Papović: Andrija Mandić and July 13th

The Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) submitted an author's text by its member, historian Dragutin Papović - "Andrija Mandić and July 13th".

We transmit the text in its entirety:

Since becoming the unconstitutional and illegal President of the Parliament of Montenegro, Chetnik duke Andrija Mandić has struggled to find a way to congratulate and praise the uprising of July 13, 1941, on every Montenegrin Statehood Day – July 13th. He has struggled to find a way to congratulate and praise the uprising of July 13th, 1941, without mentioning and praising its organizer, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ). Last year, he stated that: “The great uprising victories were won by intellectuals, royal officers and volunteers, priests, believing people and freedom-loving atheists.” This year, he stated that the uprising was launched by “those for whom, until then, in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, it was inconceivable that they could sit at the same table,” i.e. our “grandfathers and grandmothers.”

Almost at the same time, Mandić's mayor in Nikšić, Marko Kovačević, explained that the uprising "was a response to the St. Peter's Day Assembly". Thus, in Mandić's opinion and with Kovačević's expert assistance, it turned out that some grandparents there, who had previously been unable to sit at the same table, as soon as they read on the portals on July 12 that the St. Peter's Day Assembly had ended, went to social networks in the evening hours of July 12, and within half an hour they connected in all parts of Montenegro, within half an hour they acquired weapons, then within half an hour they organized insurgent companies and by the morning of July 13 attacked the Italian border zones. In addition, it turned out that the Chetnik grandparents had raised an uprising against their own Metropolitan Joanikije Lipovac, who had participated in the St. Peter's Day Assembly. Such a laughable attempt to falsify history has never been recorded.

But, the topic is serious, so it is worth repeating the facts. The July 13th Uprising was organized by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia through the Provincial Committee (PC) for Montenegro, Boka and Sandžak. On April 10, 1941, the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia adopted a decision to continue the fight against the occupiers, and on April 24, the PC of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia for Montenegro adopted a decision to mobilize for the fight against the occupiers and formed a Commission whose task was to collect weapons. At the end of June, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in Montenegro had about 1.800 members and several thousand members of the youth organization (SKOJ). By the beginning of July, they had created 285 armed groups with about 6.200 fighters and collected about 12.000 rifles, 135 machine guns and 30 machine guns. The Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in Belgrade decided on July 4 to begin armed struggle, and then the delegate of the Central Committee Milovan Đilas announced this decision to the members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia for Montenegro at a meeting in Stijena Piperska on July 8. The members of the Central Committee were: Božo Ljumović, Blažo Jovanović, Radoje Dakić, Savo Brković, Budo Tomović, Vido Uskoković, Krsto Popovida and Periša Vujošević. They organized the uprising and decided that the uprising would begin on July 13. They were against the decisions of the Petrovdan Assembly, but that was not the motive for the uprising, but the fight against the fascist occupation.

In his congratulatory message, Mandić highlighted the participation of Major Jakov Kusovac of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the uprising and stated that he was one of the "key leaders of the insurgents", but that "this hero of the uprising was erased and removed from all these great events by the totalitarian communist regime and false, helpful historians". Kusovac's subversive role in the uprising is well known, as is his transition to the Chetniks and to the side of the occupiers. Mandić is actually saying that the uprising was organized by royal officers from the Chetnik movement, and that the communists took over their uprising and later erased them from the history of the uprising. This is another of Mandić's brutal falsification of history. The army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia capitulated on April 17, and its officers who found themselves in Montenegro did not participate in organizing the uprising. Some joined the uprising and were given the opportunity to use their military skills against the occupiers. A smaller part of the officers (e.g. Arso Jovanović, Savo Orović, Velimir Terzić) remained in the insurgent army, i.e. in the People's Liberation Army (partisans), and a larger part (e.g. Bajo Stanišić, Pavle Đurišić, Jakov Kusovac) repented of their participation in the uprising and switched to the side of the occupiers. However, these officers were not part of the Chetnik movement during the uprising, because the Chetnik movement in Montenegro was founded only in October 1941. Mandić tries to show that the Chetnik movement in Montenegro already existed at the time of the uprising and that it actually led the uprising, but this is a gross falsification of history.

That the Chetnik movement had nothing to do with the July 13th Uprising is also indicated by the fact that the Chetniks condemned the uprising during the war and collaborated with the occupier. The Chetnik emigration after the war did not appropriate the uprising either. The Chetniks never celebrated July 13th. On the contrary. They always, as during the war, emphasized that it was the work of the communists. The uprising is exclusively the political and war legacy of anti-fascist communists and partisans. The essence of the uprising was the fight against the fascist occupier and the fight against the state system of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The flower of Montenegrin youth and Montenegrin youth in general sacrificed themselves for it. The goal of the uprising was to free Montenegro from the occupier, to restore its statehood within the framework of an equal Yugoslavia, and to recognize the nationality of Montenegrins, which the organizers of the uprising symbolically emphasized. Thus, on the anniversary of the uprising on July 13, 1944, the Third Session of the National Anti-Fascist Council of People's Liberation (ZAVNO) of Montenegro and Boka Bay was held in Kolašin, at which this supreme body of partisan authority in Montenegro was renamed the Montenegrin Anti-Fascist Assembly of People's Liberation (CASNO). It was decided to constitute CASNO into the highest legislative and executive body of Montenegro as an equal federal unit in the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia. The national component of the uprising was emphasized by the fact that after the war, July 13 was celebrated as the Day of the Uprising of the Montenegrin People.

CASNO was renamed the Montenegrin National Assembly on April 15, 1945. It is, in fact, the Parliament of Montenegro, which, by a cruel irony of history, is chaired by Mandić. If the communists had not restored Montenegrin statehood in 1945, Mandić would not be the President of the Assembly today. And not only that. The communists built the Assembly building in which Mandić presides and arranged a representative cabinet for Mandić in that building in which he plays the role of a statesman. In addition, the communists opened a University in Titograd and within it the Faculty of Metallurgy, from which Mandić graduated. In short, if the Chetniks had won in 1945, Montenegro would not have been a state nor would it have had a University, and Mandić would have been a high school graduate at best. It was solely thanks to the victory of the "totalitarian communist regime" that Mandić graduated from high school and became a statesman. From his perspective, it would have been more honest to thank the "totalitarian communists" instead of condemning them.

Mandić is also trying to present himself as a respecter of the state heritage of July 13, 1878, when the independence of Montenegro was recognized at the Berlin Congress by the Great Powers, which had not done so before. This is insincere, because Mandić consistently celebrates the decisions of the so-called Podgorica Assembly, which abolished the state independence of Montenegro recognized at the Berlin Congress. Mandić's Old Bjelaško-Chetnik dictatorship, which is presented in public as a supposedly New Serbian Democracy, annually awards the "Marko Daković" Charter to prominent fighters against the statehood of Montenegro and the Montenegrin nation, named after a finally convicted terrorist from 1907 and one of the leaders of the Bjelaško movement. That is how much Mandić cares about the recognition of Montenegrin statehood at the Berlin Congress.

Mandić congratulated the Statehood Day by, in fact, condemning the existence of an independent Montenegro before 1918 and condemning the communist organizers of the anti-fascist uprising in 1941 who restored Montenegrin statehood and emancipated the Montenegrin nation. It turned out that when Mandić congratulates the Statehood Day, he actually denies it and, in addition, likes to criticize the "totalitarian communist regime". If he wants to criticize totalitarianism, he should first free himself from the Bjelaš-Chetnik totalitarianism of his ideological ancestors. In 1918, the Bjelaš abolished the state of Montenegro, killing, persecuting and burning everyone who was against their policy. During the war, the Chetniks fought to create a large and homogeneous Serbia in which only Orthodox Serbs who were in favor of the Karađorđević monarchy would live. They pursued a policy of ethnic and ideological cleansing against the rest, and it was the communists (partisans) who stopped them in this. When the communist regime collapsed in 1991, the Chetnik ideology was revived and continued where it had stopped in 1945, i.e. it led to ethnic cleansing and genocide in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. This is still Andrija Mandić's real and intimate ideology today. That is why Mandić has and cannot have anything in common with July 13, 1878 and 1941. Neither is Mandić anti-fascist nor does he respect Montenegrin statehood and nationality.

Andrija Mandić is in vain pretending. His falsification of history is transparent and shallow. He whined needlessly while apologizing in front of the cameras for his participation in creating divisions. No one is fooled by his hugging and kissing with Brussels bureaucrats. It is clear to everyone that he is neither an anti-fascist nor a Montenegrin statesman. Everyone in Montenegro knows that the goal of Mandić's policy is the realization of the white-Chetnik ideology, that is, the destruction of the state of Montenegro and the Montenegrin nation. This is a constant of Mandić's policy, or, as he likes to say, the goal is the same, only the path is different.