At commemorations like the one at Zidani Most, reverence for the victims often gives way to mourning for defeated ideas. It is even more dangerous when this remembrance turns into an excuse to gloss over historical collaboration with the occupiers, so that today's political subjugation and sale of the resources of the former Yugoslav states appear as prudent state policy, rather than as a continuation of the continuity of subordination.
These are the words used by "Vijesti"'s interlocutors to interpret the presence of the Montenegrin delegation, led by the head of parliament, the day before yesterday. Andrija Mandić (New Serbian Democracy), in Kamniška Bistrica, Slovenia, at the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the massacre at Zidani Most.
Mandić laid a wreath for the victims, and his party colleagues - the Minister of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property - were also present at the event. Slaven Radunović, Deputy Prime Minister Budimir Aleksic, as well as the deputies Dejan Djurovic i Velimir Djokovic.
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According to the data Veseljka Koprivice from the book "From the Vizier's Bridge to the Built Bridge", during the withdrawal of Chetnik forces from Podgorica Pavle Djurišić He had between 7 and 12 thousand armed soldiers, while they were accompanied by between three and six thousand civilians, women, children, the elderly and the wounded. At Zidani Most, towards Koprivica, about six thousand prisoners were shot, among them the metropolitan Joannikius Lipovac, and seventy Orthodox priests from Montenegro.
Koprivica quotes and excerpts from the book of the Partisan general Koste Nađa "Comrade Tito, the war is over", which mentions that on May 14 and 15, 1945, "about 60 thousand Ustashas and Home Guardsmen and five thousand Chetniks were captured in Slovenia". It also quotes the opinion of historians Radoje Pajović, which estimates that around a thousand Montenegrin Chetniks managed to cross into Austria, but were then handed over by British forces to units of the Yugoslav Army (JA).
According to information from Koprivica's book, the British captain Thomson from the Fifth Corps, in his report, confirms that by May 15, when the deportations were formally suspended, 26.339 people had been handed over to the Yugoslav People's Army - "among them 5.880 Serbian and Montenegrin Chetniks and Ljotić members".
After the memorial service served by the Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral Joannikius, Metropolitan of Budimlje and Nikšić Methods, Bishop of the Metropolitanate of Zagreb-Ljubljana Cyril and Bishop of Pakrac and Slavonia Jovan, Mandić addressed those present, saying that they had gathered "not to revive any hatred", but, he claimed, "to pay homage to the victims in prayer and silent suffering, in the name of truth and justice".
Joanikije announced the day before yesterday that "Tito's communists in Slovenia killed the remnants of the royal army in the homeland, priests and over 20.000 faithful people" during May and June 1945.
Failed to face the past
Croatian historian Hrvoje Klasic He told "Vijesti" that many who attend commemorations, whether in Bleiburg, Zidane Most or elsewhere, do not actually come to express respect for the victims, but to mourn the defeat.
"... I was at a gathering in Zagreb attended by grandchildren of former Nazis. They travel around Europe and talk about how they condemn the actions of their ancestors. They want to know where their grandfathers are buried, not to glorify them, but to warn new generations about the crimes of Nazism. Unfortunately, that has not happened here (in Croatia), nor in Montenegro or Serbia. Those who go to commemorations, whether in Bleiburg, Zidani Most or others, often do not come to pay tribute to the victims, but to mourn the defeat," he said.
He states that in the Croatian case this would be the collapse of the Ustasha Independent State of Croatia (NDH), and in the Serbian or Montenegrin case it would be the defeat of the Chetnik forces, adding that this is an indicator that there has been no "real confrontation with the past."
"Being a Croatian patriot is not the same as being an Ustasha, just as being a Serbian or Montenegrin patriot is not the same as being a Chetnik. For most of the war, the Chetniks collaborated with the occupiers, the Italian fascists, the German Nazis, and even the NDH. It is unclear to me how those who were on the fascist payroll became national heroes. The manner of their death, although tragic, is not enough to declare them martyrs," the interviewee points out.
When asked whether it can be said that attending these types of commemorations actually serves to revise history, Klasić replies that this can be "very easily verified."
"Ask Mandić and the others: were the Chetniks anti-fascists or collaborators of the fascists? If they say they were anti-fascists, let them state where they were in 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945. For example, the Battle of the Neretva, Kozara, or May 8 and 9, 1945. Did they expel the Nazis or did they flee with them? If they don't know the answer, it's clear who they were with. And if they continue to glorify the Chetnik ranks and commanders, we have nothing to talk about," he says.
The office of the Speaker of the Parliament did not respond to questions from "Vijesti" about whether Mandić believes that the Chetniks were anti-fascists or collaborators with the occupiers in World War II.
In mid-September 1944, the Yugoslav monarch King Peter II Karadjordjevic He called on all Yugoslavs to join the Tito People's Liberation Army, recognizing its authority and emphasizing "the unity of the people as the key to victory over the occupier."
Mandic's "scandalous speech"
Mandić also said that Kamniška Bistrica is one of more than 580 registered mass graves in Slovenia, where, he says, according to data from various commissions, historians and surviving participants, more than 100 people were executed after the end of World War II.
Koprivica states in his book that there are no original documents on the exact number of killed members of quisling and anti-communist formations, but that it is estimated that around 1945 people were killed in the so-called "final operations" of partisan units in 100.000.
Historian and editor of the portal "Žurnal.me" Vuk Bačanović He told "Vijesti" that according to estimates once made by a Croatian demographer, Vladimir Zerjavic, in the liquidations of quisling troops, about 57 thousand Croats, eight to ten thousand Slovenes and approximately "two thousand Serbian and Montenegrin members of the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland (JvUO), among whom some also include members of the Zbor Dimitrija Ljotić".
"... As far as I have been able to follow the results of recent research, they show that the number of executed members of the Croatian Armed Forces is somewhat higher than Žerjavić's estimate and amounts to approximately 80.000 people," he said.
When asked how he views Mandić's presence at Zidani Most, i.e. whether it is an act of support for the victims or an attempt to rehabilitate collaborators of the occupiers, Bačanović replies that the rehabilitation process in almost all countries of the former Yugoslavia has long been completed.
"There is no post-Yugoslav society, from Zagreb, through Sarajevo and Belgrade, to Podgorica, in which there is no political strategy to present various collaborators of the occupiers either as wise pragmatists or as misunderstood martyrs," the interlocutor states.
He assesses that Mandić's speech at the Walled Bridge "fits perfectly into almost all Montenegrin politicized historical narratives that are deeply revisionist," whether they concern later historical periods or World War II.
"Ignoring the historical context today, according to which the Yugoslav Army in the homeland was partially, and since 1944 completely, in collaboration with the occupier, is just as frivolous as the claims of many who present themselves as historians that the Serbian national identity in Montenegro is a XNUMXth-century 'import' or construction," said Bačanović, adding that this "rehabilitates the ideology of the second echelon" of collaborators with fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the NDH.
"... Ideology Sekula Drljević, Savić Marković Štedimlija and similar ones, whose biographies are being 'washed' in Montenegro today, because they are supposedly in conflict with justifying or ignoring hundreds of documents about the Ravna Gora crimes and collaboration," he points out.
He says that Mandić "made a scandalous speech" in a society in which the dominant majority of political narratives "are nothing more than scandalous reductionisms", which, says Bačanović, are not created for the sake of historical truth or social cohesion, but for the sake of "an audience that has long been trained on various corpuses of partially or completely unfounded claims".
"In this specific case, there is no problem with the tendency that every victim, even a liquidated collaborator of the occupier, deserves a dignified burial, because it is precisely the fight for human dignity that distinguishes us from the ideologies defeated in World War II. However, it is something completely different when piety becomes an excuse for neglecting the historical context of cooperation with the occupier, which aims to present today's condescension and colonial subordination of the states of the former Yugoslavia not as betrayal and the sale of resources, but as a responsible and common-sense policy, unlike what various 'adventurers' advocated or are advocating," he said.
"Black hole"
Asked whether glorifying the collaborators of the occupiers and downplaying the role of those who defeated them is rewriting the history of World War II, Klasić replied that the Western Balkans region is "a black hole in dealing with both the present and the future." He added that it is "the most backward, least democratic and poorest part of Europe."
"It would be good if the problem was only in the relationship to the past. This is related to education, but also to the relationship to history. Reputable world historians have no dilemma, they know who was on the right side throughout the war, not just at the end. As early as 1943 (British Prime Minister in World War II) Winston Churchill", a monarchist and anti-communist, he realized that the Chetniks were collaborating with the fascists, while the Partisans, led by the communists, were truly fighting," he says.
He points out that the Partisan, or national liberation movement, was international, and therefore in conflict with nationalism, whether ethnic or church-based. He noted that the churches in Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro never accepted the Partisans, but that they "constantly seek justifications for the Ustashas and Chetniks" because they were supposedly "nationally conscious."
"But the Montenegrins, Croats and Serbs who died in the partisans were nationally aware, just not nationalists. Today, that distinction is being erased. Nationalism is presented as patriotism, which is deeply wrong," Klasić said.
Bačanović: Narratives instead of facts
When asked whether, by glorifying collaborators of the occupiers, high-ranking representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro are rewriting the history of World War II, Bačanović replies that "unfortunately, they are doing the same job that is being done throughout Montenegro and, more or less, throughout the entire former Yugoslavia."
"... Including those who never explained to us how it was possible that it was precisely the new generations of communist cadres who led us into the wars of the 1990s, accepting, solely for the sake of preserving their own positions, ethnic chauvinism, historical revisionism and everything that goes with it," he notes.
He states that, following the public appearances of Montenegrin intellectuals, "regardless of which current of history-rewriting they belong to," he noticed that "history is actually completely irrelevant to them," and that they "are content with household and tribal narratives as a substitute for documented facts."
"The more facts there are, the worse the facts are," he adds.
He points out that, in contrast, the memory of the People's Liberation Struggle "is mostly reduced to retro-Titoist folklore, which is only useful if it can serve as an ornament for one of the revisionist stories."
"This ignores what was most important in that struggle: the anti-colonial dimension, something invaluable in the modern world, in which the plundering, destruction and displacement of small peoples - for the purpose of seizing their resources and living space - is becoming a practice that is no longer concealed by sweet talk and lofty declarations," said Bačanović.
On May 3, Metropolitan Joanikije of Montenegro and the Littoral served a liturgy in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in Lijevče Polje, in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian entity of Republika Srpska (RS), where he said that Pavle Đurišić's heroism in the battle there "can be compared to the heroism of Pavle Orlović", and that, "attacked by combined enemy forces", he "experienced a temporary defeat" there.
Archbishop and Metropolitan of Budimlje-Niksic Metodije, after serving a liturgy at the Podmalinsko Monastery near Šavnik, said on Saturday (June 7) that "since the end of World War II, the Tito-Ustasha coalition has reigned, committing genocide against the Serbian people," and that Chetnik leaders Dragoljub Mihailović and Pavle Đurišić were "the first guerrillas to rise up against the fascists in Europe," but that "the truth about them was later covered up with lies."
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Mugoša laid a wreath, Amfilohije prayed
And the former ambassador of Montenegro to Slovenia Miomir Mugoš laid a wreath at the memorial in Kamniška Bistrica in 2015.
He then stated that "after 70 years it is unacceptable and uncivilized to revise historical truth", but also that "it is always civilized to express an attitude towards the innocent".
He also said that it was incomprehensible that "contemporaries are classified through ancestral affiliation."
"I want to believe that Montenegrin society has matured, and beyond that," Mugoša said at the time.
The MCP announced at the time that the then Metropolitan prayed at the same place. Amphilochius "in memory of all the victims of World War II and the post-war revolutionary violence".
Šarec without response about Mandić's visit
Andrija Mandić thanked both the Member of the European Parliament and the Standing Rapporteur for Montenegro the day before yesterday. To Marjan Šarec, who during his term as head of the Kamnik municipality supported the construction of a memorial in Kamniška Bistrica.
"I also want to thank Marjan Šarec, today's Member of the European Parliament and standing rapporteur for Montenegro, for helping all of us, as the former first man of the Kamnik municipality, to find the exact places of execution of people from Montenegro and build this small Orthodox chapel," said Mandić.
Šarec's office did not respond to "Vijesti's" questions about their view of the presence of the Montenegrin delegation at the commemoration of the anniversary of the massacre at Zidani Most, and whether they believe that the Montenegrin representatives were there to pay tribute to the victims, or to glorify the collaborators of the occupiers.
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