The question of the past has always, it seems, been an essential question of our existence in these areas. More precisely, the question of an uneven past, fragmented into ethno-national patterns of understanding and interpreting history, brings us every few decades to the starting point of disintegration and the inability to determine what the past really is for all of us, whether there is any category of commonality in that past, and if there is , why are we today in every way trying to end that unity and show how it is not possible in any way and at any cost. If we look back at the prices that we paid only in the twentieth century, especially those prices that we paid for the effort to make the mentioned community possible, to be achievable, attainable and finally lived, then we will very easily see that they are enormous. Despite this, we today again, when we look at that twentieth century, regardless of how terribly it cost us throughout its course, we cannot determine even the smallest meeting point. Everything that was that necessary factor of joining and connecting has today become a point of distance and separation.
Where lives were sacrificed in order to talk about a united struggle for equal rights and freedoms of all peoples, today people are talking completely against those ideas. The anniversaries of significant dates in the history of the anti-fascist and partisan struggle of the Yugoslav peoples, if they are still cherished, received their exclusively national emblems. The international character, meaning and essence of the anti-fascist struggle of the Yugoslav peoples, in which it was shown that the necessity of unity is more important than all minor differences, is year after year sought to be marginalized, meaningless, historically falsified and degraded. In societies in which the heirs of the ideas defeated in that struggle rule, insisting on canceling all the merits of Yugoslav anti-fascism and the unity of the people is the only program to stay in power. Only among quarreling nations, among people who are afraid of the others, can it be ruled in the way it is ruled today in these areas. We have reopened all our Pandora's boxes, once again for the sake of the interest of a few castes born on the blood of the nineties, old themes are now being refreshed by the context of new global opportunities. Again and again they want to insert us into the machine of wordless hatred and violence, the regiment is filled with new discomforts and it tries to obey until the point when all resistance gives way. The question remains whether it can really give way, whether it concerns us and whether we can once again allow ourselves to succumb to violence as the only way to solve the problem.
Passing last weekend through the masses of anti-fascists who came from all the former Yugoslav republics to Tjentište, in order to attend the eightieth anniversary of the famous partisan Battle of Sutjeska, one could get the impression that our common anti-fascist past is the only thing that can help us in the turmoil of the world as it is today. soothe and connect. The need to come to Tjentište, the growing number of those who want to pay their respects in the Valley of Heroes to the partisan fighters who gave their lives so that we could even exist in these areas today, in no way seems like a mere commemorative memory. Through the conversations and through the experiences of people of different generations and existences, that necessary common struggle, orientation towards each other, was always emphasized. Even today, in the perception of many, Sutjeska is perceived as a place of inspiration, a place where we can look for answers to the questions that our reality imposes on us.
The times, it was heard in the Valley of Heroes, may no longer be for weapons, but there are various other misfortunes and forms of fascism that are found in all the pores of the society around us, and against which we must fight in our own way and with our means. The eightieth anniversary of the Battle of Sutjeska brings us back to the question from the beginning, what is our past and whether it can tell us something about us today. If I were guided by the impression I had during the commemoration of this anniversary, then I could conclude that essentially our past, whether we want to admit it or not, visits our memory chambers and activates them when it feels it is necessary. It is up to us not to dull our mind, the least we can do is to open it to communion and light.
Bonus video:
