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Sarajevo Nadrealisti 1988 — the nationalism detector's only alarm

In the 1988 second season, the Nadrealisti filmed a 3-minute-6-second sketch about a machine that could detect nationalism in anyone. Seven test subjects — a Croat, a Slovene, a Muslim, a Serb, a Montenegrin, an Albanian, and a Communist Party member — were tested. All carried nationalism. The only object that triggered the machine's alarm was a Party membership card. Three years later, the sworn communists Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tuđman would lead their nations into war.

By Nedim Hadzimahmutovic · Sarajevo

The second season of Top Lista Nadrealista, filmed in 1988, raised the political ambition of the Sarajevo sketch comedy team to a level the first season had not attempted. While the 1984 first season had been rooted in Sarajevan neighbourhood life — Sejo and Seada, the Baščaršija love stories, the FK Sarajevo vs FK Željezničar jokes — the second season turned to the fault-lines that were, by 1988, visibly widening across Yugoslavia (Handžar, 2020, p. 60).

One sketch from that season has become the most-cited of the entire run.

The sketch

The sketch is called “Nacional detektor” and it appears in episode 5 of the second season. It runs 3 minutes and 6 seconds.

A researcher, played by Branko Đurić, announces in an introductory sequence that “after ten years of work in this laboratory, we have discovered and built the first nacional detektor”. The device, he explains, can be used “in moments of rest, at home, in the self-service shop, at the petrol station, at the beach” — and its purpose is to detect nationalism in its original form, regardless of profession, religion, or nationality (Handžar, 2020, p. 69).

The test

Seven test subjects are selected. Each represents a different Yugoslav nation. They are dressed in national-characteristic clothing (caps, hats, and similar markers), and the machine scans them one by one. The researcher enters “with a premise that it is not known who is a nationalist, because that will only be determined after the testing is complete” (Handžar, 2020, p. 69).

All seven test positive for nationalism.

The machine also demonstrates a secondary function: it can “measure the inter-national space”, and in one test, it measures the distance between “Croat” and “Serb” (Handžar, 2020, p. 69).

The punchline

Then a Communist Party member arrives. The machine scans him. As he removes items from his pockets (keys, documents, cigarettes), none triggers the alarm. But when the machine reaches the Party membership card (partijska knjižica), the alarm goes off (Handžar, 2020, p. 69).

The punchline, in 1988, read as a joke about the hypocrisy of sworn communists who were privately nationalist. Handžar notes: “It is very interesting how all the tested subjects were nationalists, and the machine even managed to measure the inter-national space — which in the case it tested, between ‘Croat’ and ‘Serb,’ was meaningful. It should be noted how the nacional detektor reacted to the chairman”, a Party member whose card was the one object the machine flagged (Handžar, 2020, p. 69).

What happened next

The sketch aired in 1988. Within three years:

  • Slobodan Milošević, a sworn communist and former head of the Belgrade Communist Party, had become the leading Serbian nationalist politician.
  • Franjo Tuđman, a former Yugoslav People’s Army general and Communist Party member, had become the leading Croatian nationalist politician.
  • Both led their nations into wars that would kill over 100,000 people across the former Yugoslavia.

Handžar writes: “From this, one can clearly see the association presented in the sketch — how once-sworn communists and anti-nationalists, alongside the liberalisation of society and the state, became their own opposites” (Handžar, 2020, p. 69).

The Nacional Detektor, a 3-minute Sarajevan TV sketch from 1988, had diagnosed the mechanism by which the Yugoslav collapse would happen: the old communists would repackage themselves as nationalists, and nationalism would turn out to be the one thing every Yugoslav citizen carried, regardless of which nation they belonged to.

The machine was fictional. The diagnosis was not.

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