In One Serbian Village 

The farm of my friend had been in the family for generations, passed from “knee to knee.” Like other homesteads nearby, the house and buildings were surrounded by a slanting board fence, not to prevent entrance obviously, but to define the property. The house, of whitewashed plaster over brick, was set amidst apple trees, which on this particular day were limp with fruit. Squat and solid looking, it seemed sunk into the earth. A half dozen steps led to the living quarters of three rooms. Below, at ground level, was a fourth room for a baking stove. And a few steps from that, along a path trampled hard by feet, was a second smaller, impenetrable structure that was also used to prepare food. Thirty yards away was a third building, of weathered boards, that was part cattle barn, part storage shed and part shelter for enormous kegs of fermenting plums. A yoke, leather harnesses, and some hand tools were the most visible equipment.

The farm was run by the brother, a lean, dark-eyed Serb who gave an instant and, as it developed, an accurate impression of reserve and modesty. His household consisted of himself and four others. No one knew precisely the age of his grandmother, but she was nearly of an age to have remembered when the Turks still occupied Serbia a century ago. His mother had survived both world wars, but when she gripped your hand you could feel a leathery strength still there, and her face, swathed in a large dark scarf, wrinkled in gladness. The brother’s wife, too, was strong, industrious and, like other women in the countryside, old before her years. The pride of the house was the young son, a schoolboy, who almost certainly would go to the high school in Kragujevac, and perhaps to the university in Belgrade.

We, from the city, were enveloped with hugs and kisses and ushered to a table beneath the largest apple tree where chairs and a table, covered with a white cloth, had been set out. The wife, according to Serbian custom, soon appeared with a tray holding small, glistening glasses of water, silver teaspoons and a dish of thick fruit preserve. Each of us took a spoon of fruit and then sipped the water in a communion-like ritual of receiving hospitality. After that, for the men, and the women if they chose, there was shlivovitz, a burning plum brandy that is judged the better if twice distilled to brookwater clarity. It is taken in manly swallows after raising glasses in a toast and a chorus of “zhivelil”—roughly meaning long life or to your health.

Produced from the farm’s own plum harvest and the town still, shlivovitz is one of the main cash crops. The money buys yard goods, some ready-made clothes, shoes, tea and a small ration of electricity. Very little else comes from stores. The hot flat bread that was served had been made that morning by the women. So had the kajmak, a buttery, white cheese from the skim of boiled, slightly sour milk.

For a preview of the main meal that consumed most of the afternoon, the brother led us to the barn to show with unconcealed pride a whole lamb and a suckling pig that had been freshly slaughtered and that morning roasted on an open spit made of tree branches. The pieces of meat that we sampled were still warm and dripping with juices. When it came time for the banquet, it took two men to carry the impaled animals outside where they were cut and hacked into fistsize chunks of flesh.

Before dinner, we walked up through the hills where my friend had spent his boyhood. In those years, there was not even the luxury of electricity. And, in some, there was very little food. Everyone remembers the cornbread eaten day after day during the war. Though it became detestable then, it is served in city restaurants now as a special appetizer. Atop one of the hills, you could look across small valleys to white spots of houses, and still more slats of land worked separately by different hands. We could also see the asphalt highway, the most visible and durable link between village and city. In a moment of reminiscing, my friend recalled that as a boy he had watched German tanks move along the road as they advanced for the assault on Belgrade. And he remembered that a band of Yugoslav soldiers had set up their artillery at the nearest curve, where they commanded the approach to the village. The battle had been brief and one-sided. The Germans, though they shelled the area, seldom left the highway and the backhill farms were left in relative peace after the initial attack. After the war, life remained hard for years. It was not too many years ago, in fact, that the electric power line was strung through the hills and hooked up to houses.

At the house, we talked with the brother, who answered questions as if words were scarce and rationed. He had five head of cattle at the moment, he said, three pigs, a few sheep, chickens and turkeys, and he raised plums, apples, wheat and corn. Ten years ago, he said, he paid 150 dinars in land taxes, but in 1968, the tax was 1,700 dinars (about $140). What did his taxes buy, where did the money go? He shrugged, not really knowing: “For weapons, for the military.”

Inside the house, enough tables and chairs had been assembled in one room for a dozen people. Several photographs in black, embroidered frames—the wedding picture, the mother when she was a girl — hung on pure white walls. From somewhere, the brother produced a 40 watt lightbulb to screw into the single overhead socket. Neither he, nor his wife or mother sat, but instead conveyed chicken soup, more hot bread, platters of lamb and pig, bottles of wine, beer and shlivovitz and finally, three kinds of cake. There were jokes and gossip, much talk about how much one had to eat and drink.

Among those at the table was a neighbor, a young man of 29, and his wife who looked the same age, but was 18, and who was shy to the point of silence. He had finished eight years of school, 21 months in the army and had wanted to leave the farm, but his mother objected. Of his own 10 hectares, 7 were occupied by orchards and crops, the rest was forest. He worked the fields, he said, with a hand-plow pulled by a cow. His taxes of 1,700 dinars went “for the army.” He wanted to buy machinery and more crop land, but there simply was no money. A tractor, new, cost about 30,000 dinars, or about $2,400; a hectare of land in his region was priced at 20,000 dinars, or $1,600. With a tone of resignation, he acknowledged: “I don’t like farming, but what can I do?”

Why not join with neighbors, pool land and money, buy equipment and specialize? The economic advantage seemed apparent to both the brother and young neighbor. But the loss of independence, of individual action that a voluntary collective contained was beyond them. As it was, they were almost self-sufficient. Though they labored hard and though they lived poorly, they were certain of their privacy. No one, not even a neighbor, could tell them what to do. And there remained, my friend explained, the village measure of a man—the ablest and most resourceful were those who could grow their own grain, raise their own cattle and produce their own food.

The price for this entrenched independence and self-sufficiency is, for Yugoslavia, grain yields half the volume of those on large socialized farms. But most Yugoslav agriculture remains in the private sector. Of ten million hectares of arable land, 8.7 million are divided among 2.6 million private farms (some very small, however), and the rest among 2,240 “social holdings.” The latter have three times as many tractors as the former. But the private holdings, on which nearly the entire rural labor force works (and almost half of Yugoslavia’s population of 20 million live in the countryside), produces 62% of the wheat harvest, 81% of the corn, most of the vegetables and fruits, and possesses 92% of the cattle (1968 figures).