Perović to Komnenić: Your show is a place where words cannot be found

Protopriest-stavrophor of the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral SPC Gojko Perović reacted to the views expressed in the show "Načisto" by author Petar Komnenić.

Dear Mr. Komnenić,

Your show, unfortunately, has gone from being a rare oasis of free speech – which it definitely was once – to a place where words cannot be spoken. Even physical presence in the studio does not help with this endeavor. The principle of rational arguments has ceased to apply there, and the “argument” of decibels and shouting dominates. Something like in the stands of a stadium. Except that in the stands there is room for choreography, slogans and images of both fan sides, while in the TV Vijesti studio, emblems and images of only one version of the truth fly around the heads of the interlocutors – yours.

The Church's announcements and statements (and those of mine that you quoted) that you have been lamenting for months now call for social dialogue, for a reexamination of established opinions, for the condemnation of all (and not just some) deviations, and all of these announcements are directed against totalitarian political consciousness. All of these announcements imply that the truth about historical events, about current social problems, and even about our common future – is not on just one side. Such a pluralistic and democratic premise of conversation should be the main direction of our social recovery. But, alas, to the call to talk, for scientific institutions to take a fresh look at historical reports (which we have already started to do here with regard to 1918, 1948, 1989…), to align our actions with the recommendations of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, the journalist replies: you don't need any of that, I know everything and I will explain everything to you. I have a couple of photos, there are also some documents, I can play them for you while you express your opinion (so that the viewers don't know if they are listening to you or watching what I prepared). I don't know what the expression of totalitarian consciousness is if not that?

An expression of totalitarian consciousness is also the position that the Church is a dark and totalitarian institution (and that “religion is the opium of the people”) and that it is not its place to raise the issue of general dialogue. I will remind you and the public that the Church is not a fossil from the Middle Ages, but a community that brought us from the Middle Ages to the New Age (just as it previously helped the world to move from a slave-owning to a feudal system of values). The Church ran the printing house in Cetinje; the Church founded and participated in the work of the first schools in Montenegro (both primary and secondary); the Church significantly participated in the first peaceful and democratic transition of power in Montenegro – to which you yourself, at one time, contributed. However, something has changed in your relationship, but not in the direction of peaceful dialogue and better understanding. The advocacy for a fundamental and objective revision of the one-party and revolutionary version of history – this has remained unchanged in the Church narrative from 1945 to the present. When did that start to bother you? I ask this because I remember representatives of such and such a Serbian Orthodox Church appearing in your studio, without the above-described exclusivity on your part.

The public should not be bothered with my and your personal views and our mutual (mis)understandings, but by coincidence, all our conversations have a so-called national frequency, so they need to be clarified when you persistently insist on criticizing the Church on one and the same issue. Anyway, this entire issue, in civilized and democratic societies, would not concern “ours and theirs”, nor the topic of “who ran away with whom”, but could fit into a few major issues cleansed of any ideology, and directed towards democratic and humane values ​​that, I hope, we all share:

1. Can we, apart from the issue of “collaboration with the occupier”, publicly discuss the moral value of carrying out the Bolshevik revolution under the circumstances of that same occupation? (For those under 18: the Bolshevik revolution, according to its doctrine and previous practice, implies armed violence against one's fellow citizens, against the domestic, legitimate and legal government. Now, if you carry it out under the circumstances of an armed attack by the occupier on that same government, a government that was proven to be anti-fascist and anti-Nazi before your revolutionary volleys, the moral question remains: who is of benefit to whom and for what purpose?) Revolutions whose deviations we have been “cured” for decades by transitioning to political values ​​that the revolutionaries had just abolished through violence? Let me list them: democracy, multi-party system, freedom of speech, the sanctity of private property, religious freedom... etc. I believe that decades of silence about this strengthens the extremism of people with anti-leftist views, and often leads to the exaggeration of some details from the armed struggle of those who were not partisans.

2. If we have located war criminals among the members of the Royal Army, why remain silent about those criminals who to this day bear the titles of "national heroes"? Isn't this also a continuous and decades-long "celebration of war criminals" that, unlike the Chetniks, has been placed in textbooks, and is therefore a much more harmful phenomenon? Or: why is the mass and planned killing of innocent people a more serious crime if it is motivated by chauvinism, compared to the same crimes initiated by class intolerance and ideological blindness?

3. It may be that we have something to add to the Brussels equating of communist and Nazi ideology – because, despite all the controversies, the partisan movement in our country met the end of the war as an anti-fascist, liberating military force that included the majority of our people in its ranks. However, to this day I have not seen a single investigative journalistic work on the topic of those very clear European declarations, which condemn not only totalitarian systems as such, but precisely the partnership between communists and Nazis for a large part of World War II. A relationship that was literally a prerequisite for that war to begin the way it did and when it did.

4. The murder of the national hero Ljubo Čupić is a crime. Behind this crime lies betrayal. You should read “Testimonies” by Ljubomir Kosović, a posthumously published book of memories of the Second World War, of this distinguished man, a pioneer in the post-war development of television technology in Montenegro, who during the war was among both the Partisans and the Chetniks. Remaining a rare moral and consistent patriot, condemning the crimes and wanderings of both the one and the other, in this book Kosović speaks of the ugly role that not only the Chetniks, but also the Partisans played in Čupić’s liquidation. It was such and so great that after this crime, Ljubo’s own brother Martin defected from the Partisans to the Chetniks! Martin Čupić and his wife perished in the Chetnik retreat towards Slovenia. In addition, Kosović’s book mentions by name and surname the war criminals who still adorn our streets and former factory facilities today.

5. The fate of the Čupić brothers best shows how inappropriate the slogan is: “Ustaše and Chetniks, you fled together”. It is not a banner that calms passions, nor does it represent an adequate response to the shameful cry “Kill a Serb”, no matter how much ignorant people were delighted with this “invention” of our fans. Because it alludes to a great tragedy that happened in Slovenia, after the official end of the war. To a liquidation without a trial or verdict, with a large number of people from Montenegro unjustly killed, and by people from Montenegro. In that flight alone, over 70 priests were liquidated, as well as prominent civilians, and even Chetnik soldiers and officers who did not have the opportunity to prove their innocence in any court. These people saw the Ustashas for the first and last time during the few May days of that flight (unless, very possibly, there were those patriots from Montenegro who shot at those same Ustashas in Herzegovina in 1941). And the flight towards the West, which mixed up criminals and innocents, happened because of major geopolitical changes in Eastern Europe and the obvious support that the local communists received from the Red Army. The arrival of the Red Army in the territory of Yugoslavia (not Montenegro) shook and additionally frightened all local anti-communists and turned them to flee towards Slovenia, and through the territories of the disintegrating NDH. Of course, they were not liquidated there by the Soviets, but by local communists. That is why I believe that this is not the right song or slogan that should have been heard, at least not here in Montenegro, precisely out of respect for the innocently killed people, our ancestors. From everything described, it is clear to everyone that such a verse is no alternative to the monstrous call "Kill the Serb". On the contrary.

(pobjeda.me)