According to the understanding of one of the two founders of classical liberalism (together with Adam Smith), John Locke, “the great and chief end of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.” Namely, by leaving the state of nature and giving consent to be subjected to a “second power,” a person, according to Locke, did not give consent for that power to be absolute or arbitrary. In Locke’s words, “absolute arbitrary power, or governing without settled standing laws, cannot consist with the ends of society and government; for men would not quit the freedom of the state of nature, and put themselves under government, were it not to preserve their lives, liberties, and fortunes, and by stated rules of right and property to secure their peace and quiet.”
Locke’s position on the right to property as a fundamental human right—one for whose protection people unite politically to form states—was incorporated into the foundational legal-political act of Western liberalism: the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789. Article 2 of the Declaration states that “the aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man,” and among those rights the Declaration includes “liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.” Article 17 of the Declaration proclaims property to be an “inviolable and sacred right,” and therefore no one “may be deprived of it,” “except where public necessity, legally determined, obviously requires it, and subject to prior and just compensation.”
IN CONTRADICTION WITH THE LIBERAL UNDERSTANDING OF PROPERTY RIGHTS
Recently, academician Dušan Teodorović, who publicly presents himself as a strong advocate of Western liberal values, a fervent defender of the rule of law, and an opponent of all forms of autocracy, wrote on his account on the social network “X”:
“I call on the Government of Serbia to introduce the following measures immediately, as early as today:
- Nationalization of NIS
- Sanctions against Russia
- Implementation of EU foreign policy
As can be immediately observed, these demands by academician Teodorović addressed to the Government of Serbia are in complete contradiction with the classical liberal understanding of property rights. Teodorović’s demands can be justified solely from the perspective of the Bolshevik Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People and its view of property rights. It was the Bolsheviks who, literally overnight, with a single act of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK), abolished private ownership of land in Russia—precisely in the manner now demanded by academician Teodorović, who calls on the Government of Serbia to nationalize, by its own decree, the property of majority Russian shareholders in NIS.
IDEOLOGICAL-POLITICAL IMPERATIVES ABOVE LEGAL NORMS
Moreover, academician Teodorović, just like the Bolsheviks once did, is completely uninterested in whether such an act would contradict the clauses of the contract under which NIS came under Russian ownership, as well as the imperative norms of ratified international conventions and the legal order of Serbia. For Teodorović, as was once the case for the Bolsheviks, ideological-political imperatives stand above legal norms. And while the Bolsheviks justified the abolition of property rights to land by invoking the imperative of class struggle, Teodorović justifies the seizure of Russian property in the form of nationalization through the Russophobic demand for a struggle against everything Russian in Serbia—through which Serbia would finally prove that it has aligned its foreign policy with that of the European Union.
Namely, this fervent advocate of Western interests, but not of Western liberal values, openly supports the introduction of sanctions against Russia, the expulsion of Russian and Chinese capital from Serbia, the condemnation of alleged Russian “war crimes,” and even a ban on selling T-shirts with Putin’s image or publicly broadcasting Russian marching songs. For all these reasons, it is no coincidence that Teodorović recently demanded that the Government of Serbia—which he otherwise despises—nationalize NIS.
“FOR THE ENEMIES OF FREEDOM – NO FREEDOM”
Simply put, when confronted with the demands of Russophobic politics, not only do all fundamental principles of liberal ideology become secondary, but even the trampling of legal norms regarding the “sacred right” of property becomes justified. In this regard, Serbian “Westernizers” resemble their role models in the political and public life of Western countries entirely. Both groups agree that the basic postulates of liberalism concerning the “sacred” right of property—which form the foundation of modern law—do not apply to Russians or Russia. Just as communists once advocated the principle that “for the enemies of freedom – there is no freedom.”
Writing precisely about this communist slogan, Borislav Pekić—whom our “Westernizers” of Teodorović’s kind regularly try to appropriate—concludes:
“The notion of socialist freedom is based on a typically Orwellian DOUBLETHINK. On the one hand, it is claimed that socialist freedom is the most perfect form of freedom, and on the other, that in order to remain perfect, it must be constantly restricted. The slogan: ‘For the enemies of freedom – no freedom’ is the operational conclusion of such thinking.
At first glance, one may understand it as the legitimate defense of freedom from all those who threaten it on principle. In practice, however, the slogan takes on a different form, which reads: ‘For the enemies of socialism – no freedom.’ An arbitrary substitution of the general concept of freedom with the specific concept of socialism has been carried out, and in that way, in practice, freedoms that are generously offered in theory have been denied.”
A DANGEROUS PRECEDENT
It never crosses Teodorović’s mind that the precedent of unlawfully confiscating Russian property could become a dangerous precedent—one that, in the future, might be applied against the property of any owner. The ideology of Western Russophobia, together with the millenarian belief in the global hegemony of the West, has clouded the judgment of Serbian “Westernizers” to the same extent that communist ideology once clouded the historical perspective of “intellectuals” serving the Party.
When the Constitution of the FNRJ was being drafted, Jaša Prodanović criticized the communists’ proposal to legally permit nighttime searches of private homes—something strictly forbidden in the Kingdom of Serbia—because, in his words, such an exception would lead to the constitutional right to the inviolability of the home being utterly dismantled. The legal exception would expand so far that the constitutional guarantee would become meaningless.
The well-known communist jurist Leon Geršković rejected Prodanović’s argument by claiming that one cannot “leave the night to the enemies, to act and to hide.” Prodanović responded by warning the communists that they should consider the possibility that someone other than them might come to power one day—and could then use the same provision of nighttime searches against them. Radovan Zogović replied confidently: the communist “government will never be replaced; it will only continue to develop.”
POLITICAL ASSESSMENT OF POSSIBLE DECISIONS OF THE GOVERNMENT OF SERBIA REGARDING THE STATUS OF NIS
Teodorović, just like Zogović once did, justifies trampling on the rights of others by believing in his own impunity — or rather, in the impunity of his foreign patrons. This similarity between Teodorović and Zogović shows that it is no coincidence that this academic suggested last summer that the student protests should be used to establish a “Pan-People’s Front,” which, according to him, is the only thing that can save us from becoming “the black hole of Europe”.
Just as Western liberalism no longer possesses even a fragment of its former vitality, Teodorović likewise has no political power and cannot have any. As a political figure he is, in himself, uninteresting. On the other hand, Teodorović’s demands addressed to the Government of Serbia are an indicator of political views that unfortunately dominate a large part of the Serbian intellectual — and especially political — elite, both of which by their nature are overwhelmingly colonial.
However, Teodorović’s publicly stated demands to the Government of Serbia are of particular importance for the political assessment of potential decisions the Government of Serbia may take regarding the status of NIS — decisions that, according to President Aleksandar Vučić, can be expected in a little less than fifty days.
At a press conference on November 25, President Aleksandar Vučić made it clear that the Government of Serbia has given the majority owner of NIS a deadline of fifty days to sell its stake. If the majority owner of NIS does not sell their stake within that period, the Government of Serbia would introduce mandatory administration in the company. After that, according to Vučić, the Government of Serbia would offer “Gazprom Neft” the opportunity to buy the Russian majority stake in NIS.
In this regard, Vučić has yet to clarify to the public what the Serbian authorities will do if the Russian owner, even after the introduction of mandatory administration, refuses to sell their stake in NIS to the Government of Serbia. Will Vučić’s hidden intention then be realized — the one underlying his threefold, certainly not coincidental, repetition that he was against “immediate nationalization of NIS”?
Finally, during this same press conference, Vučić repeated several times that he had “promised” the Americans that he would respect all the sanctions they have imposed on Russian legal and natural persons.
SERBIA – AN INSTRUMENT OF THE AMERICAN SANCTIONS POLICY
From what Vučić said, it clearly follows that Serbia has taken upon itself the role of an instrument of the American sanctions policy against Russia — in this case against “Gazprom Neft” — by giving the majority owner of NIS an ultimatum of fifty days to sell its stake in NIS. Consequently, such a purchase agreement would be, from the standpoint of international trade law as well as the legal order of Serbia, null and void, because it would be concluded under coercion — i.e., under the pressure of unlawful U.S. sanctions (only sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council are legal), as well as under the pressure of the fifty-day ultimatum for the sale of property imposed on the Russian owner by the Serbian leadership.
If Gazprom Neft refuses to conclude such a sales agreement, then according to Vučić, Serbia would introduce mandatory administration in NIS. Since mandatory administration deprives the majority owner of NIS of its management rights, its effect would be equivalent to dispossession — that is, nationalization. Such an act by the Government of Serbia would be contrary to Article 2 of the Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the Government of the Russian Federation on Cooperation in the Oil and Gas Industry, which regulates, among other things, the sale of NIS to “Gazprom Neft.”
This article prescribes: “The property of the Companies cannot be expropriated, nationalized, or subjected to measures equivalent in their consequences to expropriation or nationalization”.
THE LAST REMAINING CONDITION FOR PURSUING A MULTIVECTOR FOREIGN POLICY
A measure equivalent in its consequences to nationalization would be precisely the mandatory administration in NIS announced by the Government of Serbia. In a recently published article, attorney Goran Đorđević listed in detail many other reasons why the potential nationalization of NIS — as well as mandatory administration in NIS — would be unlawful from the standpoint of ratified international conventions and the legal order of the Republic of Serbia.
The political meaning of such unlawful measures would be even more evident. Namely, through such measures — mandatory administration and/or nationalization of NIS — the Government of Serbia would fulfill the demands of the United States and the European Union to remove Russian capital from the vitally important energy sector in the shortest possible time (a euphemism for “diversification” in the energy field), thereby depriving Serbia of the most important and, it seems, the last economic prerequisite for pursuing a multivector foreign policy and for further preserving the country’s military neutrality.
At the same time, it should be noted that this year Russia adopted a law allowing the nationalization of property belonging to foreign legal and natural persons originating from states that have nationalized or otherwise seized the property of the Russian state, as well as the assets of Russian legal and natural persons.
According to the opinion of Dmitry Kiku, Deputy Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council, the seizure of Russian property could, in the near future — as the prime ministers of Hungary, Slovakia, and even Belgium soberly argue — become a casus belli.
PROTESTS AS AN ADDITIONAL TOOL OF INTERNAL PRESSURE
It remains to be seen whether, in the coming weeks, the Government of Serbia will become a government shaped according to Dušan Teodorović’s foreign policy views, or whether it will listen to the sober voices coming from Budapest and Bratislava. In that case, it would become clear that various figures like Teodorović and their civic/student protests have merely served the Collective West as an additional tool of internal pressure on a multiply blackmailed government to fully fulfill the key geopolitical demand of Washington and Brussels — to completely expel Russia from Serbia. And once there is no longer any relevant Russian presence in Serbia, the Serbs themselves will finally be pacified. Such an outcome would be entirely in line with the preferences of the great opponent of Serbian nationalism — academician Teodorović.
