When, ten years after the war, a young man answered the question of a TV Monten journalist that Milo Đukanović was the first president of the LSCG, no one took him seriously.
The well-founded suspicion that one of the leaders of the war and unionist DPS is retroactively running for the leader of the anti-war and sovereignist movement appeared in June 2000.
Then Đukanović apologized to the citizens of Croatia, "especially Dubrovnik and the Dubrovnik-Neretva County, for all the pain, all the suffering and all the material losses caused to them by any representative of Montenegro as part of the JNA in those tragic events"...
It was the beginning of a well-organized, long-term and very effective project to whitewash the past of three unique leaders of the then also unique DPS.
How do I know? Well, from the aforementioned apology.
Because "all the pain, all the suffering and all the material losses" were not the result of the random and individual behavior of some "representatives of Montenegro in the JNA", but of a deliberate and collective project of the state leadership - the Presidency, the Government and the Assembly - known as the War for Peace.
* * *
Until that apology, the media performances of DPS about the war in which "we did not participate" seemed silly to me, even though our victims had already been counted.
The same as the whispering campaign of liberal-flyers about Đukanović as a sovereignist, although in all his public statements the preservation of the FRY was still the priority goal of the DPS and the first task of his state government.
The past years and decades will confirm that the whitewashing of the past, whose participants and witnesses are still alive, only looks silly, but it works.
Thanks to technological progress, the whispering campaign has been upgraded to a written one, and the painting of a bad and inhumane past into a picture of a better and more humane one.
Exactly as announced in 1991 by the wartime mayor of Trebinje, then the best friend of the young, beautiful and smart leadership of Montenegro, which sent the Montenegrin reservists on a shameful demolition and looting campaign:
- If necessary, we will build a more beautiful and older Dubrovnik!
Instead of Dubrovnik, the Montenegrin government built a more beautiful and older one - the truth about itself. A full thirty years, in sequels.
* * *
The first sequel related to responsibility for unprovoked aggression against a neighboring country.
It's not Montenegro's fault, but Serbia and the JNA, that's the long-established truth that - judging by social networks - still holds up well.
The reality in 1991 was quite different.
The JNA almost ran out of soldiers that year, and that's why a reserve unit was called together.
To get as many reservists as possible to respond, the Montenegrin authorities did everything they could, encouraging them with kindness and force. The Serbian government did not show such enthusiasm.
Despite this, the turnout was, of course, numerically higher in Serbia. But, at the end of the summer, Vuk Drašković arrives at the collection center in Valjevo, informs the reservists that the Army is sending them to Dubrovnik and invites them to - desertion...
Not that they listened to him individually - which some in Montenegro also did at the invitation of anti-war leaders - but also the whole unit, as a group.
The entire corps deserted... then the armored brigade... then the mechanized brigade... then another corps... and another brigade - Večernje novosti published on the front pages day after day...
* * *
Since the media, history does not remember that even in one country, the desertion of its own army was reported so triumphantly.
Slobodan Milosevic did not lift a finger to stop it.
Momir Bulatović, Milo Đukanović and Svetozar Marović did not, but their police hunted "traitors" in houses, businesses, bars...
And what could the Montenegrin reservists do, they didn't know where the JNA was taking them?
They are, even before those in Valjevo.
That is why many did not leave.
Unfortunately, however many of them did go to Dubrovnik - "only" 7.000 officially or 15.000 unofficially - it was too much for little Montenegro.
From the ten times larger Serbia, if I remember correctly, he didn't leave - none...
So much for Serbian guilt for the crimes on the Dubrovnik-Herzegovina battlefield...
* * *
About Montenegrin, there are only a few messages that Pobjeda elaborated in detail and daily, then still under the administration of the Parliament of Montenegro.
- Montenegrins are shamed by poturice and similar non-baptism;
- Montenegro will be much bigger tomorrow;
- The chessboard will not flutter;
- Liberals are our curse;
- The Croatian government is a fuse and a danger for Europe;
- Beautiful they burn;
- We are looking for new combat tasks;
- Fried everything around Dubrovnik;
- Death to traitors and freaks;
- Jevrem and Slavko - both father and mother...
Just in case a poll like the one from the beginning of the story appears again, Pobjeda was then edited and only DPS personnel could write in it.
Even before the war, three liberal journalists were banned from writing for life and promptly assigned to obituaries, marketing and technical service.
* * *
Thirty years later, the DPS youth, unprovoked, returned to the factory settings of the party's ancestors by sending a call to the Ministry of Culture to ban the showing of the film about the Podgorica Assembly "Montenegro Between Truth and Lies".
Why?
Because it "hits the foundations of Montenegrin statehood".
And because "there is a renewed desire to re-annex Montenegro and abolish its independence".
What is - yes', they well described the PG assembly from 1918:
- It is clear that one and the same Greater Serbian nationalists swear by the ideology of Greater Serbia under the new pseudonym of the 'Serbian world' and in this way want to market a historical falsification and present their side of history. All this is aimed at transforming civil and secular Montenegro into a Serbian, theocratic state, in which the multi-religious and multi-confessional community will be replaced by one religious organization that will have a monopoly in our country.
The only problem is that, after such an explanation, it is not realistic to ask for a ban on showing the film in cinema halls.
Rather than banning DPS from appearing on the public political stage. Because that party organized a repeat of the PG assembly in the form of the CG referendum in 1992.
* * *
In that year, "Greater Serbian nationalists sworn to the ideology of Greater Serbia" really forced Montenegro into Greater Serbia. Just not under the pseudonym "Serbian world" but - FRY.
The replay of the Podgorica Assembly differed from the premiere only in that it was not held in one large hall. But in almost a thousand times more small ones, including some state-owned, but also private houses and bars...
In 27, it was possible to vote on the transformation of Montenegro not into the Zeta Banovina, but into the 1992th electoral unit of greater Serbia, both on the street... and in the haustor... and by telephone... and in someone else's name...
Those "Greater Serbian nationalists sworn to the ideology of Greater Serbia" were a convincing majority from the DPS and a slight minority from Seselj's SRS.
At that time, the strongest party organization of the Serbs in Montenegro, the People's Party, boycotted the replay of the PG Assembly in the open air.
Always with Serbia, never under Serbia, this is how the NS protected the statehood of Montenegro from the DPS, together with the LSCG, SDP and all the parties of less numerous peoples in Montenegro - Bosniaks, Albanians and Croats.
Despite such a massive boycott, the DPS of that time achieved the goal that its recent successor today correctly defines as "the transformation of civil and secular Montenegro into a Serbian theocratic state".
That replay of the PG Assembly from 1992 enabled the Serbian Church to do what the prime minister from 1918 could not.
The DPS handed over to its ownership all those monasteries and churches that its mother party, the Union of Communists, did not want to register with the SPC.
And "gave a monopoly to a religious community" that was unheard of almost half a century before.
Thanks to that monopoly, that religious community had a decisive influence on the key decisions of the DPS until 2006 and later.
As long as the "Serbian theocracy" is not replaced - by the Montenegrin autocracy...
That's all from me for today about the whitewashing of DPS's wartime past...
PS These days, to my sincere astonishment, anti-war activists from almost all organizations, parties and media contributed to the painting of the past. All of them published almost identical news that the late Marko Vešović was a respected Bosnian writer, literary critic, essayist, translator and courageous chronicler of the last Balkan war. Some added that, because of that war, he was an equally courageous opponent of Milo Đukanović... And then everyone, as if on command, kept silent that after that war he became an angry opponent of Đukanović's opponents. And that for years he ruined the lives of not only the leaders of the Montenegrin anti-war movement - Slavko Perović, Jevrem Brković and Miodrag Perović - but also their immediate and extended families with hate speech, serious insults and even more serious slander. I am at a loss for words for what he wrote about Monitor journalists Milka Tadić and Milena Perović. Marko Vešović didn't lack - scumbags, mutts, punks in skirts, bullies, hollow-heads, professional forgers, hunting keruses, stupid as a wheel, kilomudić women, only the more polite part of that repertoire... Because of which Marko Vešović - just as much as because of the anti-war - it really doesn't deserve to be forgotten...
Bonus video:
