A state on the periphery may fancy that it's quite comfortable there, its citizens as well, but the reckoning of this illusion comes like the sound of an apocalypse.
Every periphery carries within it at least two curses. The center knows what it is and will exploit it accordingly. But those who rule the periphery know it too—and will exploit it even more ruthlessly, holding the ladder for the center or, in this case, providing open routes, forged documents and an invitation to contaminate.
The question therefore always returns to the same fundamental dilemma: which curse should the periphery confront first, before the two of them combine to deprive it of the ability to breathe and act? The center is far away, many people do not even know exactly where it is. The local government, by contrast, has names, faces, party initials and a long record of arrogance. So perhaps the answer is not as difficult as it seems. Or is it? Because arrogant government on the periphery has one distinctive feature: it rotates with remarkable ease, yet every rotation ultimately produces the same pattern of servile behavior. That, after all, is what democracy—or what now passes for democracy—is there to facilitate, which is why the word itself has become almost derogatory.
Rotation can probably reduce the level of arrogance and conceit, but how much long-term satisfaction does that really offer? It is entirely possible to move from "I steal because I can" to "I steal, but discreetly" through a clean, legal and properly conducted democratic process. But you will notice that the verb to steal remains present in every scenario (more on why that is the case: Kakistocracy: When a Society Gives Up on Itself, the Worst Become the Natural Choice).
People, of course, will not dissect the matter quite so apathetically. They are more likely to view this Croatian episode in simpler terms: you may impoverish us, drive us away and humiliate us, but you cannot secretly bury poison beneath our feet as well.
Yes, you can. That is precisely the point. Anyone prepared to impoverish, displace and humiliate you in pursuit of their own interests and those of their superiors will naturally assume that, by the same logic of domination—or sadism, really—they are also entitled to poison you. If a town is depopulated beyond recognition, its residents may not be suffering cellular damage one by one, but that too is a form of poisoning: elimination through economic coercion.
As many will already know, a major protest called the "March for Lika, March for Croatia" has been announced for tomorrow in Zagreb, following revelations that toxic waste has contaminated areas around Gospić and elsewhere. The protest appears to have been conceived as a vast concentration of anger stripped of any explicit political compass. The organizers say that neither opposition nor government politicians will be allowed to speak—though the government, needless to say, is unlikely to show up at all. It will therefore be one of those rare gatherings where it supposedly does not matter who is "left" and who is "right," at least for as long as everyone observes a kind of vow of silence and refrains from declaring their political, religious or other ideological loyalties. Some will probably be neither willing nor able to exercise such restraint and will find a conspicuous way of telling the crowd who and what they are. If not through words, then through symbols.
Still, let us accept that as an inevitable provocation that will remain confined to a small minority—or so we may hope. But what about the majority who genuinely think in terms of action and consequences and understand that poisoned soil transcends political affiliation? For that group, for the crowd—if there is one—the protest will undoubtedly be worthwhile as an act in itself. But if it remains the only act, Monday will swallow Saturday with ease. The protest may simply become one enormous exercise in collective venting.
The government would be delighted. It knows how badly such a release is needed after so long without a major protest: let the people—preferably every dissatisfied person in the country—come together, let someone strategically cultivate a "celebratory atmosphere" with appeals such as, "Bring your children so they can experience the spirit of solidarity, democracy, freedom and the right to express discontent", then let everything conclude with supposedly neutral, unofficial anthems around which everyone—or almost everyone—can unite. In other words, let it feel more like welcoming home a victorious football team than storming the Winter Palace. Let it become a celebration of the discovery that people are still capable of gathering, ending with the words: "If nothing changes, we will come back."
That sounds wonderful. It truly does. If you have ever stood in such a crowd, you will agree. Crowds have a powerful effect. You begin to believe that change really is gathering momentum and that you are one of the cogs driving it forward. But the problem with these textbook revolutions is that they are not revolutions at all. They are scheduled rallies, with fixed running times and a known moment when the house lights come back on. If you have ever attended an Iron Maiden concert, you know how it ends. After all the magnificent frenzy, once the final encore has been played, the lights come up and Monty Python’s cheerful Always Look on the Bright Side of Life begins playing over the speakers. The pressure has been released, now everyone can go home happy. But entertainment is one thing. Something that attacks the body at the cellular level and kills—now, and perhaps across generations—is another. If people cannot distinguish between the two kinds of gathering, they will not merely fail to achieve anything. They may accomplish something far worse.
Monday really will devour Saturday whole, and everything will continue "as usual," only more so. Perhaps toxic waste will no longer be dumped quite so brazenly, but exploitation will find another form. There is always another way, all it takes is imagination. The cruelties that the center can inflict upon the periphery through its local servants are virtually limitless.
Look at Ukraine for a moment and quickly set aside all your preferences, just as you will be expected to do tomorrow if you appear in Zagreb. What does the center do to the periphery? In this case, there are two centers. One used to be Moscow, the other now lies farther west. One destroys, while the other works to ensure that the destruction continues. When was the last time you heard a representative of the "western center" say: "This is horrifying. People are being ground to pieces. We must stop it immediately"? You have, in fact, heard it at least once—from a man who cannot be trusted even when he tells you the color of the sky. But if we disregard that particular counterfeit "peacemaker," who else has said it? Ukraine has become a testing ground for almost everything lethal, from new missiles to AI-powered drones. It would hardly be surprising if even a tactical nuclear weapon were eventually deployed to collect data from a "real-world sample."
It is dangerous to be a periphery. That is something the periphery has failed to understand for far too long. It naively imagines itself far enough from the spotlight yet sufficiently integrated to feed from the common trough. It believes it can comfortably hitch a ride—or, to put it less politely, parasitize a larger organism—while profiting from the cunning strategy of keeping its head down.
At some point, people begin to think this is a good and convenient model of existence. What they fail to see in time is that all the horsemen of the apocalypse are reserved for the periphery: death, disease, pestilence, famine, war, bloodshed, scarcity and whatever else rides in that procession. All of it is destined for the periphery—either when it is turned into a buffer zone against another center or when the center decides to export its calamities there.
Toxic waste is only one of the things such a relationship can deliver. Horrifying as it sounds, someone cynical enough and sufficiently loyal to the center might ask: "Why are you complaining? Isn’t what awaits you next far worse?" Yes, it is. Thank you for the reminder.
If the war in Ukraine were miraculously to end tomorrow, the center would suddenly possess another commodity in need of an export market. The periphery would no longer be offered only lethal waste, but lethal weapons as well—and unlike waste, weapons are not buried. They must be used. So send them to the Balkans. It has been far too long since people there killed one another with combustible passion, and when they do, they bring more drama and desecration of human beings to it than the Russians and Ukrainians seem capable of. Someone once made a grim but perceptive observation while recalling the wars of the 1990s: where are the beastly war crimes on the Ukrainian front? We see technological executions—cold, mechanical drones blowing apart helpless people below. It is dystopian and horrifying, but it lacks the kind of sadism that once rode rampant across the northern Balkans. The center remembers and respects that capacity. If the time comes to empty its swollen arsenals, the Balkans could become the perfect killing field. A handful of traumas, a few geopolitical fault lines between rival blocs, a heightened dose of media incitement—and then the spark, the incident and the gates of hell.
That is the function of the periphery. It can only hope that whatever is currently being sent its way will not prove quite so devastating. At this point in the story, we are dealing with waste seeping into the ground. This is not an isolated incident but, by all appearances, a large-scale operation treated as perfectly routine. Tomorrow it will be something worse.
That makes it difficult to say what the crowd in Zagreb should concern itself with tomorrow. Should it focus solely on the immediate problem—and only its visible part, given that no one knows how much has been buried or where? Or should people come to the square and contemplate their place and their moment in history? What exactly are we? A dumping ground? Foot soldiers? A testing ground? And what else has been prepared for us in the near future?
This is where an opening toward salvation must be forced. If someone wants a less arrogant form of exploitation, excellent, no one should object. But stopping there offers no protection whatsoever against what comes next. To remain someone else’s periphery is certain suicide, the only uncertainty is the method of execution. Breaking free from the shackles of the periphery without changing one’s geographical location—that is a cause worthy of total mobilization. People in this region have searched for that magical, life-saving formula for centuries, through experiments of varying success. But they did try. Whenever historical circumstances allowed even the slightest opportunity, they fought fiercely to pull their heads away from the already sharpened guillotine. That is the only path to salvation—not reactionary, but oriented toward the future. Yet it must first take root in enough minds as an absolute necessity if it is ever to have a chance when history finally says: now is the moment.
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