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Freedom comes when enough people stand up to demand it--at the ballot box if they can, in the streets if they must. Serbs could be proud last week that they finally mustered the gumption to do that. But the lesson of people power is that it's harder the second day. Now the opposition must consolidate Kostunica's authority over those portions of the nation that remain mutinous. Reviving an economy wrecked by the vestiges of communist planning, 10 years of war, sanctions and the destructive bombs of NATO will tax the patience of Serbs burning to emerge from the Milosevic nightmare. Balkan turmoil will not end with a single election.
After years of drunken rage, Serbia needs time to recover from a terrible hangover. But mass graves and normality make a bad mix. The many living victims of atrocities--including Serbs themselves-- and the upholders of international law will demand a reckoning. And the question of collective responsibility can be assuaged only when Serbs take their hardest step yet: a thorough, painful look at the past that they have just repudiated.
--Reported by Dejan Anastasijevic and Duska Anastasijevic/Belgrade, Massimo Calabresi/Washington and Paul Quinn-Judge/Moscow