Friday, November 29 - It was at the end of November 1981, when I first got the opportunity to keep a weekly diary of events in Montenegrin culture in the Saturday supplement Pobjeda...
And to that culture, a decade before the dissolution of the SFR Yugoslavia, post-Yugoslav nationalist politics had already begun to take place. I say that and not that because in Montenegro nationalism was mainly an imported commodity, domestic production was reduced to occasional, localized and individual incidents...
At that time, only the most experienced journalists were given the honor of writing a column and having it printed in italics, and behind my first diary were only four months of journalistic experience...
Behind my title of graduate ethnologist were four years of thorough study of the ethnogenesis of Montenegrins and other South Slavic peoples, their languages and dialects, culture and indispensable wartime and peacetime history...
That's why, with a lack of trepidation and an excess of insolence, I completely relaxed into a polemic with three of the most respected and oldest linguists and academics of SANU...
The subject of the discussion was the official language in Montenegro, i.e. Ijekavica, which - as Serbian academics wrote in 1981 - "is still used only by the uneducated and primitive part of the population"...
After the second round, high representatives of the Central Committee of the Serbian Communist Party joined in their defense and the controversy was moved to the pages of Politika...
My editor and friend Momir M. Marković stood behind me...
With one text. And the only one, because the party "linguists" gave up...
If the continuation does not count the private letter in which one of them congratulated Momir...
* * *
Saturday, November 30 - I was prompted by some yesterday's comments on social networks to give up my long silence on language, church and other national topics...
Not party bots and trained linguists, but people of knowledge and authority who consider justified the position of the spokesperson of the Bosnian Party that the Bosnian language should be declared official.
- When Serbs can do it, so can Bosniaks - is the shortest version of their argument...
Wrong, just like the arguments of the representatives of the Serbian parties.
But not a spokesperson, but a leader. Because of whose dramaturgical (pro)performances regarding the Serbian language as an official language, no reasoned discussion about the dramatic post-August 30th problems of Montenegrin society and the state can be conducted...
Of course, they know that, from the official-linguistic point of view, it is a futile story...
And that SFR Yugoslavia, the state of the official Serbian-Croatian/Croatian-Serbian language, did not disintegrate along ethnic-linguistic lines, but along state-republican borders...
And that the Montenegrin language - and the last of the four - was named after the state of Montenegro and not after the Montenegrins...
The same as Bosnian in Bosnia and Herzegovina, because - if it were the most numerous people - that language would be called Bosnian...
And that, even if there was no (post)war emigration but the immigration of Serbs, the official language in the state of Croatia would bear her name...
Just as it would be Serbian in Serbia, even if Slobodan Milošević had not separated it from Kosovo forever by abolishing provincial rights...
Even if by some miracle Serbia and Kosovo had stayed together, it would not have occurred to Aleksandar Vučić to declare the Albanian language official, even though Albanians would make up almost a third of the population in that case...
* * *
Sunday, December 1 - The leader of the Montenegrin Serbs and the European movement for Serbia, Andrija Mandić, should pay special attention to the official language of the state of Montenegro, but not because of the new name, but the old Latin nomen est omen...
To be more precise - he would have to, if he intends to hold the position of president of the State Assembly for another month...
If he fights against the "arrest of three Serbs from Nikšić" by calling the police, the prosecution and the judiciary of the state of Kosovo "the local administration", he can only be allowed to go around the house, in the circle of family and friends...
Yes, he only used such formulations on Iks, but he is also on that network and everywhere the president of the Montenegrin parliament.
And the only thing that Andrija Mandić can do about the alleged "imprisonment" of Montenegrin citizens is to send an appeal to his colleague, the President of the Assembly of Kosovo, Glauk Konjufca.
So much for respecting interstate protocol...
Respecting one's own country is best written and spoken by Mandić's persistent insistence on topics that only contribute to state disintegration.
And the accelerated slowing down of her European path, just as she vows most noisily to that path...
Why, I don't know...
But I'm not alive to not repeat a well-founded suspicion expressed a long time ago...
It is not so much about the language, script, church, citizenship, Kosmet and other Serbian symbols and landmarks as it is about Montenegro not entering the European Union before Serbia...
* * *
Monday, December 2 - About what the head of the Montenegrin parliament is ready to sacrifice for that neighboring and friendly country, I said everything a long time ago.
But if, only three years ago, someone had told me that the Minister of Defense Dragan Krapović would follow in his footsteps, I would not have believed it without a sound...
That party discipline is a miracle, somehow I understand the thing about the church and the monument to the late metropolitan, but I can't find any understanding at all for the state's mumbling after the scandal of the two soldiers...
If I heard correctly, they will be suspended until the end of the disciplinary procedure for crossing the state border without the permission of their superiors.
Come, their sick leave will also be reviewed...
And what about the laws they broke, both Kosovo and Montenegrin, the minister is silent about that...
Inscriptions depicting Kosovo as part of Serbia are treated by the Kosovo authorities as a provocation and incitement to hatred and national intolerance.
In Montenegro, the criminal offense is formulated a little differently, but in our country it is punishable by a prison sentence of six months to five years...
And not that it is not realistic, but this reduction of their guilt to procedural errors when crossing the border and going on sick leave seems somehow surreal...
* * *
Tuesday, December 3 - More surreal than that scandal was only the search for reciprocity in the story of the Montenegrin soldier who, together with two colleagues, paid respect to the black double-headed eagle in a picturesque way...
Not that it was unprovoked, but that taunt on taunt is just a little less shocking than some morbid ones from the early nineties...
When the Montenegrin government, trying to relativize one of the massacres of civilians in Sarajevo - I apologize for not remembering whether it was in Vase Miskina Street or Markale - bombarded the public with a video of the alleged excavation of weapons by Islamic terrorists in the north of Montenegro, with everything dug up deep underground The monitor as a tool for terrorism...
Back then, it was difficult to respond to propaganda works with arguments, there were no cell phones with cameras, nor these express and efficient social networks...
Times are different now, the search for the truth by comparing data does not last for hours...
So, the Montenegrin soldier found himself in Bulgaria as a member of the NATO forces.
That soldier did not arrive in a car with the inscription Bulgaria is Serbia, or the heart of Serbia, anyway...
In Bulgaria, for the needs of NATO and for civilian purposes, infrastructure worth six billion euros is being built or will be built.
The alliance will deploy multinational brigade combat groups totaling 5.000 people in Bulgaria.
Among the soldiers from the USA, Italy and five other neighboring countries, there will also be soldiers from Albania and Montenegro in the future.
In order for the nationally mixed military force of NATO to be effective, it is necessary to respect the national specificities of the soldiers as well as their unity.
Those two conditions are realized not only in joint actions but also in joint celebrations.
One such event was organized for Albanian soldiers on the occasion of November 28, Albania's Independence Day.
At the official celebrations of the independence day of any country - from the USA as an old member to Sweden as the youngest - the hosts allow the state symbols to be highlighted.
The participants of these celebrations, of course, show respect for these symbols.
The black double-headed eagle is the symbol of the state of Albania, both on the flag and on the coat of arms.
Montenegrin soldier David Gorvoković was obliged to salute that eagle.
He could do it with one bow, or one hand...
He chose to salute that symbol of a neighboring and friendly country in the same way as the two Albanian soldiers did...
And for that, he should only receive congratulations from the Army of Montenegro and the Montenegrin public...
Unlike the two aforementioned colleagues...
And all those who defend them because they think the same as them, only their survival in power restrains them from saying it publicly...
Bonus video:
