What if we come on July 13th...

What a miserable country this is, it won't let me celebrate even this holiday. The only one that still smells of freedom to me and reminds me of the time when my homeland meant something...

Both to yourself and to others...

I guess that's why every July 13th I remember my history teacher...

And it's like I hear him...

The teeth of freedom and the first popular uprising in enslaved Europe...

More than two-thirds of the population who could carry a rifle were willing to die defending their small piece of the Old Continent, at a time when the major European states remained silent and suffered occupation...

Times are different, now Montenegro is suffering from their guardianship through its own fault...

And on this very holiday, that high school kid who wanted to ask the teacher awakens in me...

Does anyone else in those big countries remember how our small one, then stateless, drew a road map for them towards freedom, justice and equality...

But to put aside pathos, the harsh truth is that July 13th was unfortunately also the date of the last effective Montenegrin rebellion...

Against the unbearable dictatorship of the regime...

Against a supposedly common state that did not belong to everyone but only to some...

Against a government that acquired money and the power that comes with it by cashing in on the misfortune of those it ruled...

Historians say that it was a date unique in history, one that cannot be repeated...

I believe, but not because there is no longer any reason to rebel...

But because there are no more Montenegrins that my history professor talked about...

***

Despite that, I was really hoping that my country had finally given me at least one reason to rejoice when I read the news last Friday around noon...

Sonja Tomović-Šundić, Nikola Vukčević, Snežana Dragićević and Snežana Vuksanović received the Thirteenth of July Award...

To be happy, I also had very personal motives because the first two are the children of my long-time - unfortunately deceased - friends...

They both grew up a long time ago, I've been following their work for decades, but let's not start a congress of admiration now. So just briefly - Thirteenth July actually got them, to restore its long-collapsed symbolism for at least a year...

The credit for this also goes to two female scientists whom the state did not recognize last year for formal and legal reasons, but nevertheless awarded the author of a book that did not even exist formally and legally...

***

The reason my joy waned on the first day of the holiday is due to the President of the State Parliament, who, also formally and legally, has the honor of presenting the highest state award...

I say formally and legally because if it were about substance and justice, Andrija Mandić would not be presenting the Thirteenth of July Award to the winners...

First of all, because of its historical symbolism, on both grounds...

Because he attributes four centuries of history, which made Montenegro famous throughout the world before 1878 and the Berlin Congress, to the Serbian world...

And that, starting the recent history of Montenegro, of all the participants in the July 13th Uprising, he publicly exalts the very one who is reasonably suspected of having killed more insurgents than both occupiers - whom he otherwise loyally served - combined...

***

And the best evidence of how much Mandić respects this year's winners, the award, and the country that awards it is the place of the handover and his words...

How lucky he had left all four July Thirteenths at the parliament's gatehouse, or mailed them to the winners' home addresses...

And that would be more appropriate than that gathering in isolation, as if a control hearing were taking place in a silent room and not a state ceremony at which the highest state awards are presented...

If he did this because of last year's events near Gorica, then he unprovokedly cast suspicion on both the winners, the award, and the state whose legislative branch he represents...

Who in their right mind would protest because, after a long break, all four July Thirteenths were handed over to the right hands...

And what was offensive about the speech? Well, that inserted sentence...

How fortunate that he had just said that "we have fantastic winners" and that "our jury decided so, which - in accordance with its own conviction - made its decision, which was not influenced by any politics"...

And if he hadn't inserted "this year, like all previous ones", which is first of all not true....

Only he knows what he had in mind, but I understood that insertion as a message that both the winners and the jury this year deserve a repeat of the treatment from last July from the citizens...

***

And how Mandić treats The Thirteenth of July, we had the opportunity to listen to, read and watch years earlier...

Whatever it is, one must admit to his unprecedented talent for always bypassing the communists who organized it in congratulating the holiday and admiring the uprising...

"Great insurgent victories were won by intellectuals, royal officers and volunteers, priests, believing people, and freedom-loving atheists," he said last year...

This year, he gave a "new Serbian answer for the new time" and to Tito's brotherhood and unity:

"The uprising was jointly raised by those for whom, until then, in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, it was inconceivable that they could sit at the same table," the leader of Euro(Serb)Prussian integration falsified Montenegrin history in a very inconceivable way...

Because the decision to revolt was not made by some nameless "they" but by - Savo Brković, Periša Vujošević, Radoje Dakić, Blažo Jovanović, Božo Ljumović, Krsto Popivoda, Budo Tomović and Vido Uskoković...

I have listed the names here in alphabetical order because they were all prominent Montenegrin communists, and I leave Mandić room to state his findings about why it would be "inconceivable that they could sit at the same table" in a more authoritative location...

Now, on July 8, 1941, I don't know whether everyone was sitting at a table or on benches, but it is documented that Milovan Đilas chaired that meeting...

As a delegate of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, he conveyed the decision on an armed uprising against the occupiers and their servants, I quote:

"That armed actions begin immediately and that the existing strike groups, now as guerrilla detachments, enter into action against the Italian occupiers";

“That members of the PK go to the field and convey the directives for the uprising to the leaderships of the OK and MK and provide assistance in planning the first armed actions”;

"That the focus of armed actions be directed at destroying smaller occupation crews, destroying communications, severing telecommunications links, etc...."

So much for those for whom it was "inconceivable that they could sit at the same table..."

***

I won't go into detail about how "our grandparents were not primarily motivated to rise up by reading Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but by reading and vows of Petar II Petrović Njegoš and Saint Peter of Cetinje"...

Let me just remind you that in Montenegro, neither before 1941 nor afterwards, the mothers of parents were called "grandmothers" but rather "babe"...

And how the vows of the two bishops were fulfilled precisely by the communist comrades, despite the fact that they considered "religion to be the opium of the people"...

And the answer to the question of what the name of the people who, with both the bishops and the communists, raised uprisings was given to Mandić and other defenders of "Chetnik anti-fascism" a long time ago by the four most famous anti-fascists among Serbs - Aleksandar Leka Ranković, Slobodan Penezić Krcun, Konstantin Koča Popović and Sreten Žujović Crni...

First, together with their comrade Tito in 1941, when they addressed the Montenegrins like this:

"Montenegrin people! You were the first to rise up in armed uprising, when you were called upon by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia..."

And then in 1942, more extensively and together with everyone else from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the Supreme Headquarters:

"Montenegrin people! You who were the first to rise up against the occupiers, you who, by your example, led others in how to fight for your freedom, you who have so far remained consistent with the glorious traditions of your ancestors, you who have once again confirmed that you are ready to defend your honor and freedom with your blood..."

***

I've gone on too long with these quotes, almost forgetting Mandić's incomprehensible admiration for that other dimension of The Thirteenth of July, from 1878...

There's nothing clear to me here...

Celebrating the statehood of Montenegro, which was confirmed at the Berlin Congress, and celebrating the decisions of the so-called Podgorica Assembly, which abolished that statehood, really can't be done in the same shoes...

PS It's not just the aforementioned new Serbian democrat, both the Thirteenth of July and the Depeers are increasingly losing their bearings. What black heirs of the Montenegrin rebels, these heroes raised an uprising because of a government similar to theirs. And instead of covering their ears at least on this holiday, they keep talking about anti-fascism as if since the founding of the DPS they have based their ideology on the political goals of Vukašin Marković, not Dragoljub Mihailović...