There has been a lot of noise in the Belgrade media these days because in the history textbook for the sixth grade of primary school, which was written by professor Rade Mihaljčić, a member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of the Republic of Srpska, while the publisher is the state enterprise Zavod za textbooks of the Republic of Serbia, it says, as they stated Serbian tabloids, "that the Serbs stole Kosovo from the Albanians".
It's true, it's not written exactly like that, but tabloids serve everywhere in the Balkans, including in Serbia, to inflame passions with various headlines that usually make the simple reader, a believer of fat headlines, immediately reach to sharpen the knife and target those on the opposite side of the border.
The Serbian Patriarch Irinej personally expressed the objection to the textbook to the Minister of Education of Serbia in March last year, but someone only now got hold of that story, which turned out to be outdated, since the textbook has since been revised according to the patriarch's objections.
True, the Serbian patriarch did not study history, but the Faculty of Theology, but in the job description of the patriarch, I guess it says that he has to read textbooks for the sixth grade of elementary school and revise them.
And then everything is clarified by the crazed tabloids and their charming audience.
The most important of the controversial claims in this textbook was, in fact, about the origin of Albanians, because the author considers Albanians among the natives of the Balkan Peninsula, although this question is still open in science. There is a thesis about their Illyrian origin, which is highlighted by Albanian science, and a thesis about Thracian origin, which is also present in Serbian science. In recent times, a migration thesis has appeared, according to which Albanians immigrated from Sicily, where they arrived from the Caucasus or the Caspian plain in the 10th or 11th century.
However, that was not the patriarch's only remark. The remarks state that the author of the textbook claims that Neretians are not Serbs. On page 41, the name Neretljana is cited as an example of a Slavic tribe that got its name from a geographical name, from the river Narona, i.e. Neretva. On page 48, however, it is clearly stated that Paganija (the name for the region of Neretljana) belonged to the Serbian lands in the Primorje. The same can be seen from the map on page 57, where the Serbian states in the 9th and 10th centuries are shown.
The remark that the author on page 53 denies that Serbs lived in Bosnia and south-east of Split is not justified, it is pointed out in the official note on objections to the textbook made by the Institute for the Improvement of Education in Serbia.
"The author explicitly stated on pages 48, 50 and 99 that Bosnia is an integral part of Serbia, which is also shown on the historical maps on pages 56 and 57, where it is clearly marked that the areas on the coast, southeast of the Cetina River, were inhabited by Serbs," the Institute's official note states.
About Nikola Pašić
When, a few years ago, the teacher in Belgrade elementary school mentioned to the students that Nikola Pašić was a military leader, my little friend Igor "brought" three encyclopedias to class the next day. By looking at all three determinants: "Nikola Pašić, Serbian politician", the teacher felt like she was chewing in an ashtray, but teachers are those mythical creatures of our childhood who never make mistakes, so, in order not to spoil the myth about herself, she vividly explained relativity to the children of historical facts in the Balkans: "You see, children, in some encyclopedias it is stated that Nikola Tesla was a Serb, in others that he was a Croat, in a third that he was an American. Whom to trust?" - she made a parallel with the "teacher of life", who, well, has doubts herself.
In a few decades, when a teacher in Kosovo will be teaching on the topic of "The Kosovo Struggle", it is not excluded that she will appear in class with three, four to one hundred and twenty-five books, and at the beginning of the presentation make a slight deviation towards the further development of the situation: "Look, children , in this, this, this and this book it is written that Miloš Obilić was a Serb. In this one, it is written that Miloš Obilić was an Albanian. And here we have information that Miloš Obilić did not even exist. This, again, undoubtedly says that he was a Serb. Who to trust?" the teacher will ask.
"Ours" - will say every little Albanian, who would rather believe that the pyramids were built by their ancestors, Cheops & company, than that aliens did the work, as the Swiss Erich von Däniken claims in his bestsellers printed in millions of copies. In Egypt, it has never been made a case of national importance. Deniken writes, but we charge tickets to tourists. Normally, until the "little green ones" appear and claim copyright.
These days, another incendiary story appeared in the Serbian media that the Kosovo authorities will in the future teach children in textbooks that the Serbian epic hero Miloš Obilić, who, according to tradition, killed the Turkish Sultan Murat during the Kosovo War, was actually the Albanian knight Miloš Kopilik.
From Vardar to Triglav, from the beginning of the nineties, the works of (para)historians, (super)historians, latent scribalists and prominent national traitors, hardly any of whom had a "Deniken" motive - a circulation of millions. They were everywhere, including in Serbia, pathetic patriotic endeavors where we learned information that even the history doctors from Cambridge were not familiar with - that Serbs have been around since before Christ, that there was no migration of Slavs to the Balkans, that Napoleon was a Serb, that the skull a Cro-Magnon is the same as the skull of a Serb, that Serbs have been Serbs since the Stone Age, that Serbs are the chosen people, the natives of the Balkans, Europe and Scandinavia.
Direct connections
Direct connections of all ex-Yugoslav nations and nationalities, individually, with amoebas, Kamenka and Kremenka, dinosaurs, tyrannosaurs, the big bang, Adam, Eve, apple and snake have been established. There was no interest in Darwin's monkeys.
Every national myth started from the thesis that they are the metaphysical center of the world, living proof of billions of tenacity, courage, historicity and "thousand-century" culture. So the story about Miloš Kopilik, the Albanian knight, can only concern those who, following the methodology of creating national mythomania, believe that all this is not accidental. One hundred percent, there will be some for whom this reading will be the reason for a new thesis: "Well, you see that Albanians are also Serbs. They admitted" - an exclamation, already seen, some national foreman, and in the next sentence go on the offensive with the thesis that Skanderbeg is not a cognac, as it was believed until now, but a Serb. Until the answer arrives from the other side that Tsar Lazar and Empress Milica are not table dry and semi-sweet red wine, but full-blooded Albanians. The heroes of the song: "Kneževa besa". Although that song is called "The Prince's Curse".
At the time when Al Jazeera Balkans was founded, I sat with Goran Milić in Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel and asked him: how will you, Goran, on your Al Jazeera, treat these stories that every nation in the former Yugoslavia is convinced is the oldest?
Goran explained it to me nicely: "I know that every media here has half a story from the past." That's okay, but I don't feel the need to undermine those holes. Simply, in this war I was in all locations, I worked in Serbia, then in Bosnia and Herzegovina, then in Croatia, and now I'm back in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I knew all those people, I talked to all those people. What they lied to me about and what they didn't lie to me is less important, but if I had been informed - I would have been. When today I read the interpretation of what I watched, then I am inclined to accept that maxim: it has entered history, therefore, it has become a lie. If in 20 years we started to differ so much in what we saw together, then it is hard to believe that even historians will discover the real truth in a hundred years".
Goran is right. We cannot agree on what was 20 years ago, let alone what it was, say, 20 centuries ago.
Bonus video:
