Football as an extension of the field of battle

FUTURE IN THE INTER-WAR PERIOD (16): We are publishing parts of the monograph dedicated to the centenary of the Budućnost Football Club

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The Post of Montenegro has issued stamps to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of Buducnost, Photo: Post of Montenegro
The Post of Montenegro has issued stamps to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of Buducnost, Photo: Post of Montenegro
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

Ideologically, Buducnost continued where Zora left off. It was a “forge of revolutionaries,” as it was proudly pointed out in the postwar years. Political work was given at least as much attention as sports. Against the backdrop of this picture, the 6th of January dictatorship dealt a heavy blow to the communist movement, which found itself backed against the wall, on the defensive. The arrest of 80 members of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and their sympathizers in Montenegro in July 1929, as well as the departure of some members of the leadership from the Zeta Banovina, decapitated the provincial party organization for a certain period.

This increased the importance of Budućnost as a legal form of gathering and action, which, at the same time, contributed to the liberation of the social inhibitions of its supporters: they could, to use a metaphor applied to Albanian football from the Stalinist period, be who they really were for 90 minutes.

"Go freely wherever there are working-class youth and separate them from the influence of the bourgeoisie and the Socialist Workers' Party; go to sports organizations and politicize them, prepare working-class youth for class struggle in them," said Proleter, the organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, in January 1930.

The message also reached Podgorica.

He spoke vividly about the nature of the functioning of Buducnost Sefket Sabanadzovic.

"After every game, we held sit-ins in the apartments of individual comrades: Milan Raičević, Marija Vučelić, Marko Vujovic, brothers Radovic and others. There was singing, dancing, reciting contemporary poems, reading 'Vrabac' and some articles from the progressive press. The sessions lasted mostly from 8 to 12 in the evening. Somewhere in the late hours, when there were no police or spies on the streets, one of the comrades from the Local Committee would come and give a lecture on Marxism and the international situation... The lectures were given to us by Sergije Stanić, Bozo Ljumovic, Beco Lazovic, Periša Vujošević, Vlado Milic, Radovan Vukanovic, Dr. Grujo Petrovic and others.”

The KPJ implemented party policy in Buducnost through Sergej Stanić, the club's secretary, previously one of the founders and first president of the Workers' Sports Club Sloga from Danilovgrad.

FK Budućnost monograph
photo: Mirko Savović

On one occasion, in January 1934, Stanić and Milan Raičević, before an evening meeting of the Budućnost leadership in Gruja Mandić's tavern, were approached by a party colleague Marko Radovic handed over illegal material intended for distribution among communists. The gathering was interrupted by the police. Sensing trouble, Raičević brought in the papers To Šeko Bibezić, a politically uncompromising member of the management, who hid them in the kitchen. The gendarmes did not accept the excuse that it was a club management meeting, claiming that it was an unregistered gathering.

“Then they took us all as a group to the district headquarters. Among the communists and SKOJ members with us were: Sergije Stanić, Miloš Lučić, Milo Mih Popović, Vojo Popović, Šeko Šabanadžović, Vlado Božović, Branko Petričević, Dimitrije Petričević, Arso Ćaro Marković, Bećo Lazović, Filip Ivanović, Gojko Mitrović and others.”

The political orientation of Buducnost also had a decisive influence on the building of friendly relations with other clubs. First of all, with the closest ones: Lovćen i Hercegovina. Contacts were also established with Radnički from Sombor, Radnički from Kragujevac, JSK Split, through Montenegrin footballers who played for them, but, due to distance, traffic disconnection (in 1931, there were nine regular traffic lines from Podgorica, but all except the one with Belgrade, were within the borders of the Zeta Banovina), and of course, the proverbial lack of money, there were no conditions to concretize relations by playing matches. That is why the only two away games of Buducnost in the interwar period outside Montenegro, and within the framework of the Yugoslav kingdom, were in the immediate vicinity.

(From the monograph “Proud Past, One Future”, which will be on sale soon)

FK Budućnost monograph
photo: FK Budućnost

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