Simonović replied to Pavlićević: A silent lie becomes a poisonous truth over time

That I am malicious and mischievous and that the text "'Mistakes of the Left', once again" (News, ART, 17. February 2024), is signed by someone whom I respect and appreciate less than Mr Veselina - Mitko Pavlićevića, my response might boil down to a warm thank you for another big, free advertisement for my book Left errors.

That, however, would really not be fair to Mr. Pavlićević, nor to the editorial staff of Vijesta, i.e. ART, which shows patience and respect for Mr. Pavlićević's right to fully communicate his position and view of my book, as well as mine to I answer that. Finally, it would be particularly unfair to those who have already read the book Left errors, and especially towards those who, perhaps, encouraged by this "advertisement", rushed to get to it and are just about to read it.

Because, especially after the new report of Mr. Pavlićević, I am convinced that all of them will easily and accurately immediately notice that in the entire extensive story of Pavlićević, apart from the repetition of the phrase "left error", my photo and the photo of the cover of my book, i.e. two lines, three lines of the aforementioned of my name, there is almost nothing that could be related or directly related to my book, neither as praise nor as criticism.

There is, therefore, neither reason nor need for me to waste paper and time discussing Pavlićević's already well-known thesis about "left" and "right" errors beyond the period that I clearly indicated in my book, which he will, let's hope, translate and in a significantly more extensive, scientifically grounded and sophisticated study.

I must, however, point out two or three of his claims, which seem to me unfounded and unacceptable from the angle from which I looked and wrote about the "left's mistakes", that is, about the period of those first ten, gloomy, painful and bloody months of the National Liberation Struggle in Montenegro Gori, when it took on the characteristics of a civil war.

For at least two reasons, Mr. Pavlićević's claim that "the fewest 'left mistakes' were made in Montenegro compared to the entire war in Yugoslavia" and that these mistakes "are not out of standard compared to other similar revolutions" is paradoxical.

First, it is undeniable that the first "left mistakes" happened in Montenegro already in September 1941 (their creator was Milovan Djilas, at that moment the leading, commanding man in the national liberation, revolutionary movement in Montenegro), that course continued, with increased intensity, when Đilas was dismissed and on November 5, 1941, he left Montenegro and took his place Ivan Milutinovic, and the situation did not change even when Đilas returned to Montenegro in mid-March 1942.

Pavlićević's claim is particularly paradoxical from the point of view of the size of Montenegro and especially from the point of view of the consequences that the "left mistakes" had in it. He ignores the bitter facts, which cannot and must never be forgotten for a moment. Montenegro, which with its national uprising against the Italian occupier, fascism and Nazism, the first in Europe, on July 13, 1941, amazed the world, overnight, as it were, largely thanks to "left mistakes", turned from a general partisan into a general Chetnik Montenegro ( according to the never-disputed data of academics Radoje Pajović, as early as March 1942, a force of about 15.000 Chetniks, armed to the teeth with Italian weapons, who fed on Italian cauldrons and received Italian salaries, stood against the considerably thinned partisan units! Do I need to remind again of the terrible crimes that, all under the guise of revenge for "left mistakes" and indisputable crimes committed by the partisans, were committed by that "right" force from January 1942 to May 1943, from the massacre at Mateševo, Baram Kraljski, Lubnica, Crkvina, Sinjavina..., not to mention Breza and Kolašin, countless other losing places throughout Montenegro, chases and pogroms until extermination, i.e. the decimation of partisan guerrillas in Montenegro and other crimes committed while partisan units were bleeding throughout Bosnia. Not to mention the masses of partisan relatives and those sympathetic to the partisan movement who were arrested by the Chetniks and handed over to the occupier, who filled camps with them in Montenegro, Albania and Italy or sent them to death camps. Can we, with all the above, forget the Neretva, where along with all the German, Italian and Ustasha forces, about 20.000 Montenegrin and Herzegovinian Chetniks arrived to help destroy the Partisan forces...

All these are the characteristics that make the Montenegrin and "left" and "right" errors that I am writing about, and how they make them specific and in many ways different and "out of standard" compared to similar phenomena in other revolutions, especially if it is known that all this happened in small and few Montenegro!

I can't even agree with Pavlićević's claim, or I don't know it, that Milovan Đilas was "the first to write about 'left mistakes' while he was Tito was alive and presented the 'left mistakes' before the international public". As far as I know, he touched on that topic most directly in his Revolutionary War, but even there he was not completely honest and it is very noticeable that he tries in every way to minimize and relativize his role in this, even in some very clear and concrete cases (some of them I have highlighted and described). In addition, even Pavlićević's gradation of "deserving people" for what happened at the very end of the NOB, that is, the Second World War, which Pavlićević persistently qualifies as "leftist mistakes" is not realistic. It is not true that on that list, after Tito, Milovan Đilas is only in sixth position! Yet he and Aleksandar Ranković were the first violins until Tito!

What I want and can agree with Mr. Pavlićević about, now and always, is the bitter truth: what would have happened if it had happened, what would have happened if it had "ruptured" in Montenegro in the nineties of the last century, and I am afraid and now! We are a heathen and vengeful world, the one, as Pavlićević says, "which runs forward and looks back". The problem is that we run too fast, and neither do we look back intelligently and far, nor do we see far ahead because of that, but we measure and judge short-sightedly, always blindly in a vengeful mood.

Mr. Pavlićević, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, confessed that he was never a communist, that while they were in power he "hygienicly distanced himself", "pityed them, perhaps even despised them", "viewed their government as a (transient ) natural disaster..." Unlike him, I was and remained a communist, formally belonging to that party for 27 years, not by order but by conviction and when I decided to do so, and I have never regretted it! And "I hygienically distanced myself", both then and now, from all those who committed crimes, especially from those who misused and perverted the noble postulates of communism and any other ideology or religion, and especially from those who every now and then they change clothes, change hats and beliefs, jump from party to party like a kid over a fence as soon as it seems to them that there is a fuller manger in the neighboring pen. Such people are always, even today, ready for crimes and for inciting hatred and deepening the gaps of schism and division.

And, finally, let me repeat what is very visible from the entire content of my book and crystal clear from the message on the last page: for us there is no salvation and progress, no reconciliation and purification until openly, calmly, without malice and malice, without hatred and vindictiveness , we don't look into each other's eyes, we don't honestly and openly say and admit what someone did - there is no reconciliation for lies, without wisdom and willingness to admit mistakes, while Willibrant's we do not kneel before the memorials of the innocent victims and we do not acknowledge the crimes whoever committed them and in whose name they were committed, in the name of the five-pointed star and in the name of the cross, the star of David or the crescent moon, the blood of all innocent victims is equally red and the pain is equally deep, and their mention, as far as I'm concerned, has only one goal: that the crimes, of anyone, are never forgotten so that they never happen again, because every silent and forgotten lie eventually becomes a bitter and poisonous truth.