* German version of this article was published by title - "Parallele Welt - Die Belgrader NGO-Szene" in Irina Slosar (Hrsg.), Verschwiegenes Serbien, Wieser Verlag, Klagenfurt-Salzburg, 1997.

** With this text I mainly wish to initiate a theoretical debate in the NGO scene. Legal, political and moral obligations which have been adopted in this scene should not hinder the constant effort to responsibly consider this new form of civic engagement. In any case, theoretical culture is the integral part of a sophisticated civic consciousness.

1. The Belgrade network of non-governmental organizations originated at the beginning of the war on the territory of former Yugoslavia. The period from 1990 to 1995 saw the founding of nearly all significant non-government organizations in Belgrade, Serbia: The Belgrade Circle, CAA, The Helsinki Commission for Human Rights in Serbia, The Foundation For Humanitarian Rights, Women in Black, The Republic, The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, Center for Women's Studies, SOS Telephone, European Movement in Serbia, Bridge, Eco Centre, Group 484, etc. See the useful book: Petrovic Branka, Paunovic Zarko, Non-government Organizations in Yugoslavia, Otvoreni Univerzitet, Subotica, 1994.

2. The term "Second Serbia" was used for the first time in public sessions of the Belgrade Circle held in 1992. When the book (Druga Srbija, eds., Ivan Colovic, Aljosa Mimica, Beogradski Krug, Borba, Beograd, 1992) came out, this term took on a much broader meaning, becoming a synonym for supporters of the New, Different, Alternate, Parallel Serbia, and, of course, SR Yugoslavia. The term is frequently used in the service of precise differentiation of nationalist, populist and above all militarist options, as well as the government option itself. See the international editions of that book: Une Autre Serbie, Les Temps Modernes, Paris, No. 570-571/1994; L'altra Serbia, Selene Edizione, Milano, 1995.

3. For an instructive view of the crisis of civic society in FR Yugoslavia see: Vukasin Pavlovic, ed., Potisnuto Civilno Drustvo, Eko Centar, Beograd, 1993.

4. By late 1992 there appeared the public petition (over a hundred signatures of the most distinguished members of the Belgrade Circle) in which an announcement was made regarding the cessation of all cooperation with government medias in Serbia. The greater part of signators followed this public announcement, this public call for caution. With this gesture of withdrawal, public discourse remained at the mercy of the West. Ultimately, the nationalist intelligentsia could manufacture, undisturbed, the media "exultation in national roots".

5. Belgrade Circle Journal, No-0/1994, p.6.

6. "That which is called totalitarianism is the completed representation of (critical) sense in truth... In the fascist version, truth is the life of a community; in the nation(alist) version it is the inflammation of people, and in the communist version, it is humanity which is created as humanity." (Jean-Luc Nancy, Le Sens du Monde, 1993)

7. The distinguished Belgrade author Biljana Jovanovic (1953-1976) is the conceptual creator of the project "The Flying Classroom/Workshop" - FCB. With the cooperation, solidarity and support of many friends from all parts of former Yugoslavia, that project was realized in the years 1992-1994. Under nearly impossible conditions FCB's fleetingly functioned in all the territories of former Yugoslavia (Ljubljana, Maribor, Skopje, Beograd, etc.). Some traces of these first, pioneering attempts at the conquest of nomadic culture in this geographic area are documented in: Ivekovic Rada, Jovanovic Biljana, Krese Marusa, Lazic Radmila, (Hrsg), Briefe von Frauen über Krieg und Nationalismus, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1993. See the Serbo-Croatian translation of this book, Vjetar ide na jug i obrce se na sjever, Radio B-92, Beograd, 1994.

8. An especially impressive analysis of symbolic (narrative and iconographic) production of nationalism can be found in: Homi K. Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration, Routledge, London and NewYork, 1994.