“It’s not a tragedy to leave or to stay. But to make it a tragedy because that someone is going to Germany?! Great, go. Go learn German, learn something else to do.”
The writer Vladimir Đukanović, known to the public as the Serbian Wolf of Wall Street, says that today there is no talk of people returning to Serbia, but only those who are leaving Serbia or who are threatening to leave, because that is not politically popular. “If you are healthy, you can always radically change your life, to turn to one of your passions, to one of your hobbies. I have a thousand examples of people around me who have done this, and in most cases these are positive changes. America has always been interesting to me, because she divorced a long time ago from that modus operandi that works according to the principle – I have a job, I’ve finished something and I have to work professionally. We still have, here I read in the newspaper, ‘he finished so-and-so and has no job’. So what did you finish it?! What do we owe you as a society to create a job because you finished something?! It is a senseless illusion. But we came from such a society. We have families like that, who raise princes who want to conquer the world, and then those princes go out to the park and see that it’s not like that,” said Đukanović in the show “PERSONAL with Peter Latinović”.
On the statement that there is a lot of talk here about how people leave because they couldn’t find a job here, Đukanović says that it’s great and that these people should go. “Excellent, and they should go. Serbs have been leaving and coming back for 200 years. That story is so hollow that I have no words. I am the one who left and came back. So I tell my sons – go, see the world a little, meet others cultures, meet girls from other cultures. That’s all awesome. People who stay, equally awesome. But making a drama out of leaving or staying, look, that’s a serious sport for idiots. I like the ones that threaten to leave the most. Well, go away man, what are you doing? I’m gone. And you know what the point is, what happens? Nothing. Mama is crying for you. That’s it. Dad sheds a single tear. My father shed literally one tear the night I left. Nobody will remember you. No one will call you, you will call your friends, because you will miss them. But go man. Neither leaving nor staying is a tragedy. But making it a tragedy because that someone is going to Germany?! Great, go. Go learn German, learn something else to do. But in our country we like to politicize every nonsense. No one talks about people coming back. Why? Because it is not politically popular. My company is now building a penthouse, the people who bought it have returned from Australia. You know why they came back? The mother and father were born there, but the daughter came here at the age of 18 and said she wanted to stay here to study. When her brother came to visit her, he also stayed. A mother can’t live without her children, she came here too. And now that man has a big company there, but everyone here. And now half here half there. And now some poor woman goes to be a ceramicist in Germany, and you have a millionaire here. Super trade-off,” he said.
According to him, our metallicity is such that we don’t want it to get better. “We are the kukák culture. A tycoon here, I won’t mention his name, we used to be good, said when I returned to Serbia that you can never say that you are good here. As soon as you say that it is good, he starts you living hell. You have to cry here, no matter how much money you have. In America, people are aware that they are to blame, while in our country, everyone is to blame except ourselves. Your father, mother, grandmother, grandfather, Milosevic, Vucic, Dacic are to blame. The whole world is to blame except you. That’s how we raise children, that’s our cultural matrix. I am a man who made everything by himself, I don’t need anyone in my life. Maybe it’s wrong, but I’m ashamed to ask something from someone. My pride won’t let me. I also teach my sons – starve, but never ask anyone for help. A large number of people here will never get better because it won’t get better in their heads,” Djukanovic said.
According to him, there is something called generational poverty. “Generational poverty is when you tell your children for generations that you are poor. If you convince your child that you are poor, you have a 98 percent chance that he will become poor,” he said. Đukanović in an interview for MONDO.
(WORLD)