarrassing move for which it has never been properly taken to task, the ICTY destroyed the physical evidence collected at the yellow house. Had it been kept it might have yielded the DNA samples critical for a full criminal investigation.

As Mr Sudetic notes, because neither UNMIK nor the ICTY pursued the case, they were able to claim that they had no evidence to support the allegations. This was not, however, the case for Mr Marty, who conducted a much more thorough investigation. Albanians and others say that Mr Marty was opposed to Kosovo’s declaration of independence, and claim his report is part of a campaign to smear the new state.

Mr Marty has also been attacked for not revealing details about his sources. He says their lives would be in danger if their identities were known. How convenient, retort the sceptics.

The new evidence

But the new documents will dismay Mr Marty's critics. They make for sickening reading about what happened in Albania after the war (although it is important to acknowledge that the claims they contain have never been tested by a proper criminal investigation). They also include details of the witnesses' identities, although not their names.

The first document is dated October 30th 2003. It is an internal ICTY text containing an annex with the witness statements gathered by the external source that had been sent to it by UNMIK. The second, dated December 12th 2003, is from the director of UNMIK's department of justice.

A summary of the witness statements in the first document states that between June and October 1999, 100-300 people, mostly Serb men, were abducted and taken to Albania. Between 24 and 100 of them were then taken to secondary detention centres, from where they were moved again to a “makeshift clinic” where “medical equipment and personnel were used to extract body organs from the captives, who then died.” The organs were then taken to Tirana airport and flown to Turkey and other destinations.

The document states that the witnesses were all ethnic Albanians who had served in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Four of them had been involved in the transport of at least 90 Serbs to central and northern Albania. Three of them delivered captives to the “house/clinic” near Burrel (the yellow house), the document states, two of them said they had helped dispose of human remains near the house, and one said he delivered body parts to Tirana airport.

The document also notes that none of the sources claimed to have witnessed the medical procedures. But they all claim that the operations and the transport of body parts took place with at least the knowledge, and in some cases the active involvement, of mid- to senior-level KLA officers.

At one point, the document quotes the sources as saying that: "The operation was supported by men with links to Albanian secret police operatives of the former government of Salih Berisha." Mr Berisha is, again, Albania's prime minister today.

The names

Significantly, the new documents do not mention Mr Thaçi's name. But they mention Ramush Haradinaj and his brother Daut. Mr Haradinaj is a former KLA commander and prime minister of Kosovo. In 2008 he was acquitted of war crimes by the ICTY, but he is now being retried on some counts after the prosecution successfully alleged witness intimidation. 

Mr Haradinaj is a political foe of Mr Thaçi. The details revealed in the new documents might cheer the prime minister, as they appear to shift responsibility from his shoulders to Mr Haradinaj’s.

But as the evidence they contain was not used in Mr Haradinaj's original war-crimes trial, it seems likely that prosecutors felt they were unable to stand up the claims. Moreover, Mr Haradinaj's name does not appear in Mr Marty’s report. The situation remains murky.

The EU’s police and justice mission in Kosovo, EULEX, is to investigate Mr Marty’s claims, which go far beyond those of organ trafficking. But the new documents are unlikely to help in the search for justice. One well-placed source says that the hunt is already on in Kosovo to identify the witnesses. 

After the leaks, anyone with knowledge of these events is unlikely to testify unless they receive guarantees of protection for years to come, including new identities and relocation abroad. That is a tragedy. 

Everyone needs to know, once and for all, where the truth lies in this story, not least the families of the disappeared, as well as Kosovars whose leaders are now increasingly isolated internationally—in part thanks to these allegations.

OUR CEE correspondent's weekly column at European Voice, the Economist's sister paper in Brussels, is called "Wi(l)der Europe". He recently attended a psychological warfare conference in eastern Estonia, and writes as follows:

It brought together Estonian spooks, politicians, military officers and journalists with experts from the US, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The Chatham House rule means I cannot name names. But three big issues are clear. 

The first is that Estonians feel they and their neighbours are in the middle of an undeclared war. They believe that a co-ordinated and well-financed Russian campaign is trying to undermine the basis of their statehood, to dub them as Nazi collaborators, and to woo their Russophone population into discontent and outright fifth-columnry. A powerful presentation by a senior government official highlighted specific examples, and the themes and outlets involved.

Multiple interpretations of this are possible. I suspect that not every negative commentary or slanted news item in Russian media is directly ordered from the top. The bias may in many cases be unconscious. Yet it is striking how the negative news switches on and off depending on which of the Baltic states Russia is trying to befriend, and which to bully. I can see why the Estonians are so worried (were I Finnish, incidentally, I would be worried too). An analysis of the Russian lexicon used in foreign information-warfare operations was particularly insightful. Watch out next time you see the word ‘humanitarian' in this context and study closely what may be behind it.

The second is that the remedy may be worse than the disease. The military analysis outlined at the conference was bleak, urgent and striking. I can see that governments need to undertake offensive information-warfare operations (in the US, it has the anodyne title ‘public diplomacy'). And I can see why defensive measures are necessary too. But it would be a mistake to regard the local media as either an enemy or a partner in this.

Some Estonian officials seem quite sincerely to believe that their own journalists are a bunch of lazy, corrupt, good-for-nothing propagandists whose corrosively negative and sensationalist coverage is damaging the national interest. In particular, they suggest that national myths should be treated reverently: just as one does not sit down with a child and go through a family photo album pointing out infidelities, cruelties, hypocrisies and other hidden black spots behind the happy pictures, so the job of journalists is to cherish the things that create national identity, not to mock them.

I profoundly disagree with this, and said so. The big contrast between Russia and Estonia is that the Estonian media is free to be rude, sarcastic, trivial and disrespectful. That is tiresome on occasion, but it is better to have the noise of the playground than the silence of the prison cell. It would be horrible to see Estonian journalists taking the same reverent and obsequious attitude to their leaders that their colleagues across the border display. A free media is a great platform for those involved in national defence to counter hostile propaganda and to promote their own ideas. But the media must be free to start with.

The third big worry is money. How does a small country sustain the high-quality media that democracy needs? The smaller the market, the greater the pressure to sensationalise and to bow to commercial (or political) ‘sponsors'. I am a small-government hawk who refuses to have a television because I dislike the BBC's compulsory licence fee. But in a place like Estonia, tax-payer support for good journalism – for example, in public TV and radio – is a vital question of national security. They should broadcast better programmes in Russian too.

TODAY saw the opening of the first trials of the opposition activists, such as Vasily Parfenkov (pictured), beaten up and arrested on the night of Belarus's presidential election, on December 19th. They are charged with taking part in mass unrest. But the unrest was a provocation by Belarus’s plain-clothed security services, who smashed windows and then quickly retreated, leaving the protesters to be bludgeoned by police.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the president of Belarus, is a Stalinist thug, and there is no justice in his courts. But his behaviour is that of a hostage-taker, and he is susceptible to pressure. A few weeks ago, a day before the European Union imposed visa bans on Mr Lukashenka and his cronies, he allowed some of his political hostages—including Vladimir Neklyaev, a presidential candidate, and Irina Khalip, a celebrated journalist for Russia's Novaya Gazeta newspaper—to be released from detention to house arrest. But Ms Khalip’s husband, Andrei Sannikov, another presidential candidate, remains behind bars. So do tens of other less-known but no less brave opposition activists.

Following the EU sanctions Mr Lukashenka cannot travel to the West. So he appears to have turned eastwards, for a Russian holiday of snow and sun. His plane has been spotted by Russian journalists in Sochi, a sea and skiing resort patronised by Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s prime minister and president. Apparently neither Mr Putin nor Mr Medvedev would see him or join him on the slopes. But they seem happy to provide him with shelter.

In the past, some Western countries, such as Lithuania, made the pathetic argument that Mr Lukashenka ought not to be pushed too hard for fear he would end up in Russia. A better policy would be to lobby Russia to kick him out. The more pressure is applied to Mr Lukashenka, the more likely he is to let his prisoners go.

SHARP-EYED observers have noted that some of the protestors that brought down Egypt's president used the clenched-fist logo of Otpor, the well-organised, foreign-financed civic resistance movement that helped topple Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Parts of the Serbian press, notes Florian Bieber, an academic who works on Balkan affairs, have claimed that former Otpor activists helped train some of the opposition groups. 

With the world's attention on the Arab world, the political instability gripping much of the western Balkans has largely been ignored. Yet so serious is the unrest here—including mass demonstrations in Belgrade, Tirana and Skopje—that one diplomat told me his country’s foreign ministry had asked him if he thought that Egypt-style revolution might sweep northwards into the Balkans. (His answer was an emphatic “no”.) Here is a round-up of recent developments:

Kosovo held an election on December 12^th, but still has no government. Following allegations of “industrial-scale” fraud, re-runs had to be held. Until an apparent breakthrough yesterday, the country’s politicians had been unable to secure the basic outlines of a deal which would permit the formation of a government. Now, however, a faction within the Democratic Party of Kosovo of Hashim Thaci, the acting prime minister, has been forced to drop its insistence that its man, Jakup Krasniqi, the acting president, be given the job formally.

Behgjet Pacolli, a tycoon, now looks set to become president. In exchange his party, the New Kosovo Alliance, will enter into coalition with Mr Thaci. Mr Pacolli is married to a Russian, which, given Moscow's refusal to recognise Kosovo's independence, leaves some Kosovars appalled.

Two years after independence, Mr Thaci has never been so weak politically. He has been weakened by a row with Fatmir Limaj, the outgoing minister of transport, who enjoys much support in the party. Internationally, his standing has been shredded by a recent Council of Europe report making all sorts of lurid allegations against him. EULEX, the EU's police mission in Kosovo, is now investigating. Partly as a consequence Kosovo’s European integration process has failed to get off the ground. Five of the EU's 27 members do not recognise Kosovo.

The situation in Macedonia is little better. Nikola Gruevski, the prime minister, has set off for Washington seeking support for his attempts to speed EU and NATO integration, but he may get his ear chewed off when he arrives. Solving the almost 20-year-old name dispute with Greece appears less of a priority in Skopje than ever. Construction of a giant plinth that will support a statue of Alexander the Great is proceeding briskly, guaranteeing fresh outrage in Greece.

The Social Democratic opposition has pulled out of parliament, and Macedonia is gripped by the saga of A1 Television, whose bank accounts have been frozen for a second time by the courts. Mr Gruevski's opponents say that the government is trying to muzzle the last bastion of free speech in the country. Nonsense, claim government supporters. The courts are simply clamping down on tax evasion. In fact, the two arguments do not contradict each other. The smart money is on an early election in June. 

Meanwhile a small group of Albanians and Macedonians fought a pitched battle in Skopje castle on February 13^th, where the government has begun building what it says is a museum, in the shape of a church. The problem is that the castle is in an Albanian, and hence Muslim, part of town. When the Albanians protested, saying that the structure was being built over an ancient Illyrian site, Pasko Kuzman, the chief archaeologist, said construction would stop. But builders went in at night to continue their work, which led the Albanians to try and dismantle the structure. And so on, and so on.

Over in Albania the prime minister, Sali Berisha, has accused the opposition of staging a coup, following a demonstration on January 21^st that went horribly wrong when Republican Guards allegedly fired on opposition supporters, killing four. The demonstration sprang from charges by the opposition, led by Edi Rama, the Socialist mayor of Tirana, that Mr Berisha was returned to power in June 2009 by fraudulent elections. Unlike Macedonia, Albania is a member of NATO, but its EU integration path has effectively stalled.*

The Serbian government has been holed and is taking on water—but has not sunk yet. Mladjan Dinkic, head of the G17 Plus party and Serbia's deputy prime minister, had been openly criticising his governmental colleagues from President Boris Tadic’s Democratic Party. On February 14^th Mirko Cvetkovic, the prime minister, moved to sack him. Mr Dinkic resigned today but stopped short of pulling his party out of the government.

How long the Serbian government can limp on like this is anyone’s guess. Tomislav Nikolic, leader of the opposition Serbian Progressive Party, has said that unless new elections are called before April 5^th he will lead more protests in Belgrade. Watch this space.

Last but not least, Bosnia and Hercegovina. Elections there were held on October 3^rd, but there is still no government at state level. No surprise there. Progress on anything, let alone EU integration, has been stalled in Bosnia since 2006 in the wake of the failure of the so-called "April Package" of constitutional reforms. Al Jazeera recently announced plans for a Balkans channel, based in Sarajevo and broadcasting in what it delicately calls “the regional language”. Given the station's role as the cheerleader of revolt in Tunisia and Egypt, one can understand diplomats' concerns.

*This paragraph has been updated: thanks to op-timist in the comments.

SOME Egypt-watchers are wondering what lessons the Arab world could draw from the experiences of those who threw off communism's shackles in 1989. One might be that there is life after revolution. One of the greatest heroes of that time, Václav Havel, is still having fun. Eight years after stepping down as president of the Czech Republic, the 74-year-old playwright, former anti-communist dissident and, for many, greatest living Czech will add a new line to his CV next month with the release of his first feature film. "Leaving" follows the fortunes of a chancellor of an unnamed country dealing with the loss of power after stepping down.

Speaking in his colourful Prague office—decorated with a life-size sculpture of a female figure and photos of him with various international dignitaries—a frail-looking Mr Havel insists the plot is not autobiographical. And, he says, the villain of the film, who succeeds the protagonist in office, is not a disguised version of his own successor, and arch-rival, Václav Klaus.

Never mind that this character's name, Vlastik Klein, bears more than a small resemblance to that of the Czech president. Or that "Vlastik", a diminutive, sounds belittling, while klein literally means "little" in German. (Although Vlastik could instead be a play on vlastinets, Czech for "patriot", something Mr Klaus rarely misses an opportunity to call himself.) "It's a coincidence," says Mr Havel. "Maybe I should have named the character differently to avoid needless misunderstanding."

In the film, the protagonist is threatened with losing his lavish state villa if he refuses to give Klein his public backing. In a not-too-subtle nod to Chekhov's play, Klein wants to destroy the villa's cherry orchard to build a gaudy shopping mall, complete with brothel.

The film is an adaptation of Mr Havel's play of the same name, his first in 20 years. It premiered in Prague in 2008 and was later staged in London and New York. But Mr Havel says he began the script in 1988, before setting it aside when other concerns became rather more pressing the following year. He says he wanted to explore the experiences of prominent academics and others who lost their status after Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring in 1968.

"It was about a hundred thousand people who were used to enjoying their vocations," he says. "Then suddenly their jobs were taken away. It's not easy for a top university professor to become a baker or window-washer, and many didn’t handle it well." These travails, says Mr Havel, influenced the play "much more than what's happening now, more than Klaus and Havel."

Yet there is certainly no love lost between the two men. Mr Havel has described Mr Klaus, a notoriously prickly Eurosceptic and champion of climate-change doubters, as “utterly unbearable”. A staunch free-marketeer, Mr Klaus served as prime minister under Mr Havel, who believes his reforms in the mid-1990s brought about "gangster capitalism".

"Everything was privatised at a great pace," he says, "which of course gave big opportunities for all kinds of crooks." Corruption still permeates the Czech Republic today, Mr Havel adds, because the social demoralisation wrought by 40 years of communism will take generations to overcome.

Whether or not "Leaving" settles scores, it does fulfil one of Mr Havel's lifelong dreams. Born into a wealthy family of intellectuals and entrepreneurs that included an uncle who founded Czechoslovakia's renowned Barrandov film studios in the 1920s, Mr Havel says he was barred from attending film school by the communist authorities. Unlike playwriting, which results in a "semi-product" completed by the stage director, he says, film directing has been a new experience for enabling him to "interpret myself".

As for whether he finds his role as a leading moral voice in the world gratifying, the one-time political prisoner who later rode scooters through the Prague castle laughs. "When I hear such descriptions, I mainly blush."

THE next general election in Serbia should be over a year off, but campaigning has already begun—and with a bang. On Sunday [thanks: drkdv in comments] Saturday the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) held the biggest opposition rally in Belgrade since the fall of Slobodan Milošević in 2000. The party's leader, Tomislav Nikolić, demanded that a general election be called by April 5th, and threatened more protests if he did not get his way.

The government shrugged this off, but the public’s discontent is clear. Teachers and police have been on strike; health workers may soon join them. The economy is nominally recovering, but few people feel it. Unemployment stands at 19%. And the ruling coalition has been quarrelling in public. Tensions are evident within the biggest party, President Boris Tadić’s Democrats. The government has lost authority, admits Mlađan Dinkić, the deputy prime minister. Big changes are needed, he says, to avert a serious electoral defeat.

The SNS may know what it is opposed to, but it is less clear what is for. The party was formed in 2008 by unhappy members of the extreme nationalist Radical Party, whose leader is on trial in The Hague for war crimes. It professes to be pro-European. Mr Nikolić has even said, grudgingly, that he would arrest Ratko Mladić, a fugitive general who is wanted by the war-crimes tribunal.

One official retorts tartly that saying you are pro-European costs nothing. When the SNS's deputies were asked to put their votes where their mouth is, during debate on a parliamentary resolution to condemn the 1995 Srebrenica massacre by soldiers commanded by Mr Mladić, they balked.

One senior SNS official argues that the Belgrade protests have broken the optimistic picture of Serbia presented by the government to the outside world. He notes, too, that the SNS has a hard time getting a fair hearing in the media.

That the SNS is popular, and that most Serbs are unhappy with their lot, is hardly news, says Marko Blagojevic, a Serbian pollster. Recent events, especially splits in the government, make it hard to predict when an election might be held. But he doubts if SNS supporters have the stamina to keep up weeks of protests. He also says that, if there were an election now, the government that emerged would look much the same as the current one. Why? Because, unlike the Democrats, the SNS has few potential coalition partners. Others are less sure, suggesting instead that the two parties could go into (awkward) coalition together.

OVER at European Voice, the Economist's sister-paper in Brussels, the Wi(l)der Europe columnist has been pondering the lessons of 1989 for the protestors in Egypt

He cautions

It would be quite unfair to draw a direct comparison between Soviet rule in eastern Europe and US alliances in North Africa and the Middle East. The US did not invade these countries. It did not deport their elites to the wilds of Wyoming, in cattle trucks. It did not force them to learn English at gunpoint, ban religion or impose an alien economic and cultural system. Nor did it buttress its geopolitical interests with tanks. The Soviet Union did all those things, and more, in eastern Europe. 

But he also points out some perturbing parallels

One big lesson of revolutions is that they are easy to steal. The nimblest insiders from the old regime get their money out quickly, or launder their reputations. If the regimes fall in Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere, watch out for clever spooks and apparatchiks amid the fog, spreading rumours, manipulating events, while busily re-inventing themselves as lawyers, academics and businessmen. 

Sometimes the stealing is more straightforward (and not just because works of art in government buildings or museums can be pinched). Money will vanish from state and party coffers and head for Cyprus, Panama, or (if it is a really large amount) London. Power vanishes but turns into wealth. Then the wealth can buy back power, whether by investments in media or in donations to political parties. Money is democracy's Achilles heel. 

The biggest danger is that people want change but get chaos. Authoritarian regimes may be crooked behind the scenes, but they keep crime and violent disorder away from the citizenry. The eruption of gangsterism between the Baltic and Black seas after 1989 chilled many people's enthusiasm for the new order. 

While Hungary's government and its media law remains a stormy issue, Latvia's media landscape is quite clouded enough even without government intervention. Worries about shrinking press freedom have intensified following a purge in the Russian-language station TV5. This follows its sale by News Corporation to Andrejs Ēķis, a leading figure in the tycoon-heavy “For a good Latvia” party.

This led to the sacking under murky circumstances of a popular anchorman and producer at TV5, Oļegs Ignatjevs. TV5 executives cited falling ratings (link in Latvian). Company documents suggested he was fired according to a “staff reduction” programme. But others blame Riga’s hyper-senstive mayor Nils Ušakovs, a chairman of the opposition Harmony Centre.

“My bosses asked me several times not to criticise Harmony Centre. It was very awkward,” says Mr Ignatjevs. He was not the first journalist to misbehave: in May 2010 news director Vladislavs Andrejevs left TV5 in a similar fashion. TV5 directors deny all allegations in both cases.

Ignatjev's firing is the latest in a series of moves that have consolidated power over the media and forced independent journalists to find work elsewhere; in December Aleksandr Krasnitsky, the respected editor-in-chief of the daily Telegraf, was sacked after the paper published a story about a schoolboy threatened with expulsion for slandering Ušakovs. Mr Krasnitsky worries that accepting job offers from other publications could jinx them with the same fate as the now-neutered Telegraf. 

