Every month, I eagerly await the call from this magazine’s editorial team, ready to spin another 4,500-character tale about how difficult life is in Serbia, yet somehow possible—how someone succeeded “against all odds,” how “I can’t” is just an excuse, how “I mustn’t” is mere justification, and how brilliant individuals and companies don’t wait for the state but push society forward themselves. Just as I’m swept up in this enthusiasm, a message interrupts: “We’re not quite sure about the theme yet—we’ll let you know.” My concern grows. It must be something serious. A day or two passes: “What does Serbia have to offer the world besides information technology?” Really? That’s what took so long? That’s easy—raspberries, everyone knows that. I start preparing a text about raspberries—research, statistics, this will be a breeze. But the devil laughs: in 2013, Poland dethroned us as the world’s top producer of “red gold,” and last year we produced a staggering 40,000 tons fewer raspberries than in 2010. Fine, not raspberries.
Monasteries? I recall how long it took me to reach Sopoćani—turn left, no, not left, right here, no, not that way, take this small road—we barely made it to the monastery gates. And what awaited us? No one but confused Italians who’d heard Serbia had a sister-twin to Ravenna’s Basilica of San Vitale and spent nearly two days searching for tourist signage to this UNESCO World Heritage site (listed since 1979). If this is how we present our heritage to the world, we’ve hidden it exceptionally well. Untouched nature? Sure, if you’re lucky enough not to encounter trees strangled by plastic bags in river valleys, or if the state power company doesn’t suddenly decide to drain a lake in a national park, triggering landslides, groaning forests, collapsing houses, and desperate pleas from locals to restore what was. To which the state monopoly coldly replies: “Lake Zaovine? It never existed until we dammed a stream on Tara. This is the biological minimum.” End of story.
So I start mentally listing what we have that the world couldn’t do without. What if—heaven forbid—Serbia disappeared from the global stage? Would the world stop? Landmark by landmark, sector by sector, topic by topic, I realize with horror that while we’ve had—and still have—individuals and initiatives of world-class caliber, today’s Serbia is but a speck on the global scene. To console ourselves, we’re not alone: sharing roughly the 70th spot (on a rather arbitrary list) of the world’s most influential countries with Slovakia and Slovenia. Is that enough?
We’re among Europe’s five poorest nations; a country where freedom indices plummet yearly; that consistently ignores anti-corruption recommendations; that doles out subsidies haphazardly while smearing the rule of law like a child with spinach; where, as we historically demarcate from a seceded territory, entire millennia-old parts of the capital city detach from common sense into urban wastelands, often backed by organized crime; where “criminal confrontations in broad daylight are possible at any time”—more so than in all neighboring countries combined. (These aren’t my words, but the U.S. State Department’s travel advisory. My heart ached reading each recommendation—not because they’re inaccurate (unfortunately, they’re spot-on), but because the country I love, where I was born and raised, where I’ve built my business and would never leave, is publicly shamed with hard-to-swallow facts. By the time I reached the section on road conditions and infrastructure, I felt physically ill.) So what do we truly offer the world besides IT?
Nothing.
Let that “nothing” echo for a moment. It’s hard to hear, I know. But it’s also our greatest opportunity. The explosive growth of IT service exports last year proves precisely this. The programming world is a peculiar plant: it needs almost nothing to create something. A computer, internet, intelligence, and algorithmic logic (all of which we fortunately have, thanks to exceptional individuals and initiatives like those mentioned earlier)—and miracles happen, akin to photosynthesis. I know of another flower that needs just stone and a drop of water to bloom again after years of withering: Natalie’s ramonda, the phoenix flower, a powerful symbol of Serbia’s resurrection after World War I. Our IT sector grew not because of our beloved homeland, but despite it.
I don’t believe much in idols, but the thousands tirelessly working in IT, creative industries, and other self-sown fields of our arduous climb toward success deserve daily celebration. Thanks solely to them—today and throughout history—we have something to offer the world. Our homeland truly has a brand like almost no other: “nothing” worth billions annually, “nothing” that blooms anew from stone, “nothing” that daily transforms into—something.