By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
New Montenegro, established after the clerical counter-revolution, is again humble and inferior to Serbia. Which is fully exporting its revisionist narrative about “good, anti-fascist Chetniks” to the submissive Montenegro. The media, as well as the companies controlled by Aleksandar Vucic, are working on it. But the authorized importer is the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), which distributes the product in all its sales facilities – some of which are sacred, some business, some media and some are offices of all three branches of government.
Why is the revisionist narrative so important to Serbian authorities? Not because of the Chetniks or because of the 1941-1945 war. But because of the revision of the truth about the reasons, nature and responsibility for the wars that Belgrade fought in the 90s of the 20th century.
Those wars had the same goal – the creation of a Greater, later Homogeneous Serbia – as well as the same methods, which included systematic war crimes and genocide in Eastern Bosnia. By rehabilitating that (1941-1945) attempt to create Greater Serbia, the innocence of this one (1991-1999) is ensured, without sticking a finger in the eye of the so-called international community and directly affecting the verdicts of the court in The Hague.
It’s known that in the 90s wars, Belgrade tried to create a Greater Serbia. That project was created by the ideologue of the Chetnik movement, Stevan Moljevic, in a document written in the town of Niksic back in 1941, published under the title ‘Homogeneous Serbia’. The realization of that project, both in 1941 and 1992, entailed the extermination of Muslims in Eastern Bosnia, especially along the Drina River. In Srebrenica and Podrinje, Ratko Mladic tried to finish what the Chetnik commander Pavle Djurisic hadn’t finished. On February 13, 1943, he sent a report to Draza Mihailovic about the ‘action against Muslims’ in the ‘Pljevljanska, Cajnicki and Focanski srez”, in which he wrote: “During the operations, the complete destruction of Muslim life, regardless of gender and age was performed. Victims. Our total victims were 22 dead, two of them by accident, and 32 wounded. Among the Muslims, about 1.200 fighters and up to 8.000 other victims: women, the elderly and children”.
What a knight. What a military honor. Among the victims – 1.200 soldiers, 8.000 women, the elderly and children – one can read that the Chetniks achieved undoubted dominance in the conflict with the maternity hospital and the nursing home. The problem would arise once they encountered armed men. On the Neretva, for example. Or in Krnovo, which Metodoje now strives for. Where, as the art historian Tatjana Koprivica announced on social media, 350 Chetniks were killed, about 350 were wounded, 180 were captured, while 130 joined the partisans. Who lost one fighter. Six of them were wounded.
Because, as is well known, the butchery campaigns of Ratko Mladic and Draza Mihailovic were the fault of Tito, the Chetnik commander was rehabilitated in Serbia, and with him the ideology in the name of which he and Mladic fought for death.
What a sense of sarcasm history has… Tito’s glorious army ended up fighting for the Chetnik cause. The army that invaded Slovenia and then bombed Vukovar and Dubrovnik was fascist. The army that armed the Chetniks who kept Sarajevo under siege was fascist.
Such an army has never won anywhere. In eight years, it was defeated in four wars – which is probably a world record. For some reason, they don’t celebrate it.
The review is to be done. Both when it comes to the military events and political vectors that managed those events. As part of the joint revisionist efforts, President Milatovic stood out with his fairy tale about Momir Bulatovic. From whom, in the future, in this sense, we should expect more serious interventions.
It is what it is… More Yugoslav footballers died in matches against Germany than Chetniks in battles against the Nazis.
That’s why all calls for reconciliation, tears over our divisions are in vain… For the story of how Chetniks were fighters against Nazism, neither you nor I can be a partner to the revisionists – in any case, not me. Because I don’t have that much imagination.
You see… when I was a boy, I dreamed of going to a Black Hole in a spaceship; I drew a comic book inspired by the Star Wars series; I dreamed that I was Silver Flyer, saving distant galaxies. But I never managed to imagine that the Chetniks were anti-fascists. Since in Romania half of my grandmother’s family was killed by them and half by the Ustasha, it was difficult to dream of such a thing.
Who then can be a partner for the revisionists for their fairy tale about the Chetniks who were anti-Hitler guerrillas?
Well – Marvel, my brothers and sisters. Marvel. In their films, namely, people fly, ride through space on surfboards, cause earthquakes and tornadoes with almighty hammers, rule civilizations under the sea and, like spiders, climb the New York buildings. Because their movies don’t care about history or physics; since in those films what happens that has never happened and will never happen – Marvel, I say, would undoubtedly know how to make a movie for children in which Chetniks are shown as heroes.
Of course, the revisionist arguments are powerful and solid. Like a used condom. Let’s say this, quasi-legal: Draza is not a war criminal because he was rehabilitated by the court in Belgrade. Well done. In the same way, Hitler is not a war criminal either, since there is no final judgment by which he was convicted of war crimes.
Or this one: the Americans were supporting the Chetniks, so the Chetniks are good guys.
Ah, what can I tell you… the US, let’s say, backed Pinochet. They supported him when he staged a military coup against the leftist Allende. They supported him when he used terror to consolidate power. They supported him when he maintained that power with all kinds of crimes – including mass executions of Chilean citizens. They supported him when, according to the American CBS News, he killed at least 3.095 people. They also supported him when – according to data of the Amnesty International and the United Nations Human Rights Committee – he jailed 250.000 Chilean citizens as political prisoners.
The list of dictators in South America that America was supporting is long. Just as they supported Franco in Spain. At first, passively, as during the Spanish Civil War the American Congress refused to provide aid to the Republic and instead adopted a series of Neutrality Acts, which enabled Hitler and Mussolini to secure Franco’s military supremacy and victory with weapons. Then, as the American LA Times reports, the USA signed a pact with Franco during the first year of the Eisenhower administration. “In exchange for military bases, Franco received military assistance, economic aid and, most importantly, implicit moral support from the US.”
OK. I think we understand each other.
(The opinions and views of our columnists don’t necessarily reflect those of the editorial staff of CdM)