The big question in all this is how Harmony Centre has become so influential. Despite being in opposition, its magnetic qualities over the media remind some people of the Kremlin's "party of power". Although it is not landing many punches on the governing coalition, it is clearly the most popular party in Latvia according to opinion polls.

Oppositionism at a time of economic austerity is always likely to play well. But the real reason for Harmony's good rating may be its role as a receptacle for protest votes, chiefly from those who dislike Latvia's mainstream "nationalist" parties, who have made for the most part little effort to win hearts and minds of the country's ethnic Russians and Soviet-era migrants. 

After independence was restored in the early 1990s, the only ideology left standing in Latvia was that of an ethnically-based nation-state. As both Western-type democracy and nationalism were already booked by Latvian parties, Harmony Centre (the name of the party was different then, but the same people still run it) had to offer its electorate a much milder stance towards Russia. Harmony Centre's big task now is to build on that and gain votes from other quarters, portraying itself not as a Kremlin poodle but as a European-style centre-left party. Naughty journalists who interfere with that mission must expect speedy punishment. 

Latvian nationalist parties campaigning for the country's language may be playing into Harmony's hands. In July 2010 the parliament approved broadcast media language restrictions, which required 65% of air time to be conducted in Latvian. That  forced local Russian TV and radio to change its formats and made them less attractive to the ethnic audience. However the pro-Harmony First Baltic Channel, a branch of the Moscow-run First Channel, does not have to follow any rules. So ratings for the more independent Russophone media are falling, while First Baltic Channel entrenches its position. Does anyone remember the mistakes made by Czechoslovak ethno-enthusiasts in the 1930s?

FOR a small country concerned with its international image, Hungary has taken quite a drubbing lately. It doesn’t need a communications genius to know that it’s probably not a good idea to pass a controversial media law on the same day, January 1st, that you take over the rotating presidency of the European Union. Especially when you are already under fire for an alarming centralisation of political power and the takeover or abolition of formerly independent institutions.

The bad publicity has certainly aroused furious passions. When Viktor Orbán, Hungary's prime minister, addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg earlier this month, he walked into a firestorm of protest. According to Hungarian Spectrum, a liberal blog, there were a record 337 negative press reports.

Back at home the opposition delighted in what they saw as a defeat for Mr Orbán. More impartial observers, however, may have sensed a whiff of the playground bully here as the big kids ganged up on the new boy. But the prime minister, who relishes a good political bust-up, certainly gave as good as he got.

Still, even Mr Orbán knows when to back down. The trigger was a scoop by Népszabadság, an opposition daily newspaper that last Friday obtained a copy of a letter sent by Neelie Kroes, an EU commissioner, to Tibor Navracsics, the deputy prime minister. The letter raised concern over three points of the media legislation:

• the obligation for balanced broadcast coverage, including a right of reply, being extended to on-demand services, including blogs with video. This, said the letter, may be in breach of the right of freedom of expression and information as enshrined in Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights

• the "country of origin" principle, which seeks to regulate broadcasts from outside Hungary if they infringe the rules on protection of minors or incitement to hatred, bearing in mind that broadcasts from EU countries are already well regulated

• the requirement to register all media, including press, internet sites and non-private blogs, with the National Media and Communication Authority (all of whose members were in effect chosen by the ruling Fidesz party). This, said the letter, would restrict non-Hungarian providers and create an “unjustified restriction” on the fundamental right of “freedom of expression and information”.

Hungarian officials at first claimed these were mere “technical issues”. But they clearly went further than that. Ms Kroes saved her most devastating criticism for last. The commission, she wrote, has “serious doubts about the compatibility of the Hungarian legislation with Union law”. She gave Hungary two weeks to reply.

The public pressure from Ms Kroes is clear enough. But behind the scenes, say Brussels insiders, Mr Orbán has been told to clear up the media issue as soon as possible, before it overshadows the whole Hungarian presidency.

The message appears to have got through. János Martonyi, the foreign minister, Mr Navracsics and Pál Schmitt, the president, have now all said that Hungary is ready to review the law and find a solution acceptable to all.

But that is easier said than done. Had the law been passed this autumn, after Hungary’s EU presidency was concluded, it would have received a fraction of the attention. But now both the commission and the European press can be expected to continue scrutinising every word.

HALF past four in the afternoon is peak time for international arrivals at Domodedovo, one of Moscow’s more efficient airports and the one favoured by many foreign airlines. As passengers leave the baggage-reclaim area, they are usually greeted by taxi touts. Yesterday they were met by a suicide bomb, which killed 35 people and injured 180. The blast was clearly designed to cause maximum damage, and to hit not just Russians but foreigners too. There were eight non-Russians among the dead. The horrific attack has been condemned around the world.

This is the first time that an international airport building in a large country has been attacked by terrorists. This was the deadliest attack on any international airport. (Thanks: various commenters). There has been no claim of responsibility yet, but Russian security services are confident the bomb was the work of Islamist radicals from the north Caucasus.

Details are still hazy, but it appears that a male bomber entered the building from the car park, and did not need to pass through metal detectors on his way to the arrivals area. A source familiar with the investigation says CCTV picked up the bomber entering the building just over an hour before the explosion. Intriguingly, the footage apparently suggests that he did not have the appearance of a north Caucasusian.

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, was quick to blame the airport management for allowing breaches of security. "People were allowed to walk in from anywhere. The entrance restrictions were partial at best," he said. An airport spokesperson said that it was the police, not airport officials, who were responsible for security in the zone where the bomb went off.

Yet no busy airport can check everyone who walks into the building. Areas designed for the general public rather than passengers have lower levels of security in most countries. Mr Medvedev’s subsequent order to increase security at Domodedovo by forcing all visitors to walk through metal detectors has led to overcrowding, which itself is a huge security risk.

This is why the key role in thwarting terrorist attacks lies with the security services and the police. Yet Russia’s police often seem more preoccupied with extracting bribes from migrant workers than with airport security. In 2004 two suicide bombers were able to board two separate planes at Domodedovo and kill 88 people, after being briefly detained and then released by the airport police.

No security service can protect against every incident. But the frequency of terrorist attacks in Russia—the last took place in March, when 40 people died in a metro bombing—raises questions about the efficiency of the bodies charged with keeping Russians safe. Over the past decade Russia's security services have acquired enormous power and influence, but this has only made them less accountable. Mr Medvedev has ordered an overhaul of security procedures at Russia’s airports, but has said nothing about the security agencies.

Russia is certainly not the only country in the world facing a surge of Islamist fundamentalism. But its problems have a specific character, stemming from the Kremlin's continued use of failed neo-colonial policies in the Muslim republics of the north Caucasus. Regions like Ingushetia, Dagestan and Chechnya are formally part of the Russian Federation, but have long ceased to be treated as such either by Moscow or by their own citizens.

Corruption and political cynicism make governance in the north Caucasus completely ineffective, says Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya of Memorial, a human-rights group active in the area. The violence doled out by officials and the persecution of particular Muslim sects plays into the hands of militants preaching jihad. Russia, Ms Sokiryanskaya says, is caught up in an escalating spiral of violence.

The growing antagonism of young north Caucasians towards the Russian government and even Russians themselves is matched by hatred on the Russian side towards the Caucasus. Last month the murder of a Russian football fan in Moscow by people from the north Caucasus sparked violent riots by Russian nationalists near the Kremlin. "Russia for the Russians" was the softest of their slogans.

The incident prompted Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, to meet with football fans and lay flowers on the grave of their fallen friend. His gesture spoke louder than his words about the need for respect and tolerance. (Prosecutions of racist attacks on people from the Caucasus, as well as Central Asia, are rare.) Mr Putin also proposed tightening registration rules for migrant workers from inside Russia, a measure implicitly aimed at people from the Caucasus.

The nationalist riots and the explosion in Domodedovo are two links of the same chain, says Ms Sokiryanskaya. The damage from the airport bomb will go beyond the immediate victims. Instead of prompting a review of the situation in the Caucasus, it is likely to raise racial tension—which is already alarmingly high. It is also likely to lead to another increase in the powers of Russian security agencies, to the detriment of security itself.