Unquestionable dogmas are understood in the sphere of spiritual life, so if no one thinks of imposing them on the entire citizenry, they are a permitted and desirable phenomenon within religious communities. Of course, there are ways to articulate religious attitudes and beliefs in civil or political language (eg the issue of abortion and same-sex marriage) and to find them as such in the public market of ideas that someone can support, and politically bring to the level of law. But once they find themselves in that zone, outside the church gates and worship services, they are subject to scrutiny and criticism, and their strength depends on the number of citizens who are ready to support them. Spiritual authority, by itself, is of no help to them.
Unquestionable dogmas also exist in science, but they are some logical axioms from which one starts in proving and thinking. Any position more complex than the one that A=A, and that 2 + 2= 4, should be proven and defended with arguments in serious scientific activity. In social science disciplines, unquestionable values include categories such as: human freedom, human dignity, respect for the law... However, the historical variability of language and social arrangements constantly leads us to reconsider the ways in which we will express these categories. As Ršum recently said, the former harmless and cheerful little song "One day my dad decided to buy me a brother for my birthday", today she could already find herself under the scrutiny of child trafficking investigators. Canon or rule - represents a more variable category in art, philosophy or law than in religion or natural sciences.
I mean, beyond faith and mathematical axioms, the imposition of dogmatism (non-questionability of attitudes) can be a very dangerous job for the human mind and wider social communities. A priest can publicly announce his dogmatic teachings; a scientist can do that with his theses, but neither of them can and should not have the possibility to impose their views on others. That is, in healthy democratic environments, everything that does not violate the Constitution and laws of a country is allowed.
And I am writing this because social dogmatism and ideological unanimity represent the greatest obstacle to mutual understanding within a community, and to the development of that society itself. I was born and grew up in a society that was so dogmatized, only then I could not be aware of an alternative to those "dogmas", and therefore, of the perniciousness of such single-mindedness. Recently, watching the first episode of the RTS series "Nobelovac", I was shocked by the horror of the scene in which comrades Đilas and Zogović, in a charming Belgrade office, examine the socio-political "eligibility" of Ivo Andrić. The historical basis for this artistic representation is obviously unquestionable, and the senselessness of such single-minded commissions was soon felt by Đilas and Zogović, the actors of the infamous questioning. And Andrić himself, when he had already survived (both figuratively and literally) the revolutionary jury, could, with a calm soul, receive the Nobel Prize. I mean, what the revolutionaries almost didn't liquidate - and a lot of it did - was later recognized by the world as the best thing we have.
This story tells us that not every war victory over the occupier is quite equivalent to the concept of freedom, just as it has long been clear that not every form of anti-fascism has brought people freedom from single-mindedness and repression. And in today's Montenegro, for the most part, we are still living the ideology of the commission that investigated what kind of person Andrić is, and this ideology is delivered to the public from numerous political addresses as an unquestionable dogma that cannot be debated. Or - whoever doubts the democratic achievements and civic capacities of the NOB is a traitor to Montenegro and its sovereignty. And precisely the numerous destinies of people from Montenegro are the clearest proof that the concept of anti-fascism is not synonymous with democracy, i.e. that anti-fascism, which brought us freedom from the occupiers, was not able to bring freedom to individuals and society, as it is today written in the Constitution and various European chapters that we need to fulfill. In other words, the partisan movement that won a war victory over fascism and Nazism, and that gave birth to countless examples of heroic sacrifice and patriotism, brought ideological unanimity among us. The single-mindedness from which all today's social and political actors in Montenegro, in the early 90s, ran towards: multi-partyism, free market, religious freedom, return to pre-communist traditional values... but also enormous enrichment of individuals and families.
In order for the readers to understand me better, this time I will not criticize militant communism from the extremely legitimate position of remembering the fact that, during and after the Second World War, over 100 Orthodox priests in Montenegro died from it, without trial or verdict. I'll put it another way: The Council of Europe and the European Parliament, in several documents they condemned totalitarian regimes. In all these documents it was pointed out how they are Nazism and Communism inflicted equal harm on people, and that these are regimes that share a number of the same common values: gross violation of fundamental human rights and disrespect for the principles of the rule of law. In this regard, the Council of Europe adopted two resolutions: Resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe No. 1096 on measures to remove the legacy of former communist totalitarian regimes from 1996 and Resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe No. 1481 on "the need for international condemnation of the crimes of totalitarian communist regimes" from 2006. On the other hand, at the level of the European Union, they were adopted European Parliament Resolution on European Conscience and Totalitarianism from 2009 and European Parliament Resolution from 19 September 2019 on the importance of European memory for the future of Europe.
These resolutions and their reports point out that the totalitarian communist regimes that ruled in Central and Eastern Europe were, without exception, marked by massive violations of human rights, and they add that low level of public awareness of the crimes committed under those systems. It is further stated that the criminal dimension of communist regimes was not the result of circumstances, but the consequence of deliberate policies worked out by the founders of such regimes, even before they took power. Communist leaders never hid their goals, which were the dictatorship of the proletariat and the elimination of political opponents and those categories of the population that are incompatible with the new model of society. The consequence of achieving those goals was mass terror, crimes and gross violations of human rights. For this reason, the similarity with the consequences of the implementation of another totalitarian ideology of the 20th century, Nazism, with which communism has, in addition to its undoubted differences, a number of common features, cannot be ignored. However, it is pointed out that the crime and the condemning character of the Nazi ideology and regime are unquestionable today, while the communist ideology and regimes did not encounter a similar reaction, so the criminals of the communist regimes were rarely subjected to criminal proceedings, and many of the perpetrators were never brought to justice. justice. Communist symbols are still openly used, and public awareness of communist crimes is very low compared to the crimes of Nazism, and the education of young generations is still such that it certainly does not help to reduce that gap. In this sense, all countries, if they have not done so before, are invited to evaluate the history of communism and their own past, to clearly distance themselves from the crimes committed by totalitarian communist regimes and to condemn them unequivocally..
And while modern Europe makes such declarations, here we have the rebranding of Broz, Titograd, Comrades Žarković, Milatović and others, from the mouths of those whose mouths are full of the "European and civil path of Montenegro". Personally, I think that it is also legitimate, if there were no Bolshevik exclusivity in the intonation of the neo-communists, who accuse any opposing opinion of abandoning anti-fascist ideals. Because, in addition to the aforementioned ideological similarity between the two totalitarianisms, history also records their historical collaboration, which - while I was teaching schools in the SFRY system - was either hushed up or minimized. However, the European parliamentarians are not silent about it, so they will say that the communist international based in Moscow was an active "coalition partner" of Mussolini and Hitler during the entire first two years of the Second World War. Not an accidental or unwilling partner, but a participant in the pact concluded a week before the outbreak of war, which we learned about in schools as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, or the Pact "on non-aggression". However, it was not just a pact "on non-aggression" - the aforementioned European declarations remind us - but a regulation "on non-aggression and mutual cooperation" (which implied military and economic cooperation between the two regimes). And this cooperation, to the great regret of the Poles and the whole of Europe, was put into practice, so while Hitler (unhindered by the future anti-fascists) conquered Western Europe, the USSR, at the same time and unhindered, annexed the Baltic states, parts of Romania and Finland. . And Poland, as we all know, was divided among themselves.
The winners of the Second World War (and here also the civil) war, as well as their ideological followers in this time, with some exceptions, mostly monopolize the anti-fascist struggle in Montenegro, so behind their own exclusive anti-fascism they hide the totalitarian and single-minded nature of their ideology. The anti-fascism and patriotism of the partisan NOB movement are undeniable, but their ideological monopoly on that universal and noble anti-fascist urge present in every normal person is undeniable. How else to define the historical circumstance in which bloody resistance to Nazism and fascism during the April War was given by the army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, while the communists were waiting for a directive from Moscow in those days? Moscow, which - at that moment - made a pact with Hitler! The April War of 1941 was short and hopeless, as was all resistance to the Wehrmacht, anywhere in the world, from the beginning of the war in 1939 until the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942/43. But that short war abounded with examples of chivalrous patriotism equal to those shown by partisan national heroes - later.
Naval lieutenants Spasić and Masera (heroes decorated by the Royal Government in London as early as 1942, and declared national heroes by Broz only in 1973) and a pilot of the Royal Aviation Milutin Perović, like many known and unknown, were the first "kamikazes" in the Second World War, but - unlike the Japanese - they gave their lives on the anti-fascist side, sworn to the "king and fatherland" and not to the party. Long before the partisan squadrons whose heroic feats we watched in TV movies and series, the Royal Air Force and its anti-aircraft defense, sacrificing the lives of soldiers and officers on the altar of patriotic freedom, shot down dozens of Nazi planes over bombed Belgrade and elsewhere. Long before the proletarian offensives, the Royal Zeta Division pushed Mussolini's army far from the borders of Yugoslavia. A large number of capable and trained officers and soldiers of the Royal Army were captured and spent the entire course of the war in German camps, which significantly blunted the edge of non-communist anti-fascism in these areas. While future partisan officers and generals emerged from the monarchy's casemates before the start of the war, royal officers and soldiers were imprisoned by Hitler soon after.
We will never know whether, during Hitler's occupation attack on their homeland, the communists were waiting for the collapse of the "bourgeois creation" and the "dungeon of the people", so that through the circumstances of the war, later, it would be easier to carry out a class revolution, or whether they were simply victims of the still valid Pact between their political headquarters and the Reichstag? Neither one nor the other serves their honor, nor does it give them the right to hold a monopoly over the anti-fascist struggle to this day. It sounds extremely ugly and dishonorable that parts of the Royal Army in the homeland had an undoubted collaboration with the occupier from 1942 to 1945 (although the reasons for Chetnik collaboration in Dalmatia should be distinguished from those in Montenegro), but how to define the fact that the local communists shot at the occupiers not when their country was attacked (April 1941) but when someone else's was attacked (July 1941), after Hitler's attack on the USSR and - therefore - the unilateral termination of the said Pact? It seems that both Chetniks and Partisans at one moment of the war (some at the beginning, others at the end) the issue of (counter)revolution was more important than the fight against the occupier.
The army of the Kingdom, whose king died in Marseilles in 1934. from the fascist shooting, showed no less courage or chivalrous heroism in the fight against Nazi-fascism than the partisan brigades, and when it comes to the sad and shameful collaboration with Hitler's soldiers, European reporters show us, without relativization or revisionism, that the mentioned evil spread across Europe and the world precisely thanks to the favorable attitude of the Communist International. True, the West was also favorable to Hitler decades before the outbreak of war, but only the Communists had Pact on mutual cooperation and assistance during the war, with the infamous Führer.
There is no doubt about the list of crimes that some Chetnik formations committed during the Second World War against non-Orthodox people in today's Montenegro, BiH and Serbia, and it is a stain that cannot be erased from the face of the army whose main command was in London, and the military headquarters in the forest and on Hitler's warrants. But the list of crimes committed against their own countrymen (perhaps mostly in Montenegro) by certain commissars and proletarians of the KPJ, which we euphemistically put under the carpet of "left turns" or "final operations" - the butchery in Slovenia at the end of May 1945 - is also indelible. over the disarmed prisoners, and after the war had formally ended. I repeat: no court, no judgment, no burial place.
If the party's unanimity has not given us the opportunity to better understand each other and to look the truth in the eye, perhaps the approach to "European standards" will lead us to reduce divisions, and to the fact that anti-fascism is a noble worldview, a good foundation for building healthy values, but without democracy and freedom of opinion, it can only be a word or a password misused to create insurmountable divisions - precisely among the descendants of anti-fascists.
Bonus video:
